The western conduit was not a passage; it was a digestive tract. Delaney was swallowed by a maelstrom of discordant energy, a torrent of vibrations so violent and chaotic they felt like being flayed alive. This was the Schism's raw power, barely contained, racing along this flawed channel. It was the opposite of the ordered silence of the wards—this was pure, screaming entropy.
Colton's training was the only thing that kept her from unraveling. She didn't fight the current. She became a part of it, a silent, neutral piece of driftwood in a raging river. She let the vibrations wash over and through her, her own null-field acting as a buffer, absorbing the worst of the dissonance. She was a bubble of calm in the heart of the storm, but the pressure was immense, threatening to pop her at any moment.
She had no sense of direction, only momentum. The conduit carried her down, away from the Anchor chamber, deep into the geothermal belly of the mountain. The oppressive, structured weight of Lane's presence faded, replaced by the primal, mindless roar of the Schism itself. It was like being in the arteries of a dying god.
After an eternity of tumbling through the noise, she was violently expelled. She landed hard on a floor of rough, warm rock, skidding several feet before coming to a stop. The relative silence was deafening. She pushed herself up, her body aching, her senses reeling. She was in a vast, natural cavern, illuminated by the same hellish glow that seeped from the walls of the fortress above. But this was a more primitive place. The air thrummed with heat and the smell of sulfur.
And it was here that the Oriax Foundation's true work was revealed.
The cavern was a factory. Dozens of the black, crystal conduits—like the one she'd just traveled through—converged here from the walls and ceiling, funneling raw Schism-energy into a central, monstrous apparatus. It was a crucible of dark metal and obsidian, covered in spinning gears and arcane sigils that pulsed in time with the energy flow. Acolytes, their faces hidden by cowls, moved around it with robotic precision, monitoring dials and levers made of bone and polished stone.
This was the engine room. This was where the chaotic scream of the Schism was refined, shaped, and fed upward to be anchored and controlled by Lane. And Lane was right. The western conduit was the weakest. Where it met the central crucible, the connection was visibly unstable. A crack, like black lightning, spiderwebbed across the crystal surface. Energy arced from it sporadically, forcing the nearby acolytes to give it a wide berth. It was a wound in their machine.
A flaw she could exploit.
But how? She was one silent girl against a room full of fanatics and a device of unimaginable power. She couldn't fight them. She had to break their toy.
She retreated into the shadows of a jagged rock formation, her mind racing. Colton's lessons echoed in her memory. Everything has a frequency. Find the resonant frequency, and you can make it shatter.
This entire complex was a symphony of vibrations, however dissonant. The crucible, the conduits, the acolytes—they all operated on a specific, controlled frequency, the "ordered silence" that Corvus had imposed on the chaos. But the flaw in the western conduit was a wrong note. A point of instability.
Her eyes scanned the cavern, reading the vibrations she felt through the rock. The acolytes moved with a synchronized rhythm, their personal frequencies muted, harmonized with the machine. The crucible hummed a deep, powerful bass note that vibrated in her teeth. But the cracked conduit… it buzzed. It was a high, frantic, irregular stutter. An irritation. A sickness.
An idea, desperate and insane, began to form. She couldn't amplify her own voice; it was too weak. But what if she didn't need to? What if she could use the machine's own power against it? What if she could take that buzzing flaw and feed it back into the system?
She needed a catalyst. A way to manipulate the vibration. Her hands went to the pockets of her jacket, and her fingers closed around the two objects she possessed: the tarnished silver whistle Colton had given her, and the cold, black lodestone.
The whistle manipulated perception. The lodestone found silence.
Could they be combined? Could she use the whistle not to create a sound, but to redirect a vibration? To take the chaotic buzz of the cracked conduit and, using the lodestone as a focus, inject it directly into the heart of the crucible?
It was a theory born of ignorance and necessity. She had nothing to lose.
Crouching in the shadows, she held the lodestone in her left hand, feeling its cold, directional pull—not toward Lane now, but toward the largest concentration of structured silence, which was the crucible itself. In her right hand, she held the whistle. She didn't put it to her lips. Instead, she pressed the cool metal against the surface of the lodestone.
She closed her eyes, becoming a conduit herself. She focused on the buzzing, frantic frequency of the cracked western conduit. She let it fill her, this jagged, broken vibration. It was painful, like holding a live wire. Then, using the whistle as an antenna and the lodestone as a targeting lens, she pushed.
She didn't blow. She projected. She aimed the chaotic buzz, the flaw, back toward its source, using the crucible's own attractive silence as a homing beacon.
For a long moment, nothing happened. The machine continued its thunderous work. The acolytes moved like clockwork. She was a gnat trying to topple a cathedral by buzzing at it.
Then, a deep groan echoed through the cavern—a vibration so low she felt it in the roots of her teeth. One of the dials on the crucible spun wildly. An acolyte looked up, his rhythmic movements faltering.
She pushed harder, pouring all her concentration, all her will, into being a mirror. A feedback loop. She took the machine's sickness and reflected it back, amplified by the focused intent of the lodestone.
The buzzing from the cracked conduit intensified, becoming a shriek of protest. The black-lightning crack glowed brighter, spreading. The stable, deep hum of the crucible began to warble, to distort. A high-pitched whine joined the bass note, creating a teeth-rattling dissonance.
The acolytes were fully alert now, rushing to consoles, their synchronized harmony broken. Shouts began to ring out—silent to her, but she could see the panic in their body language.
The crucible shuddered. A jet of raw, uncontrolled Schism-energy erupted from a seam, vaporizing an acolyte who stood too close. The ordered system was breaking down. The flaw was metastasizing.
A massive jolt threw Delaney from her feet. The entire cavern trembled. The conduits flared with wild, uncontrolled light. The crucible was going critical. She had done it. She had introduced a virus into the perfect machine.
But her victory was short-lived. As she scrambled to her knees, she saw a figure stride into the cavern, untouched by the chaos. Dr. Alistair Corvus. His face was a mask of cold fury. His eyes scanned the disintegrating engine room and then locked directly onto her hiding place. He couldn't hear her, but he could see the disruption. He could trace the source of the interference.
He raised a hand, and a whip of pure darkness, far more controlled and vicious than the wild energy lashing from the crucible, snapped toward her. There was no time to dodge.
But before it could strike, a different force intervened. A wave of pure nullity slammed into Corvus's attack, dissipating it into harmless mist.
From a shadowed archway on the opposite side of the cavern, Colton stepped into the hellish light. He held a long, serrated knife in one hand, and his other hand was outstretched, palm open. He looked tired, battered, but his eyes were blazing with defiant glee.
"Sorry I'm late, kid," his voice was a silent shape in the air, but she read his lips perfectly. "Traffic was a bitch." He grinned at Corvus. "Having some technical difficulties, Alistair? Maybe you should've sprung for the extended warranty."
The game had changed. The sabotage was underway. And the ghost was no longer alone.