Chapter 1121: The Forgotten Palace [Part 8]

Chapter 1121 – The Forgotten Palace [Part 8]

He crouched near one of the five crystals, studying the pulsing veins. His jaw tightened. "These aren’t protecting the coffin."

Cyrinne’s eyes followed the light.

"They’re sucking power from her."

"Yes." Lux’s voice went flat. "Beautiful little theft engine."

"Now what?" Cyrinne whispered. "Cut the connection? Or wake her first?"

Lux looked at the sleeping demon.

The chamber pulsed once.

Her eyelids moved.

A whisper slid through the crystal.

"Greed..."

Lux smiled without warmth.

"Wake her," he said. "But gently."

Cyrinne stared.

Lux lifted one dagger toward the nearest crystal. "And by gently, I mean we ruin Kaelmor’s equipment with manners."

For one beautiful, deeply inconvenient second, Cyrinne looked like she wanted to ask whether stabbing ancient siphon technology with manners was a Greed House tradition. Then the chamber pulsed again, red-gold veins glowing beneath the floor, and the question died like a badly timed joke.

Lux moved.

He approached the first crystal with his dagger angled down, eyes narrowed. The crystals hummed as he got close, each one pulling power from the coffin in measured pulses. This was controlled theft. Scheduled theft. Automated theft.

Lux hated it more because it was well-designed.

"Whoever built this had accounting discipline," he muttered.

Cyrinne slipped to the opposite side of the coffin, eyes scanning the floor. "That sounds like praise."

"It is an insult with professional grief."

The coffin pulsed again.

Inside, the demoness slept.

No, sleep was too kind a word. She was suspended. Held between rest and starvation, lips faintly parted, lashes dark against pale skin, long black hair floating in the crystal like ink caught underwater. Her horns curved from her temples in elegant obsidian arcs, cracked with thin silver lines that looked less like damage and more like lightning trapped beneath bone. Her body was wrapped in something between a dress and burial silk, black and translucent at the edges, clinging to her form like shadow had become cloth out of respect. She was beautiful in the ancient way, the kind of beauty that did not invite admiration so much as demand witnesses.

Lux felt Greed stir beneath his ribs.

"Mine," it whispered, not of possession, but of refusal.

His hand tightened on the dagger.

Cyrinne crouched near one of the glowing floor veins. "Destroying these will trigger him."

"I know."

"So no shattering?"

"No."

"Pity. I enjoy shattering."

Lux ignored her and studied the five crystals.

There was a rhythm.

Every siphon system had one. Pull, store, balance, report. Pull, store, balance, report. If he cut the connection entirely, the report failed. If he broke a crystal, the report screamed. If he reversed the siphon too hard, the entire chamber would notice the power flow had been tampered with, and Kaelmor’s guards would come running like underpaid employees sensing overtime.

But if the crystals still fed on something...

Lux’s eyes shifted.

Not her.

Each other.

The system was designed to drain from one source and distribute among five storage crystals. But crystals were arrogant little things. Give them a line to pull through and they would pull. Give them another crystal with compatible resonance and they would not ask moral questions. They would simply continue the transaction.

Lux smiled. "Cyrinne."

"Yes?"

"I need mirrors."

Her eyes gleamed instantly. "How many?"

"Five. Thin. Stable enough to confuse the siphon’s direction."

"You’re going to mirror-loop them?"

"I am going to make them suck each other."

Cyrinne paused.

Then looked at him.

Lux glanced back. "What?"

"You realize how that sounded."

"We are in a ten-minute infiltration window beside a sleeping legendary demon. I refuse to be held responsible for phrasing."

Cyrinne smiled like a woman who had decided to enjoy this too much. "Mirror-looping theft crystals. Very elegant."

She lifted both hands.

Green-black mirrors bloomed from the air, one by one. Sharp, narrow plates of reflective magic, each about the height of Lux’s forearm, their surfaces rippling like jealous water. Cyrinne placed them around the coffin with quick precision, each mirror angled between two crystals. Lux moved with her, carving tiny cuts into the air with his daggers, not attacking the siphon lines directly but shaving the edges of the connection. Like trimming wires around a bomb. Like adjusting a contract clause while the opposing lawyer held a knife.

The first crystal resisted.

Lux’s dagger slipped along the red-gold vein.

A spark snapped toward him.

He twisted his wrist, catching the spark along the flat of the blade, then turned it into Cyrinne’s waiting mirror. The mirror swallowed the light, trembled, and reflected it toward the second crystal.

The second crystal accepted the pulse.

Then pulled.

Good.

Lux moved to the next.

"Plus to minus," he murmured. "Pull to return. Debt to debt. Feed the loop, not the source."

Cyrinne watched his hands. "You talk to magical siphons like they’re balance sheets."

"They are balance sheets."

"They are ancient torture machines."

"Unethical balance sheets."

Second line.

Third line.

The chamber pulsed harder.

Lux’s sense of time burned in the back of his mind. Ten minutes from the seal artifact. Less now. Maybe seven. Maybe six and a half. Every second slid away like coins falling through fingers.

He cut the third connection.

The coffin shuddered.

Inside, the demoness’s fingers twitched.

Cyrinne froze. "Lux."

"I know."

The fourth crystal brightened, sensing loss. Lux lunged before it could adjust, dagger piercing the space between vein and coffin. The connection. The blade slid into invisible pressure, and Lux twisted.

The siphon screamed without sound.

Cyrinne’s mirror snapped into place, catching the backlash and throwing it into the fifth crystal.

The room stabilized.

Barely.

Lux’s breath left him in a slow hiss.

"Four."

"Time?" Cyrinne asked.

"Bad."

"That is not a number."

"It is the number you give when counting too carefully makes you depressed."

The fifth connection was worse.

The final crystal held the reporting function. Lux could feel it, the little royal seal curled inside the siphon like a sleeping snake. Break it, and Kaelmor would know. Cut it too cleanly, and Kaelmor would know. Leave it, and the demoness would keep bleeding power.