The silence following the slaughter at the Hunter's Perch was not empty.
To Soren's new Hematite-Silt skin, the silence was a dense, vibrating medium—a textured canvas of cooling corpses, the frantic scuttle of rock-beetles in the deep fissures, and the rhythmic, metallic purr of the Chimera Cub.
Soren stood in the center of the gore, his four-foot frame radiating a stillness that felt unnatural.
He was no longer a boy breathing air; he had become a geological event.
His matte-red skin, porous and damp, didn't just touch the cavern floor—it merged with it.
Through the "Sinking of the Jade," his skeletal frame had become a cage of high-density alloy.
With every single beat of his heart, a vibration echoed against Soren's Jade-Alloy ribs, sending a micro-sonar pulse out into the bedrock, mapping out the terrain and receiving the feedback through his Silt Skin.
He looked down at his right arm—the Dead Hand. The ashen-gray skin was taut, the violet veins pulsing with a sated, dark heat.
It had fed on the Iron Skin elites, and in doing so, it had distilled their "tempered" essence into the Black Sun, while the generated Tranquil Poison essence had been sent into his heart to be devoured.
Deep within his chest, the Black Sun rotated with a cold, gravitational hunger. It was a singular point of nothingness that held the "Gold-Violet" fires of the stolen Elixir. It felt heavier now.
The magnetic pull of the Void was no longer just an internal sensation; it was beginning to influence the atmosphere around him.
Tiny shards of the elixir jade, and those from his former shell weren't just lying still on the ground; they were vibrating with the pulse of his heartbeat, caught in the infinitesimal gravitational tilt of the Black Sun.
"Hunger," Soren whispered.
The word didn't leave his lips as a sound, instead it was the chorused whisper of the Tranquil Poison, Black Sun, and his grumbling stomach, becoming a vibration that he could vividly sense through his Silt skin.
The Chimera Cub trotted to his side, its tiny lion-head tilting. Its silver-gray down was beginning to mat with the dark, iron-rich blood of the fallen hunters.
As the cub's fur touched the blood, a low hissing sound filled the air. The "Oxidizing" trait inherited from its mother making its presence and lethality known to one and all.
The cub wasn't just cleaning itself; it was consuming the metal in the Iron Skin elites' blood to harden its own hematite plates.
Soren reached down, his matte-red fingers brushing the cub's head. The sensation was overwhelming.
Through the Silt, he felt the cub's internal temperature, the high-frequency hum of its growing bone-struts, and the "Crimson-Gold" spark of its heart.
The two of them sensing and understanding each other as if they were a closed-loop biological system, their evolutions feeding off the same necrotic and solar inputs.
Soren picked up the bone-white Resonance Stone. It hissed against his palm, the amber light pulsing like a frantic eye.
He looked at the Courier's Vault. He knew he couldn't hide it—not yet.
The "Master Builder Gene" within him was still sensing the stone's frequency and adjusting to the information it was receiving.
It was passively trying to find a way to imitate the signal, but as it was currently occupied with stabilizing the "Skeletal Internalization," the process was moving at a snail's pace.
Soren didn't mind the pace though. To him, if he couldn't hide the signal, then he would most definitely weaponize it.
Soren moved to the back of the cavern. Flickering like a ghost.
The Manticore-elasticity in his tendons, combined with the density of his Jade bones, allowed him to cover the distance in a blur, making no sound as his skin made him seem like a perforated leaf falling through the air.
He took the Resonance Stone and wedged it deep into a fissure of raw hematite and magnetite—a natural magnetic vein of the mountain, causing the Stone's white-hot pulse to begin to fluctuate.
Through the energy relay from his vision, he could see how the natural magnetism of the mountain's "Blood-Steel" veins acted as a shroud, distorting the signal.
Though Soren knew it wouldn't stop the Second Wave, but it would at least make their "Compass" as unreliable as possible. It would lead them to the Perch, while he was already elsewhere.
"Let them hunt the ghost," Soren muttered.
He strapped the Courier's Vault to his back, using the leather strips he had harvested from the Iron Skin guards' armor.
The weight of the box was significant, but his Jade-Alloy spine didn't even flex under the burden. He felt the box through his skin—the way the internal seals of the Oman House vibrated with a clinical, parasitic "Eden" energy.
He stepped out of the Perch and into the High Wastes.
The sun hung in the sky like a pale, sickly disc behind the dust clouds of the Spires.
Soren closed his eyes. He didn't need them. The Hematite-Silt skin mapped the canyon for three hundred yards in every direction.
He felt the wind-currents brushing past the jagged peaks like silk through one's fingers, translating the air pressure into a 3D schematic in his mind.
Then he began his descent; however, he didn't take the trail.
He moved vertically, his obsidian claws and matte-red fingers finding gaps in the tiniest of crevices etched onto the rock. From afar, he looked like a red shadow crawling down the face of a titan.
Two miles to the south, the "Second Wave" was already entering the Canyon of Whispers.
The soul-talismans of the first wave had all burnt up into ashes right before the High Shaman's eyes, and as Soren had anticipated, they had instantly mobilized another wave.
These ones however, were not the brawling Iron Skins of the border patrol. These were the "Ghost-Striders"; Seekers, not hunters—specialized trackers from the Matron's personal guard, led by a man known as Vaelin.
