The next morning, Seris awaited her fate. Sleep had not come in the Bone Tower.

  Time did not behave in the Deadlands. Night was only a deeper black, threaded with distant red flares across the wasteland. Dusk resembled a city buried beneath ash; rust and rot briefly visible. The terror did not lessen. It merely revealed itself.

  When the light shifted toward rusted red, she rose. She looked in the mirror. Her dark brown hair hung in strings. Her skin carried a dull sheen, as though it no longer remembered sunlight.

  She found the door to the bathroom attached to her room. Dark marble sheathed every surface. If it were not so wrong, she might have called it beautiful. She washed her face with a hand cloth left for her, attempting to clean herself. She did not know what awaited her. She did not care how she appeared in this place, and yet something inside her strained to look awake. Present.

  She was still wearing the Empire’s ash-stained silks. Absurd here, like something stolen from a funeral pyre. As she stepped out of the bath, her mind jolted.

  Will you permit me to clothe you?

  She stiffened. “You’ll what?”

  Your attire. The Synod will not mistake you for prey.

  “Do as you please,” she replied to thin air. “You've never required my permission before.”

  No answer came. When she left the bathroom, two gowns lay on her bed. Both black. One matte, severe, structured. The other soft, layered, almost… pretty.

  She chose the first.

  As soon as she got dressed, she received a sort of summons. It came as a vibration through the tower’s spine; a low, bone-deep resonance that shuddered through the vertebrae and settled behind Seris’s teeth. The shadows reacted first, drawing tight along the walls as though bracing for impact.

  We must leave now. I will be waiting for you outside.

  She descended the same stairs she had fled the night before. He waited at the bottom. Masked, unreadable.

  Come. Put this on. You will need it when we walk through the City.

  A cloak, black as the Deadlands themselves. She draped it over her gown.

  Outside, the creatures who had come for her the night before bowed as she passed She followed the Harrower like a prisoner. Like his possession. And she welcomed it, because without that claim, she would be prey long before she reached the Synod.

  When they reached their destination, he did not look surprised.

  “They have felt it,” he said, more to himself than to her.

  Felt what? she almost asked.

  But the bond pulsed once, a warning, sharp and deliberate.

  Do not speak now unless I permit it, Seris. Let that be a final warning.

  The stair he chose did not end in a door.

  It ended in a hollow.

  The stone opened into a circular chamber carved deep into the roots of the tower, where the great spine of the Bone Citadel disappeared into the bedrock of the Deadlands. There was no incense here. No dim red glow of ritual light. Only a pallid, marrow-coloured luminescence seeping through hairline fractures in the rock. The air was heavy enough to taste.

  The Synod were already waiting.

  Thirteen figures arranged in a perfect ring around the chamber’s perimeter, equidistant, unmoving. Each wore layered black that seemed less like fabric and more like gathered shadow. Bone masks concealed their faces, not human in shape but animal. Deer-skulls, each crowned with different antlers. Their faces were long, severe, expressionless, and carved from something too smooth to be ordinary ivory. Faint fissures ran through the masks, and from those cracks leaked a dim internal light.

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  They did not breathe.

  And yet the chamber felt braced, as though their stillness were the only thing holding it upright.

  Seris felt the moment they became aware of her.

  Her pulse faltered. The marrow-light brightened, thin fractures of illumination spreading across the stone floor in branching lines beneath her boots.

  The Bone Harrower stepped into the centre of the circle. He did not kneel, but he lowered his chin a fraction.

  A voice cut through the air, chilling and layered, thirteen voices in discord.

  “You permitted the boundary to stir.”

  It was layered and discordant, as if spoken through thirteen throats that did not quite agree on shape.

  “The bells rang,” another voice followed, lower, resonant enough to vibrate in Seris’s sternum. “The plains answered.”

  The Bone Harrower’s reply was even.

  “A living trespass triggered the wards."

  Silence followed. The air compressed further, pressing against Seris’s lungs. One of the masked figures moved towards her. Not just moved, but glided. The hem of its shadowed robes never quite touching the floor.

