WebNovels

Chapter 14 - Null

The chains hit like a verdict.

No sound, not really. Sound is a thing air does. These weren't interested in air. They pinned ideas. The first loop struck the Knight's blade and didn't wrap, rewrote. Sword became "held," not "swing." The second kissed Asta's gauntlet and told it, kindly: "you are metal", not shadow, not hunger, just weight.

His arm froze from fingertip to shoulder. The lantern's dead glare still burned on his retinas. Knife-lover grinned through blood, rifle steadied, and for a moment the hangar looked like a clean drawing of his failure.

Lysandra moved the way a trapped animal chooses which bars to bend. "Left," she said, too calm.

He trusted the compass in her voice. He shifted weight. The third chain hissed past his cheek and bit the crate behind him; wood forgot it was breakable and became furniture.

[Null Chains - Concept Lock: ACTIVE]

[Shadow Response: Suppressed]

[Daylight Trace: Present]

[Tip: Paradox input may cause slip.]

Paradox. He didn't have numbers; he had a word he'd stolen from a lantern.

The chain on his gauntlet tightened, polite as a lawyer. Asta tore at it, nothing. He couldn't get shadow under it. He couldn't get breath around it. The Black Knight leaned in from behind his ribs and met the metal with a pressure that said: we do not kneel, and the chain laughed, if a chain can laugh.

"Hold him," the Director said, friendly. "Don't harm the girl."

"Girl?" Lysandra said, and her smile flashed the way glass flashes before it becomes a weapon. She ripped the pry bar out of a dead man's visor and swung. The bar rang off chain with a sound like someone closing a book on your fingers.

Knife-lover advanced. "On your knees, rat."

Asta looked at the chain pinned to his knuckles. Metal. Just metal. Daylight liked truth. Daylight also liked theft. He remembered the way the lantern had tasted going down, a shock of winter under his tongue, then the after-warmth of doing something the world had not signed off on.

He put his mouth to the chain.

Lysandra's head whipped. "Do not-"

He bit.

Cold tore into his gums like wire. The chain didn't flinch. The chain didn't need to. It expected obedience, not teeth.

"Devour," he said into iron.

[Devour Attempt: Conceptual]

[Status: Failing…]

[Partition? Y/N]

Partition. The trick in the fissure. Half in, half out. He split the command. Bind half. Leave half. He told the chain a lie with enough sincerity that it felt like a prayer: you are metal and not-metal. You are locked and unmade. Both are true; choose.

The chain stuttered.

Something like light—not really light, refusal of dark, spooled up his teeth and into his skull. He gagged. The chain slipped a fraction, like a belt with one tooth missing. The gauntlet twitched free by a knuckle's width.

The Director's smile reduced. "Interesting."

Knife-lover lunged to finish it. Lysandra met her, pry bar under rifle, twist; the shot took the ceiling, dust snowing rivers. Pry bar up, butt of the rifle into the woman's jaw, crack like thin ice. Knife-lover staggered, laughed because of course she did.

"Again," Lysandra murmured, and did it again, cleaner. The laugh cut off mid-habit.

The Knight shoved. The freed knuckle became a wrist. The chain tightened to correct and found no correction that didn't admit defeat.

"Rise," Asta said, not to shadow, but to the part of him that liked unfairness when it tasted like justice.

The chain moved the wrong way. It came off his arm as if the room couldn't stand the paradox any longer. The loop snapped wide, hungry for a new definition. It found the broken lantern.

The glass remembered it had been the inside of a star.

The chain locked light instead.

Lantern went still, a sun in a jar, held at attention by a grammar mistake.

Lysandra blinked once, hair falling into her eyes, grin quick and mean. "You improvise like a criminal."

"Thank you," Asta said, breath sharp.

More chains leapt. He was done playing concept chess. He grabbed the nearest pylon's severed cable, jammed the sparking head into the crate stack, and pulled shadow from the fire the electricity wanted to make. The hangar went black in a ripple. Emergency lights coughed awake, red, dirty, honest.

Shadow roared back into him like a crowd that had waited too long.

The Knight stepped through his spine and made the world heavier for anyone not on their side.

Knife-lover adjusted with the humourless grace of someone married to violence. "New plan," she said, and feinted high, went low, knife for Lysandra's thigh. Pry bar met blade. Sparks spun, pretty for a second, then scared.

"Director," one suit panted, "containment is..."

"Sh," the Director said, smiling again. He watched Asta like a teacher watches a child choose whether to bite. "Let him."

"Let me what?" Asta asked, blood in his mouth, chain ache in his teeth.

"Decide what you are," the man said, and it sounded like a benediction and a threat.

Asta didn't answer. He stepped into Knife-lover's space on Lysandra's count, one, two, now, and shoulder-checked her into a steel column hard enough to dent training out of posture. The knife skittered. The hound took it, swallowed the shadow it cast, and wagged a tail that didn't exist.

"Exit," Lysandra said. "East wall. Cargo door."

"On it."

The suits fumbled with a second lantern. He didn't give them the key time. He threw the chain-locked first lantern like a bowling ball from a worse religion. It hit the second lantern, and they kissed into nonsense. Light spilled out, confused, then went still, pinned to a folded chain whose definition of "on" and "off" had decided to be colleagues.

They ran.

Running is easy when you choose it; harder when you owe it. Asta owed. He wanted to turn and finish the Director, bury that smile, take apart whatever wore it like a pet. He wanted, and wanting is heavy.

"Later," Lysandra said, reading his weight like a scale. "You don't win this room. You steal it from a distance."

He swallowed the urge and spit blood instead. The cargo door was halfway down, safety shutter thinking about duty. He lifted his gauntlet; shadow surged and the Knight took the rest, shoulder to steel. The door lost the argument.

