Gravity was a weapon, and Kaelen Vance was the bullet.
She didn't scream as she plummeted toward the black glass lake. Screaming was a waste of breath, and she needed every ounce of air to fuel the borrowed magic burning in her lungs. The stolen memory of the Silencer—the gravity mage she had consumed on the rooftops—was a jagged, metallic taste in her throat, demanding release.
Below her, Lord Arcanist Sterling looked up from his blood-painting. His face, the face of a man who should have been dead for sixty years, didn't show fear. It showed curiosity.
"A kinetic entry," Sterling mused, his voice amplified by the cavern's acoustics. "How dramatic."
Kae hit the ground ten feet from him. She didn't land; she detonated.
She released the gravity spell in a concentrated sphere of force. The impact shattered the black glass floor, sending shards of obsidian flying like shrapnel. The shockwave slammed into Sterling, lifting him off his feet and throwing him against the massive bone Door.
He hit the white surface with a sickening crack, leaving a smear of golden blood on the bone.
Kae rose from the crater of her own making. Her velvet gown was shredded, her boots were caked in dust, and her eyes were burning with a violet, radioactive intensity.
"Check," she rasped, her voice layered with the distortion of the Dreg.
Valerius dropped down beside her a second later, having slid down a stalactite formation. He looked small without his armor, armed only with a knife, but he moved with the predatory grace of a wolf cornering a bear.
Sterling groaned. He slid down the face of the Door, clutching his ribs. The golden tattoos on his pale skin writhed, trying to knit his broken bones back together.
"You broke my concentration," Sterling wheezed, wiping golden ichor from his lip. "Do you have any idea how difficult it is to conduct a symphony when the audience keeps throwing chairs?"
"We're canceling the show," Valerius said, stepping forward. "Step away from the Door, Sterling. You are bleeding out. You don't have the mana to fight us."
Sterling laughed. It wasn't the booming laugh of the Laughing God; it was a dry, hacking chuckle.
"I am not fighting you, Inquisitor. I am simply the stage manager." He looked at the golden blood smearing the floor—his own essence, leaking away. "And you are right. I am running low on fuel. But fortunately..."
He dipped his fingers into the pool of golden blood at his feet.
"...I remember everyone I've ever killed. And unlike your Mindsink, I don't digest my meals. I keep them."
Sterling slammed his hand onto the shattered glass floor.
"Rise."
The golden blood hissed. It bubbled and boiled, expanding outward in spidery veins. It didn't just flow; it stood up. The liquid coalesced, defying gravity, weaving itself into shapes. Muscles formed from light. Bones formed from mana.
Two figures pulled themselves out of the golden puddles.
Kae froze. The breath caught in her throat, turning to ice.
The first figure was tall, wearing a tattered grey asylum gown. Its eyes were sewn shut with shimmering golden thread. It tilted its head, sniffing the air with a nose that had been broken and healed a dozen times.
The White Queen.
"No," Kae whispered, stepping back. "I sank her. I ate the memory. She's gone."
She is gone, the Voice in her head agreed, sounding agitated. This isn't her soul, Kaelen. It's a recording. A hollow loop. Don't let it fool you.
The second figure was shorter, wearing a pristine grey Guild uniform and a porcelain mask painted with a vertical black line. The Silencer—the gravity mage Kae had blasted off the roof in the Tanyard.
"Recycling," Valerius cursed, tightening his grip on his knife. "He's summoning echoes."
"I told you," Sterling said, leaning back against the Door, looking pale but triumphant. "The cast is never truly gone. They just wait in the wings."
He pointed a shaking finger at Kae.
"Entertain them."
The Golden White Queen shrieked—a sound of pure sonic dissonance—and lunged.
Kae didn't have time to think. She raised her arms, instinctively trying to summon a gravity shield, but she was empty. She had used the last of the Silencer's power to survive the fall.
The Queen hit her, driving her into the dirt. The golden hands, hot as branding irons, wrapped around Kae's throat.
