The lower markets were still standing. Barely.
Blaine descended the ramp past stalls that had been abandoned mid-transaction. Glowstones flickered in their sconces, their light unstable. The merchants were gone. The hunters who remained huddled in groups near the entrances, weapons drawn, eyes on the deep passages. The aberrant construct's rampage and the twin's feeding had shaken something loose in the city's underbelly. The Zone was healing, but the process was violent, and everything the Architects had buried was surfacing at once.
Not just the experiments. The fear. The city's been running on a fragile peace for centuries. That peace just cracked.
Voss was waiting at the entrance to Kellan's compound. The sharp-faced messenger looked like he hadn't slept since the first tremor. "He's inside. Been pacing for hours. Whatever you did to that twin—he felt it. The whole compound felt it."
Blaine walked past him. The reinforced door stood open. The corridor beyond was cold and smelled of antiseptic and old stone. Kellan's laboratory was as cluttered as before, but the researcher himself was not pacing. He was standing over a table covered in fragments—stone, crystal, vials of red light—arranged in a pattern that hadn't been there on Blaine's last visit. A map. Or a diagram. Something the researcher had pieced together from the archive records and his own excavations.
Kellan looked up. His amber eyes were bloodshot. "You're still alive."
"So far."
"Good. That makes two of us." Kellan gestured at the table. "While you were killing the twin, I was cross-referencing the archive records with the seismic data from the Zone's healing. The aberrant constructs aren't the only things waking up. There's a pattern to the energy surges. They're not random. They're directional. All of them—every single one—is pointing toward the same location. The gate below the Artery. The one the descendant opened."
The descendant isn't just waiting. He's drawing them toward him. Or drawing something out of the deep. "What's down there?"
"I don't know. The archives call it the Origin Chamber. It's older than the laboratory. Older than the Forbidden Zone. The Architects didn't build it—they found it. Sealed it. Studied it. And whatever they learned, they buried deeper than anything else." Kellan's voice dropped. "The descendant has been guarding it since the Fall. Alone. For centuries. He's the last of them, and he's been waiting for someone with a complete bond to open the door."
Blaine withdrew the white crystal Voss had given him. The spiral etched into its surface pulsed with a faint, steady light. "This is the key."
"Yes. But it's not just a key. It's a beacon. When you activate it, the gate will open—but it will also signal the descendant. And whatever else is down there." Kellan met his eyes. "The twin you killed was a test. The aberrant constructs were a test. Everything the Architects buried is waking up, and it's all being drawn toward that gate. If you go down there, you won't just be meeting the descendant. You'll be walking into the center of the shift. And whatever the Architects sealed in the Origin Chamber—it's been waiting a very long time."
Everything converges there. The Zone's healing. The escaped experiments. The descendant. The Origin Chamber. I'm not descending alone. I'm walking into a convergence.
"How much time do I have?"
"Hours. Maybe less. The surges are accelerating." Kellan pushed a small stone tablet across the table. A map, etched in spiral script, of the passages below the Artery. "This is the route to the gate. I've marked the known safe passages. But after the twin, I can't guarantee any of them are still safe."
Blaine took the tablet. The map was detailed but fragmentary—large sections were blank, uncharted. The path led through the Artery's lowest levels, past the core door, into tunnels that predated the laboratory itself. The gate was at the bottom.
No more delays. The city won't survive another wave of aberrants. The descendant is waiting. The past is waiting. Time to listen.
He turned to leave. Kellan's voice stopped him.
"Blaine. If the Origin Chamber is what I think it is—if it's the place where the bloodlines first entered this world—then what you do down there won't just affect the city. It'll affect everything. The bloodlines. The Zone. The bond. Whatever choice you make, it'll echo."
Blaine didn't answer. He walked out of the compound and into the shuddering light of the lower markets. Voss watched him pass. The hunters watched him pass. The glowstones flickered, and somewhere deep beneath his feet, the past was stirring. Not waiting anymore. Calling.
He walked toward the Artery. The white crystal pulsed in his hand.