Silas's psychic web clung to Modern Avalon like rot, and Kael saw each tainted strand.
The soul-sight hadn't blurred. It burned.
Kael spewed behind a collapsed coolant pipe within the tunnels, his cranium part. Violet-indigo fibers beat at the edge of his vision:
- Silver strings chaining authority, Hunters' minds to the Institute Spire.
- Dark ropes official half-Forged thralls to demolished Soul-Forge labs.
- Beating nexus focuses where the internet thickened—anchored in Doors over the city, murmuring with stolen will.
And weaving through it all, the spider—Silas's awareness, endless and frigid, turning his cage for the world.
Lyss squeezed another mineral shard into Kael's trembling hand. The half breed rune eaten up it, calming its starvation but not the Soul-Sight's corrosive dribble behind his eyes. "How long?" he gritted out.
"Until you go frantic? Or until Silas finds us?" Lyss's violet look followed a silver string vanishing into the burrow ceiling.
"Same deadline."
---
They moved through corpse-lit rear ways. Over, the Entryways drained indigo light through smog, closer presently, blending. Where two Doors covered, reality glitched: buildings glinted like terrible visualizations; gravity pulled sideways. Individuals ran, not from beasts, but from the sky itself.
"The stays," Kael gasped, avoiding a rain of smashed glass as a Gate-pulse hit. If we disjoin them—"
"—You murder the stay." Lyss didn't see him. "Silas unites his web into living minds. Cut the string, the intellect snaps." She halted some time recently, a rusty get to bring forth." Here. To begin with, the anchor. "
The bring forth opened into a forsaken rune-tech substation. Interior, a lady in worn out Foundation build coveralls sat shackled to a resonator chair. Wires punctured her sanctuary, nourishing into a gleaming indigo gem. Her eyes were open, unseeing. Silver strings beat from her cranium into the walls.
"Elara?" Kael whispered.
The lady from the lab, now empty. A living conduit.
Lyss touched her claim scarred her ear. "Silas reuses his failures."
Kael ventured forward. His rune flared, reverberating with the grapple gem. The Soul-Sight sharpened:
- He saw Elara's memories—a child within the ghettos, misplaced when the Doors ate up his block.
- Silas's voice: "Serve, and I'll save him."
- A lie. The boy was a coward.
"We can't," Kael choked. "She's still in there!"
"At that point, you let Silas win." Lyss's hand floated over Elara's chest. Violet light accumulated. "Her torment, or thousands more?"
---
An edge murmured through the air.
Kael pushed Lyss aside. Valen's buzzing arm buried itself within the resonator chair, showering sparks.
His human eye was ragged-looking; the green sensor burst. Silas's voice spilled from his vocal processor: "Slaughter the young lady. Bring Thorn's rune to me."
Valen tore his arm free. "He's… in my head. Continuously whispering." He lurched at Lyss.
Kael is capturing, rune-first. Light detonated. Valen screamed—not from affect, but from Soul-Sight backfire. Kael saw it: Silas's psychic snare buried in Valen's intellect, yanking like a marionette string.
"Battle him!" Kael got Valen's human bear. "You abhor me! Utilize it!"
For a pulse, Valen's green sensor darkened. His human eye centered.
"I… wanted… your power…" His bladed arm trembled. "…not this…"
"OBEY! Silas yelled through him".
Valen's sensor reignited. His arm pistoned toward Kael's throat—
—and Lyss hammered her palm onto Elara's stay crystal.
"NO!" Kael yelled.
As well as late.
Violet light tore through the room. The precious stone smashed. Elara's body writhed, stilled at that point. Silver strings snapped, whipping back toward the Foundation Spire.
The Soul-Sight appeared Kael the precise minute Silas screamed—a psychic shockwave of seethe and pain.
Valen collapsed, clutching his head. "GET OUT! GET OUT!"
Lyss was influenced, blood streaming from her scarred ear. "Grapple down. But Silas felt it." She met Kael's eyes. "Following one's yours, Rune-eater."
---
Over, the sky tore open.
The combining Gates—now a colossal indigo maw—began slipping. Not a fracture.
An invasion.
Kael dragged Valeonto the highway. Chaos ruled. Buildings are distorted. Gravity fizzled in pockets—debris coasted upward. Through the Soul-Sight, Kael saw why:
The entryways weren't fair openings. They were mouths. And Silas's web was the leash.
Lyss pointed to the Foundation Tower. The web's nexus blasted there—a tie of stolen wills and biting the dust stays. "Cut the head. The body dies."
Valen mixed, his green sensor dull. As it were, his human eye worked presently, clear and panicked. "The Spire… resonator core…" he wheezed. "Silas is melded to it. He's not controlling the web… It's controlling him."
Kael gazed at the slipping Gate-maw. At the Tower. At Valen's broken form.
The rune in his palm pulsed—not with starvation, but purpose.
"At that point, we nourish it something it can't process," he said.
Silas needed a weapon?
He'd get one.
Right through his heart.
End of chapter 12.