hen the engines of the Dawnbreaker shut down above the council square, most of the crystal dust in Lesandra's arms had been swept away by the hot wind. The remaining shards sparkled in her palm, reflecting the scarred marks on her face—old and new wounds like burnt chains, pulling the corners of her mouth toward the ground.
"Lord Orion..." Finn's voice caught in his throat. The youth wrapped his acid-corroded right hand in bandages, his left arm still clutching Elara's severed limb. The elf remains in the main energy chamber had grown dim, black filaments oozing from the severed edges.
The crowd fell silent as a graveyard. Merchant Feinck suddenly pushed through the crowd, his eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses scanning the airship wreckage: "So, what did you get in exchange for the elf's sacred remains and noble lives?" He kicked aside the half-melted crystal fragments at his feet, "More plague?"
As if to confirm his words, a piercing wail echoed from the western side of the square. An old woman lifted her daughter's hood—the girl's neck was covered in wooden scabs, with the outlines of gears protruding beneath her skin! The crowd retreated in panic, crushing the newly blooming white flowers between the fungal threads.
"The symbiotic contamination is evolving!" Finn's detector flashed red. "Malcolm released a genetic bomb before he died..."
Fenk stepped onto the airship wreckage: "We once believed the Branded Army could bring new life!" He suddenly tore open his silk shirt, revealing a lion's head brand on his chest—the edges already rotting and oozing pus. "What's the result? The old brands are rotting, and the new plague is spreading!" He raised his arms and shouted, "We need true purification! Burn all sources of contamination! Including that filthy ship and the red-haired witch!"
Rocks were hurled at the airship. Lysandra wiped the blood from her cheekbone. The old and new brands glowed like hot irons in the morning light. She drew her dagger and plunged it into a crack in the deck. Black blood oozed from the blade:
" Those who wish to burn me, step forward."
Dead silence spread like ice. The blacksmith's hammer clanged to the ground: "The Branded Army obeys only Lysandra's commands!"
"And rot to death with her?" Fenke sneered. Behind him emerged the alchemist wearing a bird-beaked mask, with purple liquid boiling in his test tube: "I can cure the pollution... as long as you hand over decision-making power to the professionals. .."
Lysandra suddenly smiled. She drew her dagger and walked toward Feinke, the blade lifting the alchemist's mask—beneath the bird-beak was the steward of the Chancellor's mansion! The purple liquid in the test tube reflected her bloodstained face: "Malcolm's neurotoxin—drink it and become a obedient puppet. Is this 'professionalism' to your satisfaction?"
The crowd erupted! Feinck drew a poisoned dagger from his sleeve and stabbed it straight into Lasandra's heart!
***
As the dagger pierced her robe, Lasandra spun and struck with her elbow. Amid the dull crack of Feinck's shattered nasal bone, her palm, covered in crystalline dust, pressed against the merchant's rotting brand!
Intense pain surged through both of them like high-voltage electricity. Before Lasandra's eyes, memories not her own exploded: a moonlit chamber, Feinck kneeling to present ledgers, Malcolm's mechanical hand branding a lion's mark. "Become the hyenas of the new world..." electronic harmonies seeped into her bones, "...spread fear, harvest despair..."
In reality, Feinck's seven orifices bled. He frantically scratched at the brand on his chest, from which fine metal wires emerged! "No! You promised me immortality—" His scream abruptly ceased as his body convulsed like a marionette, his pupils dilating into the shadowy gears of a machine!
"The parasite has awakened." Lysandra severed the protruding metal wires from his neck. The merchant collapsed, convulsing, as countless worm-like mechanical entities burst forth from beneath his skin!
The chaotic crowd froze at the sight. Lysandra stepped over the insect carcasses onto the sanctuary steps, her bloodstained dagger pointing toward the direction where the Crown of the Heavens had collapsed:
"Malcolm didn't give us a plague; he gave us a choice." She tore open the bandage on her right arm, revealing a fungal wound embedded with half a gear—a fragment of the backup core destroyed by Orion. "To be a host like him..." The gear was carved out with the dagger, black blood spattering, "...or turn the mark into a weapon?"
The blacksmith was the first to step forward. He tore open the scab of the old mark and smeared Lysandra's blood into the wound: "How do we do it?"
"Build a new furnace." She tossed the gear fragment to Finn, "Use Malcolm's filthy blood... to refine our medicine."
***
The stained-glass windows of the council hall were blackened by smoke. Lysandra removed the carved panels from the altar and laid them out as a meeting table. At the centre of the table stood Elara's severed limb—now encased in a glass column, with vine-like nerve bundles connected to twelve distillers. Finn threw the mechanical nematodes extracted from Feinke into the reactor, and green steam hissed through the pipes.
"The essence of symbiotic contamination is neural parasitism." The youth adjusted the distillation valve, and the liquid in the test tube separated into layers: black sediment at the bottom, purple toxins in the middle, and clear green liquid at the top. "Elara's blood can separate the toxins, but..." He raised the green liquid test tube, its inner walls quickly covered in ice crystals. "...the antidote accelerates crystallisation."
