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Chapter 19 - The Taste of Ashes

The meat was flavorless. It was neither good nor bad; it was an absence. A texture of tough, fibrous gristle that surrendered to chewing with a grudging resilience, leaving behind a faint, chalky aftertaste, like crushed stone. We ate in silence There was only the mechanical act of consumption, the fueling of a body that had become a engine for survival, divorced from the soul that piloted it.

Lys ate what I gave him, his eyes distant, focused on some internal horizon of memory or misery. He did not look at the remaining carcass from which the strips of grey flesh had been cut. When he was finished, he simply curled into a tight ball within his cloak, his back to the fire and to me. I did not disturb him. There were no comforts to offer that would not taste like lies.

The Warden's gift was all but spent. The act of purification had drained the last dregs of that borrowed vitality, and the familiar, gnawing emptiness was back, a hollow pit in my stomach that the bland, ashen meat did nothing to fill. It was a physiological hunger, yes, but it was also a spiritual one. I felt… less. As if each compromise, each bending of my nature to a purpose it was never meant for, was eroding the edges of what I was.

Croft watched us from a high rock, a silhouette against the bruised purple of the twilight sky. He offered no commentary, no judgment. He was a fact, like the wind and the stone.

As the last of the light faded, I felt the pull. The compass in my chest, which had been a subdued thrum during the fight and the grim meal, now sharpened its focus. It was no longer a general pull east, but a specific, localized tug, like a lodestone drawn to a particular vein of iron in the mountain. It was close. Very close.

"We will reach it tomorrow," I said into the quiet. My voice was rough, unused.

Lys did not respond, but I saw the line of his shoulders tighten. Croft turned his head, his eyes catching the starlight.

"The Spires hold their secrets tightly," the raven said. "The pull you feel… it is different from the shard in the city. Stronger. More… complex."

"Complex how?"

"It feels less like a single drop of water, and more like a wellspring," he replied, his tone thoughtful. "A confluence. Tread carefully, Cassian. Power of that magnitude is rarely left unguarded. The Warden was a test of identity. What awaits in the high places may be a test of worth."

A test of worth. The words settled over me, colder than the night air. What was my worth?.

The night was deep and star-drenched, the clarity of the high altitude making the heavens look like a spill of frozen diamonds. My shadow-sight rendered the world in shades of silver and deepest black. I looked over at Lys. In his sleep, some of the tension had left his small form. His dormant Spark was a pale, grey moon in the center of his being, a perfect, untroubled stillness. So peaceful. So utterly vulnerable.

The memory of Croft's words echoed. 'You could reach into the very essence of the meat and subtract the corruption itself.'

A terrible, nascent idea began to form in the weary corridors of my mind. A thought so audacious, so blasphemous, that it made my hands go cold.

If I could subtract the corruption from the blighted flesh… if I could define a foreign, malevolent energy and command the shadows to consume it…

Could I do the same for a Soul-Spark?

Not to awaken it. The opposite.

To see the dormant, silent state not as a lack, but as a purity. To define the potential for life, for power, for connection to the agonizing world, as the "unwanted" thing. To reach into that grey moon and, with the same surgical precision I had used on the monster, subtract the very potential for it to ever beat, to ever glow, to ever feel the pain of this existence again.

I could make him permanently safe. Not just hidden, but fundamentally, irrevocably immune. I could freeze his soul in this silent, painless state forever. He would never awaken. He would never know power, or passion, or the profound connection to a world that had betrayed him. But he would also never know the terror of the hunt, the corruption of the blight, the agony of loss. He would be a peaceful, static thing in a universe of chaos and suffering. A perfect, eternal still point.

It would be the ultimate mercy. The ultimate perversion.

I stared at my hands, the hands that held the shadow-blade, that had purified the foul meat, that had touched the ichor of a dead god. Could they perform such an act? Was the power within me, the shard of ending, subtle enough, cruel enough, to enact such a quiet, terrible peace?

The weight of the choice was a physical pressure on my chest, heavier than the entire mountain range. To awaken him was to offer him a torch in a boundless dark, knowing the light would draw every predator for miles. To still him forever was to blow the torch out and ensure he never felt the cold again.

I was an angel of death. It was my function to end suffering. But was this an ending? Or was it a theft? A theft of a future he had never been asked to choose?

I looked up at the cold, indifferent stars. There was no answer there. Only the silent, pulling certainty of the power in the mountain ahead, and the silent, sleeping question of the boy beside me.

The taste of ashes was still in my mouth. I had a feeling it would never leave.

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