The city wasn't spared.
Kael had wanted to believe it could be. That Silas's death, the collapse of the Spire, the shattering of the lattice would be enough. But as the Gate-maw loomed over New Avalon like a wound torn too wide to ever heal, he understood the truth.
Silas had been the dam holding back the flood. And with him gone, the tide was loose.
The night burned with violet lightning, tearing across the broken sky like veins in a dying god's eye. Wind howled through the gutted towers. Ash fell like snow, choking the air, coating the ruins of the Spire in a skin of grey.
Kael dragged in a breath, the taste of soot bitter on his tongue. His hybrid rune pulsed against his palm—no longer just hunger, not completely. Now it throbbed with purpose. With the weight of what had to be done.
Valen stumbled beside him. His clothes were in tatters. His human eye was wide and bloodshot, his sensor dark. He looked hollowed out, like the last of him had been poured into the battle that should've ended it all.
"It's falling apart," Valen muttered, as if saying it might slow the ruin. His voice cracked, raw from shouting or breathing smoke—Kael couldn't tell.
"We have to stop the Gate-matter from collapsing all the way through," Lyss said. Her hair was matted to her face, streaked with ash. Her violet eyes burned bright despite the ruin around them. "We need the pylon hub."
The earth trembled beneath their feet. Somewhere distant, a building groaned as it toppled, swallowed by a sinkhole born of warped gravity.
Kael nodded. His hand flexed, fingers tingling with the rune's heat. He looked up at the Gate. The edges of it bled light, sickly green and black. It was slipping. The last bindings were coming undone.
"Let's end this," he said.
And they ran.
The pylon yard was a graveyard of rune-tech.
Smashed coils. Burnt-out conductors. Concrete shattered like brittle bone. The pylons that still stood flickered with failing light, one by one succumbing to the storm overhead.
Only one remained intact. A lone tower of steel and rune-crystal, its cables tethered to the Gate above, feeding the dying storm with what power it could steal. It pulsed like a heartbeat. Weak. Fading.
Valen dropped to one knee, hands clutching his head. He shook it as if trying to break free of Silas's voice, even though Silas was long gone. The last threads of the web still clung to him. Strings of control that refused to die with their master.
Kael moved past him. No hesitation. His palm slammed against the pylon's base.
The rune in his hand flared.
Violet-black light surged up the pylon's frame, bleeding into the cables, drinking the stolen energy, feeding on it like a man starved too long.
The storm hesitated.
Just for a breath, the Gate-maw recoiled. As if tasting something it didn't want. Couldn't bear.
Kael's vision sharpened, Soul-Sight peeling back the skin of the world. And in the heart of the Gate he saw it.
A figure.
Taller than the towers. Draped in the shadows of shattered stars. Arms stretched wide, like it could tear the city apart with a single grasp. A hand of dying suns reached through the Gate's edge, clawing at the sky, at the earth.
The First Walker.
Lyss grabbed Kael's shoulder, fingers biting deep. "Kael," she said, voice urgent. "You have to let go!"
He hadn't even felt his grip tighten on the pylon. But he was holding it like he could will the world back into place. His rune still drank deep—too deep. The pylon cracked under the strain, veins of light splitting its core.
Kael forced himself to let go. He stepped back.
The pylon gave out. Shards of steel and crystal rained down as it split apart.
The Gate-maw shrieked, a sound that split the sky—then folded in on itself.
Ash rained from the heavens. The storm collapsed into echo and dust.
For a long time, there was only the wind.
The last of the lightning faded from the clouds. The city groaned under its own weight, but no new fractures opened.
Valen slumped against the twisted ruin of a fallen pylon, breathing hard. His human eye was glassy. His sensor remained dark, as if it too had nothing left to give.
Lyss watched the sky, silent, her expression unreadable. The violet in her gaze seemed to catch the last glimmers of the dead Gate's light.
"It's not over," she said at last. "That thing saw us."
Kael lowered his gaze to his palm. The hybrid rune pulsed slowly. The hunger was tempered, the storm inside him quiet—for now.
"I know," he said.
And above, where the Gate had been, the night seemed to ripple. The dark itself held its breath.
Somewhere, something smiled.
End of Chapter 14.