13 Heavens: Rise Of The Bloodline Dreg

The Changed World

Getting out of the Chasm was harder than getting in. The energy was wilder, thicker. The peaceful bubble around Elias's cave was gone, swallowed by the expanding purple glow.

Leo found the old hermit gone, the cave empty save for a few abandoned belongings. He’d fled, wisely.

Leo’s new heart the Breach Heart was the key. It didn't just beat; it hummed, a low, steady note that resonated with the chaotic energy around him.

When he focused, he could make the ambient energy bend away from him, creating a small pocket of calm. It was like being a shark in a shark-filled ocean; he smelled like them, he moved like them, and they left him alone.

He walked where beasts would have charged. He breathed air that would have driven others mad. The System was quiet, integrating the monumental change.

He felt stronger than ever, but the power was different. Darker. Quieter. It didn't flare; it pressed.

After a day of walking, he saw the change in the landscape. The edge of the Chasm had pushed outward.

Streets that were merely ruined before were now twisted into impossible shapes, glowing with inner light. The border was no longer clear. The cancer was spreading.

He finally broke through into a sector that was still recognizably New York shattered, but not yet transformed. The air cleared, the whispers faded, replaced by the familiar sounds of distant beasts and the hum of distant generators. He was back.

He found a broken mirror in the shell of a looted store. He looked… older. His eyes, which had always been a determined brown, now had faint, almost imperceptible rings of silver in the irises, like echoes of the Warden's gaze.

He looked harder. The softness of the desperate Reclaimer was gone, burned away.

He needed clothes. His Aetherius grey was torn and marked him as a target. He scavenged some dark, durable pants and a jacket from an abandoned supply cache. He looked like any other rough Hunter now.

He needed information. He needed to know what had happened in the weeks he'd been in the Chasm.

He headed for the only place he could think of: the Rusty Bolt Tavern.

---

The Rusty Bolt was louder, more crowded, and more tense than he remembered. The air smelled of fear and cheap stimulants.

Every screen on the wall was tuned to a news feed showing maps with expanding red zones the Chasm was growing, and fast.

Leo kept his head down, found a shadowy corner, and ordered a drink. He listened.

"…pushed back the Ironblood patrols at 86th Street…"

"…Sylvan Weavers are saying it's a 'spiritual corruption'…"

"…reward for any information on stable paths through the new Deadzone…"

"…seen Lia's team? They haven't checked in since the big push…"

Lia. Marc. Ben. Guilt stabbed him. He'd brought that Crystal-Stag down on them, then vanished.

Then, he heard a conversation at the next table that froze his blood.

"…not just beasts anymore," a grizzled Hunter with a missing ear was saying. "Saw one myself, out near the new edge. It looked… wrong. Not mutated. Built. Like metal and flesh fused together.

Moved in straight lines. Didn't care about cover. Just… absorbed a pulse rifle blast and kept coming."

"Rumor is the Aetherius have a prisoner," another Hunter, a woman, whispered. "Caught one of those things alive in a net of pure Qi. They've got it locked up in their tower, trying to figure out what it is."

Leo's new heart gave a single, hard thump. A prisoner. One of the mercury-colored things from the other side of the Breach? It was here already?

He had to see. He had to know.

He left the tavern and moved through the broken city towards Aetherius Tower. It was easier now. His senses were preternaturally sharp. He could feel the flow of energy around him, could tell where patrols were minutes before he saw them. He was a ghost.

He reached the district near the tower. Security was massive. More guards, drones in the air, scanning fields. They were terrified.

He couldn't get in the front door. But he remembered the service tunnels. The maintenance shafts.

His Breach-Heart hummed. He focused on the building's energy the precise, structured Qi of the Aetherius. To his new senses, it was a bright, loud pattern. He found a quiet spot, a drain cover leading to the sub-levels.

He focused, and pushed a subtle pulse of his own aligned energy at the electronic lock. His energy wasn't pure; it was invasive. It didn't unlock the mechanism. It convinced the mechanism it was already unlocked.

The cover popped open. He slid into the darkness.

He moved through the familiar, yet now tense, corridors of Sub-Level 2. He could feel a concentration of wrongness ahead a screeching, dissonant energy that grated against everything, even the chaotic pulse of his own heart.

It was coming from a heavily secured door labeled QUARANTINE CELL DELTA.

Two guards in full containment armor stood outside. Their auras were tight with fear.

Leo found a ventilation shaft above the corridor. He moved silently, his body stronger and more controlled than ever. He peered through a grate down into the quarantine room.

Inside, under blinding white lights, was a containment field a cage of humming, golden energy.

Inside the cage was the prisoner.

It was about the size of a large dog. It had no clear shape. It was a shifting mass of that tarnished mercury-colored substance, constantly forming and dissolving crude limbs, sensory clusters, and razor-sharp probes.

