Chapter 12:The Heartforge's Gambit

The fall seemed endless.

Leonis's vision blurred as the Bloodchamber collapsed around them, its fleshy walls dissolving into a storm of shadow and static. Celia's weight in his arms was a dull ache against the fire searing through his veinshis bloodlines still unstable, still tearing him apart from the inside. Fenrir's snarls and Thoren's frantic curses were swallowed by the roar of crumbling stone.

Then-

Impact.

They hit water.

lcy blackness swallowed Leonis whole, the shock of it stealing his breath.

His shadow-arm thrashed instinctively, tendrils lashing out to anchor him to something, *anything*, but the current was too strong. It wrenched Celia from his grip, her silver hair flickering like a dying star as the darkness dragged her under.

"No.*

He kicked toward her, his lungs burning. The water wasnt just waterit was thick, viscous, *alive*. It coiled around his limbs like a serpent, whispering in a voice that wasnt a voice:

**'You are close, little shadow. Close to the truth."**

Leonis ignored it. His fingers brushed Celia's wrist, and he *yanked*, pulling her against him as he breached the surface. The air was rancid, heavy with the metallic tang of blood and ozone. Theyd landed in a subterranean river, its banks lined with jagged obsidian shards that pulsed with a faint, sickly glow.

Fenrir hauled himself onto a nearby ledge, his fur plastered to his body, golden eyes scanning the cavern.

**"Where in the seven hells?**

Thoren coughed up water, his glasses cracked. **

"The Heartforge's undercroft,"

** he rasped. **"The river runs beneath it. If we follow the current"*

**'well drown before we get there,"** Fenrir snapped.

Celia stirred in Leonis's arms, her moonmark flickering weakly. Her voice was a raw scrape.

**"The Sovereign... knows wete coming."**

Leonis tightened his grip. "*"Then we dont let it prepare."**

---

The cavern narrowed into a tunnel, the river's current slowing to a sluggish crawl. The obsidian shards grew denser, their glow intensifying until the

walls themselves seemed to *breathe*, inlaid with veins of corrupted shadowglass. The air hummed with a low, discordant frequencylike a blade dragged across bone.

Then they saw it.

The Heartforge wasnt a forge at all. It was a *heart*.

A colossal, pulsing mass of fused shadow and crystal, suspended in the

center of a cavern so vast its ceiling vanished into gloom. Tendrils of liquid

darkness spiraled from its base, feeding into a network of pipes and conduits that crisscrossed the chamber like arteries.

At its apex, a single, gaping fissure pulsed with a light that wasnt lighta negative space, a*hunger*.

**'Thats not just a machine,"** Thoren whispered. **"It's *alive*."**

Fenrir's claws unsheathed. **'Then we kill it."**

Leoniss shadow-arm twitched.

The closer they crept, the more the Heartforge's presence *pressed* against his mind, probing, testing. It knew him, It *remembered* him.

A notification seared across his vision:

*Disrupt the Sovereign's connection to the Heartforge. Warning: Direct contact may result in assimilation.*

Celias fingers brushed his wrist.

**"There's another way,"** she murmured.**

'The Lunar Shardit's not just a key. It's a *counterweight*."**

Leonis frowned. **"You mean"*

**'The original Celia used it to stabilize the Gate,"** she said, her voice steadier now. **"We can use it to destabilize *this*."**

Thoren's eyes lit with grim understanding. **"A feedback loop. Overload the system from within."**

Fenrir bared his teeth. **"Sounds like a good way to get vaporized."**

**'Got a better idea?"** Leonis shot back. The wolf-prince grinned, **"Nope."**

The plan was simple. Suicide, but simple.

Thoren would hack into the Heartforges control runeswhat remained of his scientist's knowledge might buy them seconds. Fenrir would guard their backs, holding off whatever nightmares the Sovereign vomited forth. And Leonis and Celia?

They'd dive straight into the beasts maw.

Leoniss shadow-arm seethed as they approached the Heartforge's base. The ground here wasnt stoneit was *flesh*, warm and yielding beneath his boots. Celia's moonmark flared brighter with every step, her stolen memories of the original's designs guiding her.

**"Here,"** she said, stopping before a fissure in the Heartforges surface. The edges writhed like living tissue, resisting as she pressed her palm against it.

**"It's a weak point. The shard's resonance should""*

The Heartforge *screamed*.

Tendrils of shadow lashed out, snatching at Celia's limbs. Leonis moved on instinct, his flame-arm igniting, but the darkness *absorbed* the fire, drinking it greedily.

**"Leonis!** Celia gasped, her body half-submerged in the fissure.

He lunged, grabbing her wrist just as the Heartforge's pull intensified. The world *warped*, the cavern dissolving into a storm of fragmented memories:

"A lab, the original Celias face looming over him, her smile a razor.*

*The Sovereign's throne, not a monster but a man, his eyes hollow with greed.*

*Eelia's voice, whispering: *"You were never meant to remember me."***

Then-

**"*Enough.*"**

Leonis *wrenched* Celia free, his shadow-arm surging into the fissure in her place. The Heartforge recoiled, its tendrils blackening where his darkness touched it. For a heartbeat, the chamber trembled, the pulsating

light stuttering.

Thorens voice cut through the chaos: **"Now, Celia!"**

She didnt hesitate. With a cry, she drove the fractured Lunar Shard into the Heartforges core.

The explosion was silent.

For one suspended moment, the world was *nothing*no light, no sound, no breath. Then the backlash hit.

Leonis was thrown backward, his body skidding across the fleshy ground. Celia landed beside him, her moonmark *splitting*, silver light pouring from the crack like blood. The Heartforge's surface spiderwebbed, its pulse faltering, its light dimming to a sickly flicker.

**"Did it work?"** Fenrir panted, his claws dripping with shadowglass

residue.

Thoren stared at the dying behemoth, his face ashen. **"Not yet."+*

The Heartforge's final pulse was a *sob*, a shuddering gasp. Then, from its core, something *stirred*.

A hand.

Pale, perfect, *familiar*.

The original Celia's fingers curled around the shard's remnants, her voice slithering through the chamber.

**'You cant kill me. Im *everywhere*."**

Leoniss blood ran cold.

The Sovereign's laughter followed, echoing from the fissure in the Heartforge's apexe-sound like a thousand screams harmonizing into one.

**'Welcome."** it whispered, **"to the end."**

---

As the originals hand emerges, Celia's moonmark *shatters* completely,

revealing a truth buried deeper than the Sovereign's lies: the original wasnt just a weapon. She was a *failsafe*. A vessel meant to *contain* the Sovereign if it ever grew too powerful. And now, with her resurrection, the game has changed.

Leonis realizes*they werent meant to destroy the Heartforge.*

*They were meant to* awaken "it.*

---

The chamber trembled as the original pulled herself free, her body reforged from shadow and shattered glass. Her eyes, when they opened, were no longer crimson.

They were *void*.

***Run,"** Celia whispered.

The Heartforge *woke*