The hybrid rune on Kael's palm wasn't healing.
It gnawed.
Where the plume shard and Silas's circle had touched, violet and indigo threads writhed, like living wires under his blistered skin. Each pulse sent waves of cold fire up his arm. It wasn't pain exactly. It was hunger. The bruised sky above the Skyreach Gate seemed to watch him. The air crackled, heavy with static.
Lieutenant Vex froze, red cyber-eye whirring, locked on Kael's burned hand. Her rifle trembled.
"Thorn… what are you?"
Kael opened his mouth, but before he could speak, the wounded Hunter-the one whose arm had turned to raw, broken scream. It wasn't pain. It was terror.
He pointed a shaking finger past Kael.
"Eyes! Saints help us — more eyes!"
The obsidian towers around them pulsed. Dozens of green slits opened in the jagged rock. Empty. Cold. Watching.
"Fall back!" Vex's voice cracked. "To the extraction point! Move!"
No one hesitated. The veterans grabbed their fallen comrade and stumbled back across the warped ground. Vex grabbed Kael's collar and yanked him forward.
"Move, Catalyst! Or I leave you for those things!"
Kael stumbled after her. The new rune pulsed in sync with the needle's snarl at his neck. He risked a glance back. The green eyes didn't follow. They just stared. Waiting.
The extraction point was a ring of scorched earth, rune-stones flickering around it. Vex slammed a beacon into the ground as the squad tumbled into the circle's edge.
"Signal's out! Thirty seconds to the portal!"
She turned on Kael, rifle raised, her cyber-eye burning red.
"Talk. That burst — that wasn't Void magic. That was something else. Anti-magic."
Kael clutched his burned hand. The hybrid rune squirmed beneath his skin.
"The orb… the feather… they reacted."
"Reacted?" Vex barked a laugh, but there was no humor in it. "It didn't react. It destroyed. It shut down their weapons. That thing on your hand — it ate."
Thunder growled overhead. The sky darkened, like bone grinding on bone.
Kael's rune flared. Indigo light crawled up his wrist.
"I didn't ask for this."
"None of us did!" Vex waved at the Hunter's body.
Martyn signed up for Gate duty. Not… not this."
The word hung between them.
Soul-forging.
Kael heard the dying prisoner's voice again. They… lied.
Vex's eye dimmed. Her voice dropped low.
"Martyn found a chip on that prisoner. Before he bled out. Project Skyreach isn't about mapping. It's about turning the Deep Void into a weapon. Turning people into those things."
Her anger faded. Fear took its place.
"Silas knew. The Assessors knew. We were sent to feed the machine."
A sharp whine cut through the air. The rune-stones flared. Realitysplit — a portal back to the Institute vault.
"Go!" Vex shoved Kael. "Silas sees through that needle! He'll know Martyn talked!"
Kael hesitated.
"What about you?"
Vex touched her cracked cyber-eye.
"I owe worse than death."
She turned, raising her rifle toward the storm.
"Run, Catalyst. Before it eats you too."
Kael dove through the light.
The vault was in chaos.
Cables sparked and burst. Tech-priests yelled, trying to control the overload. Silas stood at the console, silver remote in hand. His eyes locked on Kael the second he appeared.
"You." His voice cut through the noise. "That resonance spike — it destabilized the grid! What did you do?"
Kael lifted his hand. The rune throbbed. Indigo light bled into the sterile vault.
"I survived."
Silas's face twisted. He lifted the remote.
"You destroyed priceless assets! I should burn you downright now—"
CRACK-BOOM.
The Skyreach Gate detonated.
Not a collapse. A blast.
A shockwave of pure negation ripped through the vault. Consoles shattered. Tech-priests flew like dolls. Silas was thrown back, the remote torn from his grip.
Kael's rune screamed.
But it wasn't pain. It was clarity.
Indigo light burst from his palm. Not a wave — a vortex. A whirlpool that drank in the Gate's dying energy. The blisters on his hand sealed. The threads beneath his skin burned brighter, colder. The power filled him. Not the whispers of the Void. Silence. Crushing. Final.
Silas stared, stunned.
"Impossible. It's feeding on the Gate's death throes."
Kael stepped forward. The vortex followed, devouring the shattered energy. The needle at his neck still snarled — but the sound dulled, smothered by the storm.
"You wanted a weapon, Silas." Kael's voice felt strange, too calm.
"You made one."
Above them, through the smashed viewports, the nearest Gate pulsed. Not green anymore. Indigo.
Answering.
End of Chapter 9.