Dawn on the Twin Peaks brought no heat, only a cruel, grayish light that bathed the plateau, making the Threshold seem even more unnatural—a purple and amber ulcer upon the gray reality. Inside the cavity, the atmosphere was dense, thick with the acrid smoke of the herbs James burned to purify the air and the metallic scent of fear.
Leo, the rescued summoned, lay wrapped in a blanket, trembling. The black mark on his palm, which James had called a 'Sigil of Reabsorption,' seemed to have calmed, but it was a dead seal, a patch of necrotic skin that neither healed nor spread. The worst part was his eyes: glassy, fixed on the ceiling rock as if he were still seeing the Threshold's hallways.
James finished examining him with a sigh. 'It's not common corrosive magic,' he announced, cleaning his prismatic lenses. 'It doesn't spread. It's... a marker. A tag. Like the code on a postal package. It says: "Property of Lyra. Return to sender."'
"Can you remove it?" asked Sara, kneeling beside him with some magically heated water in a stone bowl.
"Not without tearing off his hand, and maybe not even then," James replied with grim frankness. "It's tied to his spiritual signature, not his flesh. It's part of the pact he signed without reading when he accepted the 'blessing.'"
Azrael, who had spent the night sleeplessly watching the Threshold, turned towards them. His face showed traces of weariness, but his gaze was cold steel. 'So, as long as he has it, they can track him.'
"Yes," confirmed James. "It's a beacon."
"Can you block it?" insisted Azrael, his calm unbroken.
"I can try to mask it. With a mixture of shadowroot and volatile silver, creating a field of spiritual interference. But it won't be permanent. And if he gets too close to the Threshold, or if the goddess Lyra focuses her attention here, it will dissipate like smoke."
"Do it," ordered Azrael. Then he approached Leo. He didn't kneel but stood before him, projecting a firm presence, not a compassion that Leo, in his state, couldn't process. 'Leo. I need you to talk to me. I need you to remember.'
Leo blinked slowly, shifting his vacant gaze toward Azrael. 'Remember what? I already told you... it's all a lie...'
"Not about the lie," cut in Azrael, his voice low but incisive. "About the place. The halls. The rooms. The people. How many summoned were there? What are they like? What do they do?"
It was Antoni who stepped closer then. He sat on the ground, level with Leo, without touching him. "Don't think about the gods," he said, in a strangely soothing voice, the voice of one who had inhabited the same abyss. "Think about the walls. What color were they? Did they smell like anything? Did you hear footsteps, voices, crying?"
The tactic worked. The concrete, sensory details anchored Leo away from abstract panic. He swallowed, and his eyes regained a glimmer of focus.
'They were... gray. The walls. But not stone. Like... smoked glass. Cold to the touch. It smelled like... ozone, like after a storm, and something sweet, like rotting fruit.' His voice was hoarse. 'There were... many. Hundreds, maybe. In a large atrium. All with different marks, different colors in their clothes. Some seemed sure, fanatical. They spoke of 'purification' and 'glory.' Others... like me. Scared. Confused. They separated us into groups based on the god they said served us."
"Anyone in charge?" asked Sara.
"The Heralds," said Leo, and a shudder ran through him. 'They have no faces. They're like... shadows with robes, with voices that don't come from one place, but from everywhere at once. They gave us orders. The tests.'
"Tests for what?" asked James, taking mental notes.
'Of affinity. To see how much 'divine essence' we could withstand. Some... changed. Their eyes glowed, they spoke in tongues. Those were taken elsewhere, deeper in. Those who failed...' He looked at his marked hand. '...They told us we needed 'refinement.' But the Herald's gaze... was one of waste. Like looking at spoiled food.'
Azrael absorbed each word, building a mental map of the enemy. It wasn't an army. It was a system. An assembly line to manufacture fanatics and discard defective material.
"Exits?" he asked, the most crucial point.
