The first step sank.
Stone gave way like flesh. Black ichor welled up through the cracks, searing Kael's boots, clinging, pulsing. The street did not hold him—it drank him.
Kane laughed. "Thirsty little thing, isn't it?"
The spine-blade in his hand twitched. The eye in the other blinked once, then twice, rolling to face Kael as if it, too, waited for an answer.
Kael said nothing.
The Dark Tome drifted above him, pages peeling back one by one, shrieking. Words boiled into the air, thick as smoke, curling into the trembling city.
"When flesh is stone, when stone is vein, when vein is door—open."
And Spinedral obeyed.
Windows split wider, like jaws unhinged. Doors bulged, sprouting teeth. Towers bent, folding toward the brothers. Every wall whispered the same word, low and constant, in voices both human and not:
Bloom.
Blade.
Bloom.
Blade.
Thirn followed behind, her paper-dress shredding into strips, each strip scribbled with ink that bled and moved. She did not walk—she was carried by unseen hands, her face tilted upward toward the faceless spire.
"The God listens," she rasped. "And the city kneels."
Kael's chest throbbed. The root inside writhed, pushing veins of obsidian light beneath his skin. It wanted out. It wanted more. His breath came ragged, but his eyes remained steady.
Kane grinned wider, dragging the edge of his weapon against the street. Sparks of bone-fire leapt and hissed. "I say we give it something worth kneeling for."
He kicked a corpse aside—what had once been a man, now twisted into a skinless husk by the city's hunger. The body convulsed, split open, and from it crawled a mouth that was not a mouth, screaming a name that belonged to no tongue.
Kael stepped closer. He reached out with his palm, and the root spilled forward, black tendrils lashing into the husk. Flesh writhed, dissolved, reshaped. A moment later, the corpse stood again—reborn, eyes glowing with ink, hands trembling with alien strength.
Kane clapped, slow, cruel. "Now that," he said, "is art."
The god stirred above. Its shadow stretched across the city like an eclipse. No form, no face—only presence. It was hunger given shape.
The Dark Tome turned its pages with a voice like tearing skin.
"The Maw Eternal opens. The children must be fed."
Kael's smile was thin. "Then we feed it."
And the city screamed again—this time, not in fear.
In hunger.