The Thirteen Knight

Chapter 19: The Anatomy of Ghosts

The deeper you went into the Academy, the colder it got.

Most students knew about the classrooms in the spires and the dorms on the surface. Few knew about the Sub-Basement. It was three levels below the dungeons, carved directly into the bedrock of the mountain.

The elevator rattled as it descended. I watched the floor numbers tick down on the rusted analog dial: B1, B2, B3... B4.

The doors slid open with a hiss of decompressed air.

The smell hit me first. It didn't smell like a school. It smelled like formaldehyde, ozone, and copper. It smelled like a hospital where the patients didn't recover.

I stepped out into a long, white corridor. My boots squeaked on the pristine tile. I felt naked. For the first time in weeks, I didn't have the weight of the Apostate Drive against my ribs. It was safe in Randar’s lead vault, and I was here, walking into the lion’s den with nothing but a screwdriver in my pocket.

"Name?"

I jumped. A security golem—a construct of brass and glass with a floating blue skull for a head—blocked the path.

"Cadet Chase Royce," I said, showing my new ID badge. "Reporting for duty with Professor Kael."

The skull’s eyes spun. "Access Granted. Proceed to Containment Lab 1. Do not touch the glass."

I walked past the golem. The walls were lined with windows looking into containment cells. I tried not to look, but I couldn't help it.

In the first cell, a sword floated in mid-air, dripping blood that never hit the floor. In the second, a flower made of crystal pulsed with a heartbeat.

In the third, a creature that looked like a flayed imp was strapped to a table, twitching.

I swallowed bile and kept walking. This wasn't a classroom. This was a chop shop for magic.

I reached the double doors at the end of the hall. They slid open automatically.

Professor Kael was waiting.

He wasn't what I expected. I pictured a mad scientist with wild hair. Kael was immaculate. He was tall and gaunt, wearing a lab coat that was impossibly white. He wore thin, wire-rimmed glasses, and his hair was slicked back with military precision.

He was standing over a large, circular table, adjusting the lenses of a massive microscope.

"You're late, Mr. Royce," he said, without looking up. His voice was soft, melodic, and terrifyingly calm.

"I... the elevator was slow, sir," I stammered. "And it's 05:59."

"Entropy waits for no one," Kael murmured. He stepped back from the microscope and turned to face me.

His eyes were grey. Not blue-grey or storm-grey. Flat, dead grey. Like standing water.

"Commander Vane tells me you are a curiosity," Kael said, walking around the table. He moved with a strange, gliding grace. "A Null with a talent for kinetics. She believes you might be useful in handling... sensitive materials."

"I just fix pipes, Professor," I said, sticking to the script.

"We shall see."

Kael picked up a pair of heavy rubber gloves and tossed them to me.

"Put these on. We have a delivery from the incident in Sector 7."

My heart skipped a beat. Sector 7. The site where I had fought as the Knight.

Kael pressed a button on the console. A heavy blast shield retracted from the wall, revealing a pedestal.

On the pedestal sat a jagged piece of metal. It was black, twisted, and scorched.

I recognized it immediately.

It was a fragment of the Hellhound’s collar. The one I had crushed.

"This object," Kael said, pointing a laser at it, "is infused with a highly volatile demonic residue. If a mage touches it, their own mana reacts with the corruption. The result is usually instant necrosis of the hand."

He looked at me.

"Pick it up."

I stared at the metal. "Sir?"

"You are a Null, aren't you?" Kael smiled thinly. "You have no mana to react. To you, it should be nothing but scrap metal. Unless, of course... you aren't actually a Null."

It was a test. Vane had told him to check me.

If I refused, I looked guilty. If I picked it up and my skin reacted—because of the trace amounts of Apostate energy still in my blood—I was dead.

I put on the gloves.

"The gloves are for hygiene, not protection," Kael noted. "Proceed."

I walked to the pedestal. The metal shard looked angry. Faint purple wisps of smoke curled off it.

I took a breath. I forced my mind to go blank. I imagined I was just back in the maintenance shed, picking up a rusty bolt.

