Vera reached the final door. It had no keyhole. It was a massive slab of Stellar Iron, engraved with the image of a weeping woman.
"It's a blood-lock," Vera realized, looking at her bandaged hand. "But not just any blood. It needs the resonance of the Heart."
She pressed her wounded palm against the iron weeping woman's face. For a moment, the vault rejected her, the cold biting into her bones. But then, the heat from Kassian's hand covered hers. The Sun-curse met the Catalyst's blood, and the door didn't just open—it surrendered.
The room beyond was not a vault. It was an amphitheater of silence.
In the center of the room, suspended in a sphere of dark, swirling energy, was a figure. It looked like a woman, but her skin was the color of a bruised twilight, and her hair was a waterfall of frozen smoke. She was beautiful, terrifying, and utterly hollow.
This was the Shadow Catalyst.
