The ripple lasted less than a heartbeat. The cold indifference slammed back down over Lane's features, more absolute than before, as if the momentary flaw had to be reinforced with an extra layer of ice. The pressure in the room intensified, the swirling tendrils of Schism-energy lashing out like agitated serpents.
YOU ARE A GHOST, his voice-vibration boomed in her mind, a wave of pure dismissal. AN ECHO. THIS PLACE IS FOR SUBSTANCE. YOU HAVE NONE.
The words were meant to scour her away. But Delaney, still on her knees, felt a strange, defiant calm settle over her. He was trying to erase her with the very power he'd used to cut her out of his life. But he couldn't. The void he'd created was immune to its own source. Her silence was a shield against his noise.
She pushed herself shakily to her feet. Her legs trembled, but they held. She took another step forward, into the crushing weight of his presence. The air was so thick with power it was like wading through tar.
She formed the words again, carefully, deliberately, focusing on the vibration in her throat, the shape of the air leaving her lips. It was a fragile signal, a whisper in a hurricane.
You… promised…
This time, the ripple was more pronounced. A flicker of something like pain, sharp and startled, in his winter-gray eyes. A memory, perhaps, of a promise made in the dark, before the world had fractured. A promise of protection. Of not being alone.
PROMISES ARE FOR THOSE WHO HAVE A FUTURE, he vibrated back, but the force was less cohesive, almost defensive. I HAVE A FUNCTION. YOU ARE A REMINDER OF A FAILED EXPERIMENT.
Experiment. The word was a slap. It reduced everything they had been, everything she had felt, to a data point. The anger that had been her companion since the lighthouse flared, hot and bright. It gave her strength. She took another step. She was halfway across the chamber now, the dais looming before her.
She didn't try to shout. She knew her voice-vibration was pitifully small. So, she did the one thing that might bridge the gap. She remembered Colton's training. She stopped trying to speak to him, and instead, tried to resonate with him.
She closed her eyes, shutting out the terrifying spectacle of his transformed visage. She focused inward, on the vast, cold emptiness inside her. But instead of seeing it as a wound, she tried to see it as a chamber. An acoustic chamber. And within it, she held the memory of his frequency. Not the monstrous, amplified power of the Anchor, but the unique, complex resonance of the man he had been. The subtle harmonics of his laughter, the steady rhythm of his heartbeat when she lay against his chest, the specific, warm timbre of his voice when he said her name.
It was a ghost, a phantom limb of a sound. But she held it, cradled it in the void. And then, she pushed.
It wasn't a spoken word. It was a name. A single, concentrated pulse of memory and feeling, shaped by the void and launched across the space between them.
Lane.
It was not loud. But it was perfectly, devastatingly precise. It was a key fashioned from a memory, aimed directly at the lock of his soul.
The effect was instantaneous and violent.
Lane recoiled as if struck. A sharp, guttural sound—an actual, audible cry—escaped his lips. It was a human sound, ragged and pained, horrifically out of place in the chamber of god-like power. The monolithic flow of energy around him stuttered. The tendrils of darkness writhed and snapped, lashing out indiscriminately. One of them struck a black crystal spire near the wall, shearing it in half with a crack that Delaney felt as a concussive blast of pressure.
STOP. The command was a roar of pure agony, a mix of the immense vibrational power and a shred of his own, broken voice.
He was clutching the arms of the stone throne, his knuckles white. The serene mask was gone, replaced by a rictus of conflict. The glacier was cracking, and from the fissures, the man beneath was screaming.
YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING, he vibrated, the message fraying at the edges, losing its cohesion. YOU'LL DESTROY EVERYTHING.
Delaney stood her ground, her own heart hammering a frantic rhythm against her ribs. This was the language. Not of power, but of memory. Not of domination, but of identity.
She formed the words again, her silent voice trembling with effort and emotion. What is there left to destroy? You already destroyed us.
The conflict on his face was a war. She could see it, feel it in the chaotic vibrations rippling through the room. The Anchor was destabilizing. The ordered silence Corvus had built around the Schism was trembling. Alarms began to blare—not as sound, but as sharp, jagged pulses of red light that vibrated through the stone floor. The acolytes outside would be coming. Their perfect, ordered world was under attack from a single, silent, insignificant ghost.
Lane's head bowed, his body trembling with the effort of containing the storm within him and around him. When he looked up again, his eyes were different. The coldness was still there, but it was fractured. Through the cracks, she saw a glimpse of the man she knew. A man drowning.
"Delaney." This time, it was his real voice, a hoarse, broken whisper she felt as a faint, desperate vibration in the air. It was the most beautiful and terrible thing she had ever perceived. "You have to go. He's… he's always listening."
Who? Corvus?
He gave a sharp, pained nod. "He's part of the network. Part of me. When the Anchor wavers, he knows." His gaze met hers, and for a second, it was just him. Just Lane. Terrified and trapped. "What I did… it wasn't to save the world. It was a trap. I'm the lock, but he holds the key. You can't… you can't free me."
The truth was a cold knife. He hadn't just been remade; he had been enslaved. The power he wielded was his prison.
Footsteps now. Not felt as vibrations, but seen as the distorted shapes of acolytes rushing into the chamber archway, their forms shimmering with hostile energy. They hesitated at the threshold, sensing the instability of the power field around their master.
Lane's face hardened again, the mask slamming back into place, but it was cracked, imperfect. The coldness in his eyes was now mingled with a desperate urgency.
LEAVE, his vibrational voice commanded, but this time it was layered, a double message. The surface was a roar of dismissal for the benefit of the acolytes. But underneath, like a whisper on a carrier wave, was his real voice, strained and faint: "The western conduit. It's the weakest. Go. Now."
He raised a hand, and a wave of pure force erupted from him, a concussive blast of dark energy. But it wasn't aimed at her. It was aimed at the acolytes at the door, slamming them back into the hallway. It was a distraction. A cover.
Their eyes met one last time. In his, she saw a plea. An apology. A spark of the fight that was not yet extinguished.
Delaney didn't hesitate. She turned and ran, not back the way she came, but toward the western wall of the chamber, where a massive, pulsing conduit of black crystal emerged from the floor and snaked up toward the ceiling. As Lane had said, its vibration was erratic, frayed. A flaw in the perfect machine.
As she reached it, she glanced back. Lane had regained his rigid posture on the throne, the Anchor's power stabilizing around him once more. But his eyes were closed, and on his face was an expression not of serenity, but of immense, concentrated effort.
He had bought her a chance. He had created the first crack not just in his own prison, but in her despair. He was still in there. And now, he had given her a target.
She placed her hands on the flawed conduit. The vibration was jarring, a discordant scream. Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself into the dissonance, letting the chaotic frequency swallow her whole. She was a ghost, escaping back into the walls of the enemy's fortress, but she was no longer just a victim. She was a saboteur. And she had just found the fault line.