If the underground 'sludge pit' was the stomach of the Maya district, then, at that moment, it was churning violently with spasms.
Aaryan held his breath and pressed himself against the cold, damp mountain of garbage. His skin clung to a slippery substance — the 'corpse skin' that Pau had given him. It was a layer of keratin peeled from the crystallised demon race and emitted a stench that lay somewhere between rotting flesh and aged engine oil.
But this stench was his only lifeline.
'Don't move, unless you want your head to become a target for a steam cannon.' Pau's almost inaudible voice sounded in his ear. The one-armed man was curled up inside the wrecked boiler shell, his sharp, hawk-like eye the only visible part of his body.
Above his head, dozens of red searchlight beams, each over three metres in diameter, were frantically cutting through the darkness. These were not ordinary lighting tools, but scanning rays integrated with 'ether concentration sensors'.
"Buzz—Buzz—"
A deafening mechanical roar grew louder as the Overseer Vane's steam patrol vehicle approached — a mobile fortress armed to the teeth with countless rivets, tracks and exhaust pipes. Each movement caused the foundations of the lower city to groan under the vehicle's weight.
'Hide in that pile of rotting flesh, Aaryan,' his inner voice said, sounding chillingly cold. 'Remember this feeling. Your dignity and your bloodline are now worth less than a piece of mouldy skin. This is reality. This is their gift to you.'
Aaryan felt his fingertips tremble, not from fear, but from extreme weakness. Though severely damaged in the earlier outburst, his suppression bracelet had drained most of his strength from the spilled amethyst ether; now he didn't even have the power to throw a punch.
The sound of heavy mechanical tracks crushing scrap metal a few metres away stopped abruptly.
"Search."
A hoarse, deep, metallic voice rang out — it was Overseer Vane.
Then, a dozen or so Inquisitors clad in heavy black armour leapt into the pit. Their steam-powered flamethrowers spat thin, preheated flames that instantly incinerated the mindless, petrified monsters wandering the area. The synchronised thud of their power boots echoed through the pit.
The air was filled with a nauseating smell of burning.
An Inquisitor approached the pile of junk where Aaryan was, his power boots reflecting a dim red light only a centimetre from Aaryan's nose.
'Sir, this area only has some scraps,' the Inquisitor reported in a muffled voice. 'The sensors show that the royal frequency has disappeared. It must have diffused into the deeper water system through the waste channel.'
'Disappeared?'
Vane slowly walked over. Instead of armour, he wore a black leather trench coat with gold trim. A precisely rotating sapphire prosthetic eye replaced his right eye, clicking and adjusting its focus as it scanned every inch of shadow on the ground. "The blood of the Celestial Vein royal family can sting my prosthetic eye, even from a hundred metres away." Vane stopped abruptly beside the pile of corpses where Aaryan was hiding.
He slowly drew a slender rapier from his waist; its blade gleamed with high-pressure green ether. He gently lifted a piece of 'corpse skin' covering Aaryan's shoulder with the tip of the sword.
Cold sweat trickled down Aaryan's temples, mingling with the soil.
Just as the rapier was about to pierce the thin layer of keratin and touch his skin, something he had hidden close to his chest suddenly and inexplicably heated up.
It was the only memento he had brought from the ruins of the royal palace: a fragment of the royal family emblem of the Celestial Vein.
At that moment, it seemed to sense the presence of an enemy; the remaining holy fire within it attempted to activate itself, a faint, almost invisible, purple-gold light flickering at the edge of the fragment.
"Stop it, damn it!" Aaryan screamed internally. He forced his chest muscles to press down hard on the shard.
The tip of the rapier remained suspended in mid-air.
Vane seemed to sense something. He bent down, his sapphire prosthetic eye almost touching Aaryan's disguised 'corpse', the tiny gears inside spinning wildly and emitting a sharp whistling sound.
'The refractive index of the ether here... something's not right,' Vane muttered to himself, a cruel smile creeping onto his face. 'Since we can't be sure, let's get rid of all this "garbage".'
He straightened up and coldly ordered,
"Flamethrowers ready? Burn all the leftovers within a hundred metres to ashes."
"Sir! High-energy reaction detected 500 metres to the east!"
A radar officer suddenly shouted. "It's that woman in white! She's trying to force open the gates of the underground reservoir!"
Vane's eyes instantly turned sinister. He stared intently at the pile of corpses before him, finally letting out a cold snort, before turning to walk towards the patrol car.
"Chase her! She's the key to activating '1969'; we can't let her get away!"
The engine roared, the patrol car spewing out a wave of heat hot enough to melt lead as it sped into the distance.
Only when the red searchlight had completely disappeared into the darkness did Aaryan abruptly rip off his disguise and gasp for breath.
A charred mark had been burned into his chest by a fragment of the badge, but ignoring the pain, he grabbed Paul, who was about to leave.
'Dahlia is using herself as bait. She will die!"
Pau sneered, slamming his prosthetic arm down on Aaryan's shoulder with astonishing force. 'She's a witch. She knows better than you how to survive in the shadows. As for you, Your Highness, you are only valuable if you live to see Cyrus."
He pointed to an abandoned building in the distance that looked like an inverted bell.
'There,' he continued, 'you'll understand what the Holy Blood Council is really afraid of.'
