I froze and pretended to be a brainless piece of trash. Wait! Why? It wouldn’t make a difference where Chapman saw me, as long as it wasn’t in the chair. Rising again, I bolted toward the Arch. A single extra line, and the whole system might fall apart.

  Too bad I couldn’t gauge just how catastrophic the consequences would be. Killing the Archmaker outright would’ve been ideal.

  A couple of strokes could turn Ehwaz into Mannaz, Wunjo into Raido, and Isa could be transformed into practically anything—but those were too obvious. And if Chapman checked… I would if I were him.

  The only spot out of view was the blood reservoir at the centre of the horizontal Arch. I grabbed the rod Chapman had been using and immediately felt the control circuit within it.

  “Damn it!” There were three circuits, which meant at least three modes of operation. Worse, they were flexible—adjusting the strength of their effect based on the intensity of mental pressure applied. Someone had poured an enormous amount of time and effort into crafting this tool, and I had mere moments to figure it out.

  I held the staff to the stone and lightly triggered the first circuit. A deep scratch appeared on the surface, filling with dust. Not right. The second mode reversed the process, turning the dust back into solid stone. It took me a few more seconds to grasp this, but time was ticking, my nerves were fraying, and the third mode saved me—it made the stone as soft as dough.

  I hurried but worked carefully, not wanting to damage the reservoir. The last thing I needed was an explosion of blood. Blood magic was usually the gentlest and most human-friendly form of magic—its accidental absorption could make you stronger, heal minor cuts, and improve your overall vitality. But when it erupted in an uncontrolled, concentrated flow, it could produce horrors. Extra organs and limbs growing in the wrong places, or worse—eyes and ears sealed under layers of skin. And the affected wouldn’t even die quickly. The magic kept them alive, prolonging their agony.

  For me, the risk was low. My experience working with seals on energy nodes had taught me how to direct internal flows, and I could redistribute blood if needed. But it would cost precious time. Softening the stone, I scooped out the “dough,” layer by layer, until I reached the reservoir. Pulling it free was a nightmare; I nearly broke my nails. It was a large piece of jade, about the size of a plum.

  Replacing it with an opposing element—a death reservoir—would’ve been perfect.

  I rummaged through Chapman’s bag, searching for other reservoirs. The Arch itself had plenty of obsidians infused with death magic, but his bag had none. Instead, I found a fire-infused citrine. Not ideal, but it would have to do.

  “Where the hell is everyone?” came an irritated voice from the corridor. It was the arsehole. “I need another death reservoir, now.”

  “Maybe you should go shopping for one,” a man’s mocking voice replied.

  “Bring me the reservoir!” Chapman barked, his tone icy. “And leave the jokes for your bloodsucking friends.”

  "I don’t like your tone, limpy,” the vampire hissed.

  “They pulled eleven enchanted .45-calibre bullets out of my body. I ran halfway across the city with them. But the limp will pass—it’s already fading. And right now, I’m strong enough and in the mood to rip your stupid head off, leech! And no one will care, because your life is nothing compared to what I’ve offered Nina. Drop that body and find me the reservoir!”

  I couldn’t tell if the Archmaker was really that strong or just boasting because he knew Nina needed him. Not my problem. I quickly shoved the fire reservoir into the hollow and tried to seal it, but the stone had already hardened again, resisting my hands. I had to soften it once more. Thankfully, the vampire wasn’t in any rush to follow Chapman’s order, giving me just enough time to finish.

  When the reservoir was finally sealed, a horrifying realisation struck me—I couldn’t remember where the rod or the bag had been placed. Footsteps echoed in the corridor, and I abandoned everything where it was to return to my spot.

  Damn it! The extracted blood reservoir was still sitting on the Arch.

  I spun around, grabbed the stone, and threw my arse and back onto the spikes. They were dull, yes, but at that speed, I still managed to impale myself in a couple of places. Fire erupted through my body, and the pain I’d felt earlier seemed like a tickle in comparison. I have no idea how I didn’t scream. I think I heard my teeth creak, and some noise managed to escape through them. But it wasn’t just my jaw that strained.

  Through the blurry haze of tears, I realised the reservoir was still in my hand. The blood magic began to surge into my body, working to heal and ease the pain. With sheer willpower, I stopped the flow, ensuring the vampires and Chapman wouldn’t notice.

  Where could I hide the stone? I shoved it into my mouth. The damn thing was huge—if I tried to swallow it, I’d choke. I froze, waiting, as the hazy blur in my eyes began to recede.

