The night was a living thing—thick, heavy, pressing down on the bastion. Beneath a moonless sky, even the stars seemed to hold their breath. The silence was no longer a mere absence of sound, but a tangible presence, broken only by the faint, obsessive murmur of essence beginning to seep from the ground. In front of the gaping tunnel mouths, Maggie stood motionless, arms crossed, her unblinking gaze fixed on the operation below.
The Awakened of the Sixth Unit were descending into the earth's veins, their spectral silhouettes lit by the inner glow of their stigmas and the dim luminescence of the essence crystals they carried like beating hearts. They looked like pilgrims of some forbidden cult, walking down into the belly of the world. Their eyes, glassy and faraway, reflected a light not of this world, and their movements had the hypnotic fluidity of those who commune with invisible forces.
