The wind of the Frost-Spine Mountains didn't just howl; it judged. It swept through the jagged peaks with the sound of a thousand spectral flutes, carrying the scent of the ozone fire that had consumed Site-One. Kael Light sat in the lee of a granite overhang, his back against the cold stone, his breath a rhythmic, silver mist in the twilight.
Beside him lay the three boys he had pulled from the wreckage of the Sun-Eater suits. They were silent. Not the silence of sleep, which is filled with the soft cadence of dreams, but the silence of a vacuum. Kael reached out his iridescent hand, the 'Reforged Sun' glowing with a dim, weary light, and touched the forehead of the eldest boy.
He felt... nothing.
Usually, when Kael used his Healing Art, he could sense the "Vessel"—the internal architecture of a person's mana and soul. He could feel the pulse of their life-force, the heat of their blood, the electrical sparks of their thoughts. But these boys were hollowed out. The Academy had surgically excised their mana-cores and replaced them with Void-Metal dampeners. They were biological shells, their identities erased to make room for the "Order."
"I can't mend what isn't there," Kael whispered, his voice cracking.
THEY ARE THE PERFECT CITIZENS OF THE NEW WORLD, KAEL, the God purred, its voice echoing with a dark, satisfied resonance. NO ENVIED GOLD, NO REBELLIOUS DREAMS, NO AGONY. THEY ARE THE ULTIMATE EXPRESSION OF THE ACADEMY'S PROGRESS. BREAD WITHOUT LEAVEN. LIGHT WITHOUT HEAT.
"They are children," Kael growled, his jaw tightening until his teeth emitted a dull thud-crack.
He stood up, his grey cloak now a scorched rag that barely kept out the biting frost. He looked down at the valley. Far below, the lights of the southern towns remained dark. The implosion of the Frozen Peak had triggered a localized "Mana-Blackout," a technological and magical collapse that would take weeks to repair. He saw the faint, flickering orange dots of torches and campfires—the people were returning to the fire-light of their ancestors, the "Order" of the steam-age having failed them.
Kael gathered the three unconscious boys, wrapping them in a single, large cloak woven from his own mana-reinforced fabric. He began the descent toward a hidden settlement Silas had mentioned—a mining hamlet known as Cinder-Hollow, tucked away in a ravine that even the Academy's Search-Towers ignored.
The journey took six hours. By the time the first light of dawn touched the peaks, Kael reached the gates of the hamlet. It was a miserable collection of soot-stained shacks and iron smelting-ovens, built directly into the side of a coal-rich cliff.
As Kael approached, he expected to be met with the same terror he had seen in the refugees of the wastes. He expected Path-Wardens to challenge him or villagers to bar their doors.
Instead, he found a line of people waiting for him.
They were miners, their faces blackened with coal dust, their hands scarred and gnarled. They didn't have weapons. They stood in two rows, forming a path toward the center of the village. At the head of the crowd stood a woman with a prosthetic iron arm—a legacy of a mining accident that the Guild had refused to heal.
"The Weeper has come," she said, her voice a low, gravelly rasp.
She didn't bow, but she touched her forehead with two fingers—the "Mark of the Sun" that Kael had seen Martha use in the Gut.
"How did you know?" Kael asked, his eyes weeping a slow, frozen trail of violet blood.
"The blackout reached the foundries three hours ago," the woman said, gesturing to the silent smoke-stacks of the village. "When the mana-lamps died, the 'Little Suns' in the mines felt the resonance. They said the mountain had finally spoken. They said the Heir was coming down from the peak."
She looked at the three boys Kael was carrying. Her expression softened, a deep, weary empathy crossing her face. "You found the hollow ones. The Academy takes our children for the suits every decade. We call it the 'Tithe of the Void.'"
"I'm sorry," Kael said, setting the boys down on a pallet of straw the villagers had prepared. "I couldn't restore them. The cores are... gone."
"You gave them back their skin," the woman replied. "In this world, that is more than we ever expected. My name is Elena. We have a hot stove and some root-mash. Come. You look like you're made of more scars than skin."
