The spiral stair leading to the upper battlements was carved from a single, unbroken vein of black obsidian.
It climbed through the hollow spine of the Sunken Spire, cold and slick with damp mist, each step worn hollow by centuries of penitent pilgrims. But the air grew hotter with every landing, thick with the stench of pitch, burning sulfur, and the concussive shockwaves of the siege raging outside.
Aurelia led the ascent, her twin daggers held reversed along her forearms, her senses spread out like a spider’s web through the vibrating stone.
The Veil beneath the Spire was no longer dormant.
The slaughter in the lower baptismal pool had awakened the ancient foundation wards. Pale silver mist coiled up the stairwell behind them like hunting hounds, lapping at the heels of the sixty veterans following in two-column formation. The silver glyphs on Aurelia’s skin burned with an icy brilliance that cut through the darkness, illuminating the winding steps in ethereal twilight.
Beside her, Malakor took the stairs two at a time, his boots striking the obsidian with measured, rhythmic power.
The great sword in his hand was alive with golden sovereign embers, trailing sparks of molten light that hissed against the damp stone walls. Every line of his body was coiled for the final kill; the predator had tracked his quarry to the highest branch, and there was nowhere left for the prey to run.
"The Inquisitor's guard holds the high landing," Aurelia murmured without breaking stride. "Thirty Paladins of the Solar Dawn. Full plate of gilded steel, heavy tower shields, and halberds."
"They can hold their shields against mortal men," Malakor rumbled, his voice low and vibrating with savage anticipation. "They cannot hold them against an avalanche."
He caught her hand as they rounded the three-hundredth step, his calloused fingers interlacing with hers in a brief, bone-crushing squeeze. The contact was an explosion of shared power; the silver frost of her Veil magic surged into his arm, while his sovereign furnace flooded her veins, weaving their separate essences into an indivisible chord of lethal intent.
Aurelia looked back at him, her lips curving into a breathless, wicked smile. "Show them the wolf, Malakor."
"Stay at my shoulder," he whispered, releasing her fingers as they reached the massive double doors of the summit chamber. "When I crack their line, you take the Inquisitor's throat."
The doors were cast bronze, embossed with the radiant eye of the Solar Concord and barred from within with a beam of seasoned ash as thick as a tree trunk.
Malakor didn't bother looking for a battering ram.
He stepped back two paces, channeled the combined fury of their bound bloodlines into his core, and brought his great sword down in a devastating, two-handed diagonal cleave across the center seam of the bronze valves.
Sovereign Cleave!
The blade struck the metal with the sound of a falling cathedral bell. A shockwave of golden fire and silver frost exploded outward from the impact, shearing through bronze, hinges, and the massive ash bar in a blinding cascade of sparks.
With a final, brutal kick of his iron-shod boot, Malakor blew the shattered doors into the room.
The summit of the Sunken Spire was an open-air observation platform suspended three hundred feet above the Sinking Fen.
The night wind howled across the flagstones, carrying the roar of burning siege towers and the screams of dying men from the causeway far below. In the center of the terrace, surrounded by thirty armored paladins locked in a shield wall, stood High Inquisitor Vane.
The Inquisitor was dressed in vestments of spun gold and white ermine, wearing an iron solar crown spiked with twelve rays. In his hands, he held a colossal two-handed reliquary mace, its head carved like an open sun weeping golden fire.
"Malakor!" Vane shrieked over the howling gale, his fanatic eyes bulging in disbelief as the bronze doors crashed into his guards. "You were buried under Mount Sorrow! The Light burned you to ash!"
Malakor stepped through the smoke, towering, blood-spattered, and completely unyielding, his amber eyes burning with the cold finality of death itself.
"The Light," Malakor said, stepping onto the terrace as Aurelia flanked him like a shadow of silver death, "is about to go out."