The city beneath the glacier breathed lies.
Iron spires pierced low-hanging clouds, their surfaces etched with pulsating covenant runes that rewrote themselves as Aelric passed. Crowds flowed like poisoned honey through the streets—merchants hawking bottled nightmares, children playing with shackled light-sprites, priests whose mouths seethed with black smoke as they preached. Every third building bore the triple raven crest, its wings dripping molten silver onto cobblestones that hissed in protest.
His shadow had grown teeth.
It now walked three paces ahead, its form bloated with stolen frost-lily patterns and chain-link scars. The raven's voices argued ceaselessly:
"Claim the central spire," snarled the darker tone.
"Beware the oathbreakers' banquet," sang the melodic counterpoint.
Aelric's left eye throbbed where the black diamond tear had embedded itself. Through its fractured lens, he saw the city's true face—a writhing mass of translucent oath-strings connecting every soul to the central spire. All but his own.
A hand seized his wrist.
"Three silvers for a taste of your shadow, covenant thief."
The woman's grin revealed teeth filed into raven skull shapes. Her stall overflowed with crystallized screams suspended in amber. Behind her, a caged storm writhed against glass walls.
His shadow lunged.
"No!" Aelric wrested control, freezing mid-strike. The merchant's smile widened as she pressed a dagger to her own throat.
"Clever boy. Kill me, and my death-oath binds you to this stall for seven lifetimes." Her free hand caressed his cursed palm. "But give me a scale from your shadow... and I'll name the one who awaits you at the Feast."
"Bargains breed betrayals," both raven voices warned in rare unison.
Aelric's shadow lashed out—not at the merchant, but at his own wrist. Obsidian scales scattered like broken vows.
The woman swallowed one whole, her pupils dilating into raven-track spirals. "She waits in the Tower of Folded Hours," she giggled, blood streaming from her ears. "The one who wore your mother's face."
The market erupted.
Stalls collapsed into fractal patterns. Merchants and patrons alike turned toward Aelric, their oath-strings glowing crimson as the spire's command flooded their minds: CONSUME THE COVENANT BREAKER.
His shadow moved first.
Darkness unfurled like a blasphemous banner, devouring oath-strings in a gluttonous frenzy. Aelric's veins burned with stolen power—too much, too fast. His right pinky crystallized mid-gesture, shattering as he deflected a hurled thunder-jar.
The spire's doors opened.
Through the chaos, Aelric saw her—a woman draped in his mother's stolen visage, standing framed by archways of frozen time. Her hands cradled a pulsing void-core identical to the shrine's liquid darkness.
"Come home, Ashspire heir," she crooned in his mother's voice.
The raven voices screamed.
"Liar!"
"Truth!"
Aelric's shadow split—half attacking the mob, half clawing toward the spire. His remaining eye bled black ice as conflicting oaths tore at his soul.
The woman raised her void-core.
Every broken oath-string in the city snapped toward it, weaving a throne of stolen promises beneath her feet. Aelric's shadow froze mid-leap, its stolen power hemorrhaging back to its true master.
"All shadows return to the light that cast them," the impostor sighed, her form flickering to reveal the triple raven sigil burning where her heart should be. "Did you truly think your little thefts went unnoticed?"
The last thing Aelric heard before darkness claimed him was the crackle of his own bones crystallizing—and the raven's final warning:
"The Feast requires courses... and you are the main dish."