Chapter 64 The City of Glass
The storm didn’t dissipate; it bypassed us, leaving our caravan sitting in a valley of perfectly smooth, vitrified sand.
The heat of my magic had turned the desert floor into a sheet of dark, translucent glass.
“Everyone out,” Killian commanded over the comms. “We move on foot from here. The vehicles won’t survive the descent.
”
We stepped out into the eerie silence.
The Reclaimed wolves emerged from the other transports, their chrome grafts glinting in the twilight.
They moved with a newfound fluidity, their bodies adapting to the harsh environment in ways that felt both impressive and unnatural.
They didn’t pant in the heat; their skin simply radiated a dull, metallic hum, shedding the thermal energy back into the air.
Silas led the way, his ivory mask replaced by a specialized visor that allowed him to see the energy signatures of the wasteland.
He pointed toward a jagged rift in the earth, a canyon that looked like it had been cut by a giant’s blade.
“The Node is at the bottom of the Maw,” Silas said.
“But the scans are showing movement. Biological movement.”
“Feral packs?” Killian asked, his hand going to the hilt of his blade.
“No,” Silas replied, his voice grim.
“Something older. The Wasteland wasn’t always a desert.
It was the site of the first Sovereign-Human war.
The things that died down there didn’t always stay dead.
”
As we descended into the canyon, the temperature plummeted.
The orange sand gave way to black basalt, and the walls began to glow with a faint, bioluminescent moss.
It was a subterranean world hidden from the Architects’ eyes for millennia.
In the centre of the canyon floor stood a structure that made the Obsidian Tower look like a child’s toy.
It was a pyramid made of solid obsidian, but its surfaces were moving—shifting and sliding in complex geometric patterns.
It was the First Node, the “Bone of the World.”
But it wasn’t alone.
Surrounding the pyramid were hundreds of creatures that looked like a nightmare fusion of wolf and mineral.
Their fur had been replaced by jagged quartz, and their eyes were hollow pits of blue flame.
They weren’t the “Ghost Pack” of the Aegis; they were the Lithic-Wolves—the original guardians of the Nodes.
“They don’t recognize the Gene,” Leo whispered, his golden eyes wide.
“They only recognize the Song. Mama, you have to sing. If you don’t sing, they’ll turn us all to stone. ”