I stagger backward, yanking my hand from the Veilstone's surface.

  The cold remains. Not on my skin but deeper, burrowing through bone and settling in spaces I did not know existed. The chamber materializes around me in fragments: polished stone floors reflecting fractured light, white-robed figures at the periphery, the weight of scrutiny pressing against my chest like a physical thing.

  The vision clings to me with terrible clarity. Twisted creatures bowing before a throne of shadows. Blood-dark eyes reflecting terror that felt both alien and intimately familiar, as though I were seeing myself through their gaze and finding something monstrous looking back. The hollow throne waiting. My own face, crowned in darkness, speaking words that still echo in my bones.

  To rule is to consume.

  But worse than the vision is what I felt. That hunger rising in my chest when I reached for the creature's essence. The way it filled empty spaces inside me when I broke it apart. Natural as breathing. Warm as blood.

  Eater.

  The word whispers through my thoughts, refusing to be silenced.

  I blink hard, trying to clear the afterimages seared into my vision. The creatures' faces flicker at the edges of my sight, there and gone, accusatory even in memory. My legs waver. I lock my knees, forcing them steady. No weakness. Not here. Not now.

  But the world feels subtly wrong, as though the angles have shifted while my hand touched the stone. Light falls at incorrect trajectories. Shadows pool in places they should not exist. I cannot tell if the Veilstone has changed reality or merely changed how I perceive it.

  The gathered scions stare. Their gazes pierce through the silence like thrown knives, each one a judgment I can feel against my skin.

  Some study me with cold curiosity, heads tilted at precise angles, examining a specimen pinned for analysis. Others make no effort to hide their disdain; lips curl with disgust barely restrained by propriety. A few look afraid, their eyes darting between me and the Veilstone as if expecting it to crack open and spill horrors across the chamber floor.

  Enna stands among them, her pale golden hair catching light like a halo, her smirk sharp enough to draw blood. She knows. They all know. Something happened. Something wrong.

  My throat tightens. Each breath scrapes. The Inner Hell's gate trembles behind my ribs, threatening to burst open and flood me with everything I have locked away. Terror. Confusion. The sick certainty that I am exactly what they think I am.

  I force the gate shut. Push it down. Lock it away.

  Only observation remains. Only the facts.

  The Veilstone stands dark and silent on its pedestal, its surface unmarked by what passed between us. High-Exarch Oshen looms beside it, white robes pooling like fog around his feet, his golden mask catching fragments of light. Those hollow eyes bore into me, twin voids that seem to reach past flesh and bone to examine the contents of my soul.

  Behind the mask, I sense calculation. Assessment. The kind of scrutiny that strips away pretense and leaves only naked truth.

  My hands shake. I clench them into fists, nails biting into palms. The pain anchors me, pulls me back from the vision's edge. I am here. In this chamber. In this moment. Real.

  But the creatures' final question haunts me.

  What-are-you? Is-this-you?

  I do not know. I do not know.

  "What did you see, boy?"

  High-Exarch Oshen's voice cuts through the silence. Deep. Monotone. Each word deliberate and weighted with authority that does not ask but demands.

  He moves closer. White robes whisper against stone. The Staff of the Eternal Watch taps once, twice, the dark crystal at its tip drinking light. He stops before me, close enough that I can see the fine etchings in his golden mask, patterns that seem to shift when I am not looking directly at them.

  "Answer me."

  I try to speak. My tongue feels thick, useless. The words tangle in my throat, refusing to form into anything coherent. How can I explain what I saw? Creatures made of angles and light. A throne that promised power and emptiness in equal measure. The hunger that rose in me when I reached for their essence.

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  The way it felt right to break them.

  "I..." My voice cracks. "I do not know."

  The mask tilts. A slight movement, but it carries judgment absolute. "Do not lie to me, child. The Veilstone has never burned so bright. Never." His hand rises, fingers spreading as if to grasp something invisible in the air between us. "What. Did. You. See?"

  The scions press closer. I feel their attention like heat against my back. Waiting. Judging. Already certain of my guilt.

  "Nothing," I whisper. "I saw nothing."

  The word falls into silence and dies there, unconvincing even to my own ears.

  High-Exarch Oshen's fingers close around my arm. The grip is iron, unyielding, and through the contact I feel something else. A resonance. As if his touch reaches deeper than flesh, searching for the same essential core I grasped within those creatures.

  I try to pull away. He tightens his hold.

  "You dare play games with me?" The monotone cracks, revealing something darker beneath. Something almost hungry. "The Autarch himself could not make the Veilstone sing with such intensity. You are no Dularch. No eidolon. You are barely Azure at all." He leans closer, the mask's hollow eyes filling my vision. "So what are you, boy? What did you bring back from the Balah?"

