The earth exhaled.
Not wind—breath.
Kael felt it roll through the tunnel like a living thing, warm and heavy, carrying a pressure that bent his spine and blurred his vision. The mark on his arm burned white-hot, no longer waiting.
Lyra staggered, catching herself against the wall. "That wasn't an echo."
"No," Kael said through clenched teeth. "That was it."
The ground split.
A crack tore through the tunnel floor, spilling molten light upward. From the depths rose a sound too large for any throat—a pulse that rattled bone and thought alike.
A heartbeat.
The Devourer was waking.
Kael dropped to one knee as visions slamd into him again—this ti clearer. A colossal shape coiled beneath layers of dead earth, its body fused with cities, its veins glowing with the sa runes carved into his skin.
He scread.
Lyra grabbed him, pulling him back as the tunnel began to collapse. "Kael, stay with !"
"I can see it," he gasped. "It's… everywhere."
Zombies erupted from the walls, drawn by the pulse. But they didn't attack.
They faced Kael.
And waited.
Lyra raised her gun, horrified. "They're listening."
The mark flared.
A command tore out of Kael's throat—unspoken, unwilling. The dead surged forward, not at them, but past them—throwing themselves into the fissure, bodies piling, feeding the growing light below.
Lyra scread. "Make it stop!"
Kael clutched his arm, flesh burning, blood running between his fingers. "I can't!"
A shape erged from the crack—an eye the size of a building, opening beneath the earth. It stared upward through stone and fire.
And it saw Kael.
"Key," the Devourer breathed.
The word crushed him.
Lyra fired blindly into the fissure, bullets vanishing into the glow. "You don't get him!"
Kael forced himself upright, every step agony. He raised both swords, planting them into the ground. The runes leapt from his skin into the steel, spreading outward, forming a barrier of burning symbols.
The fissure scread.
The Devourer recoiled—just slightly.
Enough.
The ground slamd shut, sealing the crack in a violent quake. The heartbeat faded, retreating—but not gone.
Silence returned, broken only by Kael's ragged breathing.
He collapsed.
Lyra caught him, dragging him away from the sealed fissure. "You pushed it back," she whispered.
Kael shook his head weakly. "I delayed it."
He looked at his arm. The mark was darker now, deeper—like a wound that would never heal.
"It's taking pieces of ," he said. "Every ti it wakes."
Lyra rested her forehead against his. "Then it pays for every piece."
Far away, the sky finally shifted.
Not to blue—but to red.
Across the world, other fissures began to glow.
The Devourer slept again.
But now it dread.
And it dread of Kael.
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