Chapter 22

Zevander and Kazhimyr abandon their horses and wade through the lethal bog toward Corvus Keep, avoiding traps and killing a serpent. When Kazhimyr sinks into quicksand, Zevander hauls him free, only for Carnificans to attack. Zevander’s sablefyre sigils manifest as giant scorpions, while Kazhimyr unleashes freezing mist; together they carve a path to the castle.

Inside the ruined hall, waves of Carnificans swarm. The Letalisz fight stair by stair until an unseen ward stops the horde. Concluding Dolion must be near and warding with bloodstones, they split up. Zevander reaches a turret, kills spying mimicrows, and confronts a weakened Dolion.

Dolion confesses his visions were incomplete: the red stone with silver markings concerns the Corvikae, mortals once living at Corvus Keep, driven to the Crussurian Trench by Solassions. The magehood, not the king, now hunts him to seize the septomir and the secret of the seventh stone. He believes the mortal girl may be Corvikae, bearing the Death Goddess’s blood—and refuses to be party to her death.

Zevander, enraged that the stones cannot yet break his curse, insists Dolion come to Eidolon and be chained in copper. Dolion opens a portal back to their horses, where Carnificans and then magehood attackers converge. Zevander shields Dolion from flame, Kazhimyr exhausts the mages’ defenses with ice, and Zevander’s scorpions finish them when their shields fail.

With the mages dead and Carnificans retreating, Zevander asserts control over Dolion, intent on imprisoning him despite the king’s execution order. The stakes shift: the seventh stone is bound to the Corvikae bloodline—the likely mortal girl—and the magehood’s pursuit has begun in earnest.