The Bellkeeper's roar cracked the Salt Cathedral's dome. A thousand glass shards froze mid-air, spinning into a cyclone of mirrored death. Cherina's hymn—once her voice, now the Choir's weapon—shredded Farren's eardrums. Blood dripped from his ears. Sable's fur crackled with static; the lynx leapt.
Farren fired twice. The rune-bullets left violet trails, detonating into sigils of UNBINDING. The storm shattered, shards falling like silver rain. The tortoise spirit beneath him—its shell a lattice of bone and soul-iron—charged. Farren rolled under a sweeping serpent-arm, plasma sword screaming as it severed the limb. Black blood hissed into steam, eating holes in the mirrored floor.
Cherina's chains of woven sound wavered. Sable's claws—translucent energy—raked them apart. She fell. Farren caught her mid-air. Her skin was translucent, veins glowing violet. Her eyes, once sky-blue, were milk-white.
"Farren?" A whisper like wind through broken bells.
"Got you, Cheri. Hold on."
The Bellkeeper raised its remaining arms—dozens, each ending in a different beast's maw. The hymn became a command:
"THE GIRL IS THE BELL. THE BELL IS THE CHOIR."
The glass storm collapsed inward. Farren holstered the revolver, slung Cherina over his shoulder, and ran. The tortoise spirit hardened into a dome of soul-iron, deflecting the storm's fury. Farren sprinted up the nave's central aisle, boots sparking on crystal. Behind, the Bellkeeper pursued—limbs regrowing, mouths chanting in dead tongues.
He reached the apse. A stained-glass window towered above: the Rift devouring the sun. Farren leapt. The plasma sword carved an X. Shards exploded outward—not as knives, but as butterflies of light, wings trailing code. They fell three stories. The tortoise shell shattered on impact, dissolving into gold motes that sank into the sand.
Farren landed in a crouch, Cherina cradled. Sable's cyber-spines unfolded into glider wings. They surfed the storm's edge, landing in a dry arroyo. A ghost caravan waited—six wagons of bone and neon, pulled by spectral mustangs. Lanterns of ghost-fire floated above.
A woman stepped forward. Half her face was polished skull, the other a flickering hologram of youth. Her coat was coyote pelts and fiber-optic cable. A snake-head revolver hung at her hip.
"Vale's heir," she said, voice layered with static. "Ride with the dead or die with the living."
Farren's hand rested on his revolver. The runes pulsed—HUNGER.
"I choose neither."
She tilted her skull. "Your sister's song is a beacon. The storm follows. Minutes."
Farren looked at Cherina. Her pulse flickered like a dying bulb. Sable pressed against her, purring static. He had no choice.
The woman—Mara Dead-Eyes—extended a hand. Bone fingers, holographic light.
"Payment: a memory of your father's death."
Farren closed his eyes. The memory tore free—Arcturus on his knees, condor wings burning: "Tell Cherina… the sky is still hers…"
Mara inhaled it like smoke. The caravan doors opened. Farren stepped inside. The wagon's interior was a server farm fused with a saloon—terminals blinking, barstools of vertebrae. Cherina was laid on fiber-optic cable. Sable curled around her.
Mara sealed the door. The caravan moved—no sound. Outside, the glass storm howled past.
Farren cleaned his weapons. Revolver runes fading. Plasma sword glitching.
Mara watched. "Your sister is a resonator. The Choir wants her as the final bell—to shatter the Rift wide. Blood moon. Nine days."
Farren etched FAMILY on his last rune-bullet.
"Then we have eight."