And now, I know Kel is more than a child needing saving—he might be a key in something far older, far deeper.
We step forward into the shining corridor, together, heart pounding, into what we built and what we must unmake.
I step into the inner sanctum and my heart threatens to burst out of my ribs. The device looms before us—an obsidian obelisk, monolithic and half-alive, rings of circular conduits looping around it like ancient veins. Glyphs pulse with delicate light, casting shifting shadows on the walls. It hums. Low. Deep. Something older than memory.
The air tastes like charge and ozone. The stone beneath my boots vibrates. Every sense screams: this is real.
Kyldak’s team fans out behind me, flashlights trembling over the ruins. The others hesitate at the threshold. I motion them forward. “Stay close. Don’t touch anything untested.”
He steps beside me, shoulders squared, eyes bright in the ambient glow. He doesn’t say much. Doesn’t need to.
I kneel before the conduits, wiring my portable scanners into hidden ports. My fingers move fast—buffers, analog readouts, rewrites. The glyph circuits flicker, respond, resist. Energy arcs across the coils, faint heat ripples in the air. I swallow. Sweat beads on my skin.
“It’s unstable,” I whisper to him. “It can activate once—maybe twice—before the core fractures.”
He nods. Voice low: “I’ll take the risk.”
My head snaps up. “You can’t—” My scream breaks. “It’s too dangerous!”
He meets my eyes. “If this works, we cross. I get you home.”
“Don’t lie to me!”
He reaches for a conduit. I lunge forward, grabbing his arm. Sparks crackle. His cybernetic skin thrums with energy. “Stop!”
He jerks his arm free. His eyes flare, red eye glowing. “I won’t hide. I’m not going to stay back this time.”
I press fists to my temples. The corridors hum louder. My voice trembles. “You don’t get to die before you meet your son!”
I hear the words echo inside that chamber, so loud they tear the shadows apart.
Silence follows.
The hum coils tighter, the glyphs strobe. The air weighs heavy, pregnant.
He stares at me. Breathing long, steady. Then he says softly, “Say that again.”
My throat locks. I can’t. I shut my mouth.
He steps back, eyes haunted, chest tight. He watches me with a breaking kind of sorrow.
I turn and run. The ruins swallow me, the corridors twisting, light warping. I flee through archways, past conduits, the hum chasing me. My boots echo. The air tastes of dust and broken promise.
Behind me, I hear his voice: “Jaela—wait.”
I don’t stop.
I run.
CHAPTER 24
KYLDAK
Istand frozen in the ruins’ half-light—shafted beams of energy dancing across fractured walls, the hum of the obelisk thrumming like a heart. Dust motes drift in the air, each one catching the glow of ancient glyphs. My boots crunch on cracked tile and broken conduit, but I can’t even move.
Jaela’s words echo in my bones:“You don’t get to die before you meet your son.”The sentence hangs between us like a blade.
I replay every moment since she returned—her silence, her fear, the things she half-said and half-hid. The extraction. The scans. That she coaxed life from my marrow. I see her face in every shadow, every flicker of light. My fists clench. Rage claws at me. But beneath it is something else, fierce and raw. Something like awe.