Inside the largest shack, Kael sat by a hearth that burned with actual coal, not a mana-crystal. The heat was honest, stinging his frostbitten skin. Elena sat across from him, cleaning the grease from her mechanical arm.
"The world is breaking, Kael Light," Elena said, not looking up from her work. "Ever since you turned the Guild's gold to sludge in Blackwall, the 'Broken' have been rising. It's not just the Gut anymore. It's the miners in the North, the sailors in the East, the farmers in the South. They've heard the story of the healer who wept for them."
"I am not a leader," Kael said, his head hanging low. "I am a consequence of a betrayal. I only want to reach the Cradles. I want to stop the harvest."
"You don't understand," Elena said, finally looking at him. Her eyes were a hard, coal-grey. "To the Academy, you are an 'Anomaly.' To the Guild, you are a 'Thief.' But to us... to the ones who have been used as fuel... you are the proof that the fuel can bite back. They are calling you the 'King of the Broken.'"
A KING, the God laughed. A KING OF HUSKS AND RUST. IT SUITS YOU, KAEL. YOU ARE THE SOVEREIGN OF THE VOID.
Kael felt a sudden, sharp pressure in his chest. "I don't want a crown. Crowns are for people like Sam. I just want to finish the 'Mother's Mercy.' I want to put the God back in the dark."
"You can't," Elena said. "The 'Agony of Progress' is too fast now. The Academy has already started the 'Final Protocol' at Site-Two. They know they can't stop you with magic, so they're going to burn the evidence. They're going to sacrifice the Sun-Blooded children before you can reach them, just to ensure the 'Order' doesn't lose its monopoly on the source."
Kael stood up, the chair scraping against the stone floor. "Site-Two. The Whispering Woods."
"It's five days to the south," Elena said. "But you won't make it on foot. Not with the Sun-Eaters hunting you." She stood up and pulled back a heavy canvas sheet at the back of the shack.
Hidden beneath the cloth was a mechanical marvel—a steam-powered carriage, but unlike the heavy monsters of the Guild, this one was stripped down, reinforced with iron plating and spiked wheels. It looked like a predatory insect made of brass and soot.
"We stole it from a Guild transport three months ago," Elena said. "We've been modifying it. It doesn't run on mana. It runs on coal and water. It won't show up on the Academy's scanners. If you can drive it, you can reach the woods in three days."
Kael looked at the machine. It was a product of the very "Progress" he hated, but it was built by the hands of the people he loved. It was an "Agony" of its own—a necessary evil.
"I don't know how to drive," Kael said.
"Pip does," Elena smiled.
From the shadows of the shack, a small figure stepped out. It was Pip, the boy from Blackwall. He looked taller, his face smudged with grease, wearing a leather aviator's cap.
"I told you I'd see you again, Saint," Pip said, a cocky grin on his face. "The 'Little Suns' have their own ways of traveling. We followed the blackout. We knew you'd need a getaway driver."
Kael felt a rare, genuine smile touch his lips. He looked at the three "hollow" boys in the corner. They were still staring at the ceiling, but one of them had reached out and gripped Martha's shawl—Martha had arrived with Pip, acting as a nurse for the village.
The "King of the Broken" looked at his small, ragtag army. He saw the healers, the drivers, the miners, and the ghosts.
"We leave at sunset," Kael said.
As the sun dipped below the peaks, the steam-engine of the "Broken" roared to life, a rhythmic chug-chug-shriek that echoed through the ravine. Kael sat in the back of the carriage, his grey cloak billowing, his iridescent eyes fixed on the southern horizon.
He was no longer just a "Wandering Wraith." He was the heart of a machine that was heading toward the "Whispering Woods."
But far to the south, inside the emerald depths of Site-Two, a different kind of progress was being made. High Inquisitor Vane's replacement, a woman known as 'The Sculptor,' was standing before a row of glass tanks. She held a scalpel made of Void-Metal.
"The Weeper is coming," she whispered to the children in the tanks. "Let us make sure he finds nothing but echoes."