So, the void-hound finally bites the dust, and for a second, you think, "Okay, we made it." But let's be real, that silence after the thing died? Total mind game. It wasn't victory; it was just a trap snapping shut, you know? The air was all thick with this gross smell—burnt shadow-flesh and this weird, sharp ozone tang—when suddenly, everything starts shaking with a new, much worse sound: the low, growly rumble of Seeker carriers. And I mean, they looked gnarly, these jagged, obsidian things dropping from the sky, just as menacing as the Gates they were supposedly fighting. Their spotlights hit the ground, blinding everyone and sweeping over the hound's still-steaming corpse. Nothing was left in the shadows.
And then this voice—mechanized and totally monotone—just drills into Kael's skull. It's like, "KAEL THORN. HAND OVER THE STORMHEART. OR THE WHOLE PLACE BURNS." It was the Authority, you could tell. Cold, absolute, no room to argue.
But Valen? Oh man, his smile just gets wider, slower, and honestly, a little unhinged. The Stormheart's crimson-indigo glow, where it's fused with his blood, isn't just pulsing anymore; it's humming with this super clear, terrifying energy. The ancient runes on his skin are all lit up, too, like a circuit that finally, finally connected.
"About time," Valen rasps, his voice all dry and gravelly. "Asking the right questions, gutter rat."
Meanwhile, Lyss's voice, a tiny, strained whisper, reaches Kael's mind from inside the beast. "The monster is hurt," she says. "I can't... I can't hold on much longer..."
Kael's mind is just racing, you know? He's looking from the carriers, to Lyss who's fading fast, to Valen, who's got this new, chilling focus in his eyes. The Stormheart is just going nuts in his palm, a frantic drum against his ribs. The Authority is here. This is it—the final, messed-up price for just surviving.
"What's your grandpa's legacy, then?" Kael asks, barely a whisper. "Can it break them?"
Valen's smile turns into this cruel, beautiful thing. He pushes off the pipe he was leaning on, his body a total mess of fresh wounds and brand-new void-crystal. "Break them? Nah. You can't break what's already broken." He gestures with his human hand up at the carriers coming down. "The Foundation is a corpse. Silas was just a maggot eating its heart. These guys... they're just scavengers fighting over the bones. You don't break 'em. You just... possess 'em."
He leans in, his voice dropping to this conspiratorial whisper, like he's sharing a secret only they'd get. "House Thorne didn't get rich by being great fighters. We got rich by being the best damn thieves. My grandpa, the first Thorne Seeker, didn't fight the Gates. He stole from them. He figured out how to chain their power, how to siphon it into his blood. He built the Foundation, not as a fortress, but as a freaking cage. And he left me the key."
He holds up his bleeding arm, the void-crystal spikes all shimmery in the carrier lights. The blood pulsing in it is going even faster. "Your rune is the lightning. My blood is the conductor. You're the storm. I'm the key to the sky."
And that's when Kael's mind, which is still reeling from the psychic blowback of the hound dying, connects all the dots in this sudden, gut-wrenching moment. The "blood-key" isn't some weapon. It's a lock. And it can be turned on the Foundation itself.
"The carriers are running on rune-tech," Kael says, the words just spilling out of him. "They're just bigger versions of the pylons. Their runes are a closed system."
"Almost closed," Valen corrects him, his smile turning savage. "But every system has a back door. The Void isn't just some threat out there, Kael. It's in the very DNA of this city. The Foundation feeds on it. It's where they get their power, their armor, everything. And if you know how to tap that power..."
He looks up at the nearest carrier, his eyes all narrowed and calculating. "You don't yield the Stormheart, Kael. You give it to them. All at once."
Above them, the carriers start powering up their weapons, all a hundred feet up. Plasma cannons are humming with a low, electric whine, swiveling to face the three of them on the ground.
"THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE, THORN!" the voice bellows again.
Kael just ignores it. He turns to Lyss, whose form is now this faint, shimmering violet light inside the beast. "Lyss, can you feel their power lines? The carriers' runes?"
Her mental voice, a ghost of what it was, is just a whisper in his mind. "I... I see their threads. They're fragile. They think their nets are strong..."
"Valen," Kael says, not even waiting for her to finish. He grabs the Thorne's bleeding arm, and the hybrid rune in his own palm just surges with cold fire. "When their weapons are active, and they're ready to fire... that's when we hit them. We overload their systems. We feed the storm to the conductors. We remind them where all their power really came from."
Valen's blood-light pulses, a beat of dark anticipation. "A fitting end for a corrupt House," he says, with this genuine, rattling laugh. "To be consumed by the very thing they stole."
The first carrier fires. A beam of plasma just rips through the refinery floor, turning the ground to glass, just missing Kael's boots. A second one targets the beast, its guns whirring to life.
"NOW!" Kael screams.
He shoves the Stormheart against Valen's crystal-infused stump. The hybrid rune in his palm just flares, a roaring violet and indigo light. Valen's crimson blood-light surges to meet it, a river of power crashing together in one explosive point.
The psychic shockwave that hits Kael is like a tidal wave. He sees the whole carrier network at once. This fragile, arrogant web of power, stretching from their ships back to the Foundation's central spire. And in the heart of each carrier, he sees it: a small, humming power-rune, hungry and stupidly open to the Void's call.
Valen's voice, a scream and a roar all in one, is in the maelstrom of his mind. "DEFILER! BLOOD-KEY! CONSUME!"
The Stormheart doesn't just scream; it howls. It's this soundless tempest of pure rage. It's no longer just a drain for the Void; it's a weaponized geyser of pure negation. Kael just shoves the raw, wild power of the Gate-maw, filtered through the Thorne bloodline's inherited control, into the carriers' open systems.
Their rune-lights flicker.
And then... they start to tear themselves apart.
They don't just fall. Their rune-tech, arrogant and fragile, becomes this virus, eating them from the inside out. Their weapons sputter and die. The obsidian bodies shudder, plates buckling and groaning. The blinding projectors turn into a sickly, pulsing indigo light, illuminating the chaos that just erupted. And their screams aren't the cries of the dying; they're the roars of the betrayed. The scavengers suddenly realizing they're the meal.
Kael falls back, gasping, Valen collapsing next to him. The Stormheart pulses like crazy in his grasp, and this new feeling burns through him. Not hunger. Not power. Something totally new.
The void-hound's core. The essence of the First Walker's will, which his rune had just devoured, now beats in time with his own heart.
And from the biggest carrier, from a fresh, raw wound torn in its hull, comes a voice. Not mechanized. Not human. Just pure, unadulterated power.
"BLOOD-KEY... A FITTING TOY FOR THE WEAPON."
The voice isn't just in his head. It's everywhere. In the air, the ash, the shuddering ground. It's the sound of a god talking to its new favorite knife.
The First Walker isn't just watching anymore. It's talking.
End of chapter 21