"Hungry," the construct mimicked, its voice a perfect, cruel copy of Elena Vance. "So hungry."
Kae thrashed, kicking at the construct. It felt different than the corpse in the Cathedral. It didn't feel like cold meat; it felt like burning oil. It was searing her skin.
"Valerius!" Kae choked out.
Valerius was busy. The Silencer construct had engaged him. The Inquisitor was fast, dodging a gravity-hammer blow that pulverized the rock where he had been standing. He rolled, slashing at the construct's leg with his knife, but the blade passed through the golden form as if it were water, sizzling on contact.
"Physical attacks are useless!" Valerius shouted, scrambling back. "They're pure energy!"
Eat it, the Voice commanded. It's mana, Kaelen. It's pure, high-grade Arcanist blood magic. It's spicy, but it's edible.
It's my mother, Kae thought, frantically holding back the burning hands.
It is a picture of your mother drawn in poison, the Voice snapped. Drink the poison or die.
Kae looked up into the sewn-shut eyes of the golden construct. She felt the heat radiating off it. This wasn't Elena. This was Sterling's arrogance given form.
She stopped fighting the hands. She grabbed the construct's wrists.
Kae opened her jaw—the psychic maw that lived in the back of her skull. She didn't try to find a memory this time. She just found the energy.
SINK.
She inhaled.
It didn't taste like lavender or milk. It tasted like molten gold and ozone. It seared her tongue, burning down her throat like a shot of boiling whiskey.
The White Queen shrieked, her form destabilizing. The golden light was sucked into Kae's palms, drawn up her arms in glowing veins.
Kae screamed as the power hit her system. It was too much. It was volatile.
"Vance!" Valerius yelled, distracted.
The Silencer construct took advantage of the distraction. It raised a hand, and Valerius was lifted off the ground by a surge of gravity. He hung suspended in the air, choking, his limbs splayed.
"Crush him," Sterling ordered lazily.
Kae scrambled to her feet. The White Queen was gone, consumed. Kae felt like she was vibrating. The golden blood-magic was fighting the black Dreg in her system, creating a war inside her veins.
She looked at Valerius. He was turning purple.
She couldn't reach him in time.
But she wasn't the only thing hunting in the dark.
From the tunnel entrance above—the high ledge they had jumped from—a sound echoed. A skittering, wet sound.
Skritch. Skritch. Splash.
Small, hunched shapes began to pour over the edge of the cliff, crawling down the vertical rock face with unnatural stickiness.
"Shiny," a wet voice hissed.
"Warm," another croaked.
The Mud-Larks.
They hadn't fled the service tunnels. They had followed the scent. To a scavenger born in the filth of the estuary, the smell of Lord Arcanist Sterling's spilled mana-blood was like chum in the water.
Dozens of them. Pale, mutated children of the pollution, their eyes wide and hungry.
Sterling's eyes widened. "What...?"
"Dinner is served," Kae gasped, smoke curling from her lips.
The Mud-Larks hit the floor and swarmed. They didn't attack Kae—she still smelled like a predator. They didn't attack Valerius—he was meat, but he was boring.
They attacked the glowing, golden Silencer construct.
They threw themselves onto the gravity mage, biting and tearing with teeth that could chew through rusted iron. They didn't care that the mana burned their mouths. They were starving.
The Silencer flailed, its gravity magic unfocused as twenty scavengers ripped it apart, drinking the spell-work that held it together.
The gravity hold on Valerius broke. He dropped to the floor, gasping for air.
"Filth!" Sterling roared, pushing himself off the Door. He waved his hand, incinerating three Mud-Larks with a wave of fire, but five more took their place, drawn to the fresh blood leaking from his side. "Get away from me!"
Kae saw her opening.
She stepped over the dissolving remains of the White Queen. The golden power she had absorbed was buzzing in her fingertips, demanding a target.
"You're out of pieces, Sterling," she said, her voice doubling with the Voice's baritone.
She didn't use gravity. She didn't use a blast.
