Chapter 6: Whispers of the Heretics

Chapter 6: Whispers of the Heretics

The lingering ghost of the poison was worse than the attack itself. Alex felt it as a phantom chill in his veins, a memory of encroaching stillness that made him unconsciously rub his hands together for warmth. He sat in the high-backed chair in his study—the same study where he had almost died—while Valerius stood grimly over the recovered water carafe, his brow furrowed. The sorcerer had pronounced it alchemically inert, magically clean. The assassin's work was flawlessly, terrifyingly perfect.

"They left nothing," Valerius stated, his voice tight with a frustration that mirrored Alex's own. "No residual energy, no sympathetic trace. It is a perfect crime, designed to mimic natural causes or, in your predecessor's case, the chaotic fallout of a miscast spell."

"But it wasn't perfect," Alex countered, holding up his right hand and looking at the ornate signet ring of House Finch. It felt heavier now, no longer just a symbol of a stolen life, but the very anchor of it. "Your ward fought back. It reacted to something. That means there was a conflict, an interaction. And where there's interaction, there's evidence. An echo. A scar on the magic itself."

Valerius ceased his examination of the carafe and turned his sharp blue eyes on Alex. The suggestion was, once again, a departure from established doctrine. One did not typically perform an autopsy on a spell. But Alex’s logic, born from a world of ballistics and forensic science, was horribly sound.

With a reluctant sigh, the sorcerer approached. "Extend your hand, my lord."

Alex did so. Valerius gently took his hand, his touch surprisingly cool and steady. He ignored Alex's skin, his focus entirely on the silver ring. He closed his eyes, his other hand hovering just above the signet. A soft, silver light, much fainter than the brilliant blue of the ward’s activation, enveloped the ring. Valerius was silent for a long, drawn-out minute, his breathing slowing to a near-imperceptible rhythm. Alex could feel a faint vibration from the ring, a low hum of inquiry.

When Valerius opened his eyes, the frustration was gone, replaced by a look of profound disturbance, of deep, doctrinal horror. He released Alex’s hand as if the ring had suddenly become white-hot.

"What is it?" Alex demanded, his own unease growing.

"It is a perversion," Valerius whispered, his voice laced with disgust. "An abomination against the sacred Laws. The poison… it was not merely a chemical agent. It was a thaumaturgical delivery system."

He began to pace, his austere calm shattered. "You spoke of the Law of Contagion to find the thread. It is a fundamental aspect of the Law of Sympathy—that which is connected remains connected. We use it to find, to see, to learn. It is a tool of light." He gestured wildly at the carafe. "Whoever brewed that poison… they twisted the Law. They perverted it. They took a sliver of connection to you—a hair from your brush, a drop of spittle left on a glass—and used it not as a key to a lock, but as the targeting mechanism for a weapon. The poison did not need to be in the water; the water was merely the sympathetic medium. By ingesting it, you opened the door from within and the poison was delivered directly into your very essence, bypassing all conventional wards."

Alex felt a cold knot form in his stomach. This was magic as he’d never conceived it—not fireballs and lightning bolts, but a subtle, insidious violation of the natural order. It was the magical equivalent of a DNA-targeted virus.

"Who can do this?" Alex asked. "Is this a known Commonwealth technique?"

Valerius stopped pacing and fixed him with a grave look. "No. No civilized nation, not even the Commonwealth, would openly traffic in such arts. To weaponize the Grand Principles is the ultimate heresy. It is forbidden by every Chantry, every Conclave, every Holy See on the continent. To find the source of this… we must look where the Church has forbidden us to look."

The air in the room grew heavy with unspoken meaning. Valerius’s conflict was palpable. He was a man of rules, of order. What Alex was forcing him to confront was an evil that existed outside his ordered world, and to fight it, he would have to break the most sacred of his own rules.

"There is a place," Valerius said slowly, his voice dropping to a near whisper. "Deep in the foundations of the Grand Chantry. A vault, sealed by the First Archon himself. It is called the Liber Obscura. The Library of Shadows. It contains the forbidden texts—the blasphemous grimoires, the treatises of demonologists, the catechisms of heretical sects. It is where the Church locks away the knowledge it deems too dangerous for the world."

An hour later, they stood before a door that seemed to absorb the light from their lanterns. It was a single slab of polished obsidian set into the ancient stone of the Chantry's undercroft, unmarked by any handle or hinge. The air was cold, still, and thick with the dust of centuries and the oppressive weight of suppressed magic.

Valerius produced a heavy, iron key, but he didn’t put it to the door. Instead, he pricked his own thumb with a silver stylus, smearing a drop of his blood onto the key’s head. He began to chant in a low, guttural language that made Alex's teeth ache. The obsidian door shimmered, and a complex array of silver lines lit up across its surface before it swung silently inward.

The room beyond was not a library, but a cage. Books were bound in iron and shadows, chained to shelves of cold, dark stone. A palpable sense of malice radiated from the ancient tomes, a chorus of whispering madness held in check by the powerful wards that lined the walls.

Valerius, his face a pale mask in the lantern light, moved with purpose, navigating the oppressive atmosphere as if walking through deep water. He stopped before a narrow, unassuming volume bound in what looked disturbingly like tanned human skin. Its title was scorched into the cover: On the Perversion of Sympathy.

He carefully broke the seal and opened the book. The parchment was brittle, the ink a faded, rusty brown. He scanned the pages, his lips moving silently, until he stopped, his finger tracing a line of text.

"Here," he breathed. He began to read aloud, his voice echoing in the terrible silence. "'The adherents known as the Choronzon Cult believe magic is not a divine gift to be regulated by the Church, but a raw, untamed force of nature, a birthright for any with the will to grasp it. They see the Church’s strictures not as protection, but as tyranny.'"

Alex listened, his mind racing. This wasn't just a rival nation. This was an ideology. A magical liberation front.

"'They hold as their highest art the inversion of the Sacred Laws,'" Valerius continued, his voice tight with revulsion. "'They take the Law of Sympathy, a tool of connection, and forge it into a weapon of severance. Their signature method, the Proditoris Osculum—the Traitor's Kiss—is an alchemical agent delivered through a sympathetic medium, causing catastrophic cellular decay that mimics natural affliction. It is the perfect, untraceable assassination tool.'"

He looked up at Alex, his eyes burning with grim understanding. "This is it. This is the weapon that killed Lord Harrington. This is the poison that you survived." He then pointed to a footnote on the page, a later annotation by a Church scribe. "'While suppressed within the Angevin Imperium, the Choronzon heresy is known to have found fertile ground in the border duchies of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, where the central authority of their Church is weak and old pagan beliefs still hold sway.'"

The connection was made. It was no longer a suspicion; it was a documented link. The Commonwealth wasn't just employing spies. They were sheltering, and likely weaponizing, a death cult of magical anarchists.

Katarina Volkov’s beautiful face flashed in Alex’s mind. Her confident smirk, her subtle glamour, her veiled threats. She was no longer just a slick, patriotic agent playing the great game of nations. She was now tangled in something far darker, far more fanatical. Was she a member? A sympathizer? Or was she, like the Duke, a player trying to control a fire she didn't truly understand?

The line between enemy and monster had just become terrifyingly blurred. And in two days, he was expected to dance with her.