Chapter 37
THIRTY-SEVEN
Riven
The silence was worse than the scream.
The explosion of Light had blinded me, a whiteout that scoured the roof of shadows and sound. When my vision cleared, the Extractor was gone. The chrome spire was a vaporised ruin, leaving only a twisted stump of metal smoking in the charged air.
Selene lay in the gravel.
“Selene!” Her name was a raw, desperate scream that tore through the ringing in my ears.
I scrambled over the debris, ignoring the heat radiating from the slagged metal, my boots skidding through the loose, shifting stones.
I saw her fingers twitch—a ghost of a movement—just before her eyes closed and she went still.
I slid to my knees beside her. She looked small, her strength entirely spent. Her skin was grey, drained of all colour, the golden fire that had consumed her moments ago completely extinguished.
I reached for the resonance.
I expected to feel the steady, warm glow of her presence—the frequency that had lived at the back of my mind since the Cistern. Instead, I felt a shudder. A dying ember in a cold grate.
Terror seized my chest.
“No,” I whispered, my hands hovering over her, afraid to touch in case she shattered. “No, no, no.”
I pressed my fingers to her neck. Her skin was ice. Her heartbeat was there—but it was a thready, fluttering bird against my fingertips. She was fading.
Then, the chasm opened within me. It was an abrupt weightlessness, as if the ground had vanished beneath my feet.
With every fading beat of her life force, the anchor holding me to this world began to fray.
I didn’t care what the old texts said about our connection; the theories were just words on paper.
But as her pulse slowed beneath my fingers, my magic screamed the truth.
I gathered her against my chest, my hands trembling as they buried into her hair.
For thirty years, I thought I knew what the dark was.
I thought it was the isolation of Korenth’s cage.
But watching the golden fire fade from her skin, I finally understood true emptiness.
She was the only thing that had ever given my shadows a shape and a purpose.
If she slipped away now, I wouldn’t just be alone—I would be a ruin.
“Selene,” I choked out.
The roof was too exposed. The building groaned beneath us, the structure settling from the blast. She was dead weight in my arms as I scooped her up, her head lolling back against my shoulder.
The maintenance shaft was a no-go. I headed straight for the main artery—a tactical gamble, but with Selene’s survival on the line, speed was the only metric that mattered.
I headed for the reinforced doors of the roof access. A kick sent the door flying back, hitting the wall with a clang. I stormed through the penthouse maintenance level, reaching the private lift bank. The doors were sealed. Locked down.
I used Shadow. I drove a spike of solid darkness into the seam of the doors and forced them apart. The metal screeched, gears stripping, but they gave way. I carried her inside and hit the button for the ground floor.
The doors juddered shut. The car began to descend.
The stillness in the lift was suffocating. The mirrored walls reflected us back—a man covered in soot and blood, holding a woman who looked like she was already gone. I slid down the wall, pulling her into my lap.
“Selene,” I said, my voice shaking. “Open your eyes.”
She didn’t stir. I placed my hand over her heart. I could barely feel it beating. The tether was thinning, stretching out into the void.
“Don’t you do this,” I whispered, tightening my grip on her. “We had a deal. We survive.”
I pressed my forehead against hers.
“You are not allowed to leave me here,” I said, my voice breaking. “I waited so many years to find you. You don’t get to leave me alone in this world.”
She let out a soft, rattling breath. Her heart stuttered under my hand. I leaned close to her ear, desperate to reach her through the fog.
“Stay with me, Selene,” I whispered fiercely. “Aelira says we are two halves, and I am not ready for the silence. Do you understand? I am not letting you go.”
I closed my eyes and reached for the magic. Not Shadow. I didn’t have Light to give her, but I had life. I had the resonance. I pushed.
I poured my own strength into the channel. I visualised the broken arch on her shoulder, and I fed it everything I had left. My energy, my will, the very beat of my heart. I was trying to tether her, to be the weight that kept her soul from drifting away.
Take it, I commanded her. Take it all. Stay anchored.
I felt a jolt.
Her chest rose. A breath—faint yet steady—filled her lungs. The frequency flared into a low, persistent tone. A shared pulse. A firm hold on life.
