The top floor of the tower was a vast, domed chamber, open to the night sky through an oculus of enchanted glass. In the center sat the Grand Reservoir—a massive, floating sphere of liquid light, containing the distilled spiritual essence of the Kingdom's defenders. The air hummed with a resonance so powerful it made Kaela's skin itch, but the warmth of the Reservoir was being choked out. A frost-white fog rolled across the floor, and the temperature had plummeted far beyond the natural winter chill.
The Shadow Hand stood before the sphere. He had shed his black leather armor for ceremonial robes of bone-white silk, and his hands were submerged in a shimmering, colorless field of energy that was slowly drawing threads of gold from the Reservoir. He looked like a spider draining a sun.
Kaela didn't bother with a stealthy approach. The Siphon's senses were undoubtedly attuned to the massive energy he was manipulating; any attempt at a hidden strike would be felt as a ripple in the stream. Instead, she maintained her Black Core, becoming a moving void in his peripheral vision.
"You are persistent for a rat," the Shadow Hand said, his voice echoing with a hollow, metallic resonance. He didn't turn around. "I left you in the mud of the Dregs. You should have stayed there and died with the rest of your kind."
"I brought your sword back," Kaela replied, her voice steady. She drew Rust-Eater. The Void-Iron drank the ambient gold light, turning a dark, bruised violet.
The Shadow Hand finally turned. His eyes were no longer human; they were twin pools of stagnant, grey ice. He pulled his hands from the extraction field, and the colorless energy coalesced into a long, jagged blade of frozen Aura. "That blade is a relic of a failed age. You think a Sin-Eater can consume what I have become? I am a Siphon of the Reservoir. I am the end of your Guild."
He lunged. It wasn't a physical movement but a translocation of cold. One moment he was ten paces away; the next, his ice-blade was whistling toward Kaela's throat.
Kaela's Whispering Eye had already sensed the surge. She didn't parry. She stepped inside the arc of the strike, the Formless Style turning his momentum into a liability. She swung the hilt of the Sin-Eater into his ribs, utilizing the structural force Elara had drilled into her. The Shadow Hand grunted as the air was forced from his lungs, but he countered instantly, a wave of frigid Aura exploding from his body.
The blast should have frozen Kaela solid. Instead, as the cold energy hit her, she expanded her Black Core for a microsecond. The Rust-Eater gave a gluttonous shriek. It didn't just block the energy; it inhaled it. The frost shattered before it could touch her skin, sucked into the Void-Iron like smoke into a furnace.
The Shadow Hand's eyes widened. For the first time, he felt a flicker of genuine alarm. "You... you aren't suppressing. You're starving."
"I'm a famine," Kaela whispered.
She pressed the attack. Her blade was a blur of dark, silent strikes. She didn't aim for the Siphon's body, which was shielded by a layer of shifting ice-Aura. She aimed for the connections—the points where his spirit touched the extraction field. Every time the Void-Iron crossed his Aura streams, the Shadow Hand felt a sickening yank on his very soul.
He roared in frustration, unleashing a blizzard of ice needles. Kaela moved through the storm with the jerky, unpredictable pivots of Hagar's teaching. She was a shadow in the snow. She closed the distance and drove the point of Rust-Eater into the center of the extraction field.
The effect was cataclysmic. The Sin-Eater, presented with the concentrated gold energy of the Grand Reservoir and the grey ice of the Siphon, began to feed indiscriminately. A vortex of spiritual energy formed around the blade, a swirling storm of gold and grey that threatened to pull Kaela's arms from their sockets.
"Stop!" the Shadow Hand screamed, his robes tearing as the wind intensified. "You'll shatter the Reservoir! You'll kill us both!"
"The calculus is simple," Kaela said, her teeth gritted against the violent vibration of the metal. "I have nothing to lose. You have everything."
She poured the last of her physical strength into the thrust. The Sin-Eater pierced the heart of the Siphon's connection. The grey ice-Aura began to bleed into the blade, turning the dark metal into a blinding, violet star. The Shadow Hand's body began to thin, his physical form losing its anchor as his spirit was devoured.
With a final, desperate shriek, the Shadow Hand's presence collapsed. He didn't die so much as he was erased, his essence sucked into the ravenous Void-Iron until only his bone-white robes remained, fluttering to the floor like dead leaves.
The vortex died instantly. The tower fell silent. The Grand Reservoir stabilized, its gold light dimming but remaining intact.
Kaela collapsed to her knees, her lungs burning. Rust-Eater lay on the stone before her, the blade now a deep, matte black, vibrating with a satiated, heavy hum. She had won, but the cost was etched into her bones. She was empty. Truly, utterly empty.
She looked up as the door to the chamber burst open. Dame Elara and a squad of Knights rushed in, their swords drawn and glowing with Flame Aura. They stopped dead, staring at the lone Novice, the pile of white robes, and the silent, black sword.
"Vane?" Elara whispered, her gaze moving from the Reservoir to the girl. "What have you done?"