I reached out and grabbed the shard.

It was cold. Freezing cold.

I felt a tingle in my arm—the arm I had scrubbed with acid. The nerves twitched. The residue in my blood wanted to answer the call of the demonic metal. The Apostate energy wanted to consume it.

I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted copper. I forced my hand to stay steady. I didn't let the energy flare. I was a rock. I was a void.

Nothing happened. The metal remained inert in my hand. No explosion. No necrosis.

Kael watched me like a hawk. He leaned in, staring at my hand.

"Fascinating," he whispered. "Zero reaction. Absolute insulation."

He gestured to a containment bin. "Place it there."

I dropped the shard into the bin. Clang.

"Good," Kael said, turning back to his microscope. "Very good. You are exactly what I need."

I exhaled, my knees shaking slightly. "Is that all, sir?"

"Hardly."

Kael tapped a screen. The room darkened. A hologram appeared in the center of the lab. It was a schematic.

"I am working on a project, Chase. Project Aethelgard. We are attempting to reverse-engineer the biological weapons used by the Demon realm."

The schematic rotated. It showed a suit of armor.

My blood froze.

It wasn't the Apostate Knight armor. It was clunky, crude, and covered in tubes. It looked like a medieval torture device crossed with a steam engine.

"The Academy believes that the only way to defeat the demons is to understand their integration of flesh and metal," Kael lectured. "We have been trying to build a suit that can harness demonic energy without killing the pilot."

He looked at me.

"We have failed eighteen times. The pilots always die. Their mana interacts with the fuel source and burns them alive."

He walked closer to me, his grey eyes gleaming with a manic light.

"But you... you have no mana to burn."

He placed a hand on my shoulder. His grip was surprisingly strong.

"Vane thinks you're a spy. I think you're a key."

"A key to what?" I whispered.

"To the future," Kael said. "I want you to be the primary mechanic for the Prototype. I want you to help me build the next generation of God-Killers."

He pointed to a massive curtain at the back of the lab.

"Open it."

I walked over to the curtain. I pulled the chain. The heavy fabric parted.

I gasped.

Hanging from heavy chains was a monstrosity. It was a twelve-foot-tall suit of armor made of stitched-together demon hide and scavenged steel. It had no grace, no elegance. It was a butcher’s tool.

And in the chest cavity, where a heart should be, was an empty socket.

"It needs a power source," Kael said, standing behind me. "We recovered something from the desert last year. A core. But every time we try to install it, the magnetic field kills the technicians."

He handed me a heavy wrench.

"You can walk through the field, Chase. You can install the core."

"Not today," he added, seeing my terrified expression. "Today, you just clean the hydraulic lines. But soon."

He patted my back.

"Welcome to the Artifact Recovery Unit. Try not to die."

Kael returned to his desk, humming a tuneless song.

I stood there, looking at the monstrosity. It was a pale imitation of the Apostate Knight. A grotesque copy.

But if they finished it... if they made a suit that could channel demon energy...

And if they found out I had the real source of that power sitting in a safe in Randar’s workshop...

I was in deep trouble.

I grabbed a rag and started cleaning the hydraulic lines of the prototype. As I worked, I noticed something etched into the inner chassis of the suit. Tiny runes.

I leaned closer. They weren't magic runes. They were serial numbers.

MFG: VANE HEAVY INDUSTRIES.

I almost dropped the wrench.

Vane wasn't just the Commander of the Guard. Her family built weapons.

This wasn't just about defending the school. This was an arms race. And Vane and Kael were trying to build their own demons.

I needed to tell Randar. I needed to warn someone.

But I was three floors underground, surrounded by monsters, with a madman watching my every move.

I scrubbed the grease, keeping my head down.

Play the Zero, I told myself. Just play the Zero.

But the dormant fibers in my arm were itching. They sensed the prototype. They sensed the mockery of their own existence.

And deep down, I felt a surge of emotion that wasn't mine. It was the Apostate.

It was insulted.

And it wanted to break this toy.