Smoke stung Kaelen's eyes, but it was the psychic aftershock that truly blinded him. The server room was a tomb once more, this time by his own hand. The strobing emergency lights painted the wreckage in frantic, bloody strokes. Every throb of power from his exposed, overcharged hand was a hammer blow up his nervous system, the crystalline growth now a jagged vambrace past his elbow.
Elara didn't waste a second on recrimination. Her mind was already three steps ahead, calculating the fallout. "Jax, perimeter. Lyra, can you salvage anything?"
Lyra shook her head, clutching her cracked data-slate. "The core is slag. The file is gone. All we have is the echo." Her eyes, wide in the dim light, found Kaelen. "What did you see?"
Before he could answer, a new sound cut through the ringing in his ears—a high-pitched, whining hum from outside, growing rapidly closer. The sound of Gleaner skimmer engines.
"They're here," Jax confirmed from the blasted doorway, his voice grim. "Two skimmers, deploying troops. They're not here to talk."
Elara's gaze snapped back to Kaelen, and he saw the brutal calculus in her eyes. The asset had just become a beacon. The liability had skyrocketed. But the value… the value had just become incalculable.
"The master key," she repeated, her voice low and intense. "Explain. Now."
The words tumbled out of Kaelen, raw and unfiltered. "Dr. Aris… he wasn't building a weapon. He was looking for a person. A specific genetic template he called the Still Heart. A conduit to harmonize with the Weep, not control it. The military… they wanted to weaponize it." He held up his violently glowing hand, the evidence undeniable. "I'm not a faulty product of the Weep. I'm the prototype. I am the template."
The revelation hung in the smoky air, more explosive than the blast that had preceded it.
Lyra sucked in a sharp breath. "That's why the psionic lock reacted to you. It wasn't just checking a password; it was verifying the user's very being."
"And the Gleaners just felt that verification fail catastrophically," Kael finished, his rasp more pronounced. "They will tear this mountain apart to find what triggered it."
"Then we don't let them find us," Elara stated, her decision made. She was all in. The risk had become the only game worth playing. "Jax, we're taking the eastern fissure. The one we scouted. It's tight, but it'll throw off their scanners. Lyra, help him." She jerked her head toward Kaelen, who was struggling to stand, his body wracked with tremors from the uncontrolled energy coursing through him.
The eastern fissure was a crack in the mountain's guts, a narrow, dripping passage of raw rock untouched by pre-Cataclysm construction. It was a place of profound silence, a rare dead zone where even the Weep's presence was muted. For Kaelen, it was a small mercy; the constant psychic pressure eased, allowing him to focus on the sheer, physical agony of his mutation.
They moved single-file, the only sounds their ragged breathing and the scuff of boots on stone. Jax led with a chemical glow-stick, its unnatural green light a violation of the deep darkness. For an hour, they navigated the labyrinth, the air growing colder.
It was Lyra who broke the silence, her voice a whisper that echoed softly. "The energy discharge… it wasn't entirely the security protocol, was it? Your hand… it's worse."
Kaelen didn't need to look. He could feel it. The crystals had a new, sharp edge to them, both physically and psychically. "It's learning. Or I am. When the blast hit, I didn't just try to block it. Part of me… tried to consume it." The admission felt like a confession of a deeper corruption.
"Fascinating," Lyra murmured, and for a moment, the scientist in her overrode the fear. "It's not just a passive mutation. It's an adaptive interface."
"It's a curse," Kaelen snapped, the pain making him sharp.
"It's a key," Elara corrected from ahead, not turning around. "And right now, it's the only thing keeping you alive. Remember the price."
They emerged from the fissure onto a windswept ledge high on the mountain's face. The world sprawled below them, the vast, glowing tapestry of the Weep looking deceptively serene from this height. The two Gleaner skimmers were tiny, angry insects buzzing around the bunker's entrance far below.
But it was what lay ahead that stole their breath.
Nestled in a higher, adjacent valley, hidden from the plains below, was a sight that defied the Rustwalker's gritty reality. It wasn't a ruin. It was a settlement, but unlike any Kaelen had ever seen. Structures weren't built; they were grown. Curving, organic walls of hardened, amber-colored resin pulsed with a soft, internal light. Bridges of woven, living vine stretched between towers, and the air hummed with a powerful, focused psychic resonance that made the hairs on Kaelen's arm stand up. It was a harmony, not the wild chorus of the wild Weep, but a deliberate, intelligent song.
"By the rusted gears," Jax breathed, lowering his crossbow.
"The Chorus of the Root," Elara said, her voice tight. "We must have crossed into their territory through the mountain. Their main enclave."
As if on cue, figures appeared on the graceful, arching entrance to the settlement. They were Mycelian, but profoundly different from the peaceful citizens of Spirehold. They stood tall, their postures radiating a zealous confidence. Some had Weep-fungi grafted directly onto their bodies—a cap growing from a shoulder, a cuff of glowing lichen around a wrist. They carried no obvious weapons, but the very air around them vibrated with potential power.
One of them, a woman with a cascade of bioluminescent moss for hair, stepped forward. Her eyes, pools of solid, calm light, passed over Elara, Jax, and Lyra as if they were insignificant. They locked onto Kaelen.
She smiled, a gesture of serene, terrifying welcome.
"The World-Mind sings of your arrival, Still Heart," she called out, her voice resonating not just in the air, but in Kaelen's very bones. "We have been waiting for you. You have come home."
Kaelen stared, his heart a frozen lump in his chest. He had escaped the Gleaners who wanted to dissect a weapon, only to be found by the fanatics who wanted to worship a god. He was trapped between the scalpel and the altar.
He looked down at his glowing, corrupted hand, then back at the waiting Chorus.
There was no running anymore.