  The accusation strikes like a physical blow.

  Balah-touched. The words he does not speak but implies with every syllable. Something foreign. Something contaminated. Something that should not exist.

  My pulse hammers. The Inner Hell's gate strains against its locks, threatening to burst. I push it down harder, choking on the emotions that rise like bile. Not here. Not now. Not ever.

  "Please," I manage. "I do not understand what happened. I do not—"

  "Release him."

  The command cuts through the chamber like a blade through silk.

  The gathered scions part.

  Uncle Titus strides forward, and the chamber shifts around him. Not physically, but everyone feels it. The weight of presence. Authority that does not ask for recognition but commands it regardless. His platinum hair catches light, each strand precise as if individually placed. His movements carry the fluid grace of someone who has mastered violence and made it into art.

  But it is his eyes that transform the space. Doubled pupils, one set nested within another, marking him as eidolon. Bonded to powers beyond the Hells. Beyond comprehension. They see in dimensions I cannot name, perceive truths I cannot grasp.

  The gold torq around his neck speaks of decades of mastery. Centuries, perhaps. I cannot read the intricate etchings from this distance, but I know they chronicle Hells conquered, powers claimed, enemies unmade.

  Above all, the Codicil burns on his forehead. Not literally, but I feel its heat from here. Geometric patterns that shift and reconfigure as I watch, never settling into final form. The mark that gives him command over Malkiel's very structure. The tesseract itself bends to his will.

  High-Exarch Oshen's grip on my arm suddenly feels fragile. Presumptuous.

  "Let him go, Oshen." Uncle Titus's voice carries the calm of absolute certainty. "Now."

  A moment stretches. The High-Exarch's fingers tighten, digging deeper into muscle. I feel bone grinding against bone. But his attention is no longer on me. It has shifted to my uncle, weighing. Calculating.

  The mask's hollow eyes reflect Titus's doubled gaze.

  Then Oshen releases me.

  His fingers uncurl with deliberate slowness, each one lifting away as if granting a favor rather than obeying a command. He steps back, white robes settling around him, the Staff of the Eternal Watch tapping once against stone.

  "Of course, my Qilin." The words flow smooth as oil, but beneath them I hear ice. "But House Azure would do well to remember the importance of transparency when it comes to such... extraordinary displays."

  The pause before "extraordinary" carries volumes. Accusation. Suspicion. Warning.

  Uncle Titus does not acknowledge it. He turns those doubled eyes on me, and I feel their weight settle across my shoulders like a mantle. Or a chain.

  His expression reveals nothing. No warmth. No anger. Only assessment, clinical and thorough, as if I am a mechanism he is evaluating for flaws.

  "Come," he says.

  Not an invitation. A command.

  I move toward him on legs that barely support my weight. Each step feels uncertain, as though the floor might give way beneath me. The scions watch our progression, their whispers rising like wind through winter branches.

  Strange. Different. Demon.

  Uncle Titus's hand settles on my shoulder. The touch is neither gentle nor harsh, merely proprietary. Mine, it says. My responsibility. My problem.

  Not protection. Ownership.

  The realization settles in my stomach like a stone. He did not intervene for my sake. Did not save me from Oshen's interrogation out of familial love or concern for my wellbeing. He stepped in to assert dominance. To remind the High-Exarch and everyone watching that I belong to House Azure, that any judgment of me reflects on him, and that no one questions his property without permission.

  I am useful to him. For now. And so he protects his investment.

  The moment I cease being useful, he will step aside and let Oshen's questions fall like hammers. Or worse, he will wield the hammers himself.

  Uncle Titus guides me toward the chamber's exit. His hand remains on my shoulder, grip firm enough to feel through fabric and flesh. Steering. Controlling. The scions part before us like water around stone, their whispers following in our wake.

  I catch Enna's eye as we pass. Her smirk has sharpened into something crueler. She knows what this means. Knows that her father's intervention is not salvation but merely a different cage.

  Poor cousin, her expression says. From one interrogation to another.

  Cyra stands with the Chatelaines near the far wall. Our eyes meet for a heartbeat. I search her face for reassurance, for the warmth she showed in the Dularch-Temple, for anything that confirms what she said: Whatever happens, you are my brother.

  But distance and propriety keep her frozen in place. She cannot reach me here. Cannot bridge the gap that Titus's hand on my shoulder creates.

  I am alone.

  We cross the threshold into the corridor beyond. The heavy doors close behind us with finality, cutting off the whispers. Cutting off everything.

  Uncle Titus's hand drops from my shoulder.

  "Walk," he says.

  I walk.