2025-08-27 23:50:38
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Ch-217
The horizon shivered with unstable light, faint violet streaks pulsing along the jagged plains where the spire had once stood. Nathan led the team forward, the ring’s glow fading but still tethered to his pulse. Each step carried weight—the knowledge that the fracture might awaken elsewhere, that the devourer’s essence was ancient, cunning, and patient. Harper scanned the surrounding energy signatures, her aura flaring in sharp bursts whenever the residual echoes of the rift stirred. “It’s not completely gone,” she said, voice tight. “I can feel… residue. Lingering distortion.” Miko swore under his breath, brushing dust from his clothes. “Residual chaos. It’s like the spire exhaled, and some of it just… stayed. I don’t know how stable it is. Could collapse at any moment.” Nathan didn’t answer immediately. He stepped forward, walking the ridge where the spire had anchored itself. He knelt, placing his hand over the cracked stone that had survived the final sealing pulse. The ring
Ch-216
The violet light from Nathan’s ring burned into the spire, and the hollow swarm recoiled as if scalded. But the devourer’s voice surged louder, echoing inside their minds, twisting the very air: You cannot bind me. I am the fracture itself. I am the hunger that feeds on all beginnings. Nathan gritted his teeth. He felt the ring’s energy pulsing against his pulse, trying to push him away, trying to consume him as much as it consumed the spire. The fight wasn’t just outside—it was inside him, a battle for control over the prison’s energy. “Keep them back!” he shouted. Harper raised her arms, weaving a lattice of kinetic force, her aura flaring outward to hold the advancing hollows at bay. Sera, though mute, extended her empathy like a shield, dampening their ferocity and slowing their charge. Miko spun, sending waves of force outward, breaking the hollows into fragmented dust before they could regroup. But the deeper they pressed, the more the devourer’s voice clawed at their minds.
Ch-215
Nathan’s suspicions about the Syndicate had been circling for weeks, but when the encrypted servers inside the lower wing of Imperium suddenly went offline, he knew it wasn’t just a coincidence—it was war, and it had come inside his walls.The monitors in the operations room glowed red with cascading error codes. Harper slammed her palm against the desk. “Someone’s tunneled past three of our failsafes. This isn’t just probing, Nate—they’re inside.”Miko leaned closer to the screen, her eyes narrowing as she traced the packet flows. “Not Syndicate. Their style is usually brutal, heavy-handed. This is cleaner. Surgical. Whoever’s doing this is after something specific.”Nathan’s jaw tightened. He remembered the files they’d quarantined last month—evidence tying rogue elements in the Council to Syndicate fronts. If those were compromised, every step they’d taken in building the Sovereign alliance would collapse.“Seal the vault servers,” Nathan ordered. His voice was steady, but his hand
Ch-214
Nathan hadn’t even finished locking away the last of the files when the encrypted line on his desk tablet pulsed alive. No ID. No trace. Only one kind of person could break through his security like that. A distorted voice filtered through. “You think you’ve cleaned house, Nathan? You’ve only scraped the surface. The Syndicate never bleeds alone.” His spine stiffened. He didn’t answer, just listened. Static hissed, then the line cut. He stared at the dead screen, jaw locked. Someone was watching his moves, someone higher than the officers he’d just exposed. Before he could even breathe through the thought, Harper rushed into the office. Her face was pale, almost frantic. “The evidence vault—sector three—it’s gone. Wiped clean.” Nathan was already moving, boots echoing down the concrete corridor. The vault’s biometric doors stood open, the guards unconscious, their weapons stripped. Inside, racks of hard drives and classified documents were nothing but charred husks. Someone had m
Ch-213
The storm had passed, but the air remained heavy, thick with the smell of charred stone and something else—something tainted. Nathan stood at the edge of the ruined chamber, his boots crunching over shattered tiles. He hadn’t needed to call for his power this time. It had come unbidden, rushing into his veins as if the corruption itself had provoked it into existence. And now, after the fight, he could still feel it under his skin, restless, like embers refusing to cool.Bodies lay scattered across the floor—those of the corrupted cultists who had once served the Syndicate, their features twisted grotesquely by the unnatural power they had courted. A faint shimmer still clung to their skin, black veins pulsing as if even in death the corruption tried to claim dominion. Nathan crouched beside one, studying the corpse. He had expected rot, decay, some physical manifestation of the foul energy, but instead, he saw only… hunger. Their faces looked hollow, their eyes empty sockets where fi
Ch-212
The air in the underground chamber stank of damp stone and stale incense. Nathan moved slowly, tracing his gloved hand over the cracked murals etched into the walls. The place had been abandoned for years, yet the residue of power clung like ash. Sigils glowed faintly when his fingertips neared them, pulsing in time with his heartbeat. He hated how the corruption recognized him—like it already had a claim on his flesh.Behind him, Harper’s boots scraped the floor. She carried the lantern, its glow throwing long shadows across the chamber. Miko lingered near the doorway, quiet, his stance tense as a drawn bow. None of them spoke until Nathan crouched before the center of the room, where the broken remains of a mirror lay in jagged shards.“This is where they summoned it,” Nathan muttered. His reflection fractured across a dozen pieces of glass, each shard warping his face into something monstrous. “The corruption didn’t just seep in. It was invited.”Harper knelt beside him, her dark e
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