Stagger presses close to Ash, head swiveling at every creak and groan from the forest. The huge boy does not seem to mind, his kiran held ready to protect them both.
Up front, Flint moves with practiced ease, each step measured and careful, testing the ground before committing his weight.
My hand rises to my torq without conscious thought, fingers tracing the metal still warm against my skin. The glyphs burned themselves into my awareness moments ago, sharp and precise despite their impossible origin:
Energy Assimilated: +6 Units.
Six units. The arithmetic unfolds without effort: two Xal'rith murdered by my own hand, two warriors half-consumed by the Skathrith before I could intervene. Simple enough. But units of what? The torq hums faintly under my touch, responding to the question I have not spoken aloud, and I feel the answer waiting just beyond my understanding, close enough to taste.
The ground drops away beneath me.
Not physically. My feet still move forward on metallic earth, still match the Armigers' pace ahead. But inward I am falling, sinking through layers of awareness I did not know existed. The torq's presence expands around me like a vast mouth opening wide. At the bottom of that fall waits knowledge I am suddenly, desperately certain I am not ready to possess.
No.
My attention wrenches outward, forcing my eyes to focus on Stagger's nervous gait ahead, on the way Ash's hand hovers protectively near the smaller boy's shoulder. The forest solidifies around me again. The falling sensation fades, and my fingers drop from the torq. The question remains unanswered. I do not reach for it again.
"You are breathing too loud." Edge's hiss cuts through the metallic silence.
"And you are paranoid again." Wren's voice stays low despite the retort. "At least I am not jumping at shadows."
"Both of you, quiet." Flint does not look back.
The forest's hum grows deeper, vibrating through my bones until my teeth ache with it. The Skathrith responds with matching frequency, its edge pulsing in time like a second heartbeat I never asked for.
Binah drifts beside me, silent and present, both familiar and utterly alien in the way she moves through this place without leaving trace or shadow.
We round a twisted corpse of metal trees, and the structures that rise before us defy reality itself. Obsidian spires curve and twist like frozen smoke, their surfaces both rough as bark and smooth as glass in ways that make depth impossible to judge. Half-organic shapes bulge from walls like tumors while geometric patterns cut precise lines through the chaos, creating architecture that exists in deliberate contradiction with itself. My eyes hurt trying to follow their angles.
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Above it all stretches the glass ceiling, something I had noticed before distantly, the way you notice sky without thinking. But here, standing in the clearing before the Xal'rith village, it dominates everything. Vast sheets of crystalline material curve overhead in impossible geometries, neither quite transparent nor quite reflective, existing in some state between that makes depth uncertain and distance impossible to judge.
A false sun hangs embedded in the glass, or perhaps beyond it. Distance proves equally uncertain. Its light casts no proper shadows, and everything glows with flat, directionless illumination that makes my eyes water when I try to focus. The light feels wrong and artificial, like staring at a painting of sunlight rather than the thing itself.
Flint raises his fist and everyone drops into defensive positions. My gaze traces the Xal'rith markings etched into surrounding trees, watching them pulse with faint, sickly light that matches the rhythm of the forest's hum. The village appears deserted.
The air feels thick and heavy, pressing against my skin like an invisible current, and the Skathrith stirs in response. Hungry. Drawn to the latent energy that saturates this place.
Flint signals forward. We advance slowly with weapons ready, moving between alien structures that loom overhead like the ribs of some ancient beast, mechanical and long dead.
The village's architecture hurts to perceive. Nothing follows natural laws here: walkways spiral at impossible angles, doorways twist into themselves, and what might be windows look more like wounds torn in reality. These spaces were not made for bodies like mine.
My ribs ache where they were broken and healed, though the memory burns brighter than the pain ever did.
"It is like this place was built to trap anything not... them." Wren's voice quivers slightly. His hand runs along a wall that seems to pulse beneath his touch.
Edge lets out a derisive snort. His hands have not left his kiran. "Everything appears as a trap to you."
The Skathrith's hum intensifies, resonating with the village's strange energy until its hunger bleeds into my thoughts, recognizing something familiar in these alien structures. Something it has tasted before.
"Split up. Search pattern alpha." Flint's command cuts through my unease. "Ash, take Stagger. Wren with Edge." His eyes fix on me. "You are with me, Optimate."
Binah melts into shadows as the pairs disperse.
Ash leads Stagger toward what appears to be a gathering space, their footsteps echoing strange on metallic ground. They pause at scattered objects. Tools, perhaps, shaped like fragments of bone.
"Look at these markings." Stagger calls out softly, pointing to intricate patterns carved into walls.
Across the village, Wren and Edge investigate a jagged structure that can only be an altar, deep channels running down its sides, stained with ancient purpose.
"An excellent place for prayer." Edge's voice remains flat.
Wren traces the grooves with trembling fingers. "This was not just a home. It was a temple."
Flint follows close behind as I approach the central spire. The Skathrith pulses stronger here, drawing me toward the twisted monument.
My hand finds the surface.
Wrongness floods through me. Immediate and cold. Alive in ways that violate natural law. Echoes of alien thoughts wash over me: cold calculating intelligence, endless consuming hunger. The Skathrith drinks them in. Recognition resonates through our bond.
My hand jerks back, sharp and fast. The wrongness lingers on my palm like oil. Cold and alive and knowing. The Skathrith pulses against my consciousness, drinking in those echoes with recognition that makes my skin crawl.
Kin.
The thought rises unbidden. Not mine.
I force it down and refuse it, my hand finding the torq instead, seeking the anchor that pulled me back before. The solid reality of metal against skin. The physical proof that I am still myself. Still separate from—
Instead, the ground vanishes.
This is not the gentle pull from before. This is a plunge; my stomach lurches with the terrible velocity of it. Falling through myself. Through the bond. Through layers of awareness that peel away like skin. The torq expands around me, vast and otherworldly.
The torq burns cold against my throat.
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Shattered Empire is 20 chapters ahead on Patreon, and that’s only the beginning.
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Nightbreak (Patreon-exclusive)
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Ablations (ongoing)