He had found the seam in the prison's making. Now, within the Pod-sloy, he pushed past the cacophony of stolen sorrows, hunting for the single memory of the lock.
Behind the chaos, he felt it: not the memory of a thing being made, but the memory of an oath. It was a command for the stolen pain to hold its shape and become a cage.
There it was. A single point of hateful, unwavering light in the screaming dark.
Sineus focused his entire being on that one point. The noise of the thousand other sorrows faded to a distant roar. The weeping walls, Fedor’s restless pacing, Alani’s shallow breaths—all of it fell away. There was only him and the oath. A pinpoint of pure, weaponized intent. He gathered his will, not as a blade to cut, but as a hand to grip. To pull. To unravel.
He took hold of the memory.
It resisted. The oath was old, cold, and absolute. It was not a fleeting thought but a foundational command, burned into the fabric of this pocket of reality. Pulling at it was like trying to pull a single thread from a frozen tapestry. The strain was immense. The spike of pain behind his eyes flared, white-hot.
“Knyaz?” Fedor’s voice was a distant rumble. His loyal captain had stopped his pacing.
Sineus did not answer. He could not. He pulled harder. The thread of the oath did not snap. It stretched. It vibrated with a low, angry hum that he felt in his teeth. He saw it in the Pod-sloy, a line of black light, now thinning under the pressure of his will. It began to fray at the edges, shedding sparks of corrupted memory.
Then, the chamber groaned.
It was not a sound in the air. It was a deep, structural tremor that vibrated up through the floor, through his bones. A sound like a great ship’s timbers complaining in a storm. Fedor stumbled, catching his balance, his head snapping up toward the ceiling.
“What was that?” he demanded.
Alani whimpered, her eyes still closed. “It’s breaking. He’s breaking it.”
Sineus ignored them. He held the fraying thread of the oath and pulled, twisting it, forcing the memory to un-remember its own purpose. The black light of the oath flickered, its integrity failing. It was a battle of wills, his against the one who had built this place. He poured more of himself into the effort, feeling a profound exhaustion begin to creep into his limbs.
The walls answered. The slow, greasy weeping quickened. The thin, oily fluid now ran in rivulets, the black stone shuddering as if in a fever. A crack, thin as a hair, appeared near the ceiling. It spread downward, a jagged line of failure in the polished, impossible surface. The smell of ozone grew sharp, acrid.
“Sineus!” Fedor shouted, his voice tight with alarm. He had his axe in hand now, his back to the wall as he watched the room come apart.
The oath was losing its coherence. Sineus could feel its structure collapsing, the memory degrading from a sharp command into a confused mumble of intent. He gave one final, desperate pull.
The thread snapped.
The black light of the oath shattered into a million fading motes within the Pod-sloy. The backlash hit Sineus like a physical blow, throwing his head back. For a moment, the world was a white haze of pain.
The sound that followed was the sound of a world ending. A deep, tearing roar erupted from the very substance of the tower. The floor bucked, throwing Fedor to one knee. The weeping walls did not just crack; they began to bleed a torrent of black ooze, the material losing its form, dissolving into the raw, screaming memories it was made from. The sourceless light in the ceiling flickered wildly, then died, plunging them into a terrifying gloom lit only by the phantom light of de-manifesting agony.
The foundational lie was broken. The prison was unmaking itself.
The air grew thick with the dust of dissolving stone and the stench of raw despair. A low, grinding shriek echoed from below as the entire tower began to fail.
The shriek was the fortress's death rattle. The foundational oath was broken, and the entire structure, built on a lie of permanence, began to come apart.
