The exit dumped me into a circular room. No doors. Walls like black glass reflected my scaled arm, now cracked with glowing green veins. The air smelled of ozone and wet copper.
"Impressive void manipulation. Reckless, but impressive." Director Veridia stepped from the wall itself, her robe shedding shadow like water.
"What was that metal girl?" I demanded. "And who's the Bone Weaver?"
She ignored me, tapping the wall. It turned transparent, revealing an operating theater below. A patient lay strapped to a table, chest open. Instead of organs, gears and glowing wires pulsed inside.
（
"Meet your new magic tutor," Veridia said. "Professor Kael."
The man on the table turned his head. His eyes were polished lenses. "Ah, the void-touched girl! Shall we begin your lesson?"
"While he's cut open?" I stared.
"Pain focuses the mind." Kael's voice buzzed. A mechanical arm reached from the ceiling, adjusting a gear in his chest. He gasped—a sound like steam escaping. "Today's lesson: living runes."
The wall-screen flickered. Symbols appeared, twisting like worms:
- Agony - Hunger - Regret
"Most mages carve these in stone or metal," Kael explained. "But power fades. We imprint them on living flesh." The mechanical arm extended a needle-tipped probe toward me.
"Try it and I'll shove that probe up your gears," I snarled. Magic flared in my blackened hand.
Kael chuckled. "Spirit! But aggression powers the rune. Perfect."
He didn't move. The probe jabbed into his own exposed heart-gear. Blood—oily and iridescent—spurted. It hit the wall-screen. The ᛟ rune blazed red.
PAIN.
Not mine. His. A tidal wave of synthetic agony crashed into me. My knees buckled. The ᛟ rune burned itself onto my vision.
"Good! Now shape it!" Kael rasped. The probe drilled deeper into his gears.
I tried to push the pain out. It backfired. The rune flared, scalding my mind. He's using me as a pain battery!
Desperate, I did the opposite. I pulled harder.
The ᛟ rune tore from the screen. It hovered, dripping Kael's rainbow blood. I shaped it into a spear—a lance of pure suffering.
Kael's lens-eyes widened. "No! That's unstable—"
I hurled it. Not at him. At the operating theater's window.
The living rune shattered the reinforced glass. It exploded inward, showering Kael with shards. His scream mixed with squealing gears.
Alarms wailed. Veridia grabbed my arm, her fingers cold as scalpels. "You damaged valuable property."
I jerked free. "Next time I'll aim for his property." I nodded at Kael, now impaled by glass shards.
Before Veridia could respond, the wall-screen flickered with emergency text:
GROWTH CHAMBER BREACH SUBJECT: SLIME DELTA-7 STATUS: **ESCALATING**
A wet thump shook the door. Something heavy and glistening oozed through the cracks. It smelled of rainbows and rotting meat.
The slime from the void rip. And it had followed my blood trail.
Veridia drew a device like a tuning fork. "Clean up your mess, Thornwood. Or become its lunch."
The slime quivered. A mouth formed, filled with spinning crystal teeth. It spoke in the metal-girl's voice:
"Found you, Old Blood."