Regress

Chapter 10: The Unopened Parchment

The abandoned hunting lodge stank of wet rot and old ashes. Dawn leaked through cracks in the shuttered windows, laying grey stripes across the floorboards.

Marie stood with her back against the door, both hands pressed flat against a folded parchment she hadn’t opened.

Elena watched her from the cold hearth. Water still dripped from the hem of her gown. The brand on her left palm had dimmed to a dull throb, but the brooch at her throat held a steady, watchful light.

“You followed us through the storm,” Elena said. “With that.”

Marie didn’t look up. “Saw the Duke’s fire from the tree line. Figured whatever was lit up that bright needed a third pair of eyes.”

Kael stood near the window, his singed glove clutched in his good hand. He said nothing.

“The parchment,” Elena said. “Where did you get it.”

“Mage dropped it during the Concordant’s exit.” Marie’s voice was flat. “Everyone was watching your hand burn. No one watched the floor.”

“You haven’t opened it.”

“Don’t need to.”

The silence stretched. Kael turned from the window.

Marie lifted her gaze to Elena’s. Her jaw was set, but her fingers trembled against the wax seal. “I can feel what’s inside.

The words. The shape of them. Been able to since I was twelve. Lay my hand on a sealed letter and I know every line.”

Elena’s chest tightened. Unregistered magic. Treason.

“You never told me.”

“You never needed to carry that weight.” Marie’s voice cracked, then steadied. “But this one—this one you need.”

She held out the parchment. Still sealed. “It’s a ritual. Stealing Rhee bloodline power. They’ve got the circle drawn in salt and silver, and they’ve named the sacrifice.”

Elena’s vision narrowed to a single point.

“Lian,” she said.

“Substitute. He has enough Rhee blood to turn the hourglass. The original sacrifice—” Marie stopped.

“Was me.” Elena’s voice dropped to something cold and quiet. “The poison. The brand. All of it was meant to feed the ritual at my death.”

Kael moved. Not toward her, but close enough that the air between them shifted. “The sanctum.”

“Yes.” Marie pressed the parchment into Elena’s hands. “There’s a phrase at the bottom. The Rhee hourglass shall turn. Minister Vell’s seal. Tonight.”

The brooch flared. Elena felt the heat sear against her collarbone, a pulse that matched her heartbeat.

Kael’s voice came low and raw. “You know the sanctum’s layout.”

“I walked it once.” Elena’s fingers closed around the hourglass shape. “In a life that’s already ended. A drainage conduit on the eastern slope. It runs beneath the ward-stone. You found it during the border campaigns.”

His jaw tightened. “It hasn’t been maintained in six years. The stonework will be unstable.”

“Then we don’t waste time.”

Marie straightened. “And me?”

Elena turned. “Can you sense magical wards? From outside?”

“If I’m close enough. The seals have a… texture. Like static on wool.”

“Then you watch from the west entrance. There’s an alcove near the boundary markers. You attune to the seals and you wait for my signal.” Elena pulled the communication charm from her cloak—a small, unremarkable stone Marie had slipped into her sleeve days ago. “If the wards shift, you warn us. If they collapse, you run.”

Marie took the charm. Her fingers brushed Elena’s knuckles. “Don’t make me run.”

“I intend not to.”

───────

Dusk came grey and close. Marie found the alcove as the last light bled from the sky—a shallow depression in the rock face, half-hidden by gorse. She pressed her back into the stone and closed her eyes. The sanctum’s wards hummed against her senses, a low thrum that vibrated in her molars. She let the communication charm rest in her lap and waited.

───────

Night fell.

The drainage conduit was narrower than Elena remembered. Wet stone scraped her shoulders. Kael moved ahead of her, one hand bare, the glove shoved into his belt. A single tongue of flame hovered above his knuckles—controlled, barely—but she could see the strain in the rigid line of his back.

The conduit emptied into a maintenance junction. An iron grate blocked the way forward, the lock heavy with rust and ward-etchings.

Kael studied it. “Warded. Low-grade. Heat will trip it.”

“Then don’t use heat on the ward. Cauterize the hinge.”

He glanced back at her. Something flickered in his grey eyes—not approval, but recognition. He pressed his bare hand to the iron pin.

The flame surged.

Orange light roared up the stone wall, far brighter than he’d intended. The curse snarled through his fingers, wild and hungry, scorching a black arc across the ceiling before he wrenched his hand back. The grate swung open. The corridor behind them filled with the echo of running footsteps.

A mage rounded the corner. Grey robes. Eyes filmed over with a milky sheen—possessed, his face slack but his hands already weaving a binding glyph.

“Left shoulder,” Elena said. “He’ll lead with his left.”

Kael didn’t hesitate. A burst of fire caught the mage mid-incantation, precise and brutal, swallowing the half-formed glyph before it could coalesce. The man crumpled.

They dragged the body into the shadow of the conduit. Kael’s hand smoked. Fresh blisters had split across his knuckles, the skin red and weeping.

“Your control,” Elena said.

“Is fraying.” He didn’t meet her eyes. “Don’t stop moving.”

───────

The ritual chamber opened beneath them like a wound in the earth.

Obsidian pillars rose from a floor carved with concentric circles—salt and silver, exactly as Marie had described. At the centre, an altar of black stone.

Lian was bound to it. Obsidian chains coiled around his wrists and ankles. His academy robes were torn, his face bruised, but his eyes—violet, furious, alive—found Elena the moment she stepped from the corridor.

“Elena!” His voice cracked. “Don’t—it’s a trap, it’s always been a trap—”

The hourglass brooch erupted.

Light poured from Elena’s throat, silver and blinding, and she felt the brand on her left palm ignite in answer. The two pains merged—past and present, death and memory—and she understood, fully and finally, what the ritual was designed to do.

Minister Vell stepped from behind the altar.

His robes were black, stitched with silver thread that mimicked the circles on the floor. In his left hand he held a scroll half-unfurled. His right hand—crooked pinky, just like Seraphina’s—rested on Lian’s forehead.

“Lady Rhee.” His voice carried no surprise. Only satisfaction. “You’re precisely on schedule.”

Kael’s fire roared. Uncontrolled now, spiralling up his bare arm in ropes of blue-white heat. “Step away from the boy.”

“The Duke of Blackmoor, burning himself alive for a house that despises him.” Vell’s smile was a thin, bloodless thing. “Touching. But irrelevant. The ritual was always meant for Elena. Her death, her blood, her time-bound soul—that was the key. Your poison was perfect, Lady Rhee. Or it would have been.”

Elena’s voice came from somewhere deep and steady. “You used Seraphina.”

“My daughter played her part beautifully. And when you survived—” Vell’s fingers tightened on Lian’s brow. “We found another Rhee.”

The incantation began.

Syllables older than the kingdom rolled from Vell’s tongue. The salt circles ignited. Silver light screamed up the obsidian pillars, and the brooch tore itself from Elena’s breast, hovering in the air above Lian’s chest, spinning slowly. The hourglass shape glowed furnace-hot.

Lian screamed.

Elena lunged.

Kael’s fire exploded.

The chamber vanished into searing, absolute white.