The crossover rune on Kael's palm wasn't healing.
It gnawed.
Where the plume shard and Silas's circle had intertwined, violet and indigo strings writhed like living wires underneath rankled skin. Each pulse sent beats of cold fire up Kael's arm—not torment, but starvation. The Skyreach Gate's bruised sky observed, its harsh look thickening the static-charged air.
Lieutenant Annoy was absent, her blood red cyber-eye buzzing because it bolted onto Kael's burned hand. Her rifle trembled. "Thorn… what are you? doing"
Some time recently Kael seem reply, the injured Hunter-the—the one whose arm had broken down into ash—screamed. Not from torment. From dread. He pointed a shaking finger past Kael. "Eyes! Holy people spare us—more eyes!"
The obsidian towers encompassing them beat. Handfuls of green openings glinted open within the rugged rock, featureless, mechanical. Watching.
"Drop back!" Annoyed, her voice splitting. "To the extraction point! Presently!"
The veterans didn't delay. They scooped up their injured comrade, withdrawing in a wild-eyed scramble over the gravity-warped landscape. Annoy snatched Kael's collar, yanking him forward. "Move, Catalyst! Or I take off you for those things!"
Kael faltered after her, the modern rune throbbing in agreement with the needle's snarl in his neck. He looked back. The green eyes didn't take after. They just… observed. As in the case of waiting.
---
The extraction point was a circle of seared soil stamped by flashing rune-stones. Annoy hammered a gadget into the ground as the group bumbled into its border.
"Flag sent! Thirty seconds to entry!"
She turned on Kael, rifle raised. Her cyber-eye burst dark red.
"Conversation. What was that reverberation burst? It wasn't a Void enchantment. It was… anti-magic."
Kael clutched his dying palm. The crossbreed rune squirmed underneath the skin.
"The orb… the feather… they reacted."
"Reacted?" Vex's snicker was spiked. "It unmade that Echo-shade's shell! It quieted their weapons! That's not a reaction—that's destruction!" She ventured closer, gag pointed at his chest. "Silas called you a Catalyst. But catalysts do not eat vitality.
They transmit it. That thing on your hand? It consumed."
Over them, the bruised sky was obscured. Thunder rumbled—a sound like crushing bones.
Kael's rune flared. Indigo light licked up his wrist. "I didn't inquire for this."
"None of us did!" Annoy signaled fiercely at the dead Hunter's body.
"Martyn marked up for Door obligation, not… soul-forging!" She solidified.
The words hung heavy.
Soul-forging.
The dead prisoner's grate reverberated in Kael's intellect: "They… lied…"
Vex's cyber-eye darkened. Her voice dropped to a frequent whisper. "Martyn found a data-chip on that detainee. Some time recently, he drained out. Extend Skyreach isn't around mapping. It's almost weaponizing the Profound Void. Turning individuals into… into those things." She met Kael's look, her anger supplanted by fear.
"Silas knew. The Assessors know. They sent us here to pass on nourishing their machine."
A high-pitched whimper penetrated the discussion. The rune-stones flared. Reality tore open—a gleaming entrance back to the Institute vault.
"Go!" Annoy pushed Kael toward the light. "Silas sees everything through that needle! He'll know Martyn talked!"
Kael lurched forward. "What's around you?"
Annoy touched the split focal point of her cyber-eye. "I've got obligations more regrettable than passing." She raised her rifle, not at Kael, but at the drawing closer storm.
"Run, Catalyst. Some time recently, the storm eats you too."
Kael dove into the portal.
---
The Foundation vault was in chaos.
Tech-priests yelled as rune-cables overburdened, spitting sparkles. Silas stood at the control support, his silver needle-pin glimmering as he glared at the destabilizing Skyreach Door. His look snapped to Kael.
"You." His voice cut through the noise. "The reverberation spike—it undermined the grid! What are you? doing"
Kael lifted his dying hand. The crossover rune beat, indigo light dying into the vault's sterile white. "I survived."
Silas's eyes contracted. He raised the silver inaccessible. "You harmed invaluable resources! I ought to burn you down to fiery debris right—"
"CRACK-BOOM!"
The Skyreach Door imploded.
Not a collapse—a detonation.
A shockwave of immaculate invalidation tore outward. Comfort screens smashed. Tech-priests were flung like ragdolls. Silas was stunned, the father flying from his grip.
Kael's crossover rune screamed.
It didn't harm. It revealed.
Indigo light ejected from his palm, not as a wave, but as a vortex—a hungry whirlpool sucking the Gate's biting the dust reverberation into itself. The rankles on Kael's hand were fixed. The writhing strings underneath his skin shone brighter, colder. Control overflowed him—not the Void's whispers, but the smashing hush of nothingness.
Silas gazed, his composure smashed. "Impossible… It's bolstering on the Gate's death throes!"
Kael ventured forward. The vortex took after him, drinking the smashed vitality. He felt the needle in his neck—still snarling—but its nibble was quieted. Suffocated by the storm he'd unleashed.
"You needed a weapon, Silas."
Kael's voice resounded with unnatural stillness.
"You manufactured one."
Tall over, through the vault's smashed viewports, the closest Door over Modern Avalon pulsed—not green, but indigo.
Replying to its infant twin.
End of chapter 9.