The shout wasn't Valen's.
It was the city's.
The fracture fixed itself like a wound sewing flesh—smooth, noiseless, last. Valen was gone and gulped by the pavement's sudden starvation. The black-top sparkled, damp and dark, where he'd stood like tar over a grave.
Kael jumped, fingers scratching stone. "Valen!"
Lyss pulled him back. "As well late! The ground ate him!" Her violet eyes dashed to the two remaining Purges. They hadn't moved. Didn't assault. Their empty attachments followed Kael's rune-hand, heads tilted like inquisitive dogs.
"KEY." The word scratched Kael's cranium. "STORMHEART HUNGER."
The Purge with the drill-tongue took a step forward. Not undermining. Calling. It pointed a too-long finger east, toward the skeletal refinery's heart.
"The bolstering tube," Lyss breathed. "It needs us to take after."
Kael's rune beat, cold and energetic. It recalled the Stormheart's resonance—the profound, underground throb he'd detected some time recently, by the Purges assaulted. This way, it whispered. Bolster me more.
The refinery's guts were a cathedral of rot.
Rusted channels wound overhead, trickling dark liquid that smelled of ozone and ruined blood. Antiquated crushers and smelters stood solidified mid-cycle, coated in grime. And everywhere—veins. Thick, beating lines of indigo light are implanted within the floor, dividers, and ceiling. They throbbed like uncovered nerves, casting the cavernous space in a debilitated gleam.
Lyss set her palm on one. It flared violet beneath her touch. "Not bolstering tubes. Conduits. Pumping void-energy up." She looked at Kael, fear sharp in her eyes. "Silas wasn't fair taking control. He was cultivating it."
"STORMHEART." The Empties' call resounded. They flanked an enormous impact entryway fixed with rune-scribed locks. One raised its drill-tongue—not to assault, but to open. The bit hummed, spitting sparkles because it carved through the instrument.
Kael prepared his rune. "Why offer us assistance to break in?"
"Since the Stormheart's jail is additionally its cage," Lyss mumbled. "They need it free."
The entryway moaned open.
Cold punched Kael's lungs. The discussion here wasn't aired—it was nonappearance. A vacuum that pulled at his skin, his breath, his considerations.
The past was endless. A lake of fluid shadow churned underneath a latticework of obsidian walkways. At its center, suspended by crackling vitality chains, coasted the Stormheart.
Not a gem. A heart.
Fist-sized, crude and substantial, veined with indigo lightning. It beat—a profound, subsonic crash that vibrated in Kael's molars. With each beat, fluid shadow surged through the conduits within the dividers, flooding upward toward the surface.
"FREE US" The Empties' supplication was a refrain presently. They stooped at the walkway's edge, heads bowed.
Lyss grasped Kael's arm. "Don't. It's a trap. The Stormheart isn't power—it's a battery. For him."
She pointed.
Past the Stormheart, half-submerged within the shadow lake, lay an outline. Endless. Serpentine. Coiled around the heart's stage. Not dead. Torpid. Scales like cleaned basalt shone bluntly. One eye—slitted, cleverly, the estimate of a ground-car was broken open. Observing.
The Primary Walker's chained monster.
Valen's voice resounded, battered and near: "Thorn! Get clear!"
Kael spun. Valen clung to a pipe tall on the chamber divider, his bladed arm mutilated, uniform destroyed. Blood streaked his confront. "The Walkers' coming! It felt like you touched the conduits!"
As on the off chance that summoned, the shadow lake bubbled.
The beast's eye snapped completely open. Understudies burned green-black.
The Stormheart's beat turned unhinged.
The Purges raised their faces to the ceiling and shouted.
Not in caution.
In welcome.
End of chapter 16.