The reverberation mineral endured eight blocks.
By the ninth, the rune started chewing through Kael's ribs.
He stumbled into the skeletal remains of an ancient travel center, corrosive rain eating at eroded steel pillars. The violet-eyed girl—Lyss—pulled him behind a gutted ticket booth. Her little hand squeezed another shard of metal against her palm. The rune's biting facilitated, but the alleviation was shallow. Brief. Like drenching a fierce blaze with spit.
"Silas's lab is near," Lyss whispered, her understudies flaring violet within the despair. "But the dividers have eyes presently. Hungry eyes."
Kael clutched the data-chip the Scarred Seeker gave him. Segment 13 gleamed on its holographic map—a maze of collapsed burrows underneath Modern Avalon's financial locale. "How do you know this put?"
Lyss touched the scarred skin underneath her cleared-out ear—a rugged, ponderous check. "I was Subject Zero. The primary Voidborne soul he attempted to manufacture. " Her voice held no fear. As it was a cold reality.
"He broke my rune… but not my locate. I see the chains he puts on people."
She pointed to the rusted lift ahead. A blurred biohazard image drained through peeling paint.
"That's how we go down. But when we break it… Let your rune devour. It's the best way to break your cage. "
---
The lift shaft was a tomb.
Kael's boots sank into ankle-deep slime that smelled of press and spoiling meat. Lyss moved like an apparition ahead of him, her violet look cutting through the darkness.
"Here," she breathed, ceasing some time recently at a fortified bulkhead. Runic sigils gleamed faintly on its surface—containment areas.
"They're changing somebody. Right now."
Kael squeezed his palm against the cold metal. The half breed rune flared.
He felt it.
Shouts. Not through sound, through reverberation. A thousand broken notes of misery vibrating within the air.
Lyss set her scarred hand next to him. The control wards flickered… and kicked the bucket. "He can't cage us both."
The bulkhead moaned open.
Hell unfurled beyond.
The lab was a cathedral of endurance. Columns of straightforward tubes extended into shadow, each holding a human body suspended in bubbling indigo liquid. Tubes wound into their spines, pumping fluid shadow. A few were still recognizably human, twitching, mouths open in quiet shouts. Others were midway changed: appendages stretched into blade-like prosthetics, eyes supplanted by beating green sensors. Echo-shades within the making.
At the room's heart stood an enormous resonator core—a column of dark gem veined with the same indigo light as Kael's rune. Silas's image gleamed at its base.
The center bolsters the doors, Lyss said, her little voice tight. "Break it… and your rune can eat its fill."
A murmuring shout tore through the lab.
In an adjacent tube, a lady was whipped as metallic rings burrowed into her cranium. Her eyes met Kael's—wide, arguing, terrifyingly human.
"PLEASE…" her mouth formed.
Kael moved.
Not toward the center. Toward her tube.
"No!"Lyss snatched his arm."She's far gone! If you open it—"
"I do not care!" Kael pummeled his half breed rune against the tube's control panel.
Violet-indigo light detonated. The tube smashed. Foul liquid overwhelmed the floor. The lady collapsed, spewing shadow. Her half-metal appendages scrabbled on the ground.
"Run…" Kael wheezed. "Go!"
Her green sensor-eyes settled on him. Not appreciation. Hunger.
She lunged.
As well as being quick. As well, wrong.
Her bladed hand sliced toward Kael's throat—
—and froze.
Lyss stood between them, one little hand squeezed against the woman's chest. Violet light beat from her palm. "The chains are overwhelming, Elara," she whispered. "But you keep in mind the sky. Remember."
The lady shivered. Her green eyes flickered… and for a pulse, Kael saw warm brown underneath. Human. Broken.
"Lyss…?" the lady rasped.
At that point, Silas's voice boomed from covered-up speakers:
"Thorn. YOU COULDN'T Fairly Kick the bucket carefully, might YOU? "
The resonator center flared. Indigo light washed the lab. The half-Forged detainees writhed, shouting as their changes accelerated.
The bulkhead hammered shut.
And from the shadows behind the center, a figure emerged.
"Valen Thorne."
But not the shuffling respectable. Not anymore.
His right arm was presently a mass of buzzing silver edges and water-powered cylinders. His brilliant rune glinted sporadically beneath split, dark skin. One eye burned with recognizable noble anger. The other was a beating green sensor.
"Silas guaranteed me your rune," Valen murmured, his voice layered with mechanical inactivity. "Said it would settle me. Make me idealize once more." He raised his bladed arm. "I'll carve it from your corpse."
---
Kael's rune shouted. Not in hunger—in recognition.
Valen charged.
Kael met him with the as it were weapon he had left—desperation.
He ducked beneath Valen's blade, clear, rolling behind the resonator center. Valen's edges yelled against the gem, showering sparks.
"You took everything!" Valen thundered. "My put! My future! Presently, you take my humanity? "
His bladed arm pistoned forward. Kael bent aside—but not quickly enough. The tip tore over his ribs. Blood splashed his tunic.
The torment touched off something primal within the rune.
Nourish ME.
Kael pummeled his dying palm against the resonator core.
"NO!" Silas's voice yelled from the speakers.
As well as late.
The center shattered.
Not an explosion—an implosion of light and hush. Indigo vitality tore free, crying toward Kael's rune. It has eaten up the light. The sound. The exceptional trust within the room.
For a pulse, Kael saw the chains Lyss talked of:
- Brilliant strings official Valen's intellect to a beating nexus profound within the Foundation Spire.
- Darker lines chaining the half-Forged to the resonator's wreckage.
- And woven through it all, a tremendous, psychic web—Silas's awareness, cold and infinite.
"SOUL-SIGHT."
At that point, the void-hunger overpowered him.
Kael shouted as control overwhelmed his veins—too much, as well quickly. The rune wasn't nourishing. It was suffocating him.
Valen stumbled back, clutching his head. "What… what is this? GET OUT OF MY Intellect!"
Lyss snatched Kael's arm. "Run! Some time recently, it devoured you! "
They fled through the benefit channels as the lab collapsed.
Behind them, Valen's agonized thunder echoed—half-human, half-machine, entirely betrayed. --- Within the dribbling burrows, Kael collapsed. The Soul-Sight blurred, but the vision remained: Silas's web, choking Modern Avalon. Lyss squeezed mineral into her palm.
"You saw it. His cage for the world."
Kael gazed at his rune, now beating with stolen control.
"How do I break chains I can't touch?"
"You cut the weaver,"
Lyss said, her violet eyes reflecting the removed beat of the Doors.
"Silas fears you. So we make him fear more."
Over them, through layers of shake and destroy, the Foundation Doors flared—one, at that point another, at that point another—until the sky burned indigo.
Replying to Kael's rage.
End of chapter 11.