Leo shook his head. 'The Threshold is the only entrance and exit I saw. But there are levels. The atrium is the first. Then there are doors that only open with a Herald's seal or... with a successful affinity mark.' He paused, remembering something. 'But... there are rumors. Among those who've been there longer. They talk of 'The Vanished.' Summoned who, instead of failing or succeeding... simply disappear from their cells. The Heralds deny it, but the fear is real. They say there are cracks in the lower levels, where the 'stone' of the place bleeds darkness... and sometimes the darkness looks back.'
Antoni held his breath. 'Echoes... older ones. Trapped in the foundations. The gods built their training ground on a graveyard of their own mistakes.'
The image was clear now. A spiritual slaughterhouse built on a cosmic mass grave.
"And your goddess?" asked Sara. "Lyra? Did you see her? Feel her?"
Leo paled even more. 'Once... during the first affinity. A presence. Cold. Bright. Like a mirror of ice under the sun. There was no love. Only... evaluation. Like a blacksmith testing the flexibility of metal. When I failed... the presence withdrew instantly. Without anger. Just... indifference.'
The silence that followed was more eloquent than any curse. The dehumanization was total. They weren't heroes, nor soldiers. They were raw material.
James finished preparing his mixture, a silvery-black ointment that smoked faintly. "This will hurt," he warned, bluntly.
Leo nodded, gritting his teeth. When the ointment touched the black mark, a sharp hiss filled the cavity and a smell of burnt flesh and sulfur enveloped them. Leo stifled a scream, arching his back. The mark didn't disappear, but a lattice of silvery lines covered it like a cage, smothering its darkness.
"Done," said James, wiping sweat from his brow. "It'll buy you a few weeks, maybe a month. But it's a patch, not a cure."
Leo gasped, looking at his hand now latticed with silver. For the first time, something like a spark of will returned to his eyes. "Why?" he asked, looking at Azrael. "Why did you save me? You... you are summoned too. You could have left me. One less problem."
Azrael looked at him directly. "Because someone gave me a second chance when I didn't deserve one either," he said, and for an instant, the ghost of the bridge and Dam's mocking voice passed through his gaze. "And because now I know the only way to win this war isn't with more soldiers, but by breaking the factory that makes them. You're not a problem, Leo. You're a testimony. And maybe, a key."
"A key?" asked Leo, confused.
"You know the inside. You know the rhythm. You've felt the indifference firsthand," explained Sara, understanding Azrael's plan. "That's worth more than any power."
"I... I can't go back," whispered Leo, terrified.
"And we won't force you," assured Azrael. "But we need to know how to get others out. How to find those 'Vanished.' How to sow doubt among those who still believe. We need to dismantle the lie from within, and for that, we need information. Details. The kind only you can give us."
Leo looked at their faces: Azrael's cold determination, James's practical intelligence, Sara's strategic compassion, Antoni's painful empathy. They weren't supernatural saviors. They were people. Wounded, but whole.
He made a decision.
He straightened up with visible effort. "There's a schedule... for deliveries," he said, his voice firmer. "Every full lunar cycle, the Heralds take those who 'passed' the tests to the Gate of Dawn, on the third level. It's when the Threshold is most stable. And... there's a drain. In the communal washrooms on level one. It leads to a waste conduit that comes out... I don't know where, but it's outside the Threshold. It's where I tried to escape, but they detected me."
An entry route. A schedule of activity. A weak point in the waste system.
Azrael nodded slowly. It was a desperate plan. A madness. But it was all they had.
"James," he said, without taking his eyes off Leo, "how long to prepare something that can mimic that 'spiritual signature'? Something to make us look like lost packages in the drain system."
James smiled, an alchemist's smile before a forbidden challenge. "With a sample of Leo's suppressed mark... and a bit of our own essence mixed with pure shadow... a week. Ten days if you want it convincing."
"You have a week," decreed Azrael. Then he looked at Sara and Antoni. "In the meantime, constant surveillance. Herald patterns, Threshold opening frequency. Everything. And you, Leo," his voice softened a degree, "rest. And remember. Every detail, no matter how small, is a weapon."