New Orleans was a city that refused to die.
The waters had taken it during the Collapse—not the Mud Sea of Chicago, but a slow, creeping flood that turned streets into canals and buildings into islands. The locals who remained had adapted. They built walkways between rooftops. Ran boats through what used to be boulevards. Hung lanterns from balconies, casting warm light across the dark water.
It was beautiful, in a haunted kind of way.
We came by river, six of us. Rook. Vex. Torin. Myself. Lena had insisted on coming despite Rook's protests—the fragment's energy signature was unlike anything she'd recorded, and she wanted direct readings. Sargo stayed in Silverton with Mira and the others. Someone had to hold the fort.
And Ash came too.
He'd volunteered. No one had asked. He'd simply stood up during the planning session and said, "I need to see it. The fragment. I need to understand what it does to me."
Rook had looked at me. I'd nodded. Whatever Ash was becoming, whatever connection he had to the Primeval, we needed to understand it. And isolating him in Silverton felt wrong. He'd saved us in the mountain. He deserved to be part of this.
The boat was a flat-bottomed skiff, piloted by a local woman named Esme. She was old—seventy if she was a day—with leathery skin and eyes that had seen the Collapse firsthand. She didn't ask why six armed strangers wanted to go to the deepest part of the flooded city. She just named her price and told us to keep our claws inside the boat.
"Fragment's in the old French Quarter," Lena said, studying her datapad. The signal was faint but steady. "Deep water. Maybe sixty feet. Whatever structure it's in, it's been submerged for decades."
"Underwater." Vex's red eyes narrowed. "I don't like underwater."
"Neither do Ragers. It's probably why the fragment's still there." Rook scanned the passing buildings. "Anything guarding it?"
"Can't tell. The water's interfering with my readings." Lena frowned. "But there's something else. Another signature. Faint. Moving. Not a fragment. Not a Rager."
"Stalker?"
"Maybe. It's keeping its distance. Circling."
Rook's amber eyes met mine. We both knew who it could be. Draven. Kael's former second. The one who'd gathered the Iron Maw survivors. The one who wanted my head.
"Stay sharp," Rook said. "If Draven's here, he won't attack until we're vulnerable. Probably when we're dealing with the fragment."
"Then we don't give him the chance." I looked at Vex. "You and Torin watch our backs. Rook and I go for the fragment. Lena stays on the boat with Ash. If Draven shows, you pull back and signal. We'll regroup."
Vex nodded. Torin looked nervous—he was still green, still scared of his own shadow—but he straightened his shoulders. He wanted to prove himself.
Esme guided the skiff through a narrow channel between two sagging buildings. The water was dark, thick with silt and secrets. Ahead, the French Quarter rose from the flood like a dream of the old world—wrought-iron balconies, shuttered windows, walls stained by decades of high water.
"The signature's directly below us," Lena said. "Sixty feet down. There's a structure—maybe a basement, maybe something older. The fragment's inside."
I looked over the side. The water was black. Impenetrable.
"I'll go."
Rook shook her head. "You're the Alpha. You don't go first into unknown water."
"I'm the only one who can interact with the fragment without getting cooked. And I can hold my breath longer than any of you." I met her eyes. "I'll be fine."
She didn't like it. But she nodded.
I stripped off my jacket and boots. Lena handed me a small device—a waterproof beacon she'd built.
"Press this when you reach the fragment. It'll emit a pulse that should disrupt any active Lunacy in the area. Might make extraction easier."
I clipped it to my belt. Took a breath. Dove.
The water was cold and silent.
I swam downward, following the silver thread in my blood. The fragment was close—a cold star in the darkness below. The pressure built as I descended. My lungs didn't burn. They didn't need to. The beast's biology had rewritten me. I could stay underwater for hours if I had to.
The structure emerged from the murk.
It wasn't a basement. It was a temple. Or something like one. Stone walls carved with Architect symbols, covered in algae and silt. An arched doorway leading into deeper darkness. The fragment's signature pulsed from within.
I swam through the doorway.
Inside was a single chamber. Circular. The walls were covered in more symbols—these ones glowing with faint silver light, untouched by the water. And in the center, resting on a stone pedestal, was the fragment.
This one was different.
It wasn't a link or a shard. It was a mask. Smooth. Featureless. Made of the same dark crystalline material as the others, shot through with silver veins. It was human-sized. Or Stalker-sized. Something about its proportions made my skin crawl.
The silver thread in my blood pulled toward it. Hard.
I reached out.
The moment my fingers touched the mask, the world shifted.
I wasn't underwater anymore. I was standing in a vast hall—black stone, silver light, ceilings that stretched into infinity. Architect architecture. And I wasn't alone.
Figures moved around me. Tall. Thin. Featureless faces with void-eyes. Wardens. Dozens of them. They were performing some kind of ritual, chanting in a language that made my teeth ache. And in the center of the hall, wearing the mask, was a figure I recognized.
Vera.
She was younger. Stronger. Her silver eyes blazed behind the mask's empty sockets. And she was screaming.
