The doors opened onto a chamber unlike anything they'd passed through to get there — vaulted ceiling lost somewhere in shadow overhead, floor laid in polished black stone that threw back Jeremy's small light in a dozen soft, warped reflections, and at the far end, raised on a dais of the same black stone, a throne built entirely from interlocked bone that had clearly been assembled with far more care and artistry than the crude, frantic colossus behind them.
Something was sitting in it.
It rose as they entered, unfolding from the throne with an unhurried, almost courteous patience, robes the color of old ash settling around a frame that was mostly bone wrapped in preserved, papery skin, twin points of pale green witchlight burning where eyes should have been. When it spoke, its voice carried an odd, cultured warmth that didn't match anything Xavier had braced himself to hear.
"Guests," it said, and there was something almost delighted in the word. "I haven't had guests in... Well, a very long time. Forgive me if my hosting skills have atrophied somewhat."
"Veythar..." Xavier said, forcing steadiness into his own voice, sword already drawn.
"The Eternal, technically. Though I've always found that a bit much for casual conversation. You may call me whatever you like. I suspect you already have, somewhere between the mirrors and here." The witchlight eyes drifted briefly toward Jeremy, orbiting close at Xavier's shoulder, and something in the lich's posture shifted, curious. "A wisp. How novel. He's cute."
"Where's our friend?" Stephan said, no patience left in him at all, Ember already drawn.
"Safe," Veythar said simply. "For now. My children get overeager with new company. It's been so long since they've had any, you see. But I've asked them not to be rude about it. He's being kept comfortable, more or less, several chambers from here. Whether that arrangement continues rather depends on how the next few minutes go."
"Then let's skip to the part where you let him go," Xavier said.
"I'm afraid it's rarely that simple, young one." Veythar spread both skeletal hands in something like an apology, though the witchlight in his eyes didn't waver. "You've come a very long way, through a great many of my more enthusiastic doormen, specifically to end me. I don't think either of us should pretend otherwise. So... shall we?"
"Wait," Xavier said, before the moment could tip any further. "Just... one thing first. Elrick said, before we left, that whatever six hundred years alone does to someone, it probably isn't nothing. He asked us to listen, if there was a chance to, before it turned into this."
Something flickered behind the witchlight eyes — surprise, maybe, or something closer to old, buried longing, gone again almost before Xavier could be sure he'd seen it at all. "Elrick," Veythar repeated, testing the name like it meant something he couldn't quite place. "I don't believe I know that name. Should I?"
"He's a teacher. Our teacher. He knew you were down here before we did." Xavier kept his sword raised, but softened his voice slightly, testing the room the same way Bruce might test a puzzle before committing to an answer. "He seemed to think there might be more to this than just a monster in a hole."
"How generous of him," Veythar said, and there was an edge to it now, something brittle underneath the courteous warmth. "I'm afraid generosity doesn't always accomplish one's goals. Kind offers rarely survive contact with reality quite that easily."
"Then prove me wrong," Xavier said.
Veythar was quiet for a long moment, witchlight eyes moving slowly between the two of them, weighing something Xavier couldn't read. "You're an unusual sort of guest," he said finally. "I don't think I've had one bother to ask a question before swinging at me in... longer than I can properly remember." A small, dry sound that might have been a laugh. "It changes nothing, I'm afraid. But I'll admit it's quite appreciated."
He didn't wait for a response. A lance of pale green flame lashed out across the chamber, and the fight was, without further ceremony, already happening.
"Spread out!" Xavier shouted, already backpedaling, drawing on his own fire as Stephan surged forward instead, closing the distance at a dead sprint. It was, without either of them planning it in advance, exactly the shape their fights had settled into over the past several months.
Stephan up close where Ember could do the most damage, Xavier hanging back where his own flame had room to breathe and aim.
Stephan closed the gap in three long strides and swung, Ember catching Veythar's raised forearm in a shower of sparks that should have taken the limb clean off and instead simply skidded across old, warded bone without leaving a mark. "That's annoying," Stephan said, already recovering into a second swing.
"Wards," Veythar said, catching the second swing on the same forearm. "Six hundred years buys a person a great deal of preparation. I do apologize for how anticlimactic that must feel."
Xavier answered from range with a bolt of concentrated flame aimed at the lich's exposed flank while Stephan had his attention, and this fire landed properly, scorching a black mark across ashen robes that Veythar actually flinched away from, witchlight eyes narrowing with what might have been genuine surprise.
"Oh," the lich said, sounding almost pleased. "There it is. Good. I was beginning to worry this would be disappointing."
Jeremy darted a tight, nervous circle around Xavier's head and let out a small, worried crackle, and Xavier found himself, absurdly, agreeing with the sentiment completely.
Veythar didn't press the advantage the way Xavier expected. Instead of pursuing the opening, he drifted backward a step, robes trailing across the black stone floor without a sound, and raised one skeletal hand almost lazily. A ring of pale green sigils bloomed in the air around him, spinning slowly and deliberately, and from each one lanced a thin whip of spectral energy aimed at all three points of the chamber at once — Xavier, Stephan, and the space between them, as if testing which of them would react fastest.
Stephan reacted first, throwing himself into a roll that put him inside the ring entirely, closing distance rather than retreating from it, Ember already swinging in a wide horizontal arc that caught two of the spectral whips and unraveled them harmlessly against the blade's steel.
"You're going to have to try harder than ominous sigils," he called, pressing forward.
"I generally do," Veythar said, and this time when Ember came down, he didn't simply block it. He caught the blade between two fingers, halting it dead an inch from his own collarbone, strength that shouldn't have belonged to something built from six centuries of dust. "Though I confess I'm curious how much harder you'd like."
He flicked his wrist, and Stephan went skidding backward across the polished floor, boots screeching, catching himself just before he would have slammed into the base of the dais.
"Okay," Stephan said, breathing hard, grinning anyway in that particular way he had of finding the worst possible moments genuinely fun. "That's annoying and also kind of impressive."
Xavier used the opening to loose another bolt of flame, wider this time, forcing Veythar to actually move his feet for the first time since the fight had started, ash-colored robes flaring as he sidestepped with unhurried, almost bored precision. "You're better than the horde," Xavier called, circling to keep an angle open, sword held low and ready the way Elrick had drilled into him a hundred times over. "Better than the colossus too."
"I would sincerely hope so," Veythar said. "They're constructs. I am, whatever else might be said about me, still a fully conscious being."
Stephan came at him again, low this time, forcing Veythar's attention downward just long enough for Xavier's next bolt to catch him properly across the shoulder, scorching a second black mark into ash-colored cloth. The lich staggered, just slightly, witchlight eyes flicking toward the wound with something that looked almost like satisfaction rather than pain.
"There," he said, quiet, mostly to himself. "Good. Keep doing that."
Neither of them heard him clearly enough to ask what he meant by it, too busy resetting their stances for whatever came next.