The exhaust of the patrol car churned in the narrow dumping channel, reeking of sulphur.
Aaryan propped himself up; every muscle in his body was twitching violently from having to suppress the resonance of the emblem. He looked down at his chest, where the shape of the Celestial Vein royal emblem had appeared as a clear triangular outline on his skin. Now the emblem fragment had cooled, but it still felt like a red-hot nail deeply etched into his flesh and memory. 'Don't look. That's your fate and your curse.' Pau spat out the grass in his mouth. His prosthetic arm hissed as it deflated and grasped a rusty chain suspended in mid-air with precision.
With a single leap, his normally cumbersome body was as light as an ape's as he sprang onto a hidden drain pipe.
'Keep up! Vane's patience is running out. His prosthetic eye can't sense you, but the 'etherhounds' will find you by scent soon."
Aaryan took a deep breath to endure the dizziness caused by depleted spiritual energy and scrambled up the drain. The environment here was even worse than the latrine; it was covered in damp moss and slippery industrial grease, and the tropical humidity had been concentrated to an extreme degree. Water droplets seeped from the cracks in the walls and landed on his skin, sticky and warm.
'This is what you call infiltration, Aaryan?' the inner voice sneered. 'Crawling through the pipes like a drowning dog. Look at Dahlia. She's facing the executioner who killed your people to save you, while you can only count your own heartbeats here.'
'Shut up,' Aaryan whispered in his mind, knowing that all his anger was draining his strength. He had to be like a leopard about to pounce, concealing all his light in the darkness. After navigating half a kilometre of maze-like, abandoned energy pipes, the view suddenly opened up.
This was a vast underground space that seemed to be a relic from an ancient era of the city. In the centre stood a bizarrely shaped structure that resembled an upside-down bronze bell. Its surface was densely covered with countless pressure pipes, instrument panels and glowing runic rotors.
'This is Cyrus's territory,' said Pau, stepping forward and rhythmically striking the surface of the bronze bell with his prosthetic arm.
"Thump—thump-thump—thump."
A moment later, a heavy hatch on one side of the bell slowly opened, releasing the cool, pungent scent of sandalwood mixed with coolant — a stark contrast to the polluted air outside.
"You've brought back trouble, Pau."
A calm, almost detached, voice came from the depths of the clock tower. A young man in a worn grey monk's robe sat amidst a rapidly spinning set of gears. Blindfolded, his hands moved like phantoms through the complex mechanical structure as he repaired a massive disc that constantly emitted golden light.
He was the last member of the group of four: Cyrus.
"He's not trouble; he's 'Singularity'." Pau found an oil drum to sit on and opened a can. 'The commotion he caused in the factory almost burned Vane's prosthetic eye.'
Cyrus stopped what he was doing. Despite being blindfolded, he turned his head precisely to look at the brand on Aaryan's chest.
'The embers of the Celestial Vein have reignited in the mechanical wasteland.' Cyrus slowly stood up. The array of gears around him changed speed in time with his steps, as if the entire building were an extension of his body.
He waved his hand and the enormous star map on the wall, composed of miniature projectors, lit up.
"Aaryan, you thought you had been smuggling magic stones at the Ironjaw Factory for the past three years, but you had actually been smuggling the city's 'flesh and blood'." Cyrus pointed to a wildly twisting red dot at the centre of the star map. 'Look here. All the etheric conduits and soul energy are converging at these coordinates, 1,969 metres below the surface. This singularity is devouring the humidity, the heat and the lifespan of living beings in the Maya District."
Aaryan's pupils contracted. "Is Vane forging some kind of weapon for the Council?"
'No, he's forging a "god".' Cyrus's voice held a serious tone for the first time. 'A false god powered by steam and lubricated by royal blood, and you are the final piece of the puzzle.' Just then, the entire bronze clock tower shook violently.
A blood-curdling bark echoed from the direction of the waste pit — the sound of the 'Ether Hound' spotting its target. Immediately afterwards, an elegant yet cruel voice echoed throughout the underground space via a loudspeaker.
'Since you like the underground, let this place become a true tomb.'
It was Vane's voice, but he didn't come down himself.
Dozens of pitch-black 'vacuum compression bombs', inscribed with forbidden magic, slowly descended from the ventilation openings at the top of the cavity. This weapon was strictly forbidden in the Maya District because, upon detonation, it would instantly drain all air and spiritual energy within a one-kilometre radius, suffocating all living beings.
"He's gone mad… He's going to bury all these workers with him!" Pau stood up abruptly, a high-frequency vibrating blade springing instantly from his prosthetic arm.
However, Aaryan stared intently at the disc engraved with fragments of the royal crest. His senses told him: Vane wasn't attacking blindly. The bombs were targeting the ethereal core of the clock tower precisely.
'Dahlia is still in his hands...' Blood seeped from Aaryan's palms once more. He looked at Cyrus. 'Tell me, how can I kill him in a spiritual vacuum?'
A light seemed to shine through Cyrus's blindfolded eyes.
'Refine that fragment in your chest. No longer borrow its power; make it a part of your body. Can you endure the pain of having your soul ground to dust by gears?"
The bomb's countdown timer began flashing wildly: 00:03…