Chapter 956: Thread Through the Crack
I found her in the blue garden she keeps for herself—petals still, air clean, a place where bad days soften at the edges. Rose stood among the roses with her back to me, shoulders straight like she was holding up the sky by force of will.
"You did it," I said.
She didn’t turn. "I did."
I slid my arms around her waist from behind and felt the tension leave an inch at a time. Up close, I could taste new power. Her mana had stepped up—cleaner, heavier. Mid Radiant now. Earned, not gifted.
"She called you a tool," I said.
"She always did," Rose answered, voice even. "Now she can’t."
We stayed there until her breathing matched mine. Then the work pulled at both of us again.
"Evelyn’s last spell left a thread," I said. "Your paradox bloom and my Grey both felt it. It isn’t pointing at Avalon."
Rose lifted her hand and a single blue petal hovered above her palm, quivering. "It’s pointing between. Someone anchored a fissure and hid the city on the other side."
"The Order’s nest," I said. "Not a room. A city."
She nodded once. "Let’s cut it out."
I pinged a courtesy loop to all five powers—South, North, West, East, Central. One line each: following a spatial fissure linked to the Order of the Fallen Flame; possible strike; please hold corridors clear. The replies came quick: South’s ’copy’; North’s ’sky lanes open’; West’s ’send coordinates’; East’s ’observers on standby’; Central’s ’authority granted, avoid magistrate paths.’ Good. No politics in my way for once.
I pulled Grey up just enough to read the world’s seams. Rose fed the blue petal into the air; it spun and tugged. The line it drew wasn’t straight. It slipped under rivers, around wards, skated along old leylines like a thief that knows every alley.
The petal stopped over a dead canyon two countries west—Ashbluff territory, long strip of broken stone and bad wind. Nothing lived there by choice. The cliff face at the end of the gorge looked ordinary until Grey told the truth: pressure bending where it shouldn’t, echoes landing where there was no room for echoes. A seam.
"Here," Rose said.
I sent one more ping. Vyr for perimeter. Redeemers for cleanse. Erebus for anything we shouldn’t touch.
"Two minutes," Vyr answered.
"Two is enough," I said.
The fissure wasn’t a door. It was a crack glued open with sloth-sigil staples—iron hooks sunk into reality, each stamped with Arakhel’s sleepy crown. The Order had turned the cliff into a hinge and taught it to forget the word ’close.’
"Lucent Harmony," I said, laying calm over the rock. The sloth push eased just enough to think straight. Rose’s blue roses climbed the staples and wrote ’release’ across each one in a clean hand. Hooks that had sat for years remembered they were metal and not law. They loosened.
"Grey," I told the seam. "Open."
It opened like a book that didn’t want to, and then did.
We stepped through into a city.
Not huge—no sky towers—but real. Streets, forges, shrines, barracks, markets. Wardlines stitched like spiderwebs. Sloth hung over everything like humidity, smoothing edges, slowing thought. And people. Hundreds. A lot of them trained. This wasn’t a hiding hole. It was a capital.
"The Order never left," Rose said quietly. "They just moved sideways."
Vyr came in behind us with a tight outer ring, helmets down, visors black. "Perimeter on the crack," she said. "No leaks."
"Erebus?" I asked.
His voice arrived from a shade that didn’t exist. "Here," he said.
"Redeemers?" I asked.
"Two cadres," Vyr answered. "One to follow your heels. One to hold the hinge."
"Good," I said. "Core targets. We cut the spine."
Rose pointed, already reading the weave. "Four anchors: money hall; forge grid; chapel square; command vault. Break those and the rest falls loud."
We moved.
The money hall looked like a bank anywhere: counters, ledgers, polite murder behind glass. The difference lived below. A sloth engine chugged under the floor—ritual plates, blood drains, a contraption that turned debt into leverage into power.
I didn’t give them speeches. Valeria drew clean circles and laws I trust lived in my hands. First bite. Shortest line. Carry-through. The front-line guards came fast and fell faster. Nine-circle spells sang under my skin—Kinetic Lash IX to pluck knives from hands, Gravity Shear IX to tilt the floor against a charge, Wind Lock IX to make running forward feel like trudging through syrup.
Rose starved their engine in one pass. Blue roses wrote ’profit zero’ across their scheme. The ritual plates stopped adding. The room remembered it was a room. Vyr’s people swept, tied, tagged. Redeemers slid lantern light under every desk and through every book. Sloth stains hissed and let go.
"Next," I said.
The forge grid ran hot and wrong. Sloth seep had soaked the steel, telling metal to stay lazy. Workers wore rings with the crown of Arakhel. A Radiant foreman stepped into our path with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes and lifted both hands to dump a heat-blind fog over the lane.
"Lucent Harmony," I said, and the fog refused to be stupid. "Nine-circle Heat Sink," I added, and the floor drank the rest.
He tried a sloth bind—thick, soft, convincing. Rose wrote ’one task’ over it. The bind shrank to a strap; I cut it. Then I cut the ring off his finger. He stopped smiling.
We kept it clean. I carried steel and simple spells. Rose killed contracts on sight. In fifteen minutes the forge grid ran on gears and fuel instead of oaths. Redeemers combed the dorms; Vyr’s people found the side doors and closed them forever.
