I did not know what I expected when I passed through the gigantic doors, a tomb, a temple, something old and carved and reverent. What I got was metal.

The passage ran straight ahead of me, long and low and seamless, walls of a dark dull alloy that drank the blue-white light coming off my body and gave almost none of it back. There was the same red fog inside the passage, but it seemed denser than air, gathering around the ground and making me unable to see it, although I knew the floor was still metal.

It was as if this entire passage was cast directly from metal, and if it was, what sort of magic or technology was powerful enough to do this?

I hesitated for a brief moment, and I began to walk down the passage. It was vast, and the ceiling was lost in darkness; there could be something above me, and I would not be able to see it, even my enhanced sight could not pierce through this darkness.

The walls curved away on either side, faceted like the pyramid’s exterior but smoother, as if the metal had been polished by something that flowed over it for ten thousand years. The floor was level, but every few steps, I felt a slight vibration beneath my bare feet—the pyramid’s pulse, the same rhythm that had been sounding outside, but deeper here, more intimate.

The red fog in the passage thickened as I walked, and I could no longer see my feet. It reached my waist, then my chest, and I had to push through it like water.

The field kept it from touching my skin, but I could feel its pressure, the way it wanted to press against me, to seep into the open wounds on my shoulder and my hand.

[Stored Essence: 19,000 → 19,002]

I paused and looked at the fog around me. I had just killed something in the fog, and it must have been very small, because I barely felt the tiny zap from the Field Arcs.

If I did not have this field, then whatever was in this fog could have entered my body, and I would have no idea how I died, or I could die very painfully; anything was possible.

I reduced the field until it settled over my body, enough that Lightning Resonance kept me a conduit, not enough to light the passage like a beacon.

My new senses reached down the long, dull corridor and found, a hundred metres on, where it opened into something larger.

And I had not gone far, fifty metres, no more, before the breathing passage carried voices up to me.

∞

I stopped, and my heart skipped a beat, at first I thought I had made a mistake, and I remained still, but after I remained still for a while, I heard the voices again.

As I listened, I discerned that it was two voices speaking, male and female. The fog around me seemed to be drinking up the sound, so I pushed forward until the voices became clearer and I froze.

The voice of the man was calm, almost pleasant, the kind of voice I could hear in a pub discussing the weather, and I did not know I was gritting my teeth so badly until I tasted something sweet on my tongue, making me realize that my gums were bleeding.

That voice was Rex, but the cadence was Scholar Orath, no, Orath, he did not deserve to be called a Scholar.

Kill them, they are aware of the Ascension Ritual.

These words had broken my mind, and the action that followed had made my soul a bit darker.

That memory slammed into my mind because I also recognized the second voice, Commander Rel. Hearing her voice made me gasp.

I had been avoiding my friends every loop because I could not bear to look at their faces, hear their voices, and then look to the other end of the camp where Commander Rel was standing.

With everything that I had seen and all the changes I had experienced in the last few loops, a part of me had begun to forget about the camp and the people inside of it, but these voices brought everything together, and I was dragged back to earth.

I had hated demons, but they almost did not seem real; they were like the weather. You do not hate weather; you survive it, and I had killed so many demons in these last few loops, it was hard to even think of them as life as I knew it.

But this, the voices of these two, talking in low, easy tones inside the engine at the centre of the slaughter, made everything I had been experiencing have a face.

My heart began to beat faster. I had thought my heartbeat was now very slow, but it seemed there was something that could make it fast, and that was hate.

I could not make out the words yet, but I could not sense any panic in them; either they knew of the demons outside, including the Queen of the Swarm, or something very wrong was happening here.

So many lifetimes of dying on the field while these two walked calmly through an open door to do whatever they were doing right now, and I did not believe you could hate someone more than I hated these two at this moment.

I pressed my back to the cool metal wall, dimmed myself until even the silver of my blood seemed to hold its breath, and I began, very quietly, to move toward them.

I had come to ask the pyramid what it was, but it turned out the pyramid had two people inside it who already knew.

∞

"...the vessel is failing," Rel was saying. "You are pushing it too hard. The boy’s body is rejecting the possession. We need a replacement."

"The Conclave will not approve a replacement at this stage." Rex’s voice replied, "The ritual requires a bloodline anchor. The Aldran line is the only one on this continent with the necessary... compatibility."

"Then we keep him alive until the harvest is complete. Sedation, binding. I don’t care. But if he dies before the gate opens, the Conclave’s investment in this expedition will have been for nothing."

"Commander." A pause. The sound of something being dragged across the floor. "The gate is already open. The harvest is not long, and we are in the right position to benefit."