CHAPTER 11: SOUL-FORGE FIRE
The resonance ore lasted eight blocks.
By the ninth, the rune began chewing through Kael's ribs.
He staggered into the skeletal remains of an old transit hub, acid rain eating at corroded steel beams. The violet-eyed girl—**Lyss**—pulled him behind a gutted ticket booth. Her small hand pressed another shard of ore against his palm. The rune's gnawing eased, but the relief was shallow. Temporary. Like dousing a wildfire with spit.
**"Silas's lab is close,"** Lyss whispered, her pupils flaring violet in the gloom. **"But the walls have eyes now. Hungry eyes."**
Kael clutched the data-chip the Scarred Hunter gave him. Sector 13 glowed on its holographic map—a labyrinth of collapsed tunnels beneath New Avalon's financial district. **"How do you know this place?"**
Lyss touched the scarred skin beneath her left ear—a jagged, deliberate mark. **"I was Subject Zero. The first Voidborne soul he tried to Forge."** Her voice held no fear. Only cold fact. **"He broke my rune… but not my sight. I see the chains he puts on people."**
She pointed to the rusted service elevator ahead. A faded biohazard symbol bled through peeling paint. **"That's how we go down. But when we break it… let your rune *feast*. It's the only way to break your cage."**
---
The elevator shaft was a tomb.
Kael's boots sank into ankle-deep sludge that reeked of iron and rotting meat. Lyss moved like a ghost ahead of him, her violet gaze cutting through the darkness.
**"Here,"** she breathed, stopping before a reinforced bulkhead. Runic sigils glowed faintly on its surface—containment wards. **"They're changing someone. Right now."**
Kael pressed his palm against the cold metal. The hybrid rune flared.
He *felt* it.
Screams. Not through sound—through **resonance**. A thousand fractured notes of agony vibrating in the air.
Lyss placed her scarred hand beside his. The containment wards flickered… and died. **"He can't cage us both."**
The bulkhead groaned open.
Hell unfolded beyond.
The lab was a cathedral of suffering. Rows of transparent tubes stretched into shadow, each holding a human body suspended in bubbling indigo fluid. Tubes snaked into their spines, pumping liquid shadow. Some were still recognizably human—twitching, mouths open in silent screams. Others were halfway transformed: limbs elongated into blade-like prosthetics, eyes replaced by pulsing green sensors. **Echo-shades in the making.**
At the room's heart stood a massive resonator core—a pillar of black crystal veined with the same indigo light as Kael's rune. Silas's symbol glowed at its base.
**"The core feeds the Gates,"** Lyss said, her small voice tight. **"Break it… and your rune can eat its fill."**
A gurgling scream tore through the lab.
In a nearby tube, a woman thrashed as metallic tendrils burrowed into her skull. Her eyes met Kael's—wide, pleading, *terrifyingly human*.
***"PLEASE…"*** her mouth formed.
Kael moved.
Not toward the core. Toward her tube.
**"No!"** Lyss grabbed his arm. **"She's too far gone! If you open it—"**
**"I don't care!"** Kael slammed his hybrid rune against the tube's control panel.
Violet-indigo light exploded. The tube shattered. Fetid fluid flooded the floor. The woman collapsed, retching shadow. Her half-metal limbs scrabbled at the ground.
**"Run…"** Kael gasped. **"Go!"**
Her green sensor-eyes fixed on him. Not gratitude. **Hunger.**
She lunged.
Too fast. Too wrong.
Her bladed hand slashed toward Kael's throat—
—and froze.
Lyss stood between them, one small hand pressed against the woman's chest. Violet light pulsed from her palm. **"The chains are heavy, Elara,"** she whispered. **"But you remember the sky. *Remember*."**
The woman shuddered. Her green eyes flickered… and for a heartbeat, Kael saw warm brown beneath. Human. Broken.
**"Lyss…?"** the woman rasped.
Then Silas's voice boomed from hidden speakers:
**"THORN. YOU COULDN'T JUST DIE QUIETLY, COULD YOU?"**
The resonator core flared. Indigo light bathed the lab. The half-Forged prisoners writhed, screaming as their transformations accelerated.
The bulkhead slammed shut.
And from the shadows behind the core, a figure emerged.
**Valen Thorne.**
But not the sneering noble. Not anymore.
His right arm was now a mass of whirring silver blades and hydraulic pistons. His golden rune flickered erratically beneath cracked, grey skin. One eye burned with familiar aristocratic fury. The other was a pulsing green sensor.
**"Silas promised me your rune,"** Valen hissed, his voice layered with mechanical static. **"Said it would fix me. Make me perfect again."** He raised his bladed arm. **"I'll carve it from your corpse."**
---
Kael's rune screamed. Not in hunger—in *recognition*.
Valen charged.
Kael met him with the only weapon he had left—**desperation**.
He ducked under Valen's bladed sweep, rolling behind the resonator core. Valen's blades shrieked against the crystal, spraying sparks.
**"You took *everything*!"** Valen roared. **"My place! My future! Now you take my *humanity*?"**
His bladed arm pistoned forward. Kael twisted aside—but not fast enough. The tip ripped across his ribs. Blood soaked his tunic.
The pain ignited something primal in the rune.
***FEED ME.***
Kael slammed his bleeding palm against the resonator core.
**"NO!"** Silas's voice shrieked from the speakers.
Too late.
The core shattered.
Not an explosion—an **implosion** of light and silence. Indigo energy ripped free, howling toward Kael's rune. It devoured the light. The sound. The very *hope* in the room.
For a heartbeat, Kael saw the chains Lyss spoke of:
- Silvery threads binding Valen's mind to a pulsing nexus deep in the Academy Spire.
- Darker cords leashing the half-Forged to the resonator's wreckage.
- And woven through it all, a **vast, psychic web**—Silas's consciousness, cold and infinite.
***SOUL-SIGHT.***
Then the void-hunger overwhelmed him.
Kael screamed as power flooded his veins—too much, too fast. The rune wasn't just feeding. It was **drowning** him.
Valen staggered back, clutching his head. **"What… what is this? GET OUT OF MY MIND!"**
Lyss grabbed Kael's arm. **"Run! Before it consumes you!"**
They fled through service ducts as the lab collapsed. Behind them, Valen's agonized roar echoed—half-human, half-machine, wholly betrayed.
---
In the dripping tunnels, Kael collapsed. The Soul-Sight faded, but the vision remained: Silas's web, choking New Avalon.
Lyss pressed ore to his palm. **"You saw it. His cage for the world."**
Kael stared at his rune—now pulsing with stolen power. **"How do I break chains I can't touch?"**
**"You cut the weaver,"** Lyss said, her violet eyes reflecting the distant pulse of the Gates. **"Silas fears you. So we make him fear *more*."**
Above them, through layers of rock and ruin, the Academy Gates flared—one, then another, then another—until the sky burned indigo.
Answering Kael's rage.
End of chapter 11