The interior of the chapel smelled of neglect and old secrets. It was a thick, cloying scent that coated the back of the throat like the dust of pulverized bone.
Kallum stood in the center of the nave. The stone floor was gritty beneath his boots. He remembered this place as a sanctuary of polished wood and soft candlelight where a boy could hide from the harsh discipline of the Scholasticum. Now he saw the rot. The pews were overturned skeletons of splintered oak. The tapestries depicting the saints were moth-eaten rags that hung limply in the stagnant air.
He walked toward the altar.
It was a slab of grey granite. It was unadorned save for a thick layer of wax drippings that had pooled and hardened like frozen tallow. Kallum ran a gloved hand over the stone. A phantom sensation crawled up his arm. He could feel the phantom bite of leather straps digging into his wrists. He could feel the cold metal of the injector needles sliding between his ribs.
The memory was a physical blow. The scar beneath his bandages contracted violently. It twisted the muscle and forced a sharp gasp from his lungs. The umber light of the brand bled through the linen. It cast a sickly, bruised glow onto the altar stone.
He was not in the laboratory beneath the city. He was here. He was standing in the wreckage of his childhood.
A floorboard creaked near the entrance.
Kallum spun around. His hand dropped to the hilt of the dagger concealed beneath his cloak. The movement was fluid and unconscious. It was the reflex of a hunted animal.
A figure detached itself from the shadows of the vestibule.
Father Solen looked older than Kallum remembered. The weeks had carved deep ravines into the priest's face. His skin was the color of parchment left too long in the sun. His grey tonsure was unkempt. He wore the simple, rough-spun robes of a low-ranking cleric rather than the silk vestments of the Inner Circle.
He looked like a grieving father. Kallum knew better. He was looking at a scientist who had lost a valuable specimen.
"Kallum."
The name was a breathless exhale. Solen took a step forward. His hands trembled as he reached out. They were soft, manicured hands. They were the hands of a man who signed death warrants but never swung the sword.
"You came back," Solen whispered. His eyes were wet. They scanned Kallum's face with a desperate, hungry intensity. "The Vigilants said you were dead. They said the extraction team found only ash and blood."
Kallum did not move. He let the silence stretch between them until it became a physical weight.
"Is that what you told them to find, Father?" Kallum asked. His voice was a rasp of gravel. "Or did you tell them to look for the body of a boy you sold to the dark?"
Solen flinched. He lowered his hands slowly. The mask of paternal relief slipped. Beneath it lay the steel intellect of the High Alchemist.
"I did what was necessary," Solen said. His voice firmed. The tremble vanished. "You were chosen, Kallum. You were always special. You possess a resilience of spirit that the others lacked. I knew you could survive the Rite."
"Survive?"
Kallum laughed. It was a dry, mirthless sound that scraped against the stone walls. He began to unwind the bandages from his left arm. The linen fell away in bloody strips.
He held the arm up.
The dim light of the chapel caught the brand. It was not a scar. It was a geode of agony embedded in living meat. The flesh was raised and angry. Veins of black necrosis spiraled outward from a central, pulsing knot of umber light. It looked like shattered glass suspended in amber. It looked like a scream frozen in flesh.
Solen stared at the arm. He did not look away in horror. He leaned in. His eyes widened with clinical fascination. He looked at the mutilation the way a jeweler looks at a diamond with a flaw.
"Remarkable," Solen breathed. "It stabilized. The graft took hold without shattering the humors."
"It hurts," Kallum said softly. "Every second of every day. It feels like freezing to death while burning alive."
"Pain is the crucible of evolution," Solen recited. It was a line from the Order's catechism. It sounded tinny and hollow in the ruins. "We are fighting a war against entropy, Kallum. The Abyss is not a monster we can slay with swords. It is a rising tide. We cannot stop the water. We must learn to breathe it."
Solen stepped closer. His eyes locked onto the pulsing brand.
"You are the proof," the priest said. His voice rose with fanatical fervor. "The Lumen-touched are perfect, yes. They are obedient. But they are sterile. They are dead ends. But you... you are a hybrid. You touched the raw frequency of the Threnody and you did not break. You are the bridge."
Kallum looked at the man who had raised him. He looked for a shred of the kindness he remembered from his youth. He looked for the man who had taught him to read and bandaged his scraped knees.
That man did not exist. That man had been a lure.
"I am not a bridge," Kallum said.
He reached into his satchel with his good hand. He wrapped his fingers around the obsidian shard. The cold bit into his palm. The vibration traveled up his arm and slammed into his heart.
"I am a warning."
Kallum pulled the Vestige free.
The light in the chapel died.
It did not fade. It was eaten. The obsidian shard drank the photons from the air. It sucked the color from the world. The shadows in the corners of the room leaped forward like starving hounds.
Solen stumbled back. He threw his hands up as if to ward off a blow.
"What have you done?" Solen gasped. The clinical fascination was gone. It was replaced by a primal, shaking terror. "That is a Vestige. You cannot hold that. It is unshielded radiation. It will hollow you out."
"It sings to me," Kallum said. The shard pulsed in his grip. A wave of nausea rolled through his gut, but he locked his knees. "It tells me about the Great Work. It tells me about the lies you buried under the foundation of this city. It tells me you are scared."
The shard hummed. It was a low, grinding note of absolute negation. Frost began to form on the stone floor around Kallum's boots.
Solen's back hit the heavy oak door of the chapel. He was hyperventilating.
"Give it to me," Solen pleaded. "Kallum, please. You do not understand the physics involved. That fragment is a seed of the original song. If the Vigilants sense that signature, they will burn this entire district to the ground just to contain it."
"Let them come," Kallum said.
The umber light in his arm flared. It mixed with the void-darkness of the shard. The air in the chapel grew heavy and brittle. It felt like the atmosphere before a lightning strike.
Kallum took a step toward the priest. The frost crunched beneath his heels.
"You wanted a weapon, Father. You wanted to harvest the Abyss."
Kallum raised the shard. The shadows swirled around him. He looked less like a man and more like a silhouette cut from the fabric of the night.
"Now you have one."
Solen slid down the doorframe. He fell to his knees in the dirt. He looked up at the boy he had raised. He saw the cold, calculated rage in Kallum's eyes. He saw the judgment.
"Kill me, then," Solen whispered. He closed his eyes. "If you are truly lost, finish it."
Kallum looked down at the shivering man. The urge to strike was overwhelming. The Dirge of Reprisal screamed in his blood. It demanded balance. It demanded the shattering of the man who had broken him.
Kallum tightened his grip on the shard until his knuckles cracked.
No.
Death was too easy. Death was a release. Solen deserved to live. He deserved to watch his Great Work crumble. He deserved to see the monster he had created tear down the walls of his gilded cage.
"I am not lost," Kallum said. His voice was as cold and hard as the obsidian in his hand. "I am exactly what you made me."
He lowered the shard. The shadows receded slightly, retreating to the corners of the room like chastised dogs.
"I am leaving this city," Kallum said. "I am going to find the rest of the song. I am going to find the truth you are trying to bury."
He stepped past the kneeling priest. He did not look down.
"Pray to your Light, Solen. Pray that I do not find what I am looking for."
Kallum kicked the door open. The damp, smog-choked air of the alley rushed in. He stepped out into the gloom.
Behind him, in the dark of the ruined chapel, Father Solen began to weep. It was not the weeping of a penitent man. It was the weeping of a man who realized he had just opened the gates of hell.
Kallum pulled his hood up. He slipped the Vestige back into the lead-lined pouch of his satchel. The silence of the artifact was louder than the noise of the city.
The hunt had begun.