The silence was the worst part.
After the Maw's hungry roar, the clash of steel, the screams of the consumed, and Mercy's relentless metallic song in his blood, the stillness that fell over the cavern felt like a physical weight. Kael stood amidst the carnage, Draven's withered husk crumbling at his feet. Mercy hung heavy in his grip, the blade's usual bruise-dark hue now threaded with faint, pulsing silver veins that mirrored the alien patterns beneath his own skin. The sword was quiet. Sated? Or merely watching?
Eris pushed herself upright, her hand pressed to her throat where the corrupted initiate's blade had kissed her. The thin line of blood was already drying. The black veins that had crept toward her heart were gone, vanished as if sucked back into the Maw along with the green mist that had healed her. Only the silver scar of her brand remained, stark against her pale skin. Her eyes, wide and haunted, scanned the ledge—the empty armor of the corrupted soldiers, the dissipating green vapor, the yawning, now strangely quiescent Maw below.
"What was that?" Her voice was a rasp, raw with shock and the lingering edge of terror.
Kael flexed his fingers around Mercy's hilt. The connection was still there, a low thrum deep in his bones, but the demanding voice, the cold hunger... it was muted. Distant. "Power," he answered, the word tasting like ash. "His power. Using us. Using me." He looked down at the sword, the silver threads pulsing softly in time with his own heartbeat. "It's changed."
Eris followed his gaze, her expression hardening. "Or you changed it." She took a shaky step toward him, her gaze fixed on the silver veins in his arm, visible where his sleeve was torn. "What did it cost, Kael?"
He had no answer. The Hollow King's final whisper—"The Garden grows anew"—echoed in his mind, a promise wrapped in a threat.
Above them, the mournful, rhythmic tolling of the Order's death bells began. Not the rapid clangor of an alarm, but the slow, deliberate peals reserved for fallen masters. Draven's demise had been felt.
"We need to move," Eris said, urgency cutting through her shock. She snatched up a fallen short sword from one of the empty suits of corrupted armor, testing its weight. "That bell is a dinner gong for every ambitious viper left in this nest."
Kael nodded, forcing his focus away from the unsettling quiet within him and the alien silver in Mercy's blade. The ledge offered only one way out: a narrow, winding path carved into the cavern wall, leading upward toward the fortress proper. They moved quickly, Eris limping slightly but refusing assistance, her eyes constantly scanning the shadows. The path was treacherous, slick with damp moss and littered with loose shale. The air grew cooler, cleaner, as they ascended, the oppressive heat and sulfur stench of the Maw fading behind them.
They emerged into a disused armory, its racks mostly bare, dust thick on the floor. The air here was still, heavy with neglect. Eris moved to a rusted iron door, pressing her ear against it. Silence. She gestured for Kael to take one side while she took the other. He gripped Mercy, the familiar weight a cold comfort. The sword remained quiet, its presence a watchful stillness.
Eris eased the door open a crack. Beyond lay a dimly lit corridor, part of the Order's lower service tunnels. Empty. They slipped through, closing the door silently behind them. The death bells were louder here, their somber notes vibrating through the stone.
"The barracks are this way," Eris whispered, gesturing down the left fork. "If there's any organized resistance left, that's where it'll form. Or where the scavengers will be picking Draven's bones clean."
They moved like ghosts, sticking to the deepest shadows. The usual patrols were absent, likely drawn toward the commotion near the Maw or the source of the bells. They passed empty guard posts, discarded equipment. The fortress felt hollowed out.
Rounding a corner, they stumbled upon the first signs of chaos. Two Order soldiers lay dead, their throats slit with brutal efficiency, not the work of Shade-touched claws. Looters had already been here, stripping the bodies of weapons and valuables. Further down the corridor, a storeroom door hung askew, its contents ransacked.
"Vultures," Eris spat, her knuckles white on her borrowed sword.
