Father Solen did not stay on his knees for long. The weeping ceased as abruptly as a shut tap. He wiped the mucus and tears from his face with the sleeve of his rough-spun robe. He stood up. He smoothed the fabric over his chest.
The terror was still there. It coiled in his gut like a nest of cold vipers. But Solen was a man of the Order. He was a man of systems and protocols. Panic was a variable he had spent a lifetime learning to excise.
He walked to the ruined altar. He reached into the folds of his sash and withdrew a small silver chime. It was no larger than his thumb. It was etched with microscopic runes that hurt the eyes to look at directly.
He held it up to the dim light. He took a breath that rattled in his chest. He struck the chime against the granite of the altar.
It made no sound.
Instead, a ripple of distortion warped the air. Dust motes dancing in the light froze in place. A pressure wave expanded outward. It passed through the stone walls of the chapel without slowing. It raced through the tangled alleys of the Gloom and shot upward toward the pristine heights of the Cathedral Ward.
Solen lowered the chime. His face was a mask of tragic resolve.
"Forgive me, my son," he whispered to the empty room. "But you must be unmade."
Kallum was three streets away when the city changed.
The atmosphere shifted instantly. The heavy, humid air of the slums suddenly felt thin and brittle. The hairs on his arms stood up. A low-frequency vibration started in the cobblestones beneath his feet. It traveled up his shins and settled in his teeth.
The Silent Bell had tolled.
It was the Order's highest alert. It was a psychic broadcast that signaled a breach of containment.
Kallum stumbled. He grabbed the corner of a brick building to steady himself. The scar on his forearm reacted violently. The umber light flared beneath his bandages. It was angry. The pain was a lattice of razor wire tightening around his muscle.
The reaction of the street was immediate and terrifying.
The low murmur of the market vanished. The apathy of the crowds evaporated. Every head snapped up. Hundreds of eyes went wide and glassy. The Threnody, usually a background buzz of static, spiked into a coherent note of paranoia.
A beggar sitting in the muck pointed a shaking finger at the sky. A washerwoman dropped her basket of wet linens into the filth and covered her ears. They did not know what was happening. They only knew that the shepherds were angry. They knew the wolves were loose.
Kallum pulled his hood down until it shadowed his nose. He needed to get underground. He needed to reach the Rag-and-Bone district and find a grate that led to the old sewer tunnels.
He moved fast. He kept to the edges of the crowd. He tried to mimic the terrified shuffling of the locals.
"He has a mark..."
The whisper came from his left.
Kallum did not look. He kept walking.
"He smells of the grave..."
The voice was louder this time. It came from a child sitting on a crate of rusted machine parts. The boy's eyes were completely black. They were dilated so wide the iris had vanished. He was listening to the broadcast.
Kallum quickened his pace. The paranoia of the city was weaponized now. The Vigilants were using the populace as a sensory net. Every citizen was a potential eye. Every mind was a camera.
He turned sharply into an alley that smelled of rendering fat. This was the edge of the Rag-and-Bone. The stalls here did not sell food. They sold scraps of scavenged iron, jars of questionable alchemical fluids, and strips of leather cured from beasts that had no names.
The shadows here were deep. Kallum hoped they were deep enough.
He saw the entrance to the Undercity ahead. It was a massive iron grate set into the foundation of a collapsed factory. It was welded shut, but the metal was rusted thin. He could kick it in.
He was twenty feet away when the shadows at the end of the alley solidified.
Three figures stepped out from behind a stack of crates. They wore the grey tunics of the Watchers. They did not look like they had run there. They looked like they had simply been waiting for him to arrive.
Kallum skid to a halt. He spun around.
Two Wall Sentinels blocked the way back. Their heavy tower shields were locked together. They formed a wall of black steel.
He was boxed in.
"Kallum Vire," one of the Watchers said. His voice was dry and devoid of inflection. It sounded like paper sliding over stone. "Status: Compromised. Directive: Contain and sterilize."
Kallum reached into his cloak. His hand closed around the hilt of his dagger. It felt like a toy. It felt pathetic against the weight of the authority facing him.
"Back off," Kallum warned. His voice scraped his throat. "I am not going back to the labs."
The Watcher did not blink. He raised a hand. He made a sharp, chopping motion.
The Wall Sentinels advanced. Their armored boots slammed against the wet stones in perfect unison. Clang. Clang. Clang.
Kallum looked for a way out. The walls were too high to climb. The grate was blocked by the Watchers.
He looked at the Sentinel on the left. The knight raised a heavy mace. The weapon was designed to break knees and shatter ribs. It was a tool for taking prisoners alive but broken.
The fear hit Kallum then. It was not the fear of death. It was the fear of the needle. It was the fear of the cold table and the straps and Solen's eyes watching him scream.
The fear hit the brand on his arm like a spark hitting gasoline.
The power surged. It did not ask for permission. It did not flow like water or burn like fire. It crystallized.
The bandages on his arm disintegrated. They flaked away like ash in a strong wind. The brand was exposed. It was a network of black and umber lines that looked like cracks in a frozen lake. The light pulsing from it was not hot. It was absolute, crushing cold.
Kallum screamed.
It was a sound of pure agony. The magic felt like it was calcifying his blood. It felt like his bones were turning into solid iron.
He thrust his hand forward.
He did not aim a bolt of energy. He imposed a new law upon reality.
The air in front of him hardened. It snapped into a grid of invisible, angular force. The moisture in the alley flash-froze into jagged, obsidian-colored fractals.
The wave of force hit the Wall Sentinels.
They did not fly backward. They stopped.
The knight on the left froze mid-step. His armor groaned. The metal did not melt. It crumpled inward. It looked as though a giant, invisible hand had simply crushed him like a tin can. The steel shattered. The man inside did not even have time to cry out before his chest cavity collapsed into a dense, horrific singularity.
The second knight tried to raise his shield. The force wave caught him. The shield disintegrated into a cloud of iron filings. The knight was thrown into the brick wall of the tannery. He hit with such force that the masonry exploded. He slid down the wall. He was a broken marionette.
Silence reclaimed the alley. It was the silence of a vacuum.
The Watchers stared. Their smooth, emotionless faces finally broke. Their eyes went wide. They looked at the twisted wreckage of the knights. They looked at the black frost spreading across the cobblestones.
They had hunted heretics. They had hunted monsters. They had never seen this.
Kallum fell to his knees. He clutched his left arm to his chest. He was hyperventilating. The cold was spreading into his chest. It was trying to stop his heart.
Move, the voice in his head roared. It was a cold, angular voice. Move or die.
He looked at the grate. The Watchers were still blocking it, but they were hesitating. They were afraid.
Kallum snarled. He slammed his fist into the ground.
He did not punch the earth. He willed the structure of the stone to fail.
The impact made no sound. There was only a deep, resonant vibration. A web of black cracks shot outward from his fist. The cobblestones did not break apart randomly. They separated into perfect, sharp-edged cubes.
The ground beneath him liquified into gravel and dust.
The floor of the alley gave way.
Kallum fell.
He tumbled into the dark. He crashed through rotting timber beams and splashed into stagnant, freezing water.
Above him, the circle of grey light shrank as the dust settled. He heard the shouts of the Watchers. He heard the bells tolling.
He dragged himself out of the water. He crawled onto a ledge of slime-slicked stone. He was shaking violently. His arm was a dead weight. It throbbed with a slow, heavy cadence.
He was in the Undercity. He was in the gut of the world.
Kallum rolled onto his back. He stared up at the darkness of the stone ceiling. He gasped for air that smelled of methane and ancient rot.
He had escaped the cage. Now he was in the pit.