The air in the subway junction felt like it had been vacuumed dry. The sheer output of the Aries "Emperor's March" had ionized the oxygen, leaving a metallic, stinging taste on Kael's tongue. He lay in the shallow, oily sludge, his lungs screaming for air that wasn't choked with dust and Runic exhaust. His right arm was a map of agony; the blackened skin around the runes suggested he had pushed the output far beyond what his current "Sync Rate" could handle.
Across the hub, the Azure Noble—Lord Julian of the Third Circle—stepped over the twitching, armored form of his fallen Enforcer. He didn't spare his subordinate a second glance. His eyes were fixed entirely on Kael, or more accurately, on the faint, dying red embers of the runes on Kael's skin.
"Do you know the history of the stars, scavenger?" Julian asked, his voice echoing with a haunting, musical quality. He flicked his crystalline rapier, and the blue hum intensified, carving a thin line of frost into the humid air. "Before the Fracture, humanity looked at the Zodiac as a map of destiny. After the Earth became a battlefield, we realized they were actually blueprints for war. But the blueprints were lost. Shattered into fragments. What you have... it shouldn't exist in a gutter like Z Town."
Kael didn't answer. He couldn't. He was busy fighting the urge to vomit as his body attempted to process the massive energy drain. He gripped the hilt of his rusted combat knife, his knuckles white. The Protocol's voice was a faint, distorted whisper in the back of his mind.
[WARNING: CRITICAL SYSTEM DEPLETION] [ZODIAC SYNC DROPPING: 8.4%] [ESTIMATED TIME TO UNCONSCIOUSNESS: 120 SECONDS]
"I'll be gentle with the extraction," Julian continued, his pace slow and predatory. "The House of Azure prides itself on its surgical precision. I'll take your arms, then your marrow, and finally, I'll peel that 'Protocol' out of your nervous system like a parasite."
Julian moved.
He didn't run; he slid. The friction-manipulation of the Azure Bloodline allowed him to move as if the floor were made of perfectly smooth ice. He was a blue blur, the crystalline rapier aiming directly for Kael's shoulder—the same one he had just relocated.
Kael's "Sovereign Ego" kicked in one last time. He didn't try to stand. He didn't try to block. Instead, he waited until the very last millisecond, until he could feel the biting cold of the frost-blade against his neck.
Flow. Construct. Explode.
He didn't use a "Force-Bash." He used the Aries energy to trigger a Reverse-Flow. He pulled the remaining heat from his own body and dumped it into the sludge beneath him.
Hiss!
A massive cloud of steam exploded upward, blinding Julian for a fraction of a heartbeat. It was a desperate, low-tier trick, but it was enough to disrupt the noble's friction-slide. Julian's blade whistled through the air, inches above Kael's head, striking the steel side of the subway car with a sound like a tuning fork.
Kael lunged. He didn't use his knife on Julian's armor—he knew it would shatter against the polymer. Instead, he slammed his left hand—the one that wasn't burnt—onto Julian's polished leather boot.
"Aries... Pressure," Kael wheezed.
The crimson light flared one last time. It wasn't a punch; it was a localized burst of gravity. The Aries energy pinned Julian's foot to the floor of the subway hub with the weight of a falling mountain.
Julian's eyes widened. "You dare—!"
He swung the rapier downward in a panicked arc, but Kael was already moving. He grabbed a loose, jagged piece of rebar from the debris of the ceiling and jammed it into the cooling vent of Julian's Azure combat suit.
The suit's friction-dampeners roared in protest. Blue sparks erupted from the noble's shoulder pads as the internal systems began to melt down. Julian screamed, a sound of pure, aristocratic outrage, as his own Bloodline energy began to cook him inside his expensive gear.
"I told you," Kael coughed, blood flecking his lips. "I'm the one... who outlives the countdown."
Kael twisted the rebar. The explosion was small but contained. Julian was thrown backward, his foot finally tearing free from the floor, and he crashed into the sludge ten feet away. The crystalline rapier shattered into a thousand useless shards of glass.
Silence returned to the junction, broken only by the dripping of water and the distant, fading roar of a Calamity Beast on the surface.
Kael crawled toward the unconscious noble. His vision was tunneling, black spots dancing at the edges. He needed to leave, but he couldn't leave empty-handed. Z Town was built on the law of the loot.
[PROTOCOL NOTIFICATION: SCANNING DEFEATED HOSTILE] [VALUABLE ASSETS DETECTED] [INITIATING 'SOVEREIGN HARVEST']
Kael's hand, guided by a strange, magnetic pull from the Protocol, reached for Julian's neck. He pulled a silver chain from beneath the scorched Azure suit. At the end of the chain was a glowing blue data-shard—an Azure Memory Core.
[ITEM ACQUIRED: HOUSE OF AZURE MEMORY CORE (TIER-2)] [CONTENTS: KINETIC FRICTION ENCODINGS, SECTOR 4 MAP DATA, 5,000 CREDITS]
But the Protocol wasn't done. It forced Kael's hand toward the noble's chest, where a small, pulsating light was visible through the cracked armor.
[WARNING: SENSITIVE ACTION] [EXTRACTING 'GENETIC ESSENCE: AZURE FRICTION'] [CAUTION: THE PROTOCOL ADVISES AGAINST INTEGRATION. RETAIN AS RAW FUEL FOR ZODIAC EVOLUTION.]
Kael felt a cold, liquid sensation enter his palm as the Protocol siphoned the raw Bloodline energy directly out of Julian's body. The noble groaned but remained unconscious, his power being drained away like water from a broken dam.
Kael stood up, swaying on his feet. He had the Memory Core. He had the Essence. And most importantly, he found a small, pressurized canister on the second Enforcer's belt: High-Grade Medical Nanites.
He cracked the canister over his burnt arm. The nanites hissed as they began to knit his flesh back together, the cooling sensation being the most beautiful thing he had ever felt.
[ENERGY LEVELS: 4%] [ZODIAC SYNC: 14.2% - EVOLVING] [DEAD MAN'S SWITCH: 21:40:12]
He had survived the House of Azure. But he knew that by tomorrow morning, his face would be on every digital billboard in the upper districts. He had robbed a noble. He had tasted the blood of a King.
He turned away from the hub and began to disappear into the deeper tunnels, heading toward the only person who might be able to help him survive the next twenty-one hours. He was going back to the General Store. He was going back to Bhy Khay.
As he walked, a new notification appeared on his screen, one that made his blood run cold.
[PROTOCOL UPDATE: THE ARIES ALIGNMENT HAS ATTRACTED THE ATTENTION OF THE SECOND CALAMITY.] [ESTIMATED ARRIVAL OF 'THE FROST-WEAVER': 6 HOURS.]
Kael leaned against the tunnel wall and laughed—a dry, hacking sound. "Six hours. Plenty of time for a nap."