The land quieted after the titan fell. Dust drifted in lazy spirals, and the cracked sky stitched itself into a dull, bleeding red. The spire at the center of the field still pulsed, faint but steady, like a heart refusing the last beat.
Lucian walked to it without hurry. His boots scraped embered grit; his cloak tugged in the sour wind. Lucy rose behind him, breath evening out, the glow of her flames drawing back into her skin.
"Core's beneath," he said.
She nodded once. "You'll tear it?"
"I'll make it ours."
He knelt at the edge of the spire's base. Between the stone plates, he saw it—a shard the size of a skull, red-blue and fractured, wrapped in veins of bone. Energy bled from it in tiny vapor trails, each hiss a thread sewing this wound to the world beyond.
Karl's voice returned to him, dry and amused. One way. Push, not pull. To go in, break the wound wider and drag it your way.
"Guard me," Lucian said.
