"We are not going up," Dver's voice echoed in the freezing cavern.Ren stopped, her hand resting on the hilt of her jagged obsidian blade. She looked back at Dver. His chest was fully sealed, leaving a jagged, pitch-black scar over his sternum that pulsed with the crushing gravity of his newly stabilized Singularity Core."Master?" Ren asked, her Void-corrupted eyes tracking the cold mist leaving his lips. "The Grand Elder is directly above us. He is wounded. His elites are dead."Dver looked up at the ceiling of the cavern, miles of solid bedrock separating them from the ruined arena. Those dead, infinite black holes swirled with a cold, calculating malice that had been sharpened by the Symbiotic link."A butcher does not slaughter a starving calf," Dver said smoothly. He turned away from the ceiling, looking toward the rushing, pitch-black waters of the subterranean river that led out into the wider world."Vane has drained the Outer Court. The Sect is wounded, paranoid, and poor,"

The imperial capital of Aethelgard, Veridia, was a sprawling blister of human ambition. It was a city of three million souls, choked with the smell of roasting meats, open sewers, and crushed spice.For the past week, Dver and Ren had vanished into its underbelly. They wore the unremarkable, rough-spun cloaks of traveling mercenaries. To the merchants and cutthroats, they were just another pair of cold-eyed drifters.But beneath the coarse fabric of his cloak, Dver's chest pulsed with the quiet, terrifying gravity of the Singularity Core. He was resting. Digesting.Until the air changed.Dver was sitting at a splintered wooden table in a crowded, smoke-filled tavern in the Lower Wards, casually peeling an apple with his obsidian dagger. Ren stood silently behind his chair, her Void-corrupted eyes scanning the room.Suddenly, the apple in Dver's hand turned perfectly, flawlessly ripe. The brown bruises on the skin vanished. The wood of the dead, splintered table beneath his elbows spro

Three weeks had passed since Dver stopped his own heart in the sunless catacombs.In the criminal underbelly of Veridia, three weeks was enough time to build an empire, provided you were willing to pave the streets with enough corpses.Ren sat behind a massive, dark-oak desk in the private chambers of the Black Dagger Guild. She wore a tailored suit of dark leather, an ash-grey cloak draped over her shoulders. Her pale skin and Void-corrupted eyes gave her the appearance of a beautiful, perfectly carved statue of a killer.Resting on the corner of the desk, serving as a rather morbid paperweight for a stack of bounty ledgers, was the severed head of the former Guildmaster."The perimeter is secured, Mistress Ren," a hulking assassin reported, keeping his eyes firmly glued to the floorboards. He was terrified. They all were. The girl hadn't just killed their boss; she had systematically slaughtered the top ten assassins in the city in a single night, using an art that literally dissolv

The bedrock beneath the Royal District of Veridia didn't just crack; it inverted.A fifty-foot geyser of pulverized stone, shattered sewer pipes, and black dust erupted directly through the cobblestone streets, annihilating three city blocks in a deafening, localized earthquake.From the center of the dust cloud, a streak of pale white and pitch black shot upward, moving with the terrifying, unchained velocity of a falling star moving in reverse.Dver crashed through the marble balcony of Duke Valerius's master suite, instantly vaporizing the reinforced glass doors into fine sand. He landed in the center of the Myrish rug. The sheer kinetic shockwave of his arrival flattened the opulent furniture and blew the heavy oak doors off their hinges.Dver slowly stood up. The dust settled around him.His dead, black-hole eyes swept the room. The Duke was still there, cowering in a corner, weeping in absolute terror. The bodies of the three guards lay rotting against the walls.But Ren was gon

The Royal District of Veridia was descending into chaos. Sirens wailed, and the shouts of the Imperial Guard echoed through the marble streets as they swarmed Duke Valerius's ruined estate.But Dver wasn't there.He had moved faster than sound, carrying Ren's limp, bleeding body away from the noise, away from the screaming Duke, and away from the blood-soaked rug. He landed on the highest point in the city: the jagged, stone spire of the forgotten Imperial Bell Tower, high above the smog and the panic.The night wind howled around them. Dver gently laid Ren against the cold stone.His chest was radiating a blinding, golden heat where he had absorbed the Inquisitor's wing. The celestial energy was churning inside his Singularity."I can fix it," Dver said. His voice was too fast. The smooth, sociopathic hum was gone, replaced by a frantic, vibrating tremor. He raised his hand, gathering the stolen, holy Genesis energy into his palm. "I will force the Law into your veins. I will restart