A rusted nail drove itself between his hemispheres. That was the only way to describe the pain. Kaelen collapsed, his knees cracking against the temple's stone floor. His hands grabbed at his own head. His newly formed metal claws dragged across his scalp, pulling out strands of hair as he tried to dig the agony out of his skull.A vision forced its way into his mind. It wasn't his. It was the residual memory of the Zealot he had just drained, a final insult before the man's Aether Core settled completely into Kaelen's chest.He saw a sky the color of infected blood. It was a violent, unnatural red, heavy with a suffocating heat. Massive, pulsing tendrils of golden light reached down from the heavens, sifting through the clouds like the fingers of a starving beggar. They found the earth. They sank deep into the crust of Aethelgard. The light wasn't a blessing. It was a feeding tube. The Sun God—the absolute truth of the Aegis Theocracy, the entity he had spent his life running from—wa