Fog clung to Elyndor's spires like a lover's reluctant breath, veiling the capital in shrouds of pearl-gray mist that muffled the distant clamor of ravens. Galila moved through the throng, her porcelain mask etched with an unyielding grin, lips curved in porcelain ecstasy that belied the coiled tension in her sinews. The air hummed with the scent of smoldering resins and iron-tanged anticipation, drawing her toward the obsidian dais where the Crimson Deck's heart pulsed.
At the apex loomed Cordelia, the Queen of Hearts, her form swallowed by a crown of colossal obsidian thorns that drank the torchlight, leaving hollows of shadow where eyes should gleam. The structure devoured illumination, birthing voids that whispered of devoured stars, its jagged filigree pulsing with veins of captured crimson glow. Galila's gaze traced the slits—mere fissures in the monolith—through which the Queen's will seeped like venom.
Lower ranks knelt in concentric rings, their wrists bound by jeweled bracelets that gleamed like shackled fireflies: emeralds for Aces, sapphires for Twos, each gem a seal on forgotten faces. They pressed foreheads to the slick stone, murmuring oaths that thickened the air with the musk of fealty. Galila, elevated as Second Jester, stood apart, her grin-mask a beacon amid the prostrate forms, yet her pulse thrummed with a feral discord.
A chalice circulated, brimming with blood drawn from each throat in turn—sharp incisions by obsidian blades that wept scarlet rivulets. The liquid steamed as it pooled at the dais's base, forging oaths in viscous bonds that snaked across the floor like living ink. One bracelet-clad figure, trembling, spilled too much; Cordelia's crown-slits flared with devoured light, and a Jester's whip cracked, silencing the gasp.
Galila inhaled the metallic reek, her masked mirth unchanging, but beneath the porcelain, hunger stirred—not for the Queen's dominion, but for the truths those bracelets concealed, the faces erased by the pyramid's gleam. The ritual's rhythm seeped into her veins, a cadence of submission that chafed her warrior's core.
As the final oath sealed with a thunderous chime from the crown's depths, Cordelia's voice emerged, a silken blade slicing the fog: 'The Deck endures.' Galila's grin widened impossibly in her mind's eye, but her fists clenched, yearning to claw past the shadows for the pyramid's buried fractures.
The throng stirred as the chalice completed its circuit, crimson residue tracing serpentine paths toward the dais's heart, where it vanished into fissures like blood fed to a slumbering leviathan. Galila's boots scraped the stone, her frame taut beneath the jester's motley—leather straps cinched over a masculine breadth of shoulder and thigh, evoking a predator cloaked in jest. She alone among the elevated ranks savored the ritual's undercurrent, the way oaths curdled into something viscous, binding not just flesh but the marrow of secrets.
Cordelia's crown quivered then, thorns elongating like questing roots, and from its shadowed maw issued a low threnody—a vibration that clawed into Galila's ribs, syncing with her pulse. Through the slits, she imagined the Queen's gaze, twin voids appraising her unblinking grin. No words passed between them, yet the air thickened with command: *Serve the Deck, Jester, or be its jest.* Galila's porcelain lips itched to sneer, her true mouth watering at the fantasy of shattering that monolith.
Lower ranks rose in unison, bracelets chiming like muffled bells, their faces obscured by hoods that rendered them specters in the mist. One Ace, emerald at her wrist pulsing erratically, faltered, eyes darting toward Galila's masked vigil. A flicker of desperation there—plea or warning?—gone as swiftly as fog devouring a spark. Galila committed it to memory, her hunger sharpening to a blade's edge.
The Queen's voice slithered forth again, coiling around the assembly: "Rise, shards of my will. The pyramid claims its due." Echoes rippled outward, stirring the fog into eddies that carried whispers of fealty and fear. Galila pivoted on her heel, grin eternal, but her stride carried the weight of fracture—each step a probe into the pyramid's gleaming facade, seeking the rot beneath.
As the congregation dispersed into Elyndor's labyrinthine alleys, Galila lingered at the dais's fringe, inhaling the residue of blood and resin. Her fingers ghosted the mask's edge, where porcelain met sweat-slicked skin, and a rogue thought bloomed: what faces hid behind those jeweled bonds, and what rebellion slumbered in their erased gazes? The crown loomed silent now, but its shadow clung to her like a second skin, fueling the feral itch that no oath could quench.
She melted into the dispersing throng, her boots silent on mist-slicked cobbles that wound like veins through Elyndor's undercroft. The fog thickened here, birthing phantoms from alley mouths—hooded figures clutching wrists where bracelets throbbed like second hearts. Galila's grin-mask caught glints from sconces of foxfire, its porcelain gleam a lure for wary glances. One such gaze lingered: the emerald Ace from the ritual, her form slender beneath a threadbare cloak, bracelet flickering as if fevered.
The Ace veered closer, breath ragged, a hand darting to press something into Galila's palm—a sliver of obsidian etched with hasty runes, warm as spilled life. "The gleam hides fractures," she hissed, voice frayed like unraveling silk, before vanishing into vaporous coils. Galila's fingers curled around the token, its edges biting her skin, awakening a tremor in her core—not fear, but the savage thrill of unearthed vein.
She slipped the shard into her motley, pulse syncing with its latent hum, and pressed onward through labyrinthine vaults where resin smoke curled like spectral fingers. The pyramid's gleam echoed in her mind: Cordelia's crown, a maw that swallowed not just light but dissent, yet this fragment pulsed with defiance, a whisper against the oaths' viscous grip. Galila's thighs clenched beneath leather straps, the warrior's build coiling tighter, as if the stone fed on her mounting discord.
Deeper in the fog's embrace, she paused at a rift in the spires, where wind keened through obsidian lattices, carrying the faint chime of bracelets from hidden revels below. The Ace's warning burrowed into her marrow, sharpening her hunger for the faces those gems entombed—the erased selves yearning to claw free. Galila traced the mask's eternal curve, porcelain cool against fevered flesh, and exhaled a silent vow: she would peel back the pyramid's luster, shard by treacherous shard.
The crown's shadow stretched long in her wake, but the obsidian sliver burned like a covert ember, promising fractures yet to widen. As Elyndor's mists swirled into night, Galila vanished into the gloom, her grin unyielding, the feral itch now a blaze that no ritual could sate.