The Concord is a gaggle of squabbling merchants and inbred aristocrats who mistake ledgers for law and etiquette for authority," Valerius finished, his tone so mild it was almost conversational. "They will demand answers because demanding is the only form of power they possess. They will stamp their feet, convene councils, and write angry letters on expensive paper. And then they will do what they have always done."
He stopped beside one of the hanging orreries and reached up, one long finger brushing a rotating sphere. The constellation within it pulsed faintly, responding to his touch like a slow heartbeat.
"They will accept the narrative I give them," he said. "Because the narrative I give them will soothe their fear. It will offer them a villain they understand. It will promise them a solution they can purchase."
Isolde remained on one knee, but the tilt of his head betrayed a sharpening attention. "What narrative, my lord?"
Valerius's eyes drifted back to the projection, to Soren Vale lying pale and empty in the makeshift infirmary. "That the Synod suffered a tragic, unforeseen defeat at the hands of an anomalous insurgent. That the Valley of Sorrow was lost due to the reckless desperation of a rogue cadre who overextended, drunk on zeal. That I, High Inquisitor, have already moved to contain the damage."
He spoke the words like a man reciting a prayer, but there was no reverence in him. Only function.
"And then," he continued, "I will offer them a remedy. Not faith. Not penance. Something simpler. Something they can understand."
He turned fully now, and the cold light caught his features again, making him seem carved rather than born. "They fear the Bloom. They fear the wastes. They fear the stories their nurses told them as children, of the Withering King and the end of the world. I will tell them their fears were justified, and I will tell them only the Synod has the means to prevent catastrophe."
Isolde's voice roughened. "But we will not prevent it."
Valerius's faint smile returned, thin as a knife's edge. "No. We will shape it."
He resumed his slow circuit of the projection, the image now showing Cassian's tense profile as he spoke to Nyra. The prince's hands moved as he explained something, his posture rigid with the strain of command. The spymaster listened with that sharp stillness of hers, her mind already measuring costs and angles.
"They believe the war has turned," Valerius said. "They believe the Synod is bleeding. They believe this victory is proof that Valerius can be beaten with steel and courage and a few thousand bodies thrown into the mud."
His gaze sharpened. "They are wrong."
Isolde swallowed. "My lord… if Soren's Gift is truly gone, if the vessel is shattered as you intended… what remains? You said he was the true subject. If he can no longer wield his power, how is he of use to you?"
Valerius stopped.
For the first time, the air in the sanctum felt as though it tightened around the words.
"You misunderstand what broke," Valerius said quietly.
He lifted his hand toward the projection. The image rippled, then shifted. The makeshift infirmary dissolved into a different view, deeper, subtler. Not a place, but a pattern. A web of faint, interlocking lines drawn over the landscape like invisible veins. At its center pulsed a dim, sickly point of light.
"A Gift," Valerius continued, "is not a candle to be snuffed out. It is a channel. A current. A covenant between flesh and something older than flesh." His eyes narrowed, almost reverent now, but not in worship. In appraisal. "Kaelen's rage was a hammer. Soren's soul was the anvil. And what we forged was not emptiness."
Isolde stared at the new projection, his breath slow and shallow. "That… light…"
"The void-wound," Valerius said, as if naming a tool. "A rupture. A scar in the pattern of his Gift where the Bloom can seep in. Where something else can reach through." He let the silence hang, savoring its weight. "Do you know what a man becomes when you take his fire away?"
Isolde's throat bobbed. "A hollow."
"A hunger," Valerius corrected. "A need. A desperation so clean it strips away pride and choice." His voice remained calm, but the words were merciless. "Soren Vale will wake each day and feel that absence. He will breathe and find no warmth. He will look at a sword and remember the certainty it once gave him, and he will ache for it like a starving man aches for bread."
Valerius turned his palm slightly, and the projection zoomed again, focusing on the faint, pulsing point of sick light. It trembled, as if reacting to something beyond sight.
"And now," he said, "we will teach him where to find food."
Isolde's voice came out strained. "My lord… you intend to give his Gift back?"
Valerius's expression did not change. "Not his Gift."
He moved past the projection to a shelf carved into the rock wall, lined with sealed scrolls, black stone reliquaries, and small glass vials whose contents shimmered with trapped luminescence. He selected one reliquary with deliberate care. It was no larger than a man's fist, carved from dark material that drank the light, inscribed with thin silver sigils that hurt the eye if stared at too long.
"This," he said, holding it up, "is the Concord's true leash. Not fear. Not politics. Need." He lowered the reliquary and cradled it like a priest holding a sacred text. "They have built their world on controlled miracles. On the Ladder. On regulated Gifts. On the illusion that power is a commodity."