  “Living,” it repeated softly as it approached her, its bone fingers skimming Seris's cheek. Her pulse nearly leaped out of her throat, but she did not flinch.

  The word passed around the circle like a blade.

  “She stands with you,” said another.

  “She stands under my claim,” the Harrower corrected.

  A mask angled slightly toward Seris.

  “And yet she crossed.”

  A faint ripple moved through the shadows at his feet. The only sign he had not anticipated that phrasing.

  “She crossed without sanction,” the first voice continued. “Unbound.”

  Seris felt the bond tighten around her thoughts like a hand around a throat.

  Do not speak. Do not react.

  “She was permitted to test responsiveness,” he said. "I permitted her."

  The marrow-light flared sharply. Something in the air shifted, as though the stone itself had leaned in.

  “Why test what you are bound to contain?”

  “The Deadlands must answer when touched,” he replied. “If they do not, stagnation invites breach. With the threat of the Empire growing, I need to ensure our wards still stood.”

  Another of the figures drifted closer, stopping no more than a pace from Seris. The temperature dropped instantly. Frost traced the edges of the stone near her boots.

  “The mortal reeks of Empire.”

  Seris kept her gaze forward.

  “She is no accident,” the Harrower said.

  The figure nearest her turned its mask toward him.

  “Then define her.”

  There it was: the fulcrum. But he did not hesitate.

  "She is sacrifice. Taken from the eastern provinces. Noble-born. Strategically valuable.”

  A faint murmur rippled around the circle.

  “The Empire offers living tribute?” one voice asked. "That is new."

  “They do not offer,” he said. “They yield.”

  “And you accepted.”

  “I take what strengthens my dominion.”

  He stepped closer to Seris then, as if claiming her.

  “She is leverage. The Empire tempers its aggression while she remains within my walls.”

  The figure nearest her studied her in silence.

  “She resides in your tower.”

  “I house what is mine where I please.”

  “Indulgence,” another voice murmured.

  The word scraped across the chamber like a blade along bone.

  “She is mortal,” he said, almost dismissive. “Fragile. Easily broken. If I desired indulgence, I would have chosen differently.”

  The insult landed deliberately, and Seris felt it. The light behind the Synod dimmed slightly.

  “And the bells?” the first voice pressed. “Sacrifice does not stir the wards.”

  “She crossed without escort.”

  “You were absent from the sacrifice.”

  “I have corrected the error.”

  The chamber grew still.

  Then—

  One of the thirteen raised its hand.

  A sigil flared beneath Seris’s feet; circular, ancient, carved into the stone itself. Cold fire surged upward around her boots. The air thickened violently, pressing against her ribs. Her pulse roared in her ears ,but she was too fearful to react.

  The Deadlands answered faintly beyond the chamber walls; a distant, hungry vibration. The Bone Harrower did not move in response, either. If he intervened, it would be seen as interference.

  The sigil pulsed once.

  Twice.

  Then it stabilised, the pressure easing.

  “The curse remains intact,” one voice declared. “Your term continues.”

  Term. Seris’s stomach tightened.

  The Harrower inclined his head.

  “She remains under your claim,” the first voice concluded.

  “Yes.”

  “If the mortal destabilises containment,” the nearest figure said, its mask inches from Seris now, “she will be extinguished.”

  “The mortal will not act independently,” he replied.

  A pause.

  “You will ensure it.”

  The marrow-light began to recede. The thirteen figures withdrew, simply fading as though the shadows of the chamber swallowed them whole. But before the last glow faded, one final voice lingered.

  “Remember what you were, your Highness.”

  The light died and the chamber returned to stone. Silence flooded in behind them and for several seconds, Seris could hear nothing but her own breathing.

  Then the Bone Harrower turned and walked toward the stair, not turning to see if she followed.

  As they walked, she processed what had just happened. How she had thought him ruler of this place. But now she understood: he was not sovereign here. Not truly.

  The Undead King. The terror of the Deadlands.

  And yet—

  He was serving a sentence. Cursed. Condemned.

  And she intended to learn why.