Their skin was not gray or jade; it was a translucent, pale white, laced with veins of "Quick-Silver" mercury.
They didn't wear armor; they wore suits of woven Shadow-Cat hide that absorbed light.
Vaelin came to an abrupt stop, raising his hand to stop the team's advance.
He held a secondary Resonance Stone, his fingers light and nimble. The stone in his hand was flickering erratically.
"The signal is bleeding," Vaelin said, his voice coming out in a hiss. "The target is either dead, or he has found a way to drown the stone in the mountain's blood."
"He's seven, Vaelin," one of the Seekers whispered, his body flickering in and out of the shadows. "The Iron Skins should have reached him by now."
"Korg and his men are silent," Vaelin replied. "In the Wastes, silence is the sound of a throat that has been slit open.
We do not approach the Perch from the trail. We take the high ridges. If the boy is a demon, we will see him from the sun."
If Soren was here, he would have nodded in approval of Vaelin's caution; it indicated his higher tactical awareness. If they were to swap places, he would have definitely done the same.
However, Soren who was currently miles away, felt the shift in the world.
He was navigating a narrow "Silt-Run"—a naturally formed pipe filled with fine, hematite dust.
Inside this waste tube however, his sensitivity was magnified a hundredfold.
Suddenly, Soren' skin shivered.
A vibration. Not from the ground, but from the air.
A high-frequency "Zip" that was cutting through the wind like hot knife through butter.
Soren's body reacted before his mind could process the data. His instincts firing warning signals that prompted his reflexes.
Instantly, he threw himself flat against the red dust as a needle-thin bolt of "Bone-Steel" whistled through the space where his head had been a micro-second before.
~Thud~
The bolt thunderously thudded into the rock, its resulting impact sending a seismic shock through the Silt that Soren "read" instantly.
Distance: 400 yards. Elevation: High. Wind-Adjustment: Negligible.
A Seeker Sniper.
Soren suddenly halted all possible reactive avenues, including his reflexes. He froze still, becoming a part of the dust.
As his brain fired countermeasures, his Master Builder Gene relayed the intent straight to his Hematite-Silt skin which swiftly began adjusting its temperature to match the surrounding rock, ensuring that Soren's thermal signature vanished.
He could almost feel the sniper's heartbeat through the mountain. Steady. Professional.
But the sniper was looking for a "Human" target—a boy who would panic and run. They were not looking for a "Fossil" that could sink into the earth.
Soren looked to his head where the Cub had claimed for itself and whispered; "Stay low. Hunt the scent."
Then with a cute understanding yip, the Cub vanished into a narrow crevice, its silver-down blending perfectly with the gray-red minerals.
Soren then resumed his advance through the Silt-Run, not by crawling, but by "sliding."
The same acoustic vibration from his heartbeat on his Jade-Alloy Bones were all muffled by his Silt Skin, making them pulse like the moving surface of a bass speaker, albeit in absolute silence.
This movement dislodged the particles around his skin surface, leaving him to glide on the "fluid" fine layer of dust beneath him, allowing him to move with the friction-less grace of a snake.
Soren sped his way toward the sniper.
As he moved, he felt the Black Sun in his chest pulsed, reacting to the "Bone-Steel" bolt embedded in the rock. The magnetic feedback transmitting the density of the metal to Soren's Master Builder Genes.
Soren felt this communication just like someone would react to goosebumps.
However, while the Master Gene was thinking about using such dense metal to further fortify him, Soren was already thinking of how the Black Sun's magnetic horizon can possibly be used to "detect" and "deflect" metallic projectiles.
He didn't know how yet, or even if it was possible, but he at least knew that if he could synchronize his heart to thump heavily enough to disrupt the velocity of the incoming projectile then he could at least buy himself a few seconds to dodge, or even if strong enough, simply deflect it elsewhere.
Soren reached the base of the ridge, already having discovered where the sniper was perched.
The Seeker however, was presently confused. He had seen the "target" for a split second, and then the boy had simply evaporated into the red haze.
"Target lost," the Seeker whispered into a small, copper-wire transmitter. "He's gone to ground."
"Find him," Vaelin's voice echoed through the seismic feedback of the mountain. "He is carrying the touch of the Oman House's future. If he dies, we all rot."
Soren reached the top of the ridge, but he didn't climb over the edge. Instead, he used his "Dead Hand" to pierce the underside of the rock shelf.
His ashen-gray fingers sank into the stone like it was warm wax, and with a brutal, silent heave, Soren swung himself up and over.
The Seeker Sniper didn't even have time to turn his Bone-Steel crossbow.
Soren landed with the weight of a falling boulder, but his Silt-skin absorbed the sound of the impact like he was a silent weight.
Then with all weight and momentum, he drove his left, Bony-Jade elbow into the Seeker's temple.
~Crack~
The "Internalized Jade" bones provided a crushing force that shattered the Seeker's skull instantly.
As the man collapsed, Soren's Dead Hand snapped out, catching the Seeker's throat. He didn't just kill him; he "Filtered" him.
The violet veins on his arm flared. He felt the "Quick-Silver" essence of the Seeker's blood being pulled into his own.
The Black Sun roared to life, swallowing the Seeker's refined spirit-energy, and for a moment, Soren's vision didn't just see the 3D schematic of the canyon—he began to see something entirely different.