It had no face, but it pressed itself against the energy field in one spot, as if staring at the Aetherius technicians on the other side.

One technician, wearing a hazard suit, was using a robotic arm to extend a sensor probe into the cage.

The moment the probe crossed the energy field, the entity moved. Faster than the eye could follow. A tendril lashed out, not at the probe, but along it. The mercury substance flowed like water up the robotic arm, against all physical logic.

The technician yelled, trying to retract the arm. It was too late.

The substance reached the control housing outside the cage. It didn't smash it. It seeped into the ports and circuitry.

The golden energy field flickered. Then died.

The quarantine cell door hissed open.

The entity didn't rush out. It poured. It flowed into the room in a liquid wave.

The technicians screamed. The guards opened fire with pulse rifles. The bolts hit the mercury substance and were absorbed, making it glow briefly before it settled, unharmed.

It reached the first technician. It flowed up his legs. He screamed, beating at it, but his hands sank into it.

Where it touched, his hazard suit and the skin beneath didn't burn they transformed, turning into the same mercurial substance, joining the mass.

In seconds, he was gone, absorbed. The entity was slightly larger.

The other technician turned to run. A whip-like tendril shot out, wrapping around his ankle, pulling him back into the horror.

The guards were backing towards the door Leo was hidden above, firing wildly. "It's learning! It's adapting!" one yelled.

The entity, now having consumed two humans, seemed to… solidify. It formed a more humanoid shape, with two legs, two arms, a crude head. It looked at its new hands, flexing fingers made of shifting metal.

Then, it turned its blank, mercurial face towards the two remaining guards. And it spoke.

The voice was a horrible parody of the technicians' voices, stitched together with static and the chittering sound from the Breach.

"ASSIMILATION," it grated. "OPTIMAL. CONTINUE."

It took a step forward.

One guard broke, running for the main corridor. The entity's hand shot out, elongating into a spear that punched clean through the man's chest armor and out his back. He crumpled.

The last guard stood frozen, weapon shaking.

The entity tilted its head. "DATA: DEFENSIVE FORMATS. INEFFICIENT. YOUR ENERGY SIGNATURE… FAMILIAR."

It was looking past the guard, its senses expanding. It was looking for the source of the Aetherius Qi in the building.

Its blank face turned upwards.

It looked directly at the ventilation grate where Leo was hidden.

Its head tilted again.

"NO," it buzzed, the static in its voice rising with something like recognition. "NOT FAMILIAR.… ANTITHETICAL. BREACH-BEARER. PRIMARY TARGET."

Leo’s blood ran cold. It knew him. It knew what he was.

The entity lost all interest in the guard. It dissolved into a liquid wave and surged towards the wall beneath Leo's vent, starting to climb.

Leo didn't wait. He dropped from the vent, landing in the corridor behind the stunned guard.

"RUN!" he roared, shoving the man towards the exit.

Leo turned to face the wall as the mercury entity flowed over the top and reconstituted in front of him, blocking his path to the door. It was between him and escape.

It studied him, its form shimmering.

"BREACH-BEARER," it repeated. "YOUR HEART… RESONATES. YOU WILL BE THE CONDUIT. YOU WILL OPEN THE WAY WIDER."

It reached for him, its hand shifting into a multi-pronged grabber.

Leo had no weapons. He had only the new, dark power in his chest.

He did the only thing he could think of. He didn't try to hit it. He focused his will and pulsed his Breach-Heart.

A wave of silent, dark energy emanated from him. It wasn't an attack. It was a command. The same energy he'd used to seal the fracture. A command of REJECTION.

The wave hit the entity.

For the first time, it reacted with something other than hunger. It recoiled, its surface rippling violently. The command resonated with the Breach-energy that comprised it, confusing its fundamental purpose.

It shrieked, the sound a physical blow in the confined space.

But it didn't dissolve. It adapted. It hardened its surface, shielding itself from the resonance.

"RESISTANCE," it buzzed, interested. "DATA: VALUABLE. ASSIMILATION PRIORITY: MAXIMUM."

It lunged again, faster.

Leo was fast, but it was faster. A tendril wrapped around his wrist. Instantly, a cold numbness spread up his arm. He could feel his skin and muscle starting to destabilize, to change.

He was going to be consumed, turned into more of this thing.

Then, from the doorway, a blast of pure, silver-white Qi, precise as a laser, sliced through the tendril holding him.

The severed mercurial substance fell to the floor and writhed into nothing.

Leo stumbled back, clutching his numb wrist. Standing in the doorway, her stormy eyes wide with shock and fury, her hands glowing with complex geometric light, was Analyst Cora.

She looked from the entity to Leo, her mind clearly struggling to process the scene.

"Kaelen?" she breathed. Then her eyes hardened, locking onto the abomination before her. "What have you done?"