He looked to Isolde again. "Soren Vale will become the proof that power is not a commodity. That it is a curse that can be transferred, twisted, refined. That the Synod is not merely a church with soldiers, but the sole authority capable of controlling what comes next."
Isolde's shoulders tightened beneath his crimson robe. "And what comes next?"
Valerius stared past him, as if seeing through stone and time.
"The Bloom," he said softly. "Not as a wasteland. Not as a scar on the world. As a door."
The orreries overhead rotated, slow and patient, their constellations shifting into new alignments. For a moment the light in the sanctum seemed to dim, then brighten again, as if it had taken a breath.
Valerius's voice remained steady. "The Withering King is not a myth, Isolde. He is a shape pressed against the veil, a pressure that has been building for centuries. The Synod did not invent him. We inherited him. We learned to listen to the places where the world is thin and the old hunger whispers."
He stepped closer, and Isolde felt the presence of him like a winter wind. "Our forebears built the Concord to delay the inevitable. To control it. To make it… profitable. But delay breeds complacency. Complacency breeds rot."
Valerius's eyes flashed cold. "So we cleanse. We reset. We break the old ledger and write a new one in ash."
Isolde's hands curled into fists against the stone floor. "You sacrificed a legion to wound a man."
Valerius tilted his head, the nearest thing to curiosity. "A legion is a number. Soren Vale is a key."
He returned the reliquary to the shelf with the care of a man placing a crown on velvet. Then he turned back to the projection and with a simple gesture altered it again.
Now the image showed a different part of the battlefield: the western spire, broken and smoking, the ground around it cracked like dried riverbed. At its base, dark stains marked where Kaelen Vor had fallen. The projection lingered on the spire's shadow, longer than necessary.
Valerius's smile faded, replaced by something almost clinical. "Kaelen spoke of shadows and a light that burned him. Tell me, Inquisitor… did he mention a voice?"
Isolde hesitated. "He spoke of… a whisper. A language he could not understand. It made him scream."
Valerius's eyes softened fractionally, not with pity, but with satisfaction. "Good. That means the door is listening."
He turned away from the projection and walked toward the sanctum's far wall. There, carved into the rock, was a circular seal of silver and obsidian, covered in layered sigils that overlapped like scales. At its center was a narrow slit, like a closed eye.
Valerius placed his palm on the seal.
The sigils flared. The slit widened a hair.
A breath of air escaped from within, colder than the sanctum itself, carrying the faint scent of damp earth and something older. Something like a grave that had never been empty.
Isolde's spine went rigid. He could not see anything beyond the slit, but he felt it. A pressure on his thoughts. A presence that did not look at him so much as taste him.
Valerius did not flinch.
"Send word to the Concord Council," he said, voice smooth as polished stone. "I will address them within the week. They will receive the story of our noble sacrifice, and the promise of our coming victory."
"Yes, my lord," Isolde rasped, swallowing hard.
"Also," Valerius continued, removing his hand from the seal. The slit narrowed again, the light fading. "Dispatch three of the Quiet Hands. Not to kill."
Isolde's head snapped up. "Not to kill?"
Valerius's gaze returned to the projection, to the infirmary, to Soren's pale face. "To watch. To listen. To learn his habits. His grief. His anger. His needs." He spoke the last word with delicate emphasis. "Make sure they understand: if the Cinder-Born dies, they will envy him."
Isolde bowed deeper. "As you command."
Valerius nodded once, dismissing him. Isolde rose, moving backward in deference before turning and slipping from the sanctum as silently as he had entered. The iron-bound door closed without a sound, sealing Valerius alone with his mechanisms and his ghosts.
He returned to the projection and watched the allied camp form in the aftermath, the tents rising like pale fungi from the ash. He watched men cheer and clap each other on the shoulder, watched fires ignite, watched the weary joy of survival bloom for a brief, fragile moment.
Then he focused on Soren again.
He watched the boy Finn hover at the edge of the infirmary, watched Nyra's mouth move as she spoke, watched Cassian's posture stiffen with the weight of choices he did not yet understand.
Valerius exhaled slowly, as if savoring a scent.
"They think the war is ahead of them," he murmured to the empty sanctum. "But the war is behind them. The war was the moment he broke."
He lifted his hand, and the projection tightened further, narrowing until Soren's face filled the image. The Cinder-Tattoos on his skin were dim now, grey as dead ash. His eyes were open, staring at nothing.
Valerius's voice dropped, almost tender. "Wake up, Godslayer."
The orreries overhead continued their slow, indifferent rotation, their constellations shifting into alignment as if following a script written long before any of them were born.
And far away, in a camp of canvas and scavenged steel, surrounded by men celebrating a victory he could no longer feel, Soren Vale walked through the smoke like a ghost.