Chapter 23: The Nullifier Box

The vacuum of the vault swallowed the sound of our breathing, replacing it with a hum that vibrated in my molars. It wasn't a sound, really—it was the absence of it, a frequency that ate at the air until my lungs felt thin and brittle. 

Dorian’s hand was still clamped over mine on the heavy brass lever, his pulse a frantic, rhythmic tapping against my knuckles. Usually, the touch of a cryomage was like pressing my skin against a windowpane in midwinter—sharp, bracing, and enough to make my internal pilot light roar in protest. Now, in the dead-air silence of the High Chancellor’s inner sanctum, his cold felt less like an attack and more like an anchor.

"Don't let go," he murmured. His voice was stripped of its usual melodic arrogance, reduced to a rasp that caught on the stillness.

"I have no intention of it," I snapped, though the bite was missing from my tone. I braced my boots against the floor—cold obsidian that seemed to drink the light from our glow-spheres—and threw my weight backward.

The door didn't just open; it unraveled. The interlocking gears of the vault face spun in a dizzying sequence of brass and silver, retreating into the doorframe with the precision of a watchmaker’s nightmare. As the last seal retracted, a burst of pressure hit us. It wasn't wind. It was a void, a sudden, sickening pull that made the fire in my veins flicker like a dying candle.

I stumbled, my knees hitting the obsidian. Dorian was there, his fingers digging into my shoulder to keep me upright. 

"Mira," he said, his breath ghosting over my ear. "Look."

In the center of the room, suspended by nothing but the sheer density of the shadows around it, stayed the Nullifier Box. It was smaller than the legends suggested—a cube no larger than a jewelry casket—but it moved. The metal was dark, a matte void-iron that didn't reflect our light. Its surfaces shifted in a constant, silent tuck-and-roll of clockwork plates, expanding and contracting like a mechanical lung. 

It was beautiful. It was a heretical masterpiece. 

"The dampening field is active," I whispered, forcing myself to stand. I reached for the spark that usually lived at the base of my throat, the warmth that I could call into a conflagration with a single thought. It was gone. In its place was a cold, hollow ache. I felt small. I felt like a girl made of straw and dry paper, waiting for a wind to scatter me. "Dorian. My fire..."

"I know," he said, his eyes fixed on the cube. The icy blue glow that usually rimized his irises had faded to a dull, human grey. "The ambient magic in the room is being siphoned. If we stay here too long, it won’t just be our casting ability that goes. It will start on the reservoirs. It will drain the life-force attached to the Gift."

"Then we move fast." I reached into my tool belt, my fingers trembling as they closed around a pair of lead-lined gauntlets. I’d built them for handling volatile pyrotechnic cores, but lead was the only thing that might offer a second of protection against the void-metal.

I stepped onto the dais. Every inch closer felt like walking underwater. The hum in my teeth grew into a thrumming ache in my skull. I saw Dorian move to the other side of the pedestal, his movements stiff, his jaw locked in that stubborn, aristocratic line that usually made me want to hit him. Now, I just needed him to keep breathing.

"On three," I said, reaching out.

"Mira, wait—"

I didn't wait. I couldn't. The longer we stood in the presence of that thing, the more I felt my identity blurring at the edges. I plunged my hands toward the cube.

The moment my fingers brushed the shifting plates, the world inverted. 

It wasn't a shock; it was a vacuum. The Box didn't just leech my magic; it hooked into me. It felt like a barbed wire line being cast down into the very center of my soul and yanked upward. I screamed, but the sound was devoured by the Box before it could leave my lips. My vision went white, then black, then a shimmering, bruised purple. 

My fire didn't just gutter. It was ripped out. I felt the heat leave my skin, the very marrow of my bones turning to slush. 

"Mira!" 

Dorian’s weight slammed into me, but he didn't pull me away. He couldn't. He gripped the other side of the Box, his hands bare, his skin instantly frosting over with a terrifying, necrotic grey. 

The Box hissed. The clockwork plates accelerated, spinning so fast they became a blur of dark metal. 

The sensory overload was a physical blow. Because the magic was gone, the raw, human proximity of Dorian was suddenly amplified a thousandfold. Without the barrier of our rival elements—the constant push and pull of fire vs. ice—there was only the terrifying reality of his body pressed against mine. 

I could feel the scratch of his wool coat against my forearms. I could feel the heat radiating from his chest—real, biological heat, not the artificial chill of his magic. I could smell the cedarwood and old parchment of his skin, underscored by the sharp, metallic tang of ozone. 

"Hold... it..." Dorian choked out. He was leaning over the Box, his forehead almost touching mine. "We have to... stabilize the internal... gyroscopes. Together."

"I can't feel my hands," I gasped. I forced my fingers to curl around the edges of the void-iron. The gauntlets were useless; the Box was drinking through them. 

"Look at me," he commanded. 

I lifted my head. His face was inches from mine, stripped of the Chancellor’s mask. He looked terrified. He looked human. For years, we had stood on opposite sides of the Great Hall, throwing barbs and spells like they were the only currency we had. Now, we were just two drowning people clinging to the same jagged rock.

