The sky sobbed indigo fire.
Kael dragged Valen's limp body into the skeletal grasp of a collapsed monorail station, Lyss darting ahead like a phantom. Above them, the merged Gates churned — a vortex of stolen wills and broken reality. Gravity buckled; concrete slabs drifted like headstones. Screams echoed, not from fear of beasts, but from the sky itself unmaking streets.
Valen writhed, his human eye rolling back. "Silas… in the walls…"
"He's not in the walls," Kael snapped, slamming Valen against rusted steel. "He's in your head. Fight him or I'll carve that green eye out myself."
Lyss pressed her palm to Valen's forehead. Violet light pulsed. "The web frays where Elara died. His grip slips."
Valen panted, veins bulging. "The Spire's core… Silas fused himself to it. He's not controlling the Gates — he's bleeding into them."
Kael's hybrid rune flared in response. Not hunger — recognition. The Soul-Sight peeled back New Avalon's skin:
Silver threads frayed from the Academy's fallen anchors, lashing like dying snakes.
Indigo tethers siphoned energy from the Gate-maw back into the Spire, feeding Silas's crumbling psyche.
And deep in the Spire's heart, a cracked nexus — Silas, more machine than man, welded to a resonator throne.
Feed me, the rune whispered. End him.
"We go now," Kael said. "While he's reeling."
The Spire's base was a charnel house.
Rune-tech turrets spat searing light at civilians fleeing the gravity storms. Seekers in blackened armor — half loyalists, half thralls — fought each other in snarling packs. Kael moved through the chaos like a shadow, Lyss guiding him through blind spots in Silas's eroding awareness. Valen staggered behind, his bladed arm sparking.
"Left corridor," Lyss breathed. "His fear tastes like rust here."
They slipped into a service shaft. The walls throbbed with buried power lines. Valen froze, clutching his skull. "He knows. He sees through me—"
Kael slammed him against the conduits. "Then give him a show." He pressed his rune to Valen's chest. Not to harm — to burn.
Soul-Sight ignited.
Kael saw Silas's command — a psychic barb ordering Valen to kill — and shoved back. Not with force. With memory:
Valen's first golden rune ignites at the Crucible.
The sneer as he called Kael Void Rat.
The arrogance Silas had twisted into a weapon.
Remember who you were, Kael willed. Hate me, not him.
Valen screamed — but his bladed arm swung wide, shearing through cables. Sparks rained. The lights died.
"Go!" Valen rasped. "Before he overrides me again!"
The core chamber wasn't a room.
It was a wound.
Polished black walls reflected the nightmare: Silas, encased in a lattice of indigo crystal, veins replaced by pulsating tubes feeding into the ceiling. His eyes were gone — only hollow sockets leaking liquid shadow. The resonator throne fused with his spine, its roots digging into the floor, drinking from the Gates above.
"Kael Thorn." Silas's voice vibrated in their bones, not through sound. "You bring me gifts… a broken Thorne… and my first failure."
Lyss stepped forward, unflinching. "You promised my brother lived."
"He serves… elsewhere."
Kael's rune seared his palm. Feed. Now.
He lunged — not at Silas, but at the crystal lattice.
Indigo light erupted. The rune bit into the lattice, drinking the stolen energy. Silas howled — a sound that cracked the viewports.
"You think this ends with me?!" Silas's psychic shriek tore through Kael's mind. "The Void isn't a place — it's a will. It chose you! You're just the key to a larger door!"
Reality splintered.
The floor vanished. Kael fell — not down, but sideways — into a vision:
A city of obsidian spires beneath a green-black sky.
Gates not torn… but grown, like weeping sores.
And at the center, a figure crowned with dying stars, reaching toward the earth.
"The First Walker comes," Silas's voice guttered. "I was… just paving its way…"
Kael wrenched free, soul bleeding. The lattice was half-consumed, his rune blazing violet-black. Silas's form crumbled, crystal shattering like rotten teeth.
Lyss stood over him, her small hand pressed to his chest. "You stole my brother," she whispered. "Now I steal your silence."
Violet light flashed. Silas's jaw unhinged in a soundless scream — then stilled.
The Spire shuddered. The Gate-maw shrieked overhead.
Valen stumbled in, face ashen. "The core's destabilizing! It'll take the city with it!"
Kael stared at his rune, now thrumming with stolen godhood. "Then we redirect the storm."
He looked up through the crumbling ceiling, into the eye of the Gate.
"Let it come."
End of Chapter 13