# Chapter 516: The Brother's Bait
The world dissolved into a blur of grey stone and frantic motion. Finn's lungs burned, each breath a ragged gasp that tasted of dust and his own coppery fear. He was a ghost in his own fortress, a small, terrified boy sprinting through corridors that had once felt like home. Now they were a maze, a hunting ground. Clutched in his hand was the seed, its smooth, petrified surface no longer cool but humming with a warmth that spread up his arm. It pulsed with a soft, golden luminescence, a defiant heartbeat in the encroaching dark.
Behind him, the dark came. It was not a sound, not a creature of flesh and bone, but a predatory fog of roiling purple energy. It slithered along the flagstones, clinging to the walls, its presence a psychic pressure that made his teeth ache and his thoughts skitter like frightened mice. It was the Withering King, or at least a piece of its vast, hateful consciousness, and it was hunting him. The fog moved with a terrible, inexorable purpose, and it was gaining.
Finn risked a glance over his shoulder. The purple tide was closer, tendrils of energy licking at his heels. He could feel its hunger, a cold, bottomless craving that was directed not just at him, but at the light in his hand. He understood then, with a clarity that cut through his panic. The King wasn't just chasing him; it was drawn to the seed. The seed was a beacon of life, and the King was a void that sought to consume all light. He wasn't just running for his own life. He was the bait.
The realization was a cold splash of water on his face. His terror didn't vanish, but it sharpened, honing into a desperate, singular purpose. Soren. Nyra. They were fighting their own battle, and this was his. He had to keep the King's attention focused here, on him, on this chase. He had to lead it away from the infirmary, away from Soren's vulnerable body, away from the ritual chamber where the heart of their resistance lay. He was Soren's brother. This was what he could do.
He skidded around a corner, his worn leather boots scraping against the stone. The corridor ahead was long and straight, a terrible trap. No. He needed a winding path, a labyrinth to confuse and delay. He veered left, plunging into a narrower service passage used by the fortress's maintenance staff. The air grew thick with the smell of old oil and damp metal. Pipes, groaning with the strain of the fortress's ancient systems, ran along the walls, their heat a faint, oppressive presence against his skin.
The seed pulsed again, brighter this time, and the pursuing fog surged forward in response. A low moan echoed through the corridor, a sound that seemed to come from inside his own head. It was a voice without words, a promise of oblivion, of an end to pain and fear. Finn gritted his teeth, the muscles in his jaw cording. He clutched the seed tighter, its warmth a small anchor in the rising tide of despair. He thought of Soren's steady hand on his shoulder, of Nyra's rare, genuine smile. He would not let them down.
He burst out of the service tunnel into a wide, circular chamber. A massive, dormant gear mechanism filled the center of the room, its teeth the size of a grown man. This was the old lift hub, decommissioned generations ago. A spiral staircase clung to the outer wall, leading up into darkness and down into the bowels of the Spire. The purple fog billowed into the chamber behind him, filling the space with its sickly, violet light. It was no longer a mere fog; it was beginning to coalesce, to gain a semblance of form.
Finn didn't hesitate. He scrambled up the spiral staircase, taking the steps two at a time. The metal groaned under his weight, the sound echoing unnaturally in the vast space. Below him, the fog swirled around the great gear, and for a moment, it seemed to form a colossal, skeletal hand reaching for him. He forced himself to look away, to keep climbing. His legs felt like lead, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. Every instinct screamed at him to find a hole and hide, to curl up and make himself small. But he pushed the instinct down. He was the bait. He had to keep moving.
He reached the top of the staircase and found himself in a long gallery lined with crumbling statues of the fortress's old commanders. Their stone faces were covered in a thick layer of grey dust, their eyes vacant in the dim light. The gallery ended in a T-junction. To the left, he knew, lay the barracks. To the right, the outer wall and the balconies overlooking the besieged courtyard. He needed to go right. He needed to draw the King's focus outward, away from the core of the Spire.
As he sprinted down the right-hand corridor, the seed flared with a sudden, intense brilliance. A wave of pure, untainted life energy washed out from it, a silent, golden explosion that made the very air shimmer. The purple fog behind him recoiled with a shriek of psychic agony that felt like a spike being driven into Finn's brain. He stumbled, crying out, and nearly fell. The connection between the seed and the King was a two-way street. When the seed flared, it hurt the King. And when it hurt the King, the pain echoed back to him.
He pushed through the pain, his vision swimming. He could feel the King's rage now, a cold, incandescent fury that dwarfed its earlier hunger. The hunt was no longer a patient pursuit; it was a personal vendetta. The fog behind him transformed, solidifying, rising up into a more defined shape. It was taller now, more humanoid, a towering silhouette of writhing purple energy with two points of malevolent light burning where its eyes should be.
Finn saw the end of the corridor ahead. A heavy, iron-studded door, slightly ajar. Beyond it, he could feel a change in the air pressure, a faint, cool breeze carrying the scent of smoke and the distant shouts of battle. The balcony. It was his destination, but it was also a dead end. There was nowhere else to run.
He didn't slow down. He slammed his shoulder against the heavy door, forcing it open with a screech of protesting hinges. He stumbled out into the open air, onto a wide stone balcony that overlooked the main courtyard of the Black Spire. The scene below was one of chaos. The forces of the Concord, a mix of Crownlands soldiers and Sable League mercenaries, were locked in a desperate struggle with twisted, ash-born creatures that clawed their way over the walls. Catapults launched flaming projectiles that arced through the smoky sky, and the clang of steel on chitin rose in a constant, deafening din.
Finn scrambled to the balustrade, his chest heaving. He was trapped. Behind him, the purple energy filled the doorway, a solid wall of malevolence. It flowed onto the balcony, the stone cracking under its feet. It rose to its full height, a towering, vaguely humanoid figure of swirling vortex, its form unstable yet terrifyingly real. The two points of light in its head fixed on him, burning with ancient, bottomless hate.
A voice boomed, not in his ears, but in the very fabric of his soul. It was a voice of grinding stone and dying stars.
"You cannot escape me, little morsel."
The figure raised a hand, and the air grew thick, heavy with a pressure that made Finn's bones ache. He could feel his own life force being drawn toward it, a slow, inexorable pull. The seed in his hand blazed with defiant golden light, pushing back against the drain, but it was a flickering candle against a hurricane.
The Withering King took a step forward, its form solidifying, the purple energy resolving into the semblance of armor made of fused bone and obsidian. A crown of jagged, crystalline thorns materialized on its head.
"You think this light a weapon?" the voice echoed, laced with contempt. "It is a bell. You have rung the dinner bell, boy. You are just the appetizer."
Finn's back was pressed against the cold stone of the balustrade. The drop was sheer, hundreds of feet to the courtyard below. He looked down at the desperate battle, then back at the monstrous entity before him. His fear was still there, a cold knot in his gut, but it was joined by something else. A spark of the same stubborn, defiant fire he saw so often in his brother. He was Soren Vale's brother. He would not die a whimpering victim.
He lifted the seed, holding it high. Its golden light illuminated his determined, tear-streaked face. "Then come and get me," he yelled, his voice thin but clear against the roar of the battle.
The Withering King tilted its head, a gesture of grotesque curiosity. Then, it smiled. A fissure opened in its helmet of bone, revealing not a mouth, but a swirling vortex of absolute nothingness.
"As you wish."