  The Archmaker’s blurred figure leaned over the Arch, then resolutely strode toward me. His form became clearer as the tears ran down my face in rivulets. Chapman bent over me, visibly suspicious. Clearly, I had botched the placement of the bag and the staff.

  I could barely breathe, but I forced myself to exhale evenly, pretending I didn’t care. How could I not care, though, when my body screamed in agony? And blinking. I probably needed to blink. I did, and another pair of tears slid down my cheeks, squeezed out by the tension in my eyelids.

  Without warning, Chapman slapped me. The jade almost shot out of my mouth, and in trying to hold onto it, I nearly choked.

  I had to admit, the speed of the strike was such that it wouldn’t have mattered if I’d tried to dodge.

  “You’re not fooling me!” he declared. “You were rifling through my things!”

  Footsteps approached the doorway, and Chapman turned just in time to lock eyes with his half-brother.

  “Gregor!?” Kettle exclaimed, startled. His shock quickly turned to rage as the brainless baronet charged headlong into a doomed attack, crackling with electric energy like a furious thundercloud.

  Chapman rushed to meet him.

  The shot went off in the middle of the room, sending the young men flying in a burst of sparks: Kettle crashed into the rack, and Chapman landed on the table of torture instruments.

  But Chapman sprang back up immediately, pulling from his back the same hooked poker I had once dreamed of smashing his head in with.

  “Nina, for God’s sake, what the hell!?” he barked, brandishing the poker menacingly.

  “You asked for him—I brought him,” the vampire replied calmly.

  “Are you kidding me?” Chapman snarled, swinging the poker threateningly.

  “Just like you, darling,” Nina said sweetly. “And don’t forget—I give the orders in this house.” With that, she tossed Gregor the reservoir.

  Oh, has the poor little vampire complained?

  “You can’t order me, love!” Gregor snapped back in the same tone. The tension in the air was palpable.

  God, let them kill each other!

  “Just like you’ve complained to me,” Nina reminded him. “You asked me to bring your brother…”

  “And I also asked you to stop calling that freak my brother!”

  “Oh, I remember, darling! But that doesn’t mean I’m here to cater to your whims.”

  “We had an agreement.”

  “And I intend to honour it!” Nina replied, casting a glance at the unconscious Kettle. “It’s not my problem if you’ve killed him.”

  Chapman leaned over his half-brother to check his pulse.

  “He’s alive. But tie this one up.” He jabbed a finger in my direction. “He was rifling through my things.”

  My heart sank.

  Nina turned to me, her expression curious. “You were going through his things?”

  The reservoir in my mouth felt like it had doubled in size. My mouth was full of saliva, but I didn’t dare swallow. Slowly, I shook my head. Would they buy it?

  “Wait,” Nina asked, narrowing her eyes. “How exactly did you let him go through your things?”

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  “He did it while I was out!”

  Nina’s face lit up with a knowing smile. “You didn’t actually see him do it, did you?”

  “The bag wasn’t where I left it.”

  “Right,” Nina said dismissively. “So, he could’ve sabotaged the Arch, collected the reservoirs, and used magic against you, but instead, he just went through your bag?”

  “Sabotaged!” Gregor cried out, whirling toward the Arch. Nina waited patiently as he checked every rune and mark, the mockery never leaving her face. He didn’t like it.

  “Tie that freak up already!” Gregor barked, pointing at Kettle.

  Nina rolled her eyes but grabbed a set of heavy shackles with a short chain from the table and cuffed her lover’s wrists around one of the rack’s legs.

  “Happy now?”

  Gregor didn’t reply, too busy inspecting the Arch. After he finished with the vertical section, he moved to the horizontal part. Sweat broke out on my forehead. Damn it, I’d even forgotten about the pain for a moment. A second, two, then a minute, maybe three…

  Gregor’s gaze skimmed over the stone where I’d hidden the central reservoir, but he didn’t attempt to retrieve it.

  “Are you satisfied?” Nina asked.

  Instead of answering, Chapman walked over to the table and picked up three heavy iron spikes with rings at the ends.

  “Drag him here. Let’s see how he screams.”

  Using the stone rod, he hammered the spikes into the wall, then pulled a thick coil of rope and a knife from his bag. Clearly, they weren’t planning to nail my hands to the wall. Logical enough—if they intended to reuse the Arch multiple times, they’d need a more flexible restraint system that didn’t take hours to reset.

  “Stand over there,” Nina ordered, pointing at the Arch.

  I tried to get up from the chair, but it wasn’t easy. Pain wracked my body as spasms gripped my muscles, and I collapsed to the floor again. Nina seemed to relish watching my suffering.

