Silas's psychic web clung to New 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 parting. Violet-indigo fibers beat at the edge of his vision:
- Silver strings chaining authority, Hunters' minds to the Institute Spire.
- Dark ropes binding half-Forged thralls to demolished Soul-Forge labs.
- Beating nexus points where the web thickened — anchored in Gates over the city, murmuring with stolen will.
And weaving through it all, the spider — Silas's awareness, endless and frigid, spinning his cage for the world.
Lyss squeezed another mineral shard into Kael's trembling hand. The hybrid rune devoured it, calming its hunger but not the Soul-Sight's corrosive drip behind his eyes. "How long?" he gritted out.
"Until you go mad? Or until Silas finds us?" Lyss's violet gaze followed a silver thread vanishing into the tunnel ceiling.
"Same deadline."
---
They moved through corpse-lit alleys. Above, the Gates drained indigo light through smog, closer now, merging. Where two Gates overlapped, reality glitched: buildings flickered like ghostly mirages; gravity pulled sideways. People ran, not from beasts, but from the sky itself.
"The anchors," Kael gasped, dodging a rain of shattered glass as a Gate-pulse hit. "If we sever them—"
"—You kill the anchor." Lyss didn't look at him. "Silas fuses his web into living minds. Cut the thread, the mind snaps." She stopped before a rusty access hatch. "Here. First, the anchor."
The hatch opened into an abandoned rune-tech substation. Inside, a woman in tattered Foundation coveralls sat shackled to a resonator chair. Wires pierced her temple, feeding into a glowing indigo crystal. Her eyes were open, unseeing. Silver threads pulsed from her skull into the walls.
"Elara?" Kael whispered.
The woman from the lab, now empty. A living conduit.
Lyss touched her own scarred ear. "Silas reuses his failures."
Kael stepped forward. His rune flared, resonating with the anchor crystal. The Soul-Sight sharpened:
- He saw Elara's memories — a child in the ghettos, lost when the Gates devoured 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!"
"Then you let Silas win." Lyss's hand hovered over Elara's chest. Violet light gathered. "Her pain, or thousands more?"
---
A blade hummed through the air.
Kael shoved Lyss aside. Valen's buzzing arm buried itself in the resonator chair, spraying sparks.
His human eye was wild; the green sensor burst. Silas's voice spilled from his vocal processor: "Kill the girl. Bring Thorn's rune to me."
Valen tore his arm free. "He's… in my head. Always whispering." He lunged at Lyss.
Kael caught him, rune-first. Light erupted. Valen screamed — not from the hit, but from Soul-Sight backlash. Kael saw it: Silas's psychic hook buried in Valen's mind, yanking like a marionette string.
"Fight him!" Kael gripped Valen's human shoulder. "You hate me! Use it!"
For a beat, Valen's green sensor darkened. His human eye focused.
"I… wanted… your power…" His bladed arm trembled. "…not this…"
"OBEY!" Silas yelled through him.
Valen's sensor reignited. His arm shot toward Kael's throat —
—and Lyss slammed her palm onto Elara's anchor crystal.
"NO!" Kael yelled.
Too late.
Violet light tore through the room. The crystal shattered. Elara's body writhed, then stilled. Silver threads snapped, whipping back toward the Foundation Spire.
The Soul-Sight showed Kael the exact moment Silas screamed — a psychic shockwave of fury and pain.
Valen collapsed, clutching his head. "GET OUT! GET OUT!"
Lyss reeled, blood streaming from her scarred ear. "Anchor down. But Silas felt it." She met Kael's eyes. "Next one's yours, Rune-eater."
---
Above, the sky tore open.
The merging Gates — now a colossal indigo maw — began to slip. Not a fracture.
An invasion.
Kael dragged Valen to the highway. Chaos reigned. Buildings twisted. Gravity failed in pockets — debris floated upward. Through the Soul-Sight, Kael saw why:
The Gates weren't just openings. They were mouths. And Silas's web was the leash.
Lyss pointed to the Foundation Spire. The web's nexus blazed there — a knot of stolen wills and dying anchors. "Cut the head. The body dies."
Valen stirred, his green sensor dim. Only his human eye worked now, 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 stared at the slipping Gate-maw. At the Spire. At Valen's broken form.
The rune in his palm pulsed — not with hunger, but purpose.
"Then we feed it something it can't stomach," he said.
Silas wanted a weapon?
He'd get one.
Right through his heart.
---
End of Chapter 12.