A choked sob echoed from a side passage. Kael and Eris exchanged a glance and moved toward the sound. They found a young initiate, barely more than a boy, huddled in a doorway, clutching a bleeding arm. His eyes were wide with terror.
"Please," he whimpered, shrinking back as he saw them. "Don't... don't let them take me back to the dark!"
Eris knelt beside him, her voice low and surprisingly gentle despite the hardness in her eyes. "Who attacked you? Who are 'them'?"
"Th-the Shadows," the boy stammered, his gaze darting wildly. "They came after the bells... after the Spymaster fell. They're killing everyone! Saying it's the Reaping... pruning the weak for the new Garden!" He pointed a trembling finger down the corridor. "They took others... to the old chapel. Said... said it was consecration."
A cold dread settled over Kael. Pruning the weak for the new Garden. The Hollow King's words. Draven was gone, but his ideology, twisted by the King's influence, had taken root in others. The corruption wasn't just physical; it was spreading through the Order's fractured remnants like a plague.
"Who leads them?" Kael asked, his voice rough.
The boy shook his head violently. "Don't know! They wore hoods... but... one of them..." He shuddered. "She moved like smoke. And her eyes... they glowed silver."
Silver. Kael's grip tightened on Mercy. The silver veins in the blade pulsed faintly. Eris looked sharply at Kael, the unspoken question hanging between them.
Before they could press further, the sharp clang of steel on steel echoed from the direction the boy had indicated—the old chapel. Followed by a scream, abruptly cut short.
Kael pulled the initiate deeper into the doorway's shadows. "Stay here. Stay silent." He didn't wait for a response. He and Eris moved toward the sound, Mercy's quiet presence a dark lodestone pulling Kael forward.
The old chapel was a small, vaulted chamber near the fortress's heart, long abandoned for the newer grand temple. Its heavy oak doors stood partially open. Inside, the scene was one of macabre ritual. Hooded figures—perhaps a dozen—stood in a half-circle. Before them, on the worn stone altar where initiates had once taken their oaths, lay another young soldier, struggling weakly against bonds. Standing over him, a curved, cruel-looking knife raised high, was a figure slightly smaller than the others, their hood drawn low.
"Another branch pruned," a voice rasped from the knife-wielder, distorted by the hood but undeniably female. "His weakness taints the new growth. The Gardener demands purity!"
"The Gardener demands purity!" the hooded figures chanted back, their voices a discordant chorus.
As the knife began its descent, Eris didn't hesitate. She burst through the doors, her stolen sword flashing as she slammed into the nearest hooded figure, sending them sprawling. "Enough!"
Chaos erupted. Hooded figures spun, drawing weapons. The chants turned to snarls of surprise and rage. Kael stepped into the chapel after her, Mercy held low and ready. The sword stirred, not with its old hunger, but with a cold, focused alertness. It recognized this place. This intent.
The knife-wielder on the altar whirled around. The hood fell back slightly, revealing the lower half of a face Kael knew instantly, even after years. High cheekbones, a determined chin, now set in a grimace of fanatical fury. But it was the eyes that confirmed it—no longer the warm brown from shared crusts of bread in a lab cell, but a piercing, unnatural silver that seemed to emit its own cold light.
Lyra.
Her gaze locked onto Kael, then flicked to Mercy in his hand. A flicker of something—recognition? revulsion?—crossed her face before it hardened into icy contempt.
"Kael," she hissed, her voice carrying the same distortion as before, layered now with an unsettling metallic resonance. "The failed vessel. Draven's broken tool." She raised her knife, not toward the bound initiate, but toward Kael. The silver in her eyes blazed. "The Gardener sent me a message. He grows impatient. Your pruning is overdue."
Mercy vibrated in Kael's grip, not with hunger, but with a profound sense of recognition and chilling purpose. The silver veins in its blade flared brightly, mirroring the light in Lyra's eyes. The Hollow King hadn't just claimed Lyra. He had forged her into another Scythe. And she was here to reap.