Total pages in book: 146
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 144277 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 721(@200wpm)___ 577(@250wpm)___ 481(@300wpm)
He unspools.
Threads slip from him in every direction, fine as silk, bright as stars. All at once, they hit me like a jolt. A jump from the Tau City Tower. Clara, dyin’ in my arms. Anneeta, dyin’ on the bench next to her.
Me, stealin’ spark from that family.
He’s gone.
The monk is gone.
Like breath in cold air.
Like whispers in an empty room.
Like a story, untold.
I stole it.
My hand hasn’t moved. My fingers still curl over what was the monk’s shoulder. But there is nothin’ left beneath them. No weight. No warmth. No him.
The monk was.
Now he isn’t.
The resonance in the cave shifts, like the song of it has changed, like the fabric of reality itself is registerin’ his absence.
I feel it.
I feel everything.
The pulse of the crystal. The chant in the air. The ripple of somethin’ vast, somethin’ waiting.
I flex my fingers. The tingle is still there.
I could do that again.
I could do that forever.
Rise a god! Rise a god! Rise a god!
I’m in the arena, standin’ on a high, high platform. Way higher than I was. I have no idea how I got up here. No memory of nothin’.
But… it’s like I don’t care. Couldn’t care even if I wanted to, cause I don’t.
All I care about are the monks and what it felt like to… take. Those threads of spark. It was like… like I was being augmented. The first time, the second time, the third time.
But… better.
I can’t explain it. It’s like… a drug. Like living in the God’s Tower in Tau City as an addict. But livin’ there never felt this good.
Below me, the cage maze stretches down, down, down. Layers of twisted metal and brutalized bodies.
Did I do that?
Did I kill them all?
A laugh comes out of me.
Sharp, loud, disturbin’.
I want to leave here. Go back to the monks. Grab a little more of that thread.
But it’s gone. This world has my full attention. The roarin’ crowd makes the steel bars of the cage rattle like a living thing. Like it’s got a heartbeat.
Not all the fighters are dead, though. There’s three left. Just one level below me.
They don’t move.
They’re watchin’.
Waitin’.
They are augments, but the eyes are all wrong. One has yellow, one has green, one has red. All wrong. That’s what Epsilon is doin’ here. He’s using these men to make… what?
An army?
Can’t be.
These fuckers are weak. They are no match for me. Myra, all five-foot-two of her, could take these abominations out.
These three just below me, they’re not like the others. They’ve got rage, no hunger. Their chests rise and fall, their glowing eyes flicker in the floodlights, but their feet don’t move.
They don’t want to fight.
But then—
BOOM.
A blast of static rips through the arena speakers.
Epsilon’s voice follows. Loud. Amused. Dragged into a deep, distorted growl by the speakers stacked high at the far end of the amphitheater. His face fills the giant screen. Massive. Unnatural. A grinning god of metal and scar tissue.
“Finish him.”
The words don’t just echo. They press.
Rise a god! Rise a god! Rise a god!
The augments below flinch. Their bodies jerk, muscles spasming, like puppets whose strings have just been yanked. One stumbles forward, his arms twitchin’ as they grab the bars, tryin’ not to fall.
It’s a long way down.
Another gasps—a dry, choking sound—before he lurches a step toward me.
One of them—young, too young, half his face replaced with crude, rusted plating—tries to turn his head away. Tries to step back.
His legs don’t listen.
He snarls. At himself.
Epsilon chuckles. His giant, grotesque face warps on the screen, pixels shifting, lines buzzing, godlike and bored. “Do you seeeeeeeeeee, Saarinen?” The voice wraps around me, slides into my bones. “They don’t want to fight you. You’re better than them. You’re better than they could ever hope to be!”
The augments shake, their limbs snapping into motion, dragged forward by some invisible force. One of them lets out a guttural, agonized noise—more like a scream strangled before it ever reaches the surface.
I see it now.
Epsilon isn’t just controlling them. He’s wearin’ them.
Three bodies, one will.
And I am exactly where he wants me.
I reach down, but I’m not in the cage. I’m in the cave and I’m reaching for nothin’. It’s empty. Not like a room after someone leaves. Not like a battlefield after the bodies are cleared.
Wrong.
There’s no trace of the monks. No footprints. No blood. No echo of their voices bouncing off the stone.
I did this.
Taking a step forward, my boots hit the rock floor without a sound. The air is too still, thick with something I can’t name. My breath feels loud, sharp. My fingers twitch. I don’t know what they’re reaching for. There’s nothing here…
Except there is.
The space where the monks were is warped. Like the air itself is trying to hold on to something that no longer exists anymore. It shimmers—like heat on pavement.