CHAPTER 227: THE CRACK

While celebrations echoed across the mountaintop, while crowds chanted blessings and prophecies spoke of futures bright with promise, darkness gathered in chambers where light had not been welcome for hours.

Vetra’s private rooms, deep within the palace’s oldest wing, in sections that predated current architecture, that existed in spaces most servants avoided without quite knowing why, had been transformed into something that would have horrified anyone unfortunate enough to witness it.

Candles surrounded a blood-drawn circle, dozens of them, positioned at precise intervals, burning with flames that flickered colors that shouldn’t exist. A colour so dark it was almost lightless.

They generated heat without warmth, light without illumination, creating an atmosphere of wrongness so profound it made the air itself taste corrupted.

Vetra knelt at the northern edge of the circle, her fine robes abandoned in favor of simple black cloth that wouldn’t impede movement, her silver hair unbound and hanging loose, blood smeared across her forehead and cheeks in patterns Aira had painted there hours ago.

Her hands, always so carefully maintained, so elegantly manicured, were now raw and bleeding from where she’d carved symbols into her own flesh, temporary tattoos written in pain, necessary sacrifices to make herself a suitable conduit for what they were attempting.

Across from her, at the southern point, Aira hunched over the black grimoire, her scarred face illuminated by candlelight that made her features even more grotesque, her ruined mouth moving constantly as she read passages in languages that predated writing, that existed as sounds rather than words, that required the speaker to understand suffering on fundamental levels most humans never accessed.

They’d been at this for hours.

Since before the hunting party had departed. Since the moment Soren and Eris had left the palace grounds, since the city’s attention had focused outward toward the mountaintop ritual, since the perfect opportunity had presented itself like a gift from forces that appreciated ambition and cruelty in equal measure.

The chanting was constant, rhythmic, building in layers like an obscene symphony. Vetra’s voice provided the foundation, steady, controlled, precise despite the blood that occasionally dripped from her nose as the magic’s cost accumulated. Aira’s voice wove counterpoint, higher, more erratic, carrying harmonics that suggested she was channeling something that used her throat as instrument rather than speaking with her own will.

Together they created sound that resonated not in ears but in bones, that vibrated through stone and blood and the spaces between breaths, that called to things that waited in darkness for exactly this invitation.

The chamber’s temperature fluctuated wildly. One moment, cold enough that frost formed on the walls. The next, hot enough that the candles’ wax ran like tears, that the blood symbols hissed and steamed, that breathing felt like inhaling fire.

Neither woman acknowledged the discomfort. Neither stopped chanting. Neither allowed weakness or doubt or basic human limitation to interrupt what they’d begun.

A soft knock at the door, barely audible beneath the chanting, but expected.

"Enter," Vetra called without breaking rhythm, her voice layering over itself, creating echoes where none should exist.

Isolde slipped inside, her expression caught between terror and exhilaration, her bandaged cheek a reminder of her own encounter with Eris’s retaliation. She carried a sealed message, its wax still warm, its delivery recent enough to be relevant.

"The signal, Your Grace," she whispered, approaching the circle’s edge but careful not to cross the blood-drawn boundaries. "They’ve completed the Star-Shard ritual. The fusion was successful, " her voice tightened with something that might have been jealousy or grief, ", perfectly successful. Everyone’s still at the mountain. The entire court, all witnesses, every noble of importance."

"And the Emperor?" Vetra asked, still chanting beneath her words, creating layered sound that suggested she existed in multiple states simultaneously.

"Still there. Won’t return until night, according to tradition. The city is..." Isolde paused, searching for words. "Unguarded isn’t quite right. The regular patrols are active. But all the powerful mages, all the military leadership, all those who could respond quickly to magical threat, they’re all at the ceremony."

"Perfect." Vetra’s smile was terrible, triumphant, the expression of someone who’d arranged pieces precisely and now watched them fall into inevitable patterns. "Then we proceed."

She turned her attention back to the circle, to the ritual that had consumed hours and blood and pieces of her humanity she’d sacrificed long ago. "Aira. It’s time."

The witch’s chanting shifted, rising in pitch and intensity, her hands moving over the grimoire’s pages with reverence that bordered on worship. She found the passage she’d been building toward, the culmination of all previous incantations, the words that would transform potential into actuality.

"V’rakhûn mor’talak, síkresh t’alam dûr!"

Her voice cracked, blood flowing more freely from her nose now, from her ears, from the corners of her eyes where capillaries burst under pressure of channeling power that mortal flesh was never meant to contain.

"N’arak vel’shon, túreth k’al márek!"

The temperature spiked viciously. Impossibly hot, the kind of heat that belonged in forges and volcanoes, that turned air into shimmer and made breathing an act of will rather than reflex.

"Sh’korran vél t’nash, moreth síl k’athûn!"

Vetra joined her, their voices merging into harmony that was profane in its beauty, that created sound so precisely wrong it approached art.

"D’kuthral nôm elshar, v’rakesh túl m’oran!"

The blood symbols began to glow, not reflect candlelight, but generate their own luminescence, pulsing in rhythm with the chanting, brightening until they were painful to look at directly.

"Thal’mûresh k’oron vek, silrâth nôm t’alar!"

Both women screamed now, abandoning any pretense of control, letting the magic flood through them with force that cracked their voices, that made blood flow from mouths and noses and any other orifice it could find.

"VEL’KORATH MOR’TALAK! ASHÛR K’ORON VEK!"

The final words, the ones that couldn’t be taken back, that sealed intention into action, that transformed theoretical magic into concrete violation of natural law:

"ÛRAKANIS VELKOR! OPEN! BREAK! RISE!"

The ground trembled.

Not just in the chamber, though that’s where it started. The vibration spread outward like ripples from a stone dropped in still water, radiating through the palace’s foundation, through the rock beneath, through the very bones of the mountain that supported the capital city.

Somewhere far below, leagues beneath the surface, in places where sunlight had never reached, where ancient powers had been sealed by gods who’d understood exactly how dangerous their creation was, something cracked.

It cracked, the first fracture in a seal that had held for millennia, that had been designed to last until the world’s ending, that was suddenly, catastrophically failing because two women with enough hatred and ambition had found the right words, the right sacrifice, the right moment when the barrier between imprisonment and freedom was thinnest.

The crack spread.

Through layers of divine binding. Through magical reinforcement laid down by generations of the faithful. Through the fundamental structure that kept one realm separate from another, that prevented things that belonged in darkness from emerging into light.

The seal, built to be eternal, discovered it was merely very old.

And very old things, when subjected to sufficient pressure from beings who refused to accept their permanence, eventually failed.

In the outer districts of the capital, the neighborhoods where common people lived and worked and raised families, where life proceeded with the comfortable assumption that terrible things happened elsewhere to other people, the evening had been peaceful.

The Star-Shard Hunt was a spectacle for nobles and those wealthy enough to make the journey. For everyone else, it was simply a day where important people were absent, where businesses closed early in observance of tradition, where families gathered for quiet meals and early bedtimes.

The cobblestone streets were nearly empty, just a few late workers heading home, a handful of merchants securing their shops for the night, children playing final games before parents called them inside.

Normal. Safe. Boring in the way that safety is boring when you’ve never known true danger.

Then the ground split open.