Aren screamed again.

Kael moved before the sound had finished echoing.

Elian stepped sideways and blocked the descending stair.

Kael's hand became claws.

"Move."

"If I move and you rush to him," Elian said, "you may kill everyone above us."

Golden light flashed beneath Kael's skin.

Lyra caught his wrist.

The fury that struck through the bond nearly stole her breath. Three centuries of grief had narrowed to one certainty: Aren was alive, Aren was hurting, and someone was standing between Kael and him.

But Kael had already promised her they would not free Aren blindly.

Lyra tightened her grip.

"Show us what he's holding."

Elian's golden-ringed eyes settled on her.

"That," he said quietly, "is the first sensible demand anyone has made today."

Cassian stared at his brother as though every breath Elian took was an accusation.

"You forged my seal."

Elian did not deny it.

"Yes."

Mira gave a humorless laugh. "Excellent. We have reached the confession portion of our descent into ancient treason."

"You ordered her taken," Darius said.

"I ordered the genealogies contained and Thorne delayed before the three palace witnesses had awakened and the lower wards were ready to be opened."

"Your men tied me to a chair and burned records."

For the first time, Elian's expression shifted.

"They were told to delay you, not kill you."

Mira touched the bruise along her cheek.

"A distinction I shall treasure."

Adrian's expression hardened. "Yet you needed three awakened witnesses to open this passage. Why stop Mira from finding more of them?"

Elian looked toward the branching marks on Mira, Darius, and Adrian.

"Because those three were already inside the palace. Thorne. Vane. Valerius. The old records tracked your lines for centuries. I needed these three awakened first. I did not need Mira bringing unknown heirs into the palace before I knew whether the lower circuit would survive being opened."

Lyra remembered the golden conduit magic spilling from the shattered vial, reaching Mira's mark and then Darius and Adrian.

"You expected the Saintess conduit to awaken them."

"I hoped some surviving Covenant mechanism would. I could not know your vial would break."

That answer came without hesitation.

Elian turned and started down the stairs.

"Everything happened sooner than I intended. That is why Aren is losing control."

Another impact shook dust from the hidden doorway.

Kael followed.

Lyra went with him, still holding his wrist until his claws withdrew enough that she trusted him not to carve through Elian's spine.

Behind them came Adrian, Mira, Darius, Cassian, and the single royal guard who had accompanied them from the interrogation room.

The stair descended far deeper than Lyra expected.

The air grew warmer rather than colder. Black stone replaced gray palace masonry, veined with threads of silver that glimmered when Lyra passed.

Kael touched one wall and jerked his fingers back.

"Dragon glass."

"More than that," Elian said.

Kael's eyes hardened. "Do not instruct me about dragoncraft."

"I wouldn't dare."

The answer was mild enough to be insulting.

Cassian finally spoke.

"Thirty-one years."

Elian's steps faltered.

"Cassian—"

"Thirty-one years I believed you buried beneath a monastery orchard."

Elian did not turn.

"That was safer."

"For whom?"

"You."

Cassian stopped.

Lyra looked back. Her mentor's face had gone strangely still.

Elian continued downward.

"When I discovered what the Seventh Light guarded, I was given a choice. Disappear or be made useful in the same way the Temple made others useful."

His golden-ringed eyes gleamed when he glanced over his shoulder.

"I chose disappearance. I was less successful at avoiding usefulness."

Lyra felt sick.

"The gold in your eyes."

Elian touched beneath one eye.

"Preserved Saintess essence. Small quantities. Enough to slow the body. Enough to let me pass wards built to recognize consecrated power."

Cassian whispered, "You used them."

Pain crossed Elian's face.

"Yes."

No justification followed.

Kael's disgust came through the bond like heat.

"Humans always find elegant names for drinking the dead."

Elian accepted that too.

They reached the bottom.

A circular chamber opened before them.

Lyra stopped breathing.

The room resembled the heart-vault, but this place had been built beneath it like the underside of a wound.

Seven channels had been carved into the floor. Three glowed faintly in answer to Mira, Darius, and Adrian's marks.

Beyond them ran two broader currents: one silver-white, one black-gold. Beneath both pulsed a muddy, feverish radiance that made Lyra's stomach twist.

At the chamber's center stood a column of translucent stone wrapped in enormous roots of dragon glass.

Something moved inside it.

A hand struck the stone from within.

Kael made a broken sound.

"Aren."

A face appeared behind the glass.

Older than the child Lyra had seen in the vault visions. Younger than Kael.

Silver eyes opened.

Aren Draven pressed his palm against the prison from the other side.

"Uncle."

Kael crossed half the chamber before Lyra seized his coat.

The floor answered him.

All seven channels flashed.

The muddy radiance beneath Aren surged upward.

Aren screamed.

Kael froze.

"Don't touch it!" Aren gasped.

The dragon-glass roots around him bent outward under a force from below.

Lyra finally understood the impacts.

Aren was not striking the stone.

Something beneath him was striking Aren.

Darius raised his sword.

"What is underneath that column?"

Elian walked to the edge of the central platform.

"Not a creature. Not originally."

Another blow came.

This time Lyra saw the floor bulge.

Light pushed through the seams—gold at first, then white, then a bruised red that should not have existed in any holy spectrum she knew.

Cassian whispered a prayer.

The light recoiled from his voice.

Lyra stared.

"What is it?"

"The part they could not divide cleanly," Elian said. "When dragon power and the Saintess current were separated, the division produced a remainder. Pieces that belonged to both currents and neither. Centuries of extraction added more. Every Saintess harvested. Every dragon killed through consecrated rites. Every barrier fed with stolen blood."

