The first claw broke through the iron bulkhead three minutes in. It wasn't a finger; it was a surgical steel spike, driven by a piston-powered forearm. It retracted with a wet shredding sound, leaving a jagged star-shaped hole in the door.
"Kaelen," the father hissed, backing away toward the operating table. "The door... it won't hold!"
"Get back to the Widow," I growled, not moving from my crate. I didn't look at the hole. I looked at the shadow moving behind it. "And don't close your eyes. You're the only witness she has left."
Behind me, the Widow's workshop had turned into a cathedral of blue sparks. She had the "Ballerina" frame opened up—its chest cavity a labyrinth of silver gears and Aether-Quartz. She held the vial over the Heart-Chamber, her silver gloves glowing as she began the Harmonic Sync.
SCREE-CH.
The iron door didn't buckle; it unspooled. The Hollowed were using high-frequency cutters. A circle of glowing red metal dropped inward, hitting the floor with a heavy thud.
Through the opening stepped the first one.
He had once been a man, perhaps a dockworker. Now, his jaw had been replaced with a brass grate, and his eyes were hollow sockets leaking a dim, flickering blue light. The Command-Rune on his forehead pulsed like a strobe light.
"Subject... identified," the brass grate vibrated. "Kaelen... Ferryman. Priority: Erase."
He lunged.
He didn't have the grace of the Stalker. He had the momentum of a falling building. I rolled off the crate as his steel-shod fist smashed the wood into toothpicks. I swung my notched blade in a low arc, catching him across the back of his knees.
It was like hitting a stone pillar.
The blade sparked, cutting through the leather trousers but stopping at the reinforced carbon-fiber "tendons" beneath. He didn't even flinch. He spun, his arm extending with a hydraulic hiss, a hidden blade sliding out of his wrist.
I parried, the vibration rattling my teeth. My left arm—the fractured one—screamed in protest. The Widow was starting the siphon.
"Ten minutes!" the Widow shouted over the sound of the grinding gears. "Keep him away from the table!"
Two more Hollowed squeezed through the hole. One carried a heavy chain-whip lined with mana-disruptors; the other had fingers that ended in long, humming needles.
I was outnumbered, outgunned, and my magic was being bled dry by a woman in a lace veil.
...Kaelen... look at the... joints...
The voice in the air wasn't a whisper anymore. It was a resonance. The girl was halfway into the porcelain frame, and for a split second, I saw the world through her eyes again.
The Hollowed weren't solid. They were held together by thin threads of blue mana connecting their runes to their limbs.
"The threads," I breathed.
I stopped fighting the man and started fighting the magic.
I dove under the chain-whip, my blade finding the small, unprotected gap behind the first Hollowed's neck—the "Access Port." I didn't just cut; I twisted. The blue light in his eyes flared white, then died. He slumped forward, a heap of useless meat and metal.
But the other two were on me. The needles pierced my shoulder, injecting a numbing agent that turned my right arm into lead. The chain-whip lashed across my chest, tearing through my coat and skin.
I fell back against the operating table.
"Five minutes!" the Widow cried. Her face was pale, the silver filigree of her gloves turning black from the heat of the transfer.
The Hollowed with the brass jaw stepped over his fallen comrade. He raised both hands, his wrist-blades locking together to form a guillotine.
I looked at my left hand. The grey scar was glowing a violent, angry purple. The Widow was siphoning the "waste," but there was too much. The pressure in my core was reaching the breaking point.
"You want it?" I looked at the Hollowed, a bloody grin stretching across my face. "Take the whole damn thing."
I grabbed the Hollowed's brass jaw with my fractured hand and pushed.
I didn't use a spell. I just let the dam break.
A wave of raw, unstable "Burnout" energy surged out of my marrow. It wasn't golden or holy; it was a jagged, screaming violet fire. It poured into the Hollowed, overloading his Command-Runes, melting his internal processors, and turning his mechanical heart into a molten lump.
The explosion of mana threw the other two back against the wall. The room went white.
When the light faded, I was on my knees, my left arm smoking, the skin blackened to the elbow. The Hollowed with the brass jaw was a charred husk at my feet.
The silence that followed was broken by a single, delicate sound.
Tink.
On the table, the porcelain ballerina moved.
Her fingers, white and perfect, twitched. Her head tilted to the side with a soft, clockwork click. Her eyes—two polished sapphires—flickered, then glowed with a steady, warm golden light.
She sat up. She didn't look like a toy. She looked like a soul wearing a beautiful, fragile mask.
She looked at her hands, then at the father, and finally, she looked at me.
"Kaelen," the doll whispered. Her voice was no longer in my head; it was coming from a tiny silver diaphragm in her throat. It was the sound of bells. "The road... is clear."
I tried to stand, but the world tilted. The Widow was already there, holding a vial of dark fluid to my lips.
"You survived," she remarked, her voice sounding strangely distant. "The siphon is complete. I have what I need. Now get out of my shop before the Spires send something I can't fix."
I looked at the girl—the Porcelain Soul. She wasn't a "Trace" anymore. She was a person. And she was the most dangerous thing in Oakhaven.
"Come on," I rasped, leaning on my sword as I stood. "The night isn't over. We still have three districts to go."