Malakor’s blade did not hesitate.
The heavy combat dagger blurred through the air, whistling with lethal precision straight toward the old scholar’s throat. Yet an inch before the tempered dark-steel could sever the wrinkled windpipe, a ripple of translucent, jade-green glass solidified in empty space. The dagger struck the barrier with a dull clink, its momentum killed instantly, dropping to clatter uselessly on the cedar floorboards.
Malakor’s jaw tightened, his amber eyes narrowing to slit-pupiled points of dark rage. He didn't reach for a second blade; he lowered himself into a predatory crouch, black fire licking across the ridges of his knuckles, ready to rip the man's throat out with his bare hands.
"Hold, Malakor," Aurelia commanded softly from the bed.
She rose from the wolf-pelts without a hint of shame or haste, pulling a heavy robe of midnight-blue velvet over her shoulders, tying the cord tightly around her waist. The Six Shards beneath her collarbone thrummed with a strange, dissonant frequency—not the violent panic they had displayed before the Herald, but a dull, vibrating recognition.
She stepped onto the cold floorboards, barefoot, her silver hair spilling over the dark velvet of her robe. Her eyes, glowing with their dual ring of silver and void-violet, bored into the intruder.
"You wear the chain of the Archivists of Ouroboros," Aurelia said, her voice flat and cold as a winter blade. "That order was burned alive when the First Throne shattered eight centuries ago. The imperial records said not a single scroll survived the purges."
The old scholar offered a withered, theatrical bow, leaning heavily on his iron-tipped cane. His milky, cataracts-clouded eyes stared unblinkingly at the center of her chest, where the light of the bound Shards shone through the silk of her chemise.
"Records written by conquerors are rarely more than flattering fables, Empress," the old man wheezed, his thin lips curling into a dry smile. "I am Theron. The last Watcher of the Deep Sepulchers. And while you and your butcher have been busy slaughtering usurpers and claiming the crown of the sky, the true foundation has cracked."
"Speak plain, old man," Malakor growled, stepping up beside Aurelia, his shoulder pressing against hers, his presence an unyielding bulwark of dark heat. "Or I will find out if your jade glass can stop your limbs being torn from your torso."
Theron let out a raspy, dry chuckle that sounded like dry leaves scraping across a crypt floor. He tapped his cane against the hearth once more.
The emerald flames flared higher, projecting shadowy, shifting illusions into the air of the chamber.
The image showed the continent from above—not the surface mountains or rivers, but the deep, abyssal subterranean strata miles beneath the bedrock. Far below the deepest dwarven mines, below the roots of the Iron Crags and the sunken trenches where the Abyssal Sirens had once spawned, lay an immense, circular labyrinth. At its core slumbered something colossal, shaped like a coiled serpent whose scales were composed of continent-sized plates of petrified bone.
"The Six Shards you carry were never meant to be a crown," Theron said, his voice dropping into a solemn, ancient cadence. "They were the anchors of the Great Seal. When you gathered them into a single mortal vessel, you removed the counterweights from the six corners of the world."
Aurelia’s breath hitched. A cold chill, far more piercing than the winter draft, traced its way down her spine. "The World-Eater. The Serpent of the Deep Rift."
"The Leviathan of Ouroboros," Theron corrected. "It has slumbered in the molten cradle of the world since the dawn era. The Six Shards pinned its coils to the earth's core. With all six bound into your chest... the pins have been pulled."
Theron took a step forward, his milky gaze fixing upon Aurelia with terrifying intensity.
"The earth will not break from the sky, Empress. The sea will not drown you from above. Within three moons, the bedrock beneath the capital will liquefy. The First Continent will slide into the molten maw of the serpent, unless—"
"Unless what?" Malakor demanded, his voice thick with murder.
"Unless the Empress travels down into the Sunken Tombs of Kar-Drakor," Theron whispered, "and drives the final Shard—her own beating heart—into the serpent’s skull."
Silence descended upon the chamber, heavy, suffocating, and absolute.
Malakor’s hand came down on Aurelia’s waist, gripping her with sudden, bruising violence. His amber eyes blazed with a terrifying, untamable fury as he looked at the old scholar.
"She is not dying for your dead world," Malakor snarled, his voice a low, feral promise of apocalypse. "If this empire must burn to keep her breathing, then let the serpent eat every last stone."