Her eyelids fluttered.
“Riven?”
It was barely a sound. More a shape of the lips. I let out a breath that was half-sob. I clutched her closer, burying my face in her neck, shaking with the relief of it.
“I’m here,” I rasped. “I’ve got you.”
“Is it…” She drifted, fighting to stay awake. “Is it done?”
“You broke it,” I said. “It’s gone.”
She gave a tiny, weak nod against my chest. Her hand moved, fingers curling weakly into my shirt.
“Tired,” she whispered.
“I know. I’ll get us out.”
The lift dinged. The display flashed LOBBY. I shifted my grip, coiling my legs under me. The vulnerability of the moment vanished, replaced by the cold, hard instinct of the weapon she needed me to be.
“Stay with me, Selene,” I murmured, standing up with her in my arms. “We’re almost there.”
The lift doors slid open with a soft chime that sounded obscene against the wreckage of the lobby.
The polished expanse of white marble I had walked into less than an hour ago was gone. In its place was a ruin of shattered glass and slush.
I stepped out, my arms tightening around Selene. She was limp against me, her head resting on my shoulder, her breathing shallow but steady.
Dane and Goran were waiting near the entrance to the service corridor. They looked battered.
Dane was leaning against a pillar, favouring his left leg. He had thrown on Goran’s massive trench coat to cover himself; the heavy fabric swallowed his frame, the oversized sleeves rolled back to his elbows to leave his hands free, his knuckles raw and bloody.
Goran stood guard beside him, his tactical gear shredded to ribbons from the fight, revealing the dark, shifting ink of binding runes on his skin beneath.
Motion flared in the stairwell door to my right.
Torvin and Karys stumbled out. They looked scorched—their clothes singed, faces smeared with soot—but they were upright.
Dane pushed himself off the pillar when he saw me. His eyes dropped immediately to Selene.
“Is she…?”
“Alive,” I said. “She drained herself, but she’s alive.”
Relief washed over his face, so profound it made him sag. He nodded, once, sharp and professional.
“We need to move,” Dane said.
Through the blown-out windows of the main entrance, I could see the street. It was a sea of flashing blue lights. Sirens wailed, a cacophony of authority closing in.
“Vance’s team,” Dane shouted over the noise. “And half the city precinct. We can’t go out the front. If they see us like this—if they see her like this—they’ll take us into custody.”
“Back the way we came,” Goran rumbled. “The drain.”
We turned as a unit, heading for the grey doors of the service corridor that led back to the sub-basement. We were five steps away when the reinforced blast door behind the main atrium—the secure lift from the deep labs—hissed open.
“Leaving so soon?”
The voice was calm. Cultured. Completely at odds with the destruction surrounding us.
We froze.
Korenth Vhail stepped out.
He didn’t look like a man whose empire was burning down around him. He looked like a man inspecting a renovation. His suit was immaculate, his silver hair perfectly coiffed.
And he wasn’t alone.
Four augmented guards flanked him, their weapons raised. But it wasn’t the guns that made me stop.
It was the others.
Behind Korenth, four figures emerged into the red emergency light. They were Umbrakynn—young, slight, dressed in simple, white medical tunics that looked like hospital gowns. They were barefoot.
But they moved with a terrifying, synchronised grace, stepping in perfect unison.
Goran let out a low, dangerous growl. “Who are they?”
I turned, shielding Selene with my body.
“It’s over, Korenth,” I called out. “The machine is slag. You lost.”
Korenth smiled. It was a thin, cold expression.
“Did I?”
He walked forward, his shoes crunching on the broken glass.
“You destroyed the transmitter, yes. A pity. It was expensive. And the girl…” His gaze flicked to Selene, hungry and sharp. “She is more powerful than I anticipated. To overload a Silverite core… remarkable.”
He stopped ten yards away.
“But you were moments too late, Riven. The link held. Just long enough.”
He gestured to the four figures in white.
“The primary transfer was completed before the signal collapsed.”
Dread seized my chest.
I looked at the four Umbrakynn. Their faces were blank, slack. But their eyes…
Unlike the augmented guards, their eyes burned with a sharp, ancient clarity. They surveyed the ruined lobby with cold assurance.
