Chapter 19 · Rift Breach

"Get the hell away from him!" Vesper’s voice cracked as she lunged, her boots skidding on the blood-slicked floor of the clinic.

She didn't look at the carnage around her—the shattered vials, the overturned gurneys. Her eyes were locked on the man standing over Lucian. He was dressed in the charcoal grey of a High Inquisitor, his fingers still pressed firmly against Lucian’s pale forehead.

"Too late, little bird," the Inquisitor sneered, not even glancing back at her. "The connection is already severed. He's drifting. Just a broken shell in a fancy chair now."

"Let. Him. Go." Vesper didn't shout. She hissed, her hand already wrapping around the hilt of her combat knife.

"Or what?" The man finally turned, a thin, cruel smile stretching his lips. "You’re a smuggler. A rat from the gutters. You think you can fight the Church with a piece of sharpened steel?"

Across the room, Lucian didn't move. He looked dead. His head was tilted back, his chest barely rising. But inside, miles away from the physical wreckage of the clinic, the Dream Sovereign was screaming.

Lucian wasn't in the clinic.