The treatment hit his stomach like a second poison.
Lucien's body rejected it immediately.
His throat clenched. His stomach convulsed. Heat and bitterness clawed back up his chest so violently that for one horrible second he thought he would vomit the entire thing out and die with the cure burning uselessly on his tongue. The medicine was not gentle. It was thick, sour, and vicious, as if Renn had bottled hatred and called it healing. It slid through him with a crawling cold that met the poison already tearing through his veins, and where the two touched, agony bloomed.
Lucien arched against the stone.
The Death Jester crouched beside him, head tilted, watching with obscene delight.
"Oh, that looks unpleasant," it said brightly. "Do it again."
Lucien tried to curse it, but his jaw locked before he could form the words. His lungs spasmed. His hands clawed against the smooth platform, nails scraping uselessly over stone as black veins pulsed beneath his skin. The medicine made everything worse before it helped. His blood felt too thick. His heart hammered once, stopped long enough to make terror split through him, then slammed back into motion with a painful jolt.
The Jester sighed, almost disappointed.
Then the blue flames around the platform flickered.
The copy's body twitched once with the dagger still buried between its eyes. The Death Jester looked toward it, then back at Lucien. Its smile stretched.
"Ah. Curtain closing."
The Jester stood, swept into an exaggerated bow, and bells that had not been there a moment ago jingled from the ends of its sleeves.
"Until the next laugh, little Dealer."
Its body unraveled into strips of black cloth and pale smoke. The grin remained last, hanging in the air like a cut in reality, then vanished with a soft, delighted giggle.
Lucien was alone with the poison.
He nearly passed out.
Darkness pushed at the edges of his vision, thick and patient. It would have been easy to let it take him. His body begged for it. Every muscle trembled. Every breath scraped. The blue flames above the pillars smeared into long, wavering lines, and the stone beneath his cheek felt distant, as though he were already falling away from it.
Renn's warning tore through him.
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The remedy won't help if you're out cold.
Lucien's eyes snapped open.
"No," he forced out.
It came as a broken whisper, but it was enough to anchor him for one more heartbeat.
He rolled partly onto his side, shaking so badly his teeth clicked together. The treatment crawled through his gut, fighting the poison with all the mercy of a battlefield surgeon sawing through bone. His thoughts scattered. He could not count his breaths. Could not focus on the chamber. Could not even tell whether the wet sounds in his ears were from the slime-copy, his own blood, or his heart failing in stages.
Stay awake.
He brought his hand to his mouth and bit down.
Hard.
Pain burst through his palm.
Not enough.
He bit deeper until skin broke and the taste of blood filled his mouth. The sharpness cut through the fog for a moment, crude and beautiful. Lucien groaned against his own hand, jaw trembling, refusing to release until the pain became a rope he could hold.
Stay awake.
The poison surged again.
His veins tightened beneath his skin, black lines pulsing as if something inside him wanted to crawl out. His lungs burned. His throat closed, opened, closed again. He dragged air in through his nose and almost choked on it. The treatment turned cold in his stomach, then colder still, spreading outward in slow, miserable threads. Where it passed, the burning faded by a fraction.
Not gone.
Less.
Lucien clung to that small difference as if it were salvation.
Minutes passed, or perhaps only seconds stretched by terror. Slowly, the violence in his blood began to lose its rhythm. The black veins along his wrist stopped thickening. His fingers still cramped, but no longer curled hard enough to threaten breaking. The fire in his lungs dulled into a deep ache. His heart remained unsteady, but it no longer felt as if each beat might be the last one the body remembered how to make.
He released his hand from his teeth.
Blood ran across his knuckles.
Lucien laughed weakly.
It sounded terrible.
Across the platform, the copy's corpse began to lose shape.
The flesh softened first. Skin became translucent. Hair melted into clear fluid. The body collapsed into the same slime-like substance from which it had formed, a trembling mass of water and pale membrane spread across the stone. For a moment, the dagger remained suspended inside it, then that too dissolved into nothing.
The blob shivered.
Then evaporated.
No steam rose. No scent remained. It simply thinned, faded, and disappeared into the platform as if the dungeon had never made it at all.
Something fell where the copy had died.
Two books.
Lucien stared at them through sweat-blurred eyes.
The covers were dark with age, bound in leather so worn it had almost become black. One was narrow and thick, held shut by a cracked bronze clasp. The other was broader, flatter, its corners reinforced with tarnished metal, its surface marked by an emblem he did not recognize from any Avaron house or imperial banner. They looked unimpressive. Forgotten. Like things that had sat in a tomb long enough for the world to forget how much blood they would one day cost.
Lucien smiled.
His lips were cracked. His body felt broken. Sweat soaked his shirt, his hand bled, his lungs still hurt, and every attempt to move sent a slow wave of nausea through him.
He smiled anyway.
"Got it," he rasped. "This time."
The words tasted like blood and victory.
For a while, he could not reach them.
He tried to sit up and failed once. Tried again and managed only to prop himself on one elbow. The chamber spun around him, blue flames swaying in circles above the pillars. He waited, breathing shallowly, until the floor stopped moving enough for him to trust it. The treatment was still working through him, dragging him back inch by inch from the edge he had willingly stepped over.
Only then did thought begin returning in pieces.
The Jester.
Lucien's smile faded.
It had spoken too much.