  Oh, how I wanted to smash that smug face! But instead, I forced myself to keep calm and obediently shuffle toward my doom.

  Chapman didn’t trust me, not even when I raised my hands to the rings as instructed. He deliberately yanked the ropes tight, binding my wrists and ankles with such force that the iron rings bit into my skin and cut off circulation. Ha! After the chair, this was child’s play. Besides, the jade in my mouth could restore my blood flow in no time.

  Chapman stopped less than a metre in front of me, standing directly over the hidden reservoir. Nina’s smile faded, and her eyes sharpened, tracking every movement, every gesture the Archmaker made.

  Chapman smirked, raised a knife, and, with a swift motion, sliced his own thumb open. Of course—should’ve guessed. The ritual was designed for someone without innate talent, so it needed an external activator. Blood.

  The Archmaker pressed his bloody thumb to his forehead, then crouched and let a single drop fall onto the ether reservoir. A moment later, he reached out and touched my forehead, right at the Third Eye. Was he trying to take it from me or open his own?

  The ether reservoir began to lose its power rapidly, the energy spilling out in a thick mist that crept through the runes, making them glow with a dim fire. The ether spread to the other reservoirs, triggering them one by one. Lines and symbols filled with elemental forces, and the magical fog poured into the Arch below, unable to cross its boundaries. Instead, it rose upward, activating the runes etched into the stone behind me.

  Gregor tossed the knife aside and spread his arms. His face began to change. It was reminiscent of a partial shifter transformation, but this distortion had no hint of any specific animal. His brown eyes were swallowed by pitch darkness, his cheeks sprouted sparse, wiry hair, and his nose twisted into a bulbous lump. His left brow ridge jutted forward, his jaw contorted, and his lower left canine pushed out from under his lip. His arms bulged with corded muscle, his nails transformed into milky-white claws, glowing faintly with death magic.

  The mist of magic rose higher, and I felt a heavy pressure settle on my head. A dizzying fog tried to force its way through my Third Eye and into my skull, but it couldn’t succeed.

  Harry’s protection?

  The elemental forces within the ritual grew denser, the runes burning brighter, and concern flashed across Chapman’s face. Death swirled around us, slipping into clothes and beneath them, tingling the skin and reducing tiny particles to dust.

  The fine hairs on my arms were the first to go, followed by strands of hair falling from my head, dissolving into powder in midair. To protect my eyes, I had to blink rapidly.

  Rage and frustration boiled in Chapman’s now-blackened eyes. He scooped up a handful of white mist and hurled it at my face. It felt like being splashed with boiling water. The outer layer of my skin turned into an ashen mask, and my Third Eye felt as though a drill was boring into it.

  I raised a block of personal ether to shield myself, but my face… I couldn’t endure it any longer. I drew on the blood magic stored in the jade. Clarity returned to my vision.

  “Impossible!” Chapman muttered, visibly shocked that I had shrugged off his attack.

  The magic around us grew more violent, the remaining elemental forces nearly swallowed up by the death mist. It gnawed at the skin as easily as it shredded fabric. One of Chapman’s shirt sleeves tore at the shoulder and sloughed off in ragged strips. The ashen dust made it impossible to breathe, but it was the death magic that tormented most, biting into exposed skin and laying every nerve bare.

  Blood from the reservoir surged through my body in a torrential stream, barely able to patch the new damage before more appeared. So that’s why it was needed!

  Gregor could see that the ritual wasn’t going as planned and tried to adjust it. His milky claws shredded my shirt, leaving grotesque scars of ash and plasma in their wake. Then he tore his own shirt open, exposing his chest. He ran a clawed index finger over his thumb, reopening the wound that had already started to close, and pressed the bloodied digit first to his own solar plexus, then to mine.

  The aggressive magic surged into my spiritual heart, burning a hole through my skin but crashing against Ferrish’s seal. It spread across the barrier, unable to find a way through. The death runes flared brightly, heating up almost instantly, followed by the others. The seal devoured all the elements with equal fervour, but the overwhelming tilt toward death magic left only the malevolent white energy in the ritual—a force that tore mercilessly at our bodies.

  Gregor held out under its influence much longer than I did. Clearly, he had grown accustomed to it over time, his body somewhat attuned to its effects. But even his endurance was reaching its limit. Finally, he gave in and called on the power stored within the hidden reservoir beneath the floor.

