The cavern erupted into a symphony of violence. Corvus's cold fury shattered, replaced by a predatory focus. He ignored the failing crucible, the panicked acolytes, the wild arcs of energy—his entire world narrowed to the two interlopers who had dared to touch his masterpiece.
"The broken instrument and the jester," Corvus's voice was a silken vibration that cut through the chaos, a sound Delaney felt as a razor-sharp chill along her spine. He didn't shout; he didn't need to. His power was a controlled, precise thing. "I should have discarded you both long ago."
Colton didn't bother with a retort. He moved, a blur of leather and motion. He wasn't trying to fight Corvus directly—that would be suicide. Instead, he became a catalyst for further chaos. His serrated knife wasn't for flesh; it was for the machine. He slammed the blade into a control rune on the side of the crucible. The bone-like material splintered, and a gout of black energy screamed out, forcing Corvus to deflect it with a flick of his wrist.
"Discard us?" Colton's silent laugh was a wild, reckless shape in the air. "You collected us, Alistair! You're a magpie with a taste for shiny, broken things. You just forgot that broken things have sharp edges."
Delaney knew her role. Colton was the distraction, the unpredictable variable. She was the scalpel. While Corvus was occupied parrying Colton's disruptive strikes, she had to finish what she started. The crucible was wounded, but it wasn't dead. The dissonance she'd introduced was spreading, but the core structure—the terrible, ordered frequency that fed Lane—still held.
She scrambled back to her feet, the lodestone hot in her hand, its pull now erratic as the machine destabilized. The flaw in the western conduit was a gaping wound now, vomiting raw chaos. But it wasn't enough. She had to find the heart of the machine. The primary frequency.
She closed her eyes, blocking out the visual madness. She sank into the vibrational storm of the cavern. She felt Colton's agile, sharp frequency—a staccato rhythm of attack and retreat. She felt Corvus's—a deep, arrogant, monolithic hum that sought to dominate all others. And she felt the crucible—a dying beast, its steady rhythm now a faltering, arrhythmic stutter.
But beneath it all, there was another thread. A single, pure, and horrifyingly familiar note, being siphoned from the chaos and refined. It was being drawn from the crucible, up through a central conduit that led straight back to the summit. It was Lane's frequency. Or rather, the corrupted, amplified version of it that the machine was using to keep him anchored.
This was the target. Not to destroy the machine, but to poison the well. To corrupt the signal they were sending him.
She opened her eyes, her gaze锁定on the central conduit. It was a pillar of flawless black crystal, throbbing with a steady, malevolent light. That was the source of the ordered silence. That was the leash around Lane's soul.
She started toward it, moving low and fast through the chaos. Acolytes, shaken from their rhythm, now saw her as a tangible threat. One lunged at her, his hands crackling with harmful energy. Delaney didn't break stride. She didn't know how to fight, but she didn't need to. As he reached for her, she focused her entire being into a single, concentrated pulse of her null-field. She didn't attack him; she simply was.
His hands passed through the space she occupied, and the energy around them winked out. His eyes widened in confusion behind his cowl. He was a creature of vibration, and she was a hole in the world. He stumbled, disoriented, and she slipped past him.
"The girl!" Corvus's voice vibrated with a new, sharp alarm. He'd seen her intention. He threw a blast of concentrated darkness at Colton, not to kill him, but to immobilize him—a net of solid shadow that wrapped around Colton's legs, rooting him to the spot. Then, Corvus turned his full attention to Delaney.
A wall of force erupted in front of her, a shimmering barrier of compressed silence. It was a more powerful version of the outer wards, designed to annihilate consciousness. Delaney didn't try to go through it. She knew she couldn't. Instead, she dropped to her knees and placed her hands flat on the cavern floor.
The floor was warm, vibrating with the machine's death throes. She pushed her awareness into the stone, following the vibrations like a roadmap. The wall of force was a localized phenomenon. It didn't extend underground. She couldn't dig, but she could find a path. She felt the subtle tremors of a fissure, a natural crack in the rock that ran underneath the barrier.
She rolled into the fissure, a tight, cramped space filled with the smell of ozone and hot stone. She scraped through, the rock tearing at her clothes. On the other side, she emerged, breathless, just feet from the central conduit.
Corvus was there. He had moved with impossible speed. He stood between her and the pillar, his expression no longer angry, but intrigued, like a scientist observing a fascinating mutation.
"Remarkable," his vibrational voice purred. "The void truly does abhor a vacuum. It seeks to fill itself. You are drawn to the greatest source of power, like a moth to a flame. You think you can free him? You would only be consumed."
Delaney didn't answer. She raised the lodestone and the whistle. She focused not on the conduit itself, but on the pure, terrible note being drawn from it. The note that was keeping Lane trapped.
She could feel Corvus gathering his power for a final, decisive strike. She was out of tricks, out of time.
Then, a roar of shattering crystal filled the cavern. Colton had broken free of the shadow-net. He hadn't used strength; he'd used dissonance. He'd slammed his knife into the failing western conduit again, and this time, the entire structure gave way. A cataclysmic explosion of energy ripped through the cavern, throwing acolytes like ragdolls and shaking the foundations of the mountain.
The shockwave hit Corvus from the side, breaking his concentration for a single, crucial second.
It was all Delaney needed.
She didn't project the flaw this time. She did something far more dangerous. She opened the void inside her—the vast, cold emptiness Lane had created—and she aimed it at the pure, ordered note of the central conduit. She didn't attack it. She offered it a destination. A vacuum.
The effect was instantaneous. The refined energy, the leash holding Lane, hesitated in its flow. The perfect, structured frequency wavered, drawn toward the absolute silence she represented. It was like a river suddenly finding a new, bottomless channel.
For a moment, the conduit flickered, its light dimming. The steady flow to the summit stuttered.
Somewhere high above, in the Anchor chamber, the balance of power would have shifted. Just for a second. But a second was all it would take.
Corvus recovered, his face a mask of pure rage. He unleashed a blast of power that was meant to erase her from existence. But Colton was there, throwing himself in front of her, his own body a shield. The blast struck him full in the chest. He didn't cry out. He simply folded, a marionette with its strings cut, collapsing to the ground.
The cavern began to collapse in earnest. Great chunks of rock fell from the ceiling. The crucible exploded in a final, silent fireball of purple-black energy.
Delaney stumbled to Colton's side. He was still breathing, but barely. His eyes were open, staring at the chaos. He managed a weak, bloody smile, his lips forming silent words she could easily read.
"That's how you make an exit, kid."
She grabbed him, hauling his arm over her shoulder. She didn't look back at Corvus or the ruined machine. The leash was broken. The signal was corrupted. She had to believe it was enough.
As she half-dragged, half-carried Colton toward a collapsing tunnel that promised escape, she felt a new vibration tear through the mountain. It wasn't the chaotic scream of the Schism. It wasn't the ordered silence of the machine.
It was a roar of pure, undiluted rage. And it came from Lane.
The Anchor was awake. And he was furious.