CHAPTER 8: SKYREACH SACRIFICE

The broken feather's spine dug into Kael's palm—a jagged shard of dead power. Valen hadn't just shattered it; he'd *desecrated* it. Ash and boot-print smeared its indigo rune. Silas's needle throbbed in Kael's neck, a satisfied purr after its slow, molten assault. 

**"Move, Voidborne."** 

The Skyreach escort—two Hunters in matte-black armor, faces hidden behind expressionless visors—stood at the barracks door. No titles. No names. Just cattle-prods humming in their grips. 

Kael closed his fist around the feather's remains. *Cold. Sharp.* A ghost of resonance whispered up his arm, drowned by the needle's growl. He rose, every muscle screaming. 

---

The Skyreach Gate wasn't like the others. 

It loomed in the Academy's deepest vault, a vertical **maw** of swirling obsidian and sickly green light. No jagged edges—its borders were smooth, deliberate, like a surgical incision in reality. The air crackled with static that made Kael's teeth ache. Tech-priests scurried around its base, chanting as they adjusted glowing rune-cables that siphoned pulsing energy into the vault's walls. *Harvesting it.* 

A squad of six veteran Hunters stood at rigid attention nearby. Their armor bore the scars of deep dives: acid-pitted plating, rune-overlays flickering erratically. They didn't look at Kael. Their disgust was a physical thing, thick as the ozone-stink. 

**"Thorn. How… fortunate."** 

Silas stepped from the shadows beside the Gate. 

No Assessor robes. He wore sleek, grey field gear, a silver needle-pin gleaming at his collar. His smile was a scalpel. **"Valen's unfortunate… *fragility*… presents an opportunity. You'll take his place. Serve his purpose."** He tapped a data-slate. **"Skyreach is unique. A stable aperture into the Deep Void. We need a Resonance Catalyst to map its frequency lattice."** He held out a device—a fist-sized orb of black crystal, veined with pulsating violet light. **"You'll carry this to the heart. Activate it. Simple."** 

Kael stared at the orb. It hummed with the **same resonance** as the feather. As his rune. *Bait. And bomb.* 

**"And if I refuse?"** Kael's voice was raw. 

Silas's smile didn't waver. He raised a small, silver remote. **"This syncs with the needle in your spine. Right now, it's set to 'Compliance Mode.'"** He clicked a button. 

**Fire.** 

Not the slow burn from Valen. This was **white annihilation**—a supernova detonating inside Kael's vertebrae. He dropped, vision whiting out, a silent scream locked in his throat. Bones felt like glass shattering. 

It stopped. 

Kael gasped, trembling in a pool of his own sweat. 

**"The next setting liquifies lower ganglia."** Silas tucked the remote away. **"Carry the catalyst. Activate it at the locus. Or I paint the walls with your nervous system. Understood?"** 

The veteran Hunters shifted. One—a woman with a scarred lip and cybernetic eye—glanced at Silas, then away. *Discomfort? Or complicity?* 

Silas gestured to the Gate. **"Skyreach Team. Move out. Thorn? Try not to trip."** 

---

Stepping through the Gate wasn't like the ragged tears over New Avalon. 

It was **drowning in liquid static**. 

Kael stumbled onto a landscape of fractured geometry. Jagged obsidian spires clawed at a bruised purple sky. Gravity pulsed unevenly—one moment crushing weight, the next near-weightlessness. The air tasted of burnt copper and decay. Distant, discordant shrieks echoed, but they sounded… *mechanical*. Wrong. 

**"Keep up, Catalyst."** The scarred Hunter woman—Lieutenant Vex, her armor sigil read—shoved Kael forward. Her cyber-eye glowed crimson as it scanned the warped terrain. **"Locus is two klicks northeast. And Thorn?"** She leaned close, her breath fogging his visor. **"Try anything Voidborn, and I'll space you myself. Silas wants the data. I just want to survive."** 

The team moved in grim silence. No banter. No camaraderie. Kael was cargo. Dangerous cargo. He clutched the black crystal orb. It vibrated against his palm, syncing with the needle's thrum and the feather shard's dying cold. A terrible trinity. 

Suddenly, Vex froze. **"Contact! Eight o'clock! Shadow-stalkers!"** 

Reality *rippled*. Three figures peeled from the obsidian spires. Not beasts. Not quite. Humanoid, but limbs elongated, joints bending backward. Their skin was polished black metal, faces featureless except for pulsing green slits—eyes? Sensors? They moved with silent, predatory grace. 

**"Weapons free!"** Vex barked. 

Rifles spat searing blue plasma. The bolts struck the lead stalker—and **phased through it**. The creature didn't break stride. 

**"Echo-shades!"** another Hunter yelled, panic edging his voice. **"Physical fire useless!"** 

The stalkers raised hands tipped with crackling green energy. The air screamed. 

Vex snarled, slamming a fist against her chest rune. **"Iron Guard! Brace for—"** 

The first energy blast hit. 

It didn't burn. It **unmade**. 

A Hunter screamed as his left arm dissolved into swirling grey ash, particles hanging in the air before vanishing. He collapsed, writhing. 

Chaos. Plasma fire useless. Hunters scrambled for cover that didn't exist. Vex's Iron Guard rune flared, projecting a shimmering crimson shield that buckled under the second blast. 

Kael crouched behind a jagged rock formation, the orb burning in his grip. The feather shard bit into his palm. The needle snarled in his neck. 

***"Kael…"*** 

His mother's voice. Not a whisper. A **scream**. 

***"DON'T TRUST THE EYES!"*** 

Kael's gaze snapped to the nearest stalker. Its green eye-slit pulsed… and for a fraction of a second, he saw it. Behind the machine-like exterior—a **human eye**, wide with terror, drowning in green light. 

*Not machines. Prisoners.* 

The stalker raised its hand, energy gathering. Aimed at Vex, whose shield was failing. 

Kael didn't think. 

He **shoved** the black crystal orb against the feather shard in his palm—and slammed both against the obsidian ground. 

***CRACK.*** 

A wave of **indigo silence** exploded outward. 

No sound. No light. Pure, resonant negation. 

The stalkers froze. Their green eye-slits flickered wildly. The energy blasts winked out. 

For three heartbeats, absolute stillness. 

Then the indigo wave collapsed inward—sucking back into the shattered orb and feather shard fused in Kael's hand. The force tore the remnants from his grip, leaving his palm seared and bleeding. The wave ripped *through* the nearest stalker. 

The creature shuddered. Its metal shell dissolved like smoke, revealing a gaunt man in tattered Academy fatigues. He collapsed, gasping, his eyes wide and human—and filled with soul-deep horror. He looked at Kael, then at the Gate's distant glow. 

***"They… lied…"*** he rasped. Then his eyes rolled back. Dead. 

The other stalkers shrieked—a sound of pure, digital rage—and vanished, melting back into the twisted spires. 

Silence descended, broken only by the moans of the wounded Hunter. 

Vex lowered her failing shield, her cyber-eye whirring as it fixed on Kael. Not disgust now. **Terror.** 

**"What,"** she breathed, **"in the name of the Void… was *that*?"** 

Kael stared at his bleeding hand. Where the feather shard and orb had fused, a new mark was burned into his palm—a jagged rune of violet and indigo, still smoking. 

Above them, the bruised sky pulsed. Not with Gate-light. 

With **recognition**. 

End of chapter 8