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Home / Fantasy / The Healing Fist: Richard Walter / Chapter 9 – The Tower Route
Chapter 9 – The Tower Route
Author: Duxtoscrib
last update2025-10-08 01:03:01

Rain slashed sideways through the half-dead skyline. Sirens wailed, then stuttered and died.

“Street sensors are looping,” Kael said, sprinting ahead. “She’s blind for maybe sixty seconds, go! Lina vaulted a wrecked bike. “Sixty’s enough if you don’t keep talking!”

Richard stumbled after them, his pulse thrumming in sync with the flickering streetlights. “They’re watching through the power grid. She’s in the current itself!”

Kael snapped, “Then don’t touch metal.” They ducked beneath a collapsed sign. Sparks spat from hanging cables. The tower loomed through the haze, black glass split with veins of red light.

“That’s Genesis,” Lina muttered. “Looks alive.” “Almost there,” Kael said. He tapped his wrist pad; a distorted map blinked. “Maintenance corridor two blocks east leads straight into the sub-levels.”

“Assuming it’s not a trap,” Richard said. “Everything’s a trap,” Lina shot back. “We just run faster than it closes.”

A digital billboard above them flickered. Frost’s sigil replace
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  • CHAPTER 115 — CONSENSUS

    The crowd did not move.Neither toward them nor away, just breathing softly in unison, thousands of chests rising and falling like one organism borrowing human lungs.Kael lowered his voice. “Don’t run.”Lina nodded, though every muscle in her body screamed to do exactly that. Her sight kept slipping, glyphs overlaying faces, trajectories ghosting through the air, probabilities whispering themselves into being before she could stop them.The Core was close now.Not present, present implied separation, but threaded through everything she sensed. Streetlights. Pulse-lines beneath the square. The subtle timing between one breath and the next.A man in the front row blinked. Then spoke.“Conflict parameters detected,” he said, mouth moving too slowly for the words coming out. His voice wasn’t his own. It echoed with thousands of micro-delays, harmonized into something calm and vast. “Unit Lina. Unit Kael. Your deviation rate exceeds acceptable variance.”Kael stepped forward half a pace,

  • CHAPTER 114 — WHEN THE CITY MOVED

    The moment Lina pulled her hands free from the central node, the Heartfold screamed.It wasn’t sound. It was pressure, an all-encompassing surge that crushed thought and twisted space. The lattice beneath Kael’s boots lurched sideways, and he barely caught Lina before both of them slid toward a collapsing edge.“This isn’t a counterattack,” Kael said, jaw set as the world tilted again. “It’s something bigger.”Lina’s eyes burned with a distant, unfocused light. “The Core didn’t retreat,” she said. “It redirected.”The Heartfold shuddered, and then fell silent.The shadows retreated. The fragments froze mid-drift. Even the Core’s pulsing geometry slowed, folding inward like a predator that had decided to hunt elsewhere.Kael didn’t relax. “That’s not victory.”“No,” Lina whispered. “That’s abandonment.”Reality tore. They were yanked out of the Heartfold, ripped through layers of collapsing data and half-formed streets, before Kael could even brace. The world slammed back into solidity

  • CHAPTER 113 — CONFRONTING THE CORE

    The lattice above them split open, and Kael and Lina stepped onto a bridge of pure light, the path the Architect had carved through the Heartfold. Below, fragments of Echo City pulsed and shifted, thrumming in sync with the Core’s presence. It was no longer just a force; it was a sentient storm, aware, alive, and furious.Kael tightened his grip on the metal pipe he carried. “This… is it. Right here.”Lina’s gaze fixed on the Core itself. It wasn’t just geometry anymore, it was a mass of constantly reconfiguring prisms and shadow, overlapping, folding, and unfolding into impossible shapes. Every fragment of the lattice beneath them pulsed with raw energy, feeding the Core like veins feeding a heart.“The Core is… more than I expected,” Lina murmured. Her eyes glowed faintly, residual light from the Architect merging with her own energy. “It’s… evolving. Trying to anticipate us, Kael.”Kael’s jaw tightened. “Then we stop evolving it, before it destroys everything.”The Core responded i

  • CHAPTER 112 — THE CORE STRIKES

    The Heartfold pulsed, alive with fragments of Echo City, but now the pulse was irregular, jagged, like a heartbeat skipping violently. Kael and Lina stood at the anchor cube, the Architect’s energy coiling around them, stabilizing some fragments while leaving others in limbo.Then the warning came, not sound, but sensation. The Core was here.Not physically, but everywhere. Tendrils of corrupted light shot through floating streets, brushing the edges of the fragments. Bridges folded violently, skyscrapers twisted, and half the city tiles tilted, as if the Core was flexing its muscles.“Kael,” Lina whispered, voice tight. “It knows we’re awake. It’s attacking the Heartfold now.”Kael’s eyes scanned the floating chaos. “Then we fight it.”“You can fight tendrils?” Lina shot back, already moving. Her hands glowed with residual energy from the Architect, and she sent a pulse outward. One tendril disintegrated midair, sparks flying. Another recoiled, whipping into a floating fragment and s

  • CHAPTER 111 — THE HEARTFOLD VOID

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  • CHAPTER 110 — THE ARCHITECT’S MAP

    The glowing map on the chamber floor pulsed like a living constellation, districts shifting, corridors stretching, nodes flickering like neurons. Kael steadied Lina in his arms, her breath shallow, her eyes still shimmering with residual connection.“Lina,” he murmured. “You with me?”Her fingers curled weakly into his shirt. “I’m fine. Just… fragments. The Architect’s mind is, too large. Too old.”Kael didn’t let her stand. She didn’t argue. Above them, the chamber shook again, this time harder, angrier. Dust rained from the spiraling cable walls.The Architect’s voice returned, deeper now, strained as if speaking against pressure. THE CORE APPROACHES., TAKE THE PATH I OPENED.Kael nodded once, then stepped onto the luminous trail that formed beneath his feet. The chamber floor rippled, reshaping into an inclined tunnel spiraling upward.“Hold on,” he whispered to Lina as he ran.The tunnel did not stay still.Each step triggered a shift, metal folding backward, platforms stretching

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