The blacksmith pressed the crystallised test tube into his branded wound. The ice crystals spread along the blood vessels to his elbow, but he swung the hammer without flinching: "Enough time for ten swings, enough to chop off Malcolm's dog head."
The lame washerwoman offered her right leg, infected with black spots: "Draw my bone marrow! I want to see my grandson drink clean water!"
The distiller ran day and night. When the first vial of antidote was brought to the infected girl's lips, the gears protruding from her neck had already pierced her skin. Green liquid entered her throat, black blood gushed from her eye sockets, and the girl scratched her throat in agony—what she vomited was tangled metal worms! The worm carcasses turned to white ash in the morning light, and new pink flesh peeked through her rotting skin.
Before the crowd's cheers had died down, the girl suddenly curled up and convulsed. Ice crystals spread from her fingertips, freezing her into a statue-like pose of prayer. In the silence, Finn smashed the reactor: "The antidote kills the contamination... but it also consumes the host's life force..."
Lysandra stroked the girl's cold hair. The fungal wounds in her sleeves throbbed faintly, and she raised her eyes to the silent crowd:
"Now choose. Drink the antidote and fight for twenty days of new life." The dagger paused on the table, "...or rot in despair."
***
The night wind carried crystalline dust through the parliament hall. Lysandra wiped Orion's sword alone; the sapphire on the hilt had turned to crystal dust along with its master. Suddenly, Finn's cry echoed from outside the window—within the glass column containing Elara's severed limb, the elf's remains were growing under the moonlight! Delicate vines emerged from the wound,缠绕着柱内漂浮的晶尘,开出米粒大的白花.
"Orion's crystal dust... ...purifying the elven remains..." Finn's instruments detected faint energy fluctuations, "They are merging!"
Lysandra's fingertips touched the glass. The white flowers suddenly burst into bright light, and Orion's final memories pulsed into her mind:
In the dark chamber of the royal cellar, young Orion was chained to a stone platform. Malcolm's mechanical hand sliced open his chest, removing half his heart. "True blood is the key, the counterfeit is the lock core..." The alchemist sewed the mechanical heart into the boy's chest, "...when the lock and key resonate, the gate of eternal life will open."
The illusion shifted. Beneath the Crown of the Heavens, the dying Malcolm cackled, "In the Elf Forest... I hid the true gate... Lilian is the key... and you are the living lock..."
Lysandra jerked her hand away. Inside the glass column, Orion's crystalline dust had fully fused with the vines, forming a jade-like spinal model!
"Neural interface..." Finn suddenly grabbed her mark, "Orion carved biological circuits into your face with his life!" He excitedly pointed at the spine model, "This is the key model! Your mark is the lock! As long as we find the door..."
The alarm pierced the night sky! The blacksmith burst through the door: "The western defence line has collapsed! The forest guards... have all mutated!"
***
Torches on the city walls illuminated a hellish scene. The once-elven guards had become symbiotic with the corrupted forest—their heads had grown into tree crowns, their limbs into roots, and their chests embedded with pulsating mechanical cores. They advanced with earthquake-like steps, and wherever their roots touched, the branded soldiers who had drunk the antidote crystallised!
"They're...recycling the antidote's energy!" Finn's scanner screen shatters.
Lysandra's face burns like molten lava. She tears a neural sensor vine around her neck, and in the agony, she "sees" the horrifying truth: each mutated guardian's mechanical core is extracting the crystallised energy from the soldiers, channeling it through the earth's veins deep into the elven forest. The energy convergence point was a giant inverted tree—its roots exposed on the surface, its crown deeply embedded in the crust, with half a mechanical body embedded between its branches!
"Malcolm is重组ing at the inverted tree!" Lysandra severed the vine, black blood dripping from her nostrils. "He's absorbing the antidote's energy... to complete his final evolution!"
The blacksmith's hammer shattered the barricade: "I'll take the death squad and blow up that cursed tree!"
"That's a trap." Lysandra pressed down on his crystallised right arm, "Malcolm wants the energy explosion..." She looked at the jade spine in the glass column, "...to blast open the Gate of Eternal Life."
Fenk's twisted corpse suddenly twitched! Mycelium emerged from his exploded eye sockets, forming Malcolm's phantom in the air:
"You finally understand... Key Miss." The mycelium pointed at the brand on Lysandra's face, "Bring the lock to me... at the place where the gate opens..."
The phantom faded away. The blacksmith spat out crystal shards: "Then go smash his damn door!"
Lysandra stroked the hilt of Orion's sword. Outside the window, the first rays of dawn pierced the clouds, illuminating the final outline of the jade spine within the glass column—it was clearly the shape of a long key, its teeth perfectly matching the mark on her face.
"No." She removed the spine model from the column, its icy touch piercing her heart, "We will turn the key."