The Vessels.
He had done it. He had dragged something through the Veil.
One of the Umbrakynn—a male, no older than twenty—stepped forward.
His gait was wrong. He moved with the anchored weight of centuries.
The sensation arrived without warning—a deep, unnatural resonance that collided with my chest and pressed against the scar over my heart.
It mimicked the pull of the Light Spark, yet it was twisted and far heavier, like staring into a black mirror.
This frequency was alien, a magic that had no business existing in this world.
The Umbrakynn stopped, holding my gaze with an unbroken, terrifying focus. He offered a small smile. It was an expression that completely defied his youthful face—chillingly intimate. His lips never parted, yet a voice resonated directly inside my skull, heavy and ancient.
Hello, my son.
The world stopped.
I stared at him. The words made no sense. I wasn’t a child born of blood and bone. I was a primordial force kept safe until the world needed balance. I didn’t have a father. I had a purpose.
And yet, the aura radiating from this stranger… it sang to the darkness in my own blood. It recognised me.
“Who are you?” I whispered.
The stranger opened his mouth to speak—
BOOM.
The main revolving doors of the lobby blew inward.
“POLICE! ARMED POLICE!”
Flashbangs detonated, filling the room with blinding white light and deafening noise. Smoke canisters hissed, spewing thick grey clouds into the air.
“DOWN! GET ON THE GROUND!”
The spell broke. Chaos erupted.
Korenth snarled, his composure cracking. He couldn’t be found here. Not with the Vessels. Not with the proof of what he had done standing barefoot in the lobby.
“Get them out!” Korenth shouted to his guards, pointing at the Vessels. “The secure garage! Move!”
The augmented guards opened fire on the police, buying time. The Vessels turned, moving with that same eerie calm, and vanished back into the executive corridor.
The man who called me his son cast a final look over his shoulder as he moved away. He radiated a patient, crushing dominance, his stride carrying the unquestionable authority of a man who had already won.
“Riven!” Dane grabbed my shoulder, shaking me hard. “We have to go!”
I blinked, the shock receding just enough to let survival instincts kick back in.
The lobby was a war zone of shouting voices and gunfire. If Vance’s team found us, they would arrest us. They would take Selene.
And if they took her, they would separate us.
“Move,” I rasped.
I tightened my grip on Selene, hoisting her higher against my chest. Goran kicked the service door open, and we scrambled through, leaving the light and the noise behind.
We ran into the dark of the corridor, the thick steel door clanging shut behind us, sealing the lobby away.
I leaned against the cold metal, my legs nearly giving out, tightening my grip on Selene. She was limp in my arms, her head lolling against my shoulder, breaths coming in shallow, hitching gasps.
A vibration buzzed against my hip—Selene’s phone, tucked into her pocket.
I shifted her weight, fishing the device out with one hand. I tapped the speaker and held it out for Dane.
“Orin? Report,” Dane said, his voice gravelly but steady.
“Dane?” Orin’s voice was barely audible over a cacophony of sirens. “Get out of there. Now. The second that blast hit the roof, Highspire triggered a Protocol Zero. The police and special tactical units have locked down every street in the district.”
“They just blew the main doors,” Dane shouted back over the noise. “We’re boxed in. What’s the perimeter look like?”
“Tight. They’re flooding the ground floor—”
A piercing static hiss cut him off as a mechanical siren began to wail from the building’s overhead speakers—a deafening, rhythmic pulse that vibrated in our bones.
“They’re jamming the signal,” Dane snarled.
I snatched the phone and smashed it against the wall. The screen shattered, silencing the trace.
In the sudden gap between sirens, Selene’s ragged breathing sounded thin.
“The lobby is lost,” I said, my voice tight. “We go down.”
Goran rumbled from the shadows, kicking open the maintenance hatch that dropped into the sub-basement intake. “Move.”
I hoisted Selene higher, ignoring the ache in my own muscles, and followed Goran into the damp blackness of the shaft. We left the lies and the glare of Highspire behind us. The silence of the tunnels offered no relief.
That ancient voice was still echoing inside my mind, far louder than the sirens or the deception being spun above our heads.
Hello, my son.