Chapel square was worse. Not a church. A courtyard with seven pits and a black stone table worn smooth by sacrifice. Sloth priests chanted. A demon-lord icon hung in the air—the lazy crown, eyes hooded, watching.
"Leave the icon alone," I told everyone. "It’s bait."
We hit the priests like a hammer that had learned manners. I used space and force—Space Stitch IX to keep their jumps honest, Force Ladder IX to step through a wall of bodies without making a human mess. Rose put ’later’ on any spell that needed ’now.’ Their chanting drifted a beat behind their intent, then two beats, then useless. The icon flickered. A single blue rose kissed its crown. It went out.
Redeemers flooded the pits with Purelight. You don’t burn sloth. You unstick it. They un-stuck it, inch by inch, until the stone stopped sighing. Vyr’s people took the square and put up barriers with plain labels: NO ENTRY. CLEANING.
Two cores left.
The command vault sat under a plain hall. The door was a contract written on steel. Rose looked once and wrote a blunter sentence over it: ’Open.’ The door forgot whose side it was on.
Inside: twenty Radiant mages, three bishops, one general—hard eyes, bad hands. In the center, a black stand held a square box with a lock that wasn’t a lock.
"Containment," Erebus said. He didn’t move closer. He never rushes the worst thing in the room.
They hit us as a unit: full nine-circle salvos, overlapping. Chain-lightning nets. Sandglass binds. Heat snaps. Sloth reins. The kind of coordinated fire you only see from people who train together longer than they think about dinner.
I answered with my own. Lightning IX for muscle. Gravity IX under heel. Wind IX for feet. Stonework IX to ask the floor to behave like a partner. Deepdark IX to cut their sightlines. Purelight IX—not a blast, a comb—to stop residue clinging to my team. All while my sword wrote small truths: bite, line, carry, exit.
Rose stripped their clever bare. Blue roses climbed their circles and wrote mean little rules: ’No mirror.’ ’No swap.’ ’No echo.’ Their strongest tricks hit their own gloves and blew out numb fingers.
The general tried to open a gate under me. Valeria’s flat told that spot of space ’no.’ The gate tried somewhere else and forgot where that was.
On beat five, the front line folded. On beat seven, the bishops were on the floor with Vyr’s knee on one throat and her hand on another wrist. On beat nine, the general tried to grab the box.
I was already there.
I eased the lid. Grey made a small room around my hands and the container so the rest of the world didn’t have to breathe this with me.
Inside: a glass vial with dark liquid. Not much. Enough to end cities.
It wasn’t heat. It was weight. Miasma so dense the air bent. My Soul Resonance—my second Gift—reached for it on reflex, greedy for understanding. I cut the reflex like it was a hand that wasn’t mine.
Valeria’s voice slid into my head, steady. ’Don’t copy this.’
"I won’t," I said out loud.
Rose cupped her palms around the vial without touching it. Blue roses wrote three rules on the air: ’Stay in glass.’ ’Don’t multiply.’ ’Be quiet.’ The pressure eased a notch.
Erebus opened a reliquary grown from pale bone. "Give it," he said. No drama. He never does when it matters.
I set the vial. The reliquary closed. The room stopped trying to crawl out of its own skin.
"It’s as heavy as the Infernal Armis," I said. "Maybe worse."
"Worse," Erebus said. "The Armis is a blade. This is a knuckle."
The general laughed once. "You carry death now," he said. "It will call to its owner."
"Let it try," Erebus answered, and tucked the reliquary into a page that didn’t exist. "It can be lonely a long time."
Vyr reported from the door. "Outer cordon holds. Runners tagged. No civilian spill. Your crack is quiet, but not for long."
"Then we end it," I said.
We didn’t erase the whole pocket-city. That takes weeks and courts and ledger work. But we broke the spine. Money dead. Forges honest. Square clean. Vault emptied. The rest would wither.
I sent the tally to the five powers: fissure breach confirmed; Order core city hit; four anchors down; heavy artifact contained; survivors fleeing into outer branches. Central’s reply came fastest: ’Bring me the ledgers.’ North: ’Sky clear.’ West: ’Send your list. We’ll hunt the runners.’ East: ’Scholars ready to help seal.’ South: ’We’ll pay for Redeemer overtime. Keep going.’
"We’re not done," Rose said quietly.
"No," I agreed. "But Avalon sleeps safer tonight."
We walked back to the seam. Redeemers sealed the last sloth marks with careful light. Vyr’s people started cataloging without complaint. Erebus stood at the hinge and wrote sigils that mean ’forget’ in the old dead languages.
I turned to the city one last time. It looked smaller already.
"Close it," I told Grey.
The crack folded. The canyon wind hit us like a real thing again.
Rose leaned against me. "Thank you," she said.
"Always," I said.
We didn’t cheer. We didn’t give speeches. We started sending names to people who move budgets and guards. That’s how you kill a cult that can rival an empire: you break its power and then you stop it from regrowing.
When we finally got back to Avalon, the blue garden was waiting. Rose stepped into it like home. I followed, tired in the right way.
We’d cut the root. The branches would take time.
Time we finally had.