Page 32 of Bite Bonded Bride

"—generations of elders have debated the mechanism, and the records are clear that blood magic of sufficient potency, introduced at the central node⁠—"

The central node.

I find it. Midpoint of the formation, slightly elevated, shaped like something between a basin and a lens. Dark. Dry.

The channels leading to it run downward at a seven-degree grade, roughly. Inflow. But the channels leading away from it⁠—

They angle wrong.

I stare at them. I count the outflow channels. I trace their direction.

No.

"Stop." The word leaves my mouth before I decide to say it.

Varkai pauses.

"The ritual won't work." I stand up, because I cannot have this conversation from the floor. "Those outflow channels—they don't redistribute into the underground system. They feed back into the Wildspont directly. Whatever you introduce at the central node doesn't stabilize the Wildspont. It accelerates it. You add blood magic to that mechanism and you're not lighting a lamp. You're dropping a torch into a gas pocket."

Silence.

I look at the gathered Vrakken around the chamber, the chanting has stopped. They're watching me. Some with hostility, others with exhaustion so profound it barely registers as an expression at all. These aren't monsters. I've mapped enough dangerous terrain to recognize the face of folks who’ve run out of options. Every person in this room is afraid and believes this is the only option left.

That recognition doesn't reduce the terror. It compounds it.

"The ritual destroys the mechanism," I say, directing it at Varkai now, keeping my voice flat and technical because it is the only language that might reach him. "It doesn't save the mountain. It ends it. Everyone underground and within three miles of the surface above—gone. You have to let me show you the outflow angles⁠—"

His white eyes don't change.

"Take her to the lower cell," he says quietly. "She needs rest before the ceremony."

"Listen to me⁠—"

Hands close around my arms. Two soldiers, expressionless. I'm moved with that same predatory proficiency with no malice nor drama. Just motion. A problem being relocated.

"You'll kill everyone!"

The chamber door seals behind me.

The cell is a small carved stone lit by a single violet-threaded crack in the ceiling. I press my back against the wall and slow down my breathing.

All right. Survey the terrain.

One exit. Solid stone on three sides. The crack in the ceiling is structural, a stress fracture, not a weakness I can use. The door is stone, no mechanism I can see from here.

The ceremony could be hours away. It could be less.

I close my eyes and rebuild the chamber in my mind like a map, every column, channel, and angle of outflow. There is a solution to this. Every unstable system has a solution if you understand the load points.

I just have to find it before they pour my blood into a machine that will bury us all.

18

ZARETH

The chamber door is already open. Not ajar. I cross the threshold and stop.

The bond hits me like a wound. What was warm and present and threaded through the center of my chest has gone abruptly, horrifyingly quiet. The taut wire connecting me to Cybele, pulls now toward the lower ruins with an urgency I cannot resist. It is a command written in my bloodstream and marrow. She is not here, and I feel her absence physically.