Cold night ran in. City air. Rain starting, thin needles. Sirens out there, different pitches for different failures. He loved the noise.

"Asta," the Director said, not shouting, just speaking, and somehow the sound arrived at the door with them, escorted. "You can't keep both."

"Both what?" he asked, already outside, rain on his face, Lysandra a burn at his side.

"The girl," the Director said, "and the crown."

The chains writhed like angry punctuation behind him. Knife-lover wiped her mouth and grinned at the weather. The suits looked at paperwork and saw handcuffs.

Asta smiled without humour. "Watch me."

They vanished into the rain.

They didn't take streets. Streets are for stories that want to be seen. They took the seam where the Guild's fence failed to be a straight line, cut across a gravel lot where weeds learned to be brave, slid under an offramp where old gum held the history of teenagers and secrets. The hound padded ahead, a rumor; the Knight made rebar remember gravity; Lysandra matched him breath for breath until they found a stairwell that forgot it was locked.

Down into concrete, wet, old. The kind of corridor cities grow under skin and then pretend they didn't.

Asta leaned against a wall and let two minutes be honest. His ribs tried to be sirens. His teeth hated the chain. His shadow overfilled the space and then pretended modesty.

Lysandra pressed palm to her side. Blood painted under her fingers, a dark flower. He reached. She slapped his hand away on reflex, then let him take a look on purpose.

"Through," he said.

"Grazed," she said.

"Hurts," he translated.

"Always," she said, and the half-smile was tired and hot at once.

He tore clean cloth from a hanging tarp that used to be a warning. Wrapped her tight. The knight's eyes burned faint in the tunnel; the hound lay down like steam cooling.

"What were those chains?" he asked when his hands were busy and could bear to be given thoughts.

"Null," she said. "Found or forged in the dark. They don't bind bodies. They bind statements. 'You are.' 'You aren't.' The Guild buys them from priests who lost their gods and needed a hobby." She hissed when the cloth caught. "Daylight in a jar is the same idea with better PR."

"And the Director?"

"Host." She met his eyes. "Or he's worse: volunteer. Something old rides in him. Acolytes use keys; hosts are doors." She leaned back against the concrete, closing her eyes for a breath that wanted to be longer. "Don't fight him under lights again."

"We won't," he said, which the rain upstairs might have considered a lie. He checked the tunnel mouth. Shadows deep, rain louder there, city breath coming through grates in damp sighs. "We move."

She nodded. He offered an arm. She took it without looking like she had.

"We're not done with them," she said.

"We haven't started," he said, and the chapter stepped into the dark with them.

Chapter 16: Minutes and Miles

(Split POV: Director / Asta)

Director

He didn't watch the door; he watched the room remembering the door had been there. Trauma leaves dents in more than metal. The lanterns guttered. The chains wrung themselves out and lay limp, sulking like snakes denied a throat.

Knife-lover leaned against the dented column, pinching her nose. Blood down her wrist, grin smaller but true. "He's cocky. I like him."

"You like falling off buildings," he said mildly.

"Only if there's another building," she said, and grinned wider when it hurt.

The suits hovered near the broken lanterns like widowers afraid to touch clocks. One tried to shut the case as if paperwork could be repaired by closing the lid harder. The Director let them.

He retrieved the first chain with bare hands. It bit nothing. He whispered a name to it that wasn't his and it curled, docile, around his wrist, then vanished into his sleeve like a well-trained rumor.

"Asset lost," a suit managed.

"Assets move," the Director said. He glanced at the ceiling. The suppressants rumbled awake late, coughing foam that had nowhere to be useful. City contracts were always a comedy of budget lines.

He turned to Knife-lover. "Send the notice. Not the public thing. The other thing."

Her eyes flared with appetite even as she wiped more blood on her sleeve. "Bounty or bell?"

"Bell," he said. "Let the other houses know a Hollow walked out of a double with his personality intact." He considered the broken lanterns. "And tell the Sun people we'll need a loan again. They'll pretend to be offended; let them."

She tilted her head. "You're really gonna keep him in the city? Feels messy."

He smiled, which on him was like weather pretending to be a person. "Mess makes maps."

Her grin matched it, cheaper but sincere. "On it." She pushed off the column, rolled her jaw until it clicked right, and limped toward the side door like the limp was a style choice.

The suits started to exhale. The Director lifted a finger. They went quiet like children who heard a floorboard creak.

He took out his phone. No contacts list—just the same two numbers everyone thinks they don't have. The line trilled once, then wore a voice.

"Yes," the voice said. Genderless, exhausted, bored by the end of empires.

"We've located an Heir candidate," the Director said. "Shadow type. Compatible with two keys to date. Hostile; salvageable."

"Name," the voice said.

"Asta," he said, letting it sit on his tongue like a test. "Hollow by file. Not for long."

"Your vessel is stable?"

He glanced at the stain the lantern made on his skin and the way his shadow craned toward it, curious and loyal. "Stable enough."

"Do not allow him to merge with Competing Authority," the voice said. "We will release the lighthouse."

He breathed out through his nose, pleased. "Good."

The line died. No goodbye. The Director looked around the hangar, the dented column, the two dead lanterns, the suit's trembling with the relief of not being named.

"Pull all street cameras in a two-mile radius," he said. "Every private feed with a view of rain. Run it through the sieve."

"The… essence filter?" a suit said, hating the words he knew.

"Yes," the Director said, forgiving the flinch by refusing to notice. "They'll leave traces. Everyone thinks they don't." He looked at the dent in the column again and smiled a small, private thing, more wonder than threat. "He ate daylight. Who taught him to be rude?"

No one answered. He didn't need them to. He put his hands in his pockets like a man with nothing sharp there and walked out, already writing a map only he wanted to be true.

Asta...

More Chapters