ACT ONE SHATTER LIKE GLASS CHAPTER ZERO THE MASK OF MOROZOVA
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
The Little Palace was not made for Materialki. That's what Sinika thought anyway. They were bound and strung by an invisible fetter, and at the end of that chain was The Darkling – dragging his little servants through the mud whilst he praised his glorious Heartrenders in all their red, black, bloody glory. 'Bloodletters,' He reprimanded himself with a sneer and scowl. He would come to free his people from The Darkling's grasp, he swore it with everything that was good in him. And everything that was evil too.
Sinika knew that entering Little Palace was no simple feat, The Darkling made sure of that because wherever Maxim went, that scar – that brand – encircling his eye would always follow, like a shadow. He almost laughed, the irony. Now, he knew The Darkling would always be a part of him. It no longer angered him, surely it was for a reason were it not? Maxim Sinika was going to bring that tyrant to his knees, he knew it to be true. As true as anything he had ever known. As true as the brand seething on his face. After all, like calls to like doesn't it?
Sinika decided to finally take a page out of his fated foe's book, literally and metaphorically. 15 years in the Second Army did not teach him nothing. He bled and he burnt, then bled and burnt again. All for what? a beautifully crafted sword in the dirt-covered hands of a dead soldier or maybe a golden arrow that misses their enemy and plunges into a harmless civilian. All for what? You ask again. All for fucking nothing, he answers.
Sometimes he liked that the Corporalki and Etherealki saw his people as the lesser of the Grisha Orders. It made easier work of dismantling all The Darkling had from the inside out. At first he would do innocent things, listening over official conversations longer than a Fabrikator like him should or reading the letters he was supposed to deliver to his superiors. And like a guilty pleasure or a drug, he kept going. He got bold. Yet, how could one not just take a peek at Morozova's journals? Or furthermore, just take a few pages out. Who was going to notice? Surely not a century old man who named himself 'The Darkling.' Oh no, never.
