Chapter Thirty-Six

After Lore channels one of the preserved corpses beneath the catacombs, the entire chamber erupts in screams. Mortem clings to Lore’s fingers instead of vanishing, and the corpses rise in unison, forcing Lore and Bastian to flee through the still-open door. Lore cannot close the Mortem lock because the magic is sticking to her.

Bastian unexpectedly sees the Mortem strands and manifests a golden, life-like power around his own hands. He pulls the clinging Mortem away from Lore, causing the awakened corpses to collapse and the screaming to stop. Both Lore and Bastian are shaken by the impossible event, and neither understands Bastian’s apparent power or Lore’s brief feeling of holding death and life at once.

As Lore and Bastian leave, they connect the chamber’s Mortem lock to Anton’s work at the earlier Mortem leak and conclude that Anton and others are involved. They also question why anyone would provoke war when Kirythea already threatens Dellaire. At dawn, they climb back up the well expecting Gabe, but instead find Bastian captured by the Presque Mort, with Anton, Malcolm, and Gabe waiting. Lore realizes Gabe has betrayed them.

Lore and Bastian are taken to a Church antechamber and chained to iron rings in the floor. Malcolm says Anton will explain, claiming Gabe came to Anton and then to Malcolm with information that showed they had to work together. Lore and Bastian wait in bitter silence, processing Gabe’s betrayal in different ways, until Anton returns with Gabe, Malcolm, and Severin Bellegarde.

Anton and Bellegarde reveal that they are not allied with August and do not want war; they claim August is the one trying to start it. Anton says August’s illness and jealousy have made him dangerous, that August wants Bastian dead, and that Anton’s faction led Lore into the catacombs to test the bound corpses. Lore reports that raising one corpse caused all of them to move together, confirming to Bellegarde that their binding worked.

Anton explains that he, Gabe, and Malcolm bound the corpses so one necromantic awakening would affect all of them. He says Lore’s Mortem and Bastian’s supposed Spiritum sharpened each other through the Law of Opposites, and that Apollius told him Bastian, Gabe, and a child from the catacombs born to a Night Sister were central to the god’s return. Gabe is horrified by the revelation of Lore’s parentage. Lore accuses Anton of murdering the villages, but Anton denies it and says the greater threat is that August plans to use the dead as an unbeatable army—an army Anton now claims Lore controls.