Chapter 32

Estelle arrives affecting drunken foolishness, secretly planting tiny scrived devices on Enrico and two guards. When Tomas rages, she snaps a trigger rig: the implants burrow inward, erasing the heart lining and killing the men. Estelle floors Tomas, steals the imperiat, then pins him midair with an advanced gravity plate that steadily increases pressure.

Dropping the act, Estelle reveals she covertly supplied Tomas with scriving breakthroughs via Tribuno’s collection—gravity plates, listening rigs, and more. She outlines her true goal: hierophants made themselves by investing minds and souls into their own bodies. As the plate ramps pressure, Tomas’s body compresses grotesquely until it implodes into a bloody mist.

Estelle, now holding Clef and the imperiat, orders the Candiano campo locked down, claims Tomas is missing, and prepares to head to the Mountain. She leaves a guard to dispose of Sancia. Analyzing her restraints, Sancia realizes the shackles await an audio password via a vibration needle. By querying phonemes, she deduces the word—“mango”—and opens the cuffs.

Sancia traps the guard in the shackle, seizes his scrived rapier, and redefines its weight logic. She hurls it into a foundry wall, blasting a path to a fortified window. Under fire, she leaps from the window into a canal and swims through filth to the Dandolo walls.

Exhausted but alive, Sancia opens her new perception fully, seeing Tevanne’s scrivings like a starfield. Her defiant scream coincides with a citywide stutter: lights flicker, lanterns dip, carriages slow, doors creak open, and weapons feel heavier—hinting her transformed connection can unsettle rigs across the city.