The 'Forgotten' didn't attack. They wept. Violet liquid of raw energy leaked from their empty sockets as they circled Kael. The clicking of their joints rose into a distorted, harmonious wail. It was a sound that grated against the eardrums, like a desperate prayer to something that had left them to rot in this living tomb.
"They think I'm him," Kael whispered, his hair beginning to flicker with a dark, oily light. "The one who walked through the fire before the sky broke." "Get away from them!" Corvin roared, swinging his blade in a low arc. The kinetic shockwave slammed into the frail bodies, throwing them backward. They didn't resist. Their frames simply shattered into piles of bone dust and rusted cogs the moment they hit the wall. But the noise—the violent resonance of Corvin's attack—had acted as a signal flare in the absolute dark.
A high-pitched whistle sliced the air. A metal harpoon, glowing with the golden light of the Synod, slammed into the amber wall inches from Kael's head.
From the tunnel entrance, a massive shadow emerged. It wasn't a standard 'Purifier' soldier. It was a Blood-Hound—a beast of flesh and brass, its jaw a mechanical trap of steam pistons and serrated bone. And riding on its back was a 'Justiciar' of the Second Circle.
"The Silencer and the Seed," the Justiciar laughed, his voice amplified by a brass lung implanted in his chest. "Valerius said you'd be hiding in the rot. He didn't mention you'd be playing nursemaid to a walking calamity, Corvin."
Corvin felt the heat of his own blood sliding down his neck. His body had reached its absolute limit. The internal tearing of his veins was no longer just drops; the hot bleeding threatened to completely drown his vision.
"Run, Kael," Corvin ordered, his voice a guttural growl. "Toward the lower gaps. And don't look back. I'll make sure this dog stays in its cage."
"But you'll die," Kael said, his silver eyes turning a deep, bruised violet.
"I died in that temple ten years ago," Corvin replied, his fractured blade igniting with a desperate, white-hot kinetic glow. "Everything you see now is just a corpse fighting to fix a single mistake." The Blood-Hound lunged forward. But Kael didn't run. Instead, he reached out and touched the bone floor. For the first time, Corvin felt it. It wasn't resonance. It was 'Silence.' An absolute void that sucked every particle of sound out of the air all at once. The Justiciar's laugh died in his throat. The mechanical beast's roar vanished. And in that absolute, suffocating silence, Corvin saw Kael's hair turn black for the very first time.