Three hours pass. Seraphiel has been foaming and jittering while Madarame stays with him, trying desperately to snap him out of it.

  Eventually, he comes around.

  The change is abrupt. The fit stops mid-spasm. He sits upright.

  He is awfully calm.

  Cosmic horrors beyond the veil of the heavens have begun to show themselves to the possessed boy—beings so far beyond the comprehension of man that the mind, when forced to render an image of them, interprets the signal as fatal and shuts itself down. Like a circuit cutting power to avoid a surge. Or a safety lock snapping into place to avert a reality worse than death.

  But why? he thinks. Madarame seems more or less sane. He doesn’t appear to see or hear—nor simply sense—what I can. Surely he has made a pact too? His strange powers. No grimoire. His absurd knowledge of the occult. Why can’t he perceive it as well?

  The Tengu? Perhaps. Maybe they possess supernatural perception. The burning signals—those were specific. Addressed to me. Weren’t they?

  A thousand questions fire through his synapses.

  Seraphiel is ignorant of the specifics of his initiation. Of the truth of Verez. Of the Cairnreach Faustian bargain—a new Verez. The outer shell of his mind is cracked, his amygdala metabolizing glucose at inhumane speeds.

  He is beginning to see.

  Smack—

  Madarame is drenched in sweat, his eyes damp—whether from exertion or tears impossible to tell.

  “For the love of God, finally, you little bag of shit.”

  Despite the harsh words, his actions—three hours spent trying to save his brother, his king—spoke a piety words could seldom capture.

  Seraphiel looks at him, confused.

  “Huh?”

  Madarame notices the lapse in memory and chooses to ignore it, for both of their sanities’ sake.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Wiping his forehead, he forces a grin. “Man, that fight took the life out of you. Anywho, that cloaked cultist disappeared as the sun cut through the amethyst fog!”

  His manic confusion, his attempt at distraction, makes the words far too performative.

  “OH YES,” Seraphiel shoots up, strangely passionate. His pupils are dilated. Tremors flicker through his body, his heart locked in perpetual tachycardia.

  “Look here,” he says, crawling toward the discarded cloak. “This material—what do you notice?”

  Madarame stares, aghast. “Uhh…?”

  “Cashmere. The type native to Verez. Where the brain loses its plasticity,” Seraphiel froths, regurgitating the line as if recalled rather than reasoned.

  “Yes. Clearly,” Madarame says slowly. “The Rodion, of course, escaped into Verez, as the myth goes—when the sky was parted. But why here? Why now?”

  Seraphiel goes silent. He looks upward, as if receiving a radio signal.

  Not too far up.

  “Perhaps,” he murmurs. “Mmm.”

  “I don’t know!”

  The ecstatic emotion unsettles Madarame.

  “We must leave at once,” Seraphiel says, grabbing Madarame’s shoulder and squeezing hard.

  “We must indeed,” Madarame replies, returning the grip.

  Seraphiel turns, wings pressing against the flesh of his back, threatening to emerge.

  Madarame frowns. His gaze drops slowly.

  Returning to the chateau, they settle into the lab.

  Seraphiel appears more or less normal. His sparse speech and sullen mood are infinitely more comforting to Madarame than usual.

  They place a fragment of cloth under examination.

  Faint water residue—mostly evaporated due to intense heat. A few amoebae cling to the fibres. Amoebae native to the town of Yellena in Verez. They are highly reactive, vibrating constantly. Madarame thinks he hears them buzz as he watches—almost like speech.

  Perhaps it’s just his heart.

  He swallows.

  Of all towns. Of all kingdoms in the realm.

  Seraphiel pores over Rodion lore in one of Madarame’s paltry few mythology books, embarrassing, for someone so immersed in the arcane arts.

  He strokes his lower lip with a curled finger.

  “It says here the ouroboros symbolizes death, birth, rebirth. Destroying yourself to give rise to something new—again and again.”

  “Mhm.”

  “The Rodions escaping from the heavens makes sense through that lens.”

  “How so?”

  “Devouring the old self to give birth to something greater. Falling from the highest realm down to earth as something sluggish. A mutated rat. Devouring itself. Intentionally degrading.”

  “For what aim, dear king?”

  Seraphiel looks up—then stops mid-thought, as if spoken over.

  “I don’t know. But this ritual… maybe this was the final step. A creature from another dimension—ascended beyond man, beyond comprehension—reduced to a ritual kill at human hands. Pathetic.”

  He remembers the hand, descending. Too close.

  His brain throbs. He pushes the memory deep into his preconscious.

  "How scholarly", Madarame critiques inwardly—not from hubris or jealousy, but unease. Disgust at himself.

  “Well,” he sighs, “I suppose Yellena it is. To the land where the Cradle resides. In all its… glory.”

  They rise together, the cloth carefully taken.

  The man of flame enters a dimly lit chamber.

  He bows.

  “My liege. The millennial offering was de— ....interrupted by foolish sorcerers.”

  “……”

  “Unfortunately, its taste for man has been rekindled.”