CHAPTER 9: STORM EATER
The hybrid rune on Kael's palm wasn't healing.
It **gnawed**.
Where the feather shard and Silas's orb had fused, violet and indigo threads writhed like living wires beneath blistered skin. Every heartbeat sent pulses of cold fire up Kael's arm—not pain, but *hunger*. The Skyreach Gate's bruised sky watched, its oppressive gaze thickening the static-charged air.
Lieutenant Vex backed away, her crimson cyber-eye whirring as it locked onto Kael's seared hand. Her rifle trembled. **"Thorn… what did you *do*?"**
Before Kael could answer, the wounded Hunter—the one whose arm had dissolved into ash—screamed. Not from pain. From terror. He pointed a shaking finger past Kael. **"Eyes! Saints save us—*more eyes*!"**
The obsidian spires surrounding them pulsed. Dozens of green slits flickered open in the jagged rock—featureless, mechanical. Watching.
**"Fall back!"** Vex barked, her voice cracking. **"To the extraction point! *Now!*"**
The veterans didn't hesitate. They scooped up their wounded comrade, retreating in a frantic scramble across the gravity-warped terrain. Vex grabbed Kael's collar, yanking him forward. **"Move, Catalyst! Or I leave you for those things!"**
Kael stumbled after her, the new rune throbbing in sync with the needle's growl in his neck. He glanced back. The green eyes didn't follow. They just… watched. As if waiting.
---
The extraction point was a circle of scorched earth marked by flickering rune-stones. As the team stumbled inside its perimeter, Vex slammed a device into the ground. **"Signal sent! Thirty seconds to portal!"**
She turned on Kael, rifle raised. Her cyber-eye blazed crimson. **"Talk. What *was* that resonance burst? It wasn't Void magic. It was… *anti-magic*."**
Kael clutched his bleeding palm. The hybrid rune squirmed beneath the skin. **"The orb… the feather… they reacted."**
**"Reacted?"** Vex's laugh was jagged. **"It unmade that Echo-shade's shell! It silenced their weapons! That's not reaction—that's *annihilation*!"** She stepped closer, muzzle aimed at his chest. **"Silas called you a Catalyst. But catalysts don't *eat* energy. They transmit it. That thing on your hand? It *consumed*."**
Above them, the bruised sky darkened. Thunder rumbled—a sound like grinding bones.
Kael's rune flared. Indigo light licked up his wrist. **"I didn't ask for this."**
**"None of us did!"** Vex gestured wildly at the dead Hunter's body. **"Martyn signed up for Gate duty, not… *soul-forging*!"** She froze. The words hung heavy.
*Soul-forging.*
The dead prisoner's rasp echoed in Kael's mind: ***"They… lied…"***
Vex's cyber-eye dimmed. Her voice dropped to a haunted whisper. **"Martyn found a data-chip on that prisoner. Before he bled out. Project Skyreach isn't about mapping. It's about *weaponizing* the Deep Void. Turning people into… into *those things*."** She met Kael's gaze, her fury replaced by dread. **"Silas knew. The Assessors know. They sent us here to die feeding their machine."**
A high-pitched whine pierced the air. The rune-stones flared. Reality tore open—a shimmering portal back to the Academy vault.
**"Go!"** Vex shoved Kael toward the light. **"Silas sees everything through that needle! He'll know Martyn talked!"**
Kael stumbled forward. **"What about you?"**
Vex touched the cracked lens of her cyber-eye. **"I've got debts worse than death."** She raised her rifle, not at Kael, but at the approaching storm. **"Run, Catalyst. Before the storm eats you too."**
Kael plunged into the portal.
---
The Academy vault was chaos.
Tech-priests shouted as rune-cables overloaded, spitting sparks. Silas stood at the control console, his silver needle-pin gleaming as he glared at the destabilizing Skyreach Gate. His gaze snapped to Kael.
**"You."** His voice cut through the din. **"The resonance spike—it corrupted the lattice! What did you *do*?"**
Kael lifted his bleeding hand. The hybrid rune pulsed, indigo light bleeding into the vault's sterile white. **"I survived."**
Silas's eyes narrowed. He raised the silver remote. **"You damaged priceless assets! I should burn you down to ash right—"**
***CRACK-BOOM!***
The Skyreach Gate imploded.
Not a collapse—a **detonation**.
A shockwave of pure negation ripped outward. Console screens shattered. Tech-priests were flung like ragdolls. Silas staggered, the remote flying from his grip.
Kael's hybrid rune **screamed**.
It didn't hurt. It *reveled*.
Indigo light erupted from his palm, not as a wave, but as a **vortex**—a hungry whirlpool sucking the Gate's dying resonance into itself. The blisters on Kael's hand sealed. The writhing threads beneath his skin glowed brighter, colder. Power flooded him—not the Void's whispers, but the crushing silence of *nothingness*.
Silas stared, his composure shattered. **"Impossible… It's feeding on the Gate's death-throes!"**
Kael stepped forward. The vortex followed him, drinking the shattered energy. He felt the needle in his neck—still there, still snarling—but its bite was muted. Drowned by the storm he'd unleashed.
**"You wanted a weapon, Silas."** Kael's voice echoed with unnatural stillness. **"You forged one."**
High above, through the vault's shattered viewports, the nearest Gate over New Avalon pulsed—not green, but **indigo**.
Answering its newborn twin.
End of chapter 9