The silence in the ruined vault was absolute, broken only by the ragged, painful breaths of two broken men. Damien, his own body a symphony of agony, watched as the last of Bane's defiant screams faded into a pathetic, weeping whimper. The former lord was leashed. The immediate, violent conflict was over, replaced by a tense, blood-soaked stillness.
Survival was now the only priority.
With a monumental effort that sent waves of nausea through him, Damien dragged his shattered body across the floor. He ignored the grinding of his broken ribs and the fire in his pierced lung. He reached a scattered pile of small, glowing Ratamon cores. He picked one up, his hand trembling from the strain. He held it, focusing what was left of his will, and felt a slow, cool trickle of Saupa seep into his palm. It was not a rush of power, but a near-painful, drop-by-drop infusion into a system that was scraped dry.
Across the room, Bane did the same. His one remaining hand fumbled with a core, his movements clumsy and desperate. His breathing was a wet, ragged gurgle.
For hours, they did nothing but crawl through the wreckage, each to their own small pile of cores, a fragile, unspoken truce born of mutual desperation. The slow absorption of energy was an agonizing process. Damien felt the fiery, itching sensation of his own regeneration, accelerated by his post-awakening boost, as the bones in his arm began to knit together with painful slowness. Bane's recovery was more sluggish, his natural ability hampered by the catastrophic, energy-disrupting wound Damien's blade had left across his torso. Time ceased to have meaning, marked only by the gradual fading of agony into a dull, persistent ache.
As the sun that they could not see rose on the seventh day of Damien's new life, they were stable enough to speak. It was Bane who broke the silence, his voice a raw, broken rasp, but laced with a sliver of his old arrogance.
"You are a fool if you think that leash is enough to control me forever."
"It is enough to control you for now," Damien replied, his voice cold and steady as he absorbed another core. "And 'forever' is a very long time. I am a patient man."
Bane let out a dry, rattling laugh that turned into a wet cough. "Patience won't help you when my brother comes looking for me. He is the Lord of Titan's Gate. Did you find that in my little book?"
Damien's focus sharpened, the pain in his body momentarily forgotten. Titan's Gate. The trade outpost. He had assumed it was a simple hub. He had not considered it was a rival power, a kingdom. And its lord was Bane's brother. This changed the entire strategic landscape.
"He gave me this shelter as a… testing ground," Bane continued, seeing he had captured Damien's full attention. He was proving his value, shifting from a broken prisoner to a vital source of intelligence. "A place to prove my worth. He is a true Nexus, Damien. A god in the eyes of men. When his monthly trade caravan fails to return, he will send scouts. When they find what you have done… he will burn this entire facility to the bedrock."
The threat was palpable, a cold weight in the silent vault. But as Bane spoke, Damien felt something shift within him. The initial, pragmatic decision to keep this man alive as an asset was now shadowed by a new, colder resolve. This broken thing before him, this leashed dog, was still trying to intimidate him, still trying to leverage a power that was not his own. The thought was intolerable. Bane would not just be leashed. He would be broken. Utterly.
While the two Awakened began their slow recovery in the silent tomb below, the new day dawned on a shelter without a lord.
Fred stood in the center of the empty throne room, the bone throne looming behind him like a monument to a ghost. The air was cold, and his own breath plumed in the dim light of the morning-shift lamps. Jonas stood by the wall, nervously running a gnarled thumb over the handle of a heavy wrench at his belt. Elara was perched gracefully on the edge of a stone table, a picture of calm that did nothing to ease the tension in the room.
"He's gone," Fred said, his voice a low, tense whisper that felt too loud in the cavernous space. "His room is empty. His cot hasn't been slept in. He never returned from his final inspection last night."
Jonas took a step forward, his brow furrowed with a mechanic's pragmatism. "Gone, or trapped? He went into Bane's private rooms. That man was a paranoid snake. Could be a hidden passage, a cave-in, a trap. We should organize a small, quiet search party. Just us. We check the room ourselves."
Elara's smooth voice cut in before Fred could respond. "And if we find him, Jonas? Or his body? What then? And what if we don't? How long do we search before the guards start asking questions, before the work crews notice the Lord's absence? A search party is a risk. It creates movement, whispers." She looked from Jonas's worried face to Fred's grim one, her expression a mask of pure concern. "Our Lord is a being of immense power. The same power that saved us all from the Maw. Perhaps this is simply a part of his process. A deep cultivation, a need for solitude to consolidate his gains. To announce a search would be to announce our own lack of faith in him. It would create panic."
Fred, the soldier, saw the tactical sense in her words. Chaos was the true enemy. "She's right," he said, his decision made. "Our first and only priority is maintaining operational security. No one outside this room is to know. We proceed as if he is in seclusion. I'll invent a story about him needing to enter a deep meditative state to fully integrate his power after the battle. It's something they'll believe." He turned to Jonas. "Your point is valid, though. Quietly, take your most trusted apprentice and do a full structural diagnostic of the command level. Check for any anomalies, any new drafts, anything. But be discreet." He then looked at Elara. "You will manage the rumors. Quell any whispers before they start."
The three of them stood in a tense, new alliance, the secret of the missing lord a heavy weight between them. Fred was focused on order, Jonas on the physical threat, and Elara, ever the player, on controlling the narrative, her mind already calculating the shifting power dynamics this new vacuum created.
Back in the Silent Level, the eighth day of Damien's new life was ending. His and Bane's most grievous wounds had finally healed into angry, puckered scars. The dynamic had shifted. Bane, having played his trump card, fell into a wary silence, watching Damien.
Damien, his resolve to break him now absolute, began a new kind of interrogation. It was not about information. It was about dominance.
"Tell me about the Viscount of the Rust Canyons," Damien said, his voice a quiet command. "The one who took your hand. Tell me how he beat you."
Bane flinched, his one good eye widening in disbelief and fury. "That is irrelevant."
"It is now the most relevant thing in your world," Damien replied, his voice never rising. "I want to know every mistake you made. Every miscalculation. I want to understand the architecture of your failure. In detail. Begin."
For hours, Damien forced Bane to recount every failure, every defeat, every moment of weakness he had ever recorded in his private logs. He made him dissect his own inadequacies, forcing the proud former lord to verbally acknowledge every flaw in his own carefully constructed legend. It was a slow, methodical, and utterly brutal process of psychological deconstruction.
Finally, his point made, Damien stood. His own body was healed, and he could feel the last vestiges of his post-awakening boost beginning to fade. The time for recovery and planning was over.
"You will teach me everything you know about this world," Damien said, his voice cold and devoid of emotion. "You will be the architect of your brother's defeat. You will give me the key to the tablet. That is the first condition of your continued existence."