The Liturgy wasn't just a stabilizer; it was a parasite.
As Kiron stood in the center of the silent Gallery, the calcified bone in his chest began to pulse with a cold, rhythmic throb. It felt like a second heart, one that didn't pump blood, but drew in the air around it. The sand-like remains of the Mother of Shards began to swirl at his feet, drawn toward him as if he were a vacuum.
But the sand wasn't enough. It was empty calories—the dust of a broken mind. The Liturgy wanted will. It wanted essence.
"Kiron?" Nyra stepped closer, her hand hovering near her sword. "Your eye... the stone one. It's glowing."
Kiron didn't answer. His gaze was fixed on the two Revenant guards standing near the entrance. They were ancient spirits, their forms made of hardened shadow and centuries of martial discipline. In his mind's eye, they weren't soldiers anymore. They were reservoirs of raw, concentrated gravity.
Feed, the bone in his chest whispered. The Pale-Vane is fast. You are stone. To catch the wind, you must consume the mountain.
"My King?" one of the guards rumbled, sensing the shift in the air. The giant took a cautious step back, its obsidian armor creaking.
Kiron didn't draw Lament. He simply reached out with his basalt hand.
A tether of dark, violet smoke erupted from his stone palm, latching onto the guard's chest. The Revenant didn't scream—spirits had no lungs for it—but its form began to fray at the edges, turning into long ribbons of shadow that were sucked into Kiron's palm.
"Kiron, stop!" Nyra yelled, her blade clearing its sheath. "That's your own guard!"
"He's... he's taking their weight," Nel-Eak said, his voice devoid of judgment. The hunter watched with clinical detachment as the second guard was also caught in the siphon.
Kiron felt a surge of terrifying, cold heat. As the essence of the two Revenants poured into him, the heavy, sluggish feeling in his stone limbs vanished. The basalt didn't turn back to flesh, but it became light—stronger than steel, yet as responsive as skin.
He felt fast. The world around him seemed to slow down. He could hear the drip of water three levels away; he could feel the frantic, retreating heartbeat of the Pale-Vane deep in the Lower-Marrows.
The two guards collapsed into heaps of inert, grey ash. Their centuries of service had been condensed into a few seconds of fuel for a hungry King.
Kiron turned toward the dark tunnel leading down. His stone eye was now a burning, violet sun in the dark.
"Kiron," Nyra whispered, her face pale. "You just... you just ate them."
"They were dead already," Kiron said. His voice was no longer a rasp; it was a deep, resonant boom that vibrated in the very floorboards. "Now, they are part of the path. Stay here. Guard the Gallery. If I don't catch him, there won't be anyone left to protect."
Before she could argue, Kiron moved.
He didn't run; he blurred. Every step cracked the stone floor as he propelled himself forward with the stolen strength of the giants. He plunged into the lightless shafts of the Lower-Marrows, his body cutting through the "Heavy-Taint" like a hot knife through wax.
The Pale-Vane was close. Kiron could smell the scent of tea and cowardice.
The traitor was standing at a massive, rusted hatch—the Casket of the First Age. It wasn't a door meant to be opened from the outside. It was a seal meant to keep something in.
"You're too late, Grave-Son!" the Pale-Vane shrieked, his hands frantically turning a series of jagged, bone-handled cranks. "You fed on your soldiers, but I am going to feed on the First King! Once I wake the Origin, your little sword will be nothing but a toothpick!"
The hatch groaned, and a thick, black fluid—the "Original Bile"—began to leak from the seams.
Kiron didn't slow down. He raised Lament, the blade glowing with the stolen essence of the Revenants.