The Wardens were doing something to her. Extracting something. The mask pulsed with stolen Lunacy, drinking her power, her memories, her connection to the Primeval. This was how they'd studied the silver-eyes. How they'd learned to track the chosen ones. A torture device disguised as an artifact.
Vera's screams echoed in my skull.
I wrenched my hand away from the mask.
Back in the water. The chamber. The cold. My heart was pounding. The beast was raging—it had seen what the Wardens had done. It wanted to destroy the mask. Smash it. Erase it from existence.
My mind is mine.
But I agreed with the beast on this one.
I grabbed the mask with both hands and broke it.
It shattered like glass. Silver light exploded outward, blasting through the water, through the chamber, through me. I felt the fragment's power release—not into the environment, but into me. The silver thread in my blood absorbed it. Stored it. Another piece of the Primeval's scattered essence, now carried in my veins.
The temple went dark.
I swam upward.
I broke the surface gasping—not from lack of air, but from what I'd seen. Rook hauled me into the boat.
"What happened? The water lit up like a star going nova."
"Fragment's destroyed." I coughed. "But Draven's not our only problem. The Wardens—they used these fragments to torture silver-eyes. Study them. Vera was..." I shook my head. "It doesn't matter. It's done."
Lena was staring at her datapad. "The second signature. It's moving. Fast. Heading straight for us."
Vex's claws extended. "Draven."
The boat rocked as something hit it from below.
Not Draven. Something bigger.
The water erupted. A Rager—Tier-5, massive, covered in armored plates—surged upward, jaws gaping. It had been drawn by the fragment's release. By the Lunacy pulse.
Torin froze. The beast's jaws aimed for him.
Vex moved. She slammed into Torin, knocking him aside, and took the Rager's bite on her own shoulder. Her snarl of pain was drowned by the creature's roar.
Rook was already shifting. Full combat form. She launched herself at the Rager's head, claws tearing into its eyes. It thrashed, throwing her off, but she landed on a nearby balcony and launched herself back.
I joined her. My claws found the Rager's throat. Dug deep. The beast's blood was hot and black in the water.
Together, we drove it back. Wounded it. Made it retreat. It dove beneath the surface, trailing blood, and didn't resurface.
Vex was on the boat deck, clutching her shoulder. The wound was bad—bone visible, blood pumping. But it was already closing. Nightfang regeneration.
"Stupid," she muttered to Torin. "You freeze, you die. Don't freeze again."
Torin nodded, pale and shaking. "I won't. I'm sorry."
"Don't be sorry. Be better."
Esme guided the boat toward a clearer channel. "We need to move. That Rager will come back. They always come back."
Lena was still watching her datapad. "The second signature. It stopped. During the fight. It was watching."
I scanned the dark water, the shadowed buildings. Somewhere out there, Draven was waiting. He'd seen us fight. Seen how we worked together. He was learning. Planning.
"Let him watch." I wiped Rager blood from my claws. "We got what we came for. Another fragment down. Eleven to go."
The boat slipped through the flooded streets as the Red Shift began to rise, painting the water crimson. Behind us, New Orleans dreamed its haunted dreams. And somewhere in the shadows, Draven's red eyes followed our wake.
We made camp on high ground—an old hotel on the edge of the French Quarter, its upper floors dry and defensible. Esme stayed with her boat, preferring the water to solid ground. "The river's my home," she said. "Those walls feel like a coffin."
Vex healed. Torin kept watch, determined to prove himself. Lena analyzed the data from the mask fragment, her face growing darker with each reading.
"The Wardens didn't just study Vera," she said quietly, away from the others. "They mapped her. Her Lunacy signature. Her connection to the Primeval. This mask was a recording device. It stored everything they learned about silver-eyes."
"And the Warden Absolute had access to that knowledge."
"Yes. And if there are other Wardens out there—other survivors—they might have copies. The Architects built Tartarus. They would have kept records."
I thought about Harlan's warning. The alarms. The Architects would know when the last fragment broke. But they might already know how to find silver-eyes. How to track us. How to neutralize us.
"We need to move faster. Break the fragments before anyone else can use them against us."
Lena nodded. "The next one is in the Atlantic. Off the coast of what used to be Florida. Underwater. Deep. We'll need better gear."
"Then we get better gear."
I walked to the window. The Red Shift was full now, the moon a bleeding wound in the sky. I could feel it pulling at my scar. At the fragments I carried in my blood.
Eleven left on Earth. More beyond.
Ash appeared beside me. Silent as always.
"You saw her," he said. "Vera. In the vision."
"Yeah."
"She's still fighting. Still on the moon. The mask showed you her pain, but it didn't show you her choice. She let them study her. Let them think they were breaking her. So she could learn their secrets." His gray eyes met mine. "She's not a victim, Cade. She's a spy. And she's been waiting for you to get strong enough to reach her."
I stared at him. "How do you know that?"
"The dark told me." He turned away. "It admires her. The Primeval doesn't admire many things."
He walked back into the shadows.
I stood at the window, watching the bleeding moon, and wondered what else Vera had hidden in the fragments. What other secrets she'd left for me to find.
And somewhere in the flooded city below, Draven watched. Waiting for his moment.