She reached out and grabbed the air, imagining the invisible connection between Sterling and the Door—the tether he was using to feed it.
Sever it, the Voice whispered.
Kae visualized the line. She grabbed it with her mind and pulled.
Sterling screamed. He arched his back, blood spraying from his nose. The connection snapped.
But instead of the energy dissipating, it snapped back. The massive bone Door, deprived of its steady drip of mana, reacted.
The heartbeat stopped.
THUMP.
A sound like a cracking tectonic plate echoed through the cistern.
The Mud-Larks scattered, screeching, fleeing back into the shadows. Valerius scrambled backward, dragging himself over the glass shards.
The Door didn't open. It inhaled.
A vacuum force, stronger than any gravity spell, suddenly pulled at the room. The air was sucked toward the bone surface. The dust. The loose glass.
And Kaelen.
"Vance!" Valerius shouted, driving his knife into the ground to anchor himself.
Kae dug her heels in, but she wasn't just being pulled physically. She was being pulled metaphysically. The "Cipher" in her head—the key Sterling had planted—was vibrating, magnetizing her to the lock.
She slid across the floor, her boots carving grooves in the stone.
Sterling was laughing again. He was on his knees, blood pouring from his eyes, but he was pointing at her.
"I told you!" he howled over the roar of the vacuum. "I cannot open it! Only the empty vessel can open it! You are the key, Kaelen! Go home!"
Kae slid past him. She reached out, her hand scrabbling for purchase.
Her fingers brushed the white bone of the Door.
Instant silence.
The vacuum stopped. The wind died.
Kae stood there, her hand pressed against the cold, smooth surface of the Door. She couldn't move. She was frozen, glued to the spot.
She felt something on the other side. It wasn't a monster. It wasn't a god.
It was a memory.
But it wasn't her memory. It was older. It was ancient. It was a memory of the city before it was a city. A memory of a sky that burned and a ground that sang.
And then, the Door cracked.
Just a hairline fracture. A sliver of absolute darkness appeared down the center of the bone slab.
From that sliver, a single tendril of black mist curled out. It didn't drift away. It wrapped around Kaelen's wrist.
It felt like a handshake.
Hello, a new voice whispered. It wasn't the Passenger. It wasn't the Banker. It was something vast and amused. Are you the one who knocked?
Kae tried to pull away, but the tendril tightened. It was pulling her in.
"Valerius!" she screamed, the terror finally breaking through her apathy.
Valerius was there. He lunged, grabbing her other hand, digging his feet into the cracks of the floor. He hauled back with all his strength.
"I've got you!" he gritted out.
"Let her go!" Sterling shrieked, crawling toward them. "She belongs to the Void!"
Sterling grabbed Kae's ankle.
Now she was the rope in a tug-of-war between an Inquisitor, a madman, and a God.
The Door groaned. The crack widened.
And from the darkness within, Kaelen Vance saw a pair of eyes open. They were violet. Just like hers.
Room for one more, the Ancient Voice chuckled.
The suction redoubled. Valerius's grip slipped on her wet sleeve. Sterling's nails dug into her boot.
"No," Kae whispered.
She made a choice.
She didn't pull against the Door. She didn't pull against Valerius.
She kicked Sterling in the face.
The impact broke his nose. He flinched, his grip loosening for a fraction of a second.
"Valerius, let go!" she shouted.
"Never!"
"Trust me!"
She twisted her hand, breaking Valerius's grip.
The Inquisitor fell back.
Kae flew forward, not away from the door, but into it. She slammed her shoulder into the crack, into the darkness, into the mist.
But she didn't go through. She wedged herself in the breach.
She became the doorstop.
She flared her Dreg-power, the golden blood-magic, and every scrap of hunger she possessed. She turned herself into a living seal, blocking the entity trying to push its way out.
The violet eyes in the dark blinked.
Oh, the Ancient Voice said, sounding delighted. A blockage. How rude.
Then, the world turned white.