The silence of the Vault did not last. It was an unnatural pocket of air, a bubble of forgotten logic that the Cathedral was already beginning to digest.
Kaelen clutched the Maintenance Log against his chest. The synthetic blue cover was cold, slick with a fine coating of violet glass-dust. Across the threshold of the shattered door, the nave began to vibrate. It wasn't a physical tremor of the deck-plates, but a harmonic pressure—the "Static" returning with the force of a tidal wave.
"They're here," Vesper said.
She was still on her knees, staring at the empty display case that had housed Batch 13. Her white ceramic armor was scorched, the High Council's gold leaf bubbling into black blisters. She looked at Kaelen, and for a heartbeat, he saw the question in her eyes. He was a spare part. A calculated redundancy.
Kaelen didn't answer the look. He didn't have the breath for it. The radiation scrub was wearing thin, and the copper taste in his mouth had turned into a thick, metallic sludge.
"Get up, Paladin," Kaelen rasped. "Unless you want to pray with them."
The sound reached them then. It was a single, sustained note—a low G-natural that resonated in the hollows of Kaelen's teeth. It carried the scent of cold beeswax and the ozone of a gathering storm.
The Choir entered the transept.
They didn't walk; they processed in a synchronized glide, three hundred monks in white surplices. Each held a tuning fork of blackened iron. They struck them in unison against their palms.
Cling.
The Static spiked. To the faithful, the sound was the voice of the God reclaiming its temple. To Kaelen, it was a physical blow to the frontal lobe. He stumbled, his shoulder hitting the podium.
Vesper tried to stand, but her left leg buckled. The "Dampening Verse" was being directed at her—a specific localized Dictum designed to increase the weight of sin. The air around her turned viscous, a shimmering gold haze that made every movement look like it was happening underwater.
"I... cannot..." she gasped, her fingers clawing at the slate floor.
The lead monk, a man whose face was a mask of scar tissue and religious ecstasy, stepped onto the marble circuit. He raised his tuning fork. His eyes were milky with cataracts, yet they locked onto Kaelen with terrifying precision.
"Asset Unsecured," the monk intoned. His voice was a layered chord, three tones vibrating from one throat. "The void walks in the house of Light. The Null must be filled."
The monks began the chant. "Non-existent, thou art. Found, thou art. Erased, thou art."
The floor-plates began to glow. The induction lattice—the black and white marble—was charging. Kaelen watched a small acolyte in the third row. The boy's nose was bleeding, the red drops vaporizing before they hit the floor. The power required to erase a Null was killing the batteries—the humans—providing the charge.
"Physics," Kaelen hissed through clenched teeth.
He didn't look at the monks. He looked at the Strider, slumped against the basalt pillar twenty meters away. Its boilers were dead, but its chassis was a three-ton lightning rod of Pre-Somatic iron.
Kaelen reached into his coat and pulled out a coil of copper wiring he'd scavenged in the Ribs. He tied one end to a heavy wrench.
"Vesper! The hammer!"
Vesper looked up, her face pale, sweat carving tracks through the dust on her cheeks. She understood. She used the hydraulics. With a scream of pure kinetic effort, she swung her hammer, not at the monks, but at the marble floor-plates beneath her.
CRACK.
The marble shattered, exposing the silver-threaded induction coils beneath. Kaelen threw the wrench. It arced through the air, trailing the copper wire like a tethered bird, and slammed into the Strider's exposed core-housing.
The circuit was complete.
The Cathedral's Truth-Field, built to harvest the belief of thousands, found a sudden, massive ground. The energy flowed, but also exploded.
The low G-natural of the Choir shattered into a chaotic shriek of Dissonance. The lead monk's tuning fork turned white-hot, melting into his palm. He didn't scream—his tongue had petrified in his mouth. In the third row, the young acolyte's skin began to bubble, his faith unable to protect him from the raw electrical surge he had helped conjure.
The Strider spasmed. The dead machine groaned as thousands of volts of consecrated belief poured into its rusted joints. Its single remaining searchlight flared to life, a blinding violet beam that cut through the incense.
"Go!" Kaelen yelled.
He grabbed Vesper by the pauldron, hauling her toward the shuddering machine. The air was a riot of colors—violet, gold, and the sickening green of failing insulation.
They reached the cockpit. Vesper jammed her hand into the manual override. The hatch hissed open, coughing out the smell of stale leather.
"The core is redlining," Vesper shouted over the roar of the building's agony. "It's going to detonate!"
"Then aim it at the wall!"
Kaelen shoved the Maintenance Log into the jump-seat. Vesper slammed the throttle. The Strider lunged. The machine, powered by the very field meant to destroy them, smashed through the basalt pillar.
The ceiling groaned. A ton of quarried stone fell, crushing a dozen monks who were too deep in their trance to move.
The Strider hit the stained-glass window of the western apse.
For a second, the world was a kaleidoscope of shattered saints and red-tinted light. Then, there was only the wind.
The Cathedral sat on a precipice, three miles above the Gut. The Strider cleared the ledge, its legs kicking at the empty air, and began the long descent into the dark.
Kaelen watched the Cathedral recede—a glowing, golden tooth in the mouth of a dead god. Then the clouds of the Middle Districts swallowed it.
The Static in his head finally went silent.