Mira's face had gone pale.

"You're saying the Temple buried three centuries of magical refuse under the palace."

"No. I'm saying they buried a wound."

Lyra's wrist-ring tightened.

Stage Three opened.

The chamber vanished.

She stood in the same room three centuries younger.

Aren was a child again, furious and frightened.

Melian Arden knelt before him.

"Only until the current settles," Melian said.

"You said I wouldn't have to stay."

Kael appeared at the chamber entrance, blood across his face.

"He won't."

Lyra felt present-day Kael beside her in the memory, experiencing the same scene.

A priest in ancient white stepped between them.

"If the anchor is removed before the division stabilizes, the remainder will rise."

Melian rounded on him.

"You created the remainder."

"We created survival."

"You tore one current into two and called the bleeding salvation."

The priest's expression hardened.

"The union was the danger."

Melian looked toward Kael.

For one heartbeat her face carried such certainty that Lyra felt it across centuries.

"No," Melian said. "The severing is."

The memory shattered.

Lyra staggered.

Kael caught her.

Both of them were breathing hard.

Cassian stepped forward. "What did you see?"

Lyra looked at him.

"Melian said the severing was the danger."

Something changed in Cassian's face.

Not disbelief.

Recognition.

"You know those words," Lyra said.

Cassian did not answer quickly enough.

"Cassian."

He closed his eyes.

"There is a fragment in the sealed prophecy commentaries. I was taught it referred to severing divine law from mortal obedience."

Kael's voice turned cold.

"Convenient."

"I never saw Melian named."

"But you saw the phrase."

"Yes."

Aren struck the inside of his prison with his palm.

"Argue later."

The corrupted radiance surged again.

This time one dragon-glass root cracked.

Aren cried out and dropped to one knee.

Kael took one step forward.

Lyra blocked him.

"Not yet."

His eyes burned gold.

"He's breaking."

"Then we strengthen the anchor before we remove it."

Elian looked at her sharply.

"You understand."

"I understand enough to know you brought us here because you cannot do it yourself."

"Precisely."

Mira lifted her marked wrist.

"Three witnesses opened the door. What do three witnesses do here?"

Elian indicated three shallow depressions spaced around the platform, each connected to one of the glowing witness channels.

"Hold the accessible channels steady."

Darius frowned. "And the other four?"

"Complete the circuit."

Adrian stared at four dark channels.

"We don't have them."

Aren's voice came faintly through the stone.

"You have... more than you think."

His silver eyes settled on Cassian.

Cassian went still.

"What?"

Aren lifted one trembling hand and pressed it against a small seal carved inside his prison.

Until then it had been dark.

At his touch, the seal ignited.

A thread of white-gold light traveled from Aren's palm through the dragon-glass root, entered one of the four dormant channels, and raced across the floor toward Cassian.

Elian inhaled sharply.

"The lower Covenant circuit."

The light stopped at Cassian's boots.

Aren forced out the words through clenched teeth.

"Witness blood... answer the heart."

The channel pulsed.

White-gold light climbed Cassian's body without touching anyone else. It reached his bare wrist—and hesitated.

Lyra remembered the conduit magic approaching Cassian in the interrogation room and withdrawing without marking him.

This was different.

That power had come from the harvested Saintesses. This came from the ancient Covenant mechanism built beneath Aren's prison, deliberately awakened through the seal Aren had touched.

Cassian gasped.

A gold-white branching mark unfolded beneath his skin.

Elian whispered, "Vale."

The fourth witness channel ignited.

The entire chamber shook.

Above Aren's prison, ancient symbols blazed across the stone.

Lyra could not read them.

Then silver light rose from the broad current beneath the chamber and swept beneath the inscription.

New letters formed below the ancient script, this time in the modern court language Lyra knew.

WITNESSES PRESENT: FOUR.

CURRENT STABILITY: FAILING.

Another line appeared.

LOWER-CURRENT INSTABILITY ACCELERATING CONVERGENCE.

Then the final line formed.

CONVERGENCE REMAINING: TWENTY-FIVE DAYS.

Lyra stared.

Twenty-five. The same count the vault had shown after the severing engine stopped.

The corrupted radiance slammed upward.

The chamber lurched.

Before Lyra's eyes, the final number changed.

TWENTY-FOUR DAYS.

Kael's hand closed around hers.

Another surge struck Aren's prison.

TWENTY-THREE DAYS.

"It's consuming the interval," Lyra whispered.

Elian had gone pale.

"I didn't know instability could accelerate the convergence."

A third violent pulse tore through the floor.

TWENTY-TWO DAYS.

Aren screamed.

One dragon-glass root split farther.

The corrupted light gathered beneath him, pushing upward with deliberate force.

TWENTY-ONE DAYS.

The surge stopped.

For one terrible heartbeat, the chamber became still.

Now Lyra knew exactly where the lost four days had gone.

Not into some unseen interval since the severing engine stopped.

They had been consumed here, one by one, as the failing lower current struck the convergence itself.

"Can it keep doing that?" Adrian asked.

Elian looked at the twenty-one-day warning.

"If the chamber keeps destabilizing, apparently yes."

Aren looked down.

Terror transformed his face.

"It's awake."

The cracked dragon-glass root snapped.

Aren screamed as the remaining roots jerked taut around his prison.

The corrupted radiance struck the underside of the floor hard enough to split stone.

A fissure opened beneath the central column.

Gold and silver light poured through it, tangled together with veins of bruised red.

The light gathered.

Not randomly.

Deliberately.

Five luminous shapes pressed against the broken stone like fingers finding purchase.

Then a hand made of corrupted gold and silver light pushed through the floor.