"Don't look at the void," he whispered, his voice trembling. "Look at me. Focus on the friction. Focus on the heat."

I did. I stared into his eyes, watching the way his pupils blown wide until the grey was just a thin silver ring. I felt the sweat on his palms slicking the metal between us. The attraction I’d spent months buried under layers of professional disdain flared up, a wild, panicked thing. It wasn't the slow burn of romance; it was the desperate, frantic hunger of the dying. I wanted to bury my face in the crook of his neck just to prove we were still warm.

Suddenly, the Box clicked. A deep, resonant chime echoed through the obsidian chamber, and the shifting plates locked into a solid, heavy cube. 

The vacuum pressure vanished.

We slumped against the pedestal, still clutching the Box between us. I was shaking so hard my teeth rattled. Dorian didn't pull away. He stayed there, his chest heaving, his breath hitching in a way that suggested he was hovering on the edge of a collapse.

"We did it," I breathed. 

"Not yet," Dorian said. He looked past me, toward the entrance of the vault. 

The silence of the room had changed. It was no longer a vacuum; it was a countdown. Along the walls, the decorative clockwork friezes—graceful brass lions and celestial spheres—began to rotate. Their eyes glowed with a dull, red light. 

"Security," I whispered. I tried to summon a wall of flame to block the door. 

Nothing happened. Not even a spark. My hands were just hands—unprotected, shaking, and empty. 

"The Box," Dorian realized, his voice sharp with alarm. "As long as we carry it, it’s a localized dead-zone. We have no magic, Mira. None."

One of the brass lions detached itself from the wall, its joints clicking with a lethal, rhythmic precision. It was nearly five feet tall, a mass of sharpened gears and steam-driven pistons. It prowled toward the dais, a low hiss of hydraulic fluid filling the air.

"Right," I said, a jagged, manic laugh bubbling up in my throat. I reached into my belt and pulled out a heavy-duty wrench and a pouch of magnesium powder. "No magic. Good thing I’m an engineer."

Dorian stood, swaying slightly, but he squared his shoulders. He reached down and snatched a discarded ceremonial spear from a decorative armor stand near the pedestal. He held it with the practiced grace of a man who had studied the blade as well as the book.

"Tactical formation?" he asked, glancing at me.

"Hit it until it stops moving," I suggested.

The lion leaped. 

It was a blur of gold and teeth. Dorian moved first, sliding under the beast’s arc with a fluidity that made my heart jump. He drove the spear into the lion’s underbelly, the metal screeching as it sparked against the gears. 

"Mira! The joints!" he shouted.

I didn't think. I threw a handful of magnesium powder into the lion’s open maw as it turned to snap at Dorian. "Close your eyes!"

I struck my flint. 

The resulting flare wasn't magical, but it was blinding. The magnesium ignited in a brilliant, white-hot burst, scorching the lion’s internal sensors. The beast recoiled, pawing at its face, its hydraulic limbs flailing.

I lunged forward, swinging the heavy iron wrench with every bit of the rage I’d accumulated over the last hour. I slammed it into the creature’s front knee-joint. The brass buckled. The lion tilted, crashing into the obsidian floor.

"Move!" Dorian grabbed my waist, hauling me back just as a second lion lunged from the shadows of the ceiling. 

We ran. 

The vault had become a gauntlet. The shifting walls were closing in, the obsidian slabs grinding together to create an ever-narrowing throat. We scrambled over the wreckage of the first sentinel, the Nullifier Box a heavy, dead weight in the satchel Dorian had slung over his shoulder. 

"The door is losing its seal!" I yelled, pointing toward the shrinking rectangle of light at the end of the hall. 

We were fifty feet away when the floor beneath us began to tilt. The High Chancellor hadn't just built a vault; he’d built a trapdoor. The obsidian sloped sharply, slick and impossible to grip. 

I lost my footing. My boots slid, and I felt the sickening lurch of gravity taking over. I reached out, my fingers clawing at the smooth stone. 

"Mira!" 

Dorian’s hand shot out, catching my wrist. The force of it nearly jerked my arm from its socket. He was anchored against a protruding gear-housing, his muscles straining against the fabric of his coat. 

"Don't let go," I gasped, the words a mirror of his from earlier. 

The ledge below me was a drop into a secondary grinding chamber—rows of massive brass teeth waiting to turn whatever fell into them into dust. 

"Never," he whispered. 

He pulled. It wasn't a magical feat; it was a raw, primal exertion of strength. He dragged me up the slope, his face inches from mine, his eyes burning with a desperate intensity. When I reached the level ground of the doorway, he didn't let go. He kept his arm around my waist, pulling me flush against him as we sprinted the final few yards.

The air was thick with the smell of burning oil and grinding stone. The heavy brass doors were inches from shutting, the gap narrowing to a sliver.

"Jump!" 

We threw ourselves through the opening, hitting the cold stone of the outer corridor and rolling as the mechanism behind us finished its cycle. 

The heavy brass doors slammed shut behind us, severing the Box’s connection to the vault, but the hunger inside the metal didn't stop. It began to pulse in time with Dorian’s heart, and for the first time since I was six years old, I couldn't feel the spark of my own fire.