  I relied on raw blood magic, sacrificing up to ninety percent of its energy efficiency. The fire from the citrine, however, obeyed the symbols, which directed it precisely to the most vulnerable and damaged areas. The death-threaded fabric ignited like gasoline, and Gregor screamed as his ears, eyes, and lips turned into smouldering embers. The more damage he sustained, the more magic poured into him, fueling the flames. He burned like a candle, like a fire elemental with infernal flames spewing from his eye sockets, ears, and mouth.

  Nina finally broke. She grabbed the boy by the shoulder and yanked him out of the Arch, shattering the ritual. The living torch extinguished and collapsed onto the stone floor, now just a charred hunk of stinking flesh. Small flames still flickered in his hollowed-out eye sockets. His ears and lips had swollen so badly they fell off upon impact, exposing his white teeth.

  Now I could be certain—Chapman had attacked me earlier. One of his upper vampire fangs was broken.

  The magical mist began to crawl across the floor, quickly dissipating into the air. The runes and symbols dimmed, no longer drawing power from the reservoirs. Even the jade in my mouth had been drained completely. I spat it out, the sound of it hitting the floor catching Nina’s attention.

  Her gaze snapped to me, and instead of anger, I saw unfiltered astonishment in her eyes.

  I tore through the ropes weakened by death magic, breaking free easily. But as I took my first step, the remnants of my clothes crumbled to the floor. I was left in nothing but my shoes—how they’d survived the ritual, I couldn’t say, though they’d certainly lost their shine. Still, I looked far better than Chapman.

  As I stepped forward, Nina instinctively took a step back. She was afraid. A master vampire was afraid of a naked, half-trained wizard! The nervous tension of the last hour erupted from me in wild laughter.

  I still had to die; there was no chance I could win a fight against a vampire. But she was afraid, and I wanted to live. That wild, reckless rush of hope swelled in my chest, pushing me forward.

  “Do you know how the lesson from Valentine and Lindemann should have sounded for you, Nina?” I asked, grinning madly.

  “Never! Never mess with the Bremor folk!”

  I picked up Chapman’s knife, grabbed the stone rod, and with a crazed smile, stepped forward. Nina retreated. I felt the remnants of the magic that had been healing my skin and redirected it into my muscles, hoping to make myself a little stronger and faster. My next step was quicker, sharper. Still, Nina didn’t dare respond—she retreated again.

  Her foot landed near Kettle, and only then did I notice that the baronet had regained consciousness. He reached out his shackled hands and grabbed the vampire’s leg tightly. Sparks flew from the chains, lightning cracked, and Nina jerked so violently she smacked her head against the ceiling.

  I lunged into the attack, wielding both the staff and the knife. An invisible beam slashed diagonally across the vampire’s face, taking her right eye, while the knife blade pierced her left breast, tearing through as she staggered back. Kettle struck again with lightning, and caught between the two of us, Nina shot out the door like a bullet.

  “Bitch!” the baronet spat, shaking his head. He thrust his shackled hands toward me. “The cuffs!”

  Instead of trying to remove them, I grabbed the rack’s leg and lifted it enough for him to slide the chain underneath.

  “In this state, you might want to avoid running into the cops,” Kettle joked.

  “Shut up and focus!” I snapped, turning back to the Arch. If the reservoirs still held any magic, I could put it to use.

  “What are you doing?” Kettle asked. “We need to get out of here!”

  “Your brother,” I said.

  “Don’t call that shit my brother!” Kettle snarled, kicking the charred body hard enough to flip it over. I ignored his outrage and dumped the contents of the Archmaker’s bag onto the floor.

  “…was planning to use this Arch repeatedly. And your lover,” I added, which made the baronet protest again.

  “She’s a bitch!” he barked.

  “…collected a whole bunch of children to make that happen. They’re locked up in the adjacent rooms.”

  I began inspecting the reservoirs, tossing the empty ones aside.

  “Let’s grab them and go!” Kettle suggested.

  “With a crowd of kids through a nest of vampires? Are you an idiot? Oh, wait, what am I saying? You slept with a vampire.”

  “And you’re naked and bald, genius!” the baronet retorted indignantly.

  “Du-u-ncan,” hissed a familiar voice, echoing from beyond.

  Of course. How could he miss a party like this?

  I jumped to my feet, ready for a fight, snatching up the ether reservoir. The baronet raised his hands, fingers splayed wide, as the charred husk that had once been Gregor Chapman suddenly rose to its feet.

  Phantom flames burned in his hollow eye sockets. His scorched jaw didn’t move, yet I heard his voice as clearly as if he’d spoken aloud:

  “It’s been a while, Kinkaid.”