Contents
Chapter 30. Now: Maris
Overview
Maris confronts Nej and realizes his long-game: consolidating power through blood rites and inviting Valshad to attack. She discovers a divine stylus, proof of godly intervention, and rejects Nej’s control. In the catacombs, Ophelius confirms the cipher signals Valshad’s approach and receives a knife from Maris, aligning Maris with Luca’s ruthless pragmatism.
Summary
Maris enters Nej’s chambers, newly aware that Isara’s sickness demands fire, not reform. She challenges Nej about the Forum’s latest judgment and his motives. Nej claims he protected the family name, then threatens obedience, revealing his ambition to control the city and its rites.
When Nej leaves, Maris searches his study and finds an obsidian box containing a glowing divine stylus. Testing it, she sees writing vanish into shimmering traces, realizing the gods themselves are driving the war. This shatters her faith in the Forum and recasts Nej’s plans as part of a larger, merciless design.
Maris descends to the catacombs to Ophelius. The dying Priestess recounts a darker Valshad tale: mortals stole Hermaus’s blood by force, making magic a curse. Maris presents the cipher; Ophelius reads it and confirms Valshad is coming—summoned, not resisted.
Understanding that Nej has invited Valshad to finish Isara, Maris accepts Luca’s earlier ruthlessness as necessary. She gives Ophelius a whalebone knife—granting the Priestess agency and signaling Maris’s turn toward decisive, dangerous action as the tide shifts.
Who Appears
- Maris CasperiaNew Magistrate; confronts Nej, discovers a divine stylus, learns Valshad was summoned, and gives Ophelius a knife.
- Nej CasperiaUncle and power broker; threatens Maris, reveals long plotting for blood rites, possesses a divine stylus, and signals Valshad.
- OpheliusDying Priestess; shares a darker origin of magic, deciphers the cipher, confirms Valshad is coming, accepts a knife.
- Legionnaires of the Loyal LegionYoung guards who admit Maris to Nej and guard Ophelius’s chamber; tools of the Citadel’s control.