LEVEL 0 IMMORTAL

The Void Womb screamed, but the sound was a mix of both pain and laughter.

"Three," the mouths said. "Three returns. By three, they shall fall. Three who will come back to the place where the sky ended."

The lightning ate through the central swell of the mountain of flesh, and its yellow eyes burst one by one in a single, simultaneous detonation of ichor and light.

The thousand mouths stretched wide, wider than mouths should stretch, and the sound they made shifted from counting to singing.

"The first was the spawn. The second was the womb. The third will be the hand, and the hand will close."

The mountain of flesh began to collapse inward, its own weight no longer supported by the structures the lightning had shattered, and the roots of the flower flared one last time, drinking deep of the dying mass, and then they, too, began to crumble.

Countless spawns in their millions screamed, and they began to slowly collapse into ash.

Tarian, still suspended in the air, watched the annihilation with an expression that was not triumph.

It was a strange expression, almost as if he had just learned that victory and loss could occupy the same space at the same time.

While it was true that he was the one who had made the decisive move to end this scourge, meaning that whatever price the Commander wanted to give, he would be the one to claim it… he had also paid a terrible price to win.

However, with the wealth of his heritage and the boon of a powerful Angel, Tarian knew that what he paid was worth it.

The body of the Void Womb had reduced by a massive amount, and there was barely a large mound left behind.

A small voice emerged from it, and you really needed to be listening to hear it

"Brother." It said, "I win."

Then it was gone. All of it. The flesh, the eyes, the mouths, the poison… even the flower.

Everything collapsed into a crater of glass and ash, and the silence that followed was so complete that Elias could hear the blood dripping from his own chin onto the cracked stone beneath him.

The silence held for three breaths, then Tarian fell. He dropped from the sky like a stone whose string had been cut, and he struck the rim of the pit with a loud thud, and his body did not move again.

Sera, Theron, Elara, and Kaelen were speechless at the sudden change in situation, as they stared at the fallen Elias and Tarian, and for a moment, there was nothing but silence.

"Tell me you saw that coming," Kaelen muttered.

®

The ninth floor of the Stoneward Asylum was too quiet, but of course, this place was too big for the small number of people dwelling within its walls.

Mira had been a servant for most of her life, first in the oasis kitchens, now in the Stoneward Asylum, as the personal maid of an Ascendant Candidate. She knew the difference between the silence of peace and the silence of waiting.

This was the silence of waiting.

Elias had been gone for nearly twenty-four hours, moving into the next day. The Commander had sent him somewhere; she was not told where, but she would be a fool not to realize that he was within those massive walls built in the lower districts.

Even from a distance, she could hear the rumble like the world was breaking in the distance, and she knew that whatever was happening behind those walls was far beyond anything she could touch at this time.

She busied herself with the small tasks that filled her days. She dusted the shelves in the library, rearranged the weapons in the armory that no one used, and checked the kitchen stores three times even though she knew exactly what was there.

Her talent hummed beneath her skin like a second heartbeat. Cold Mind, they called it. The ability to suppress emotion, to see clearly when others panicked, to move with precision when others froze.

She had used it to crawl through bodies in the oasis, and it had helped her understand that to survive, she had to kneel before a stranger and offer her service. She used it now to keep her hands steady while her heart raced.

Why am I so afraid? she wondered. Elias is strong. The Commander protects this place. Nothing can touch the Asylum. There was no fear in her heart that a tribe of cannibals would invade this place and kill everyone she knew once again.

But fear was not rational. And Cold Mind could suppress fear, but it could not kill it. The fear waited, patient, beneath the ice of her mind.

The chime from the main gate echoed through the lower floors, a sound she had heard only twice since arriving. Visitors to the Asylum were rare, and visitors announced by the gate's ward were rarer still.

Mira set down the cloth she had been using to polish Elias's spare practice gauntlets and walked to the window. From the ninth floor, she could see the long road winding down from the Asylum's cliff, the city sprawled below, and the figure standing at the gate.

He was tall, with a longsword hung at his hip, and even from this distance, Mira could feel the weight of him, the coiled power of a Siphon who had climbed far beyond the levels she could perceive.

'That is not a messenger,' she thought. 'That is a weapon.'

She descended the stairs, her footsteps light, her breathing even. Cold Mind kept her pulse steady, kept her hands from trembling, kept the fear locked away behind a door she could close at will.

The guards at the gate were absent; Cora and Fenwick had been called to a meeting with Brother Valerius. Mira did not know why, but she suspected it had something to do with the wall that had risen in the lower districts, the wall that Elias had mentioned before he left.

'Someone must receive him,' she thought. 'The Commander cannot be disturbed for every visitor. I will ask his business, then send him away. This is not my concern.'

She reached the gate and unlatched the small side door, stepping out into the cold morning air.

The man turned, and his eyes were pale gold, the color of old coins, and they held no warmth.

"You are not the gatekeeper," he said.

Mira inclined her head. "The gatekeepers are otherwise occupied. I am the maid of the ninth floor. I can take a message, or I can direct you to the proper channels for requesting an audience."

The man smiled. It was a thin expression, and it did not reach his eyes. "The proper channels. How quaint." He looked past her, up at the towering bulk of the Asylum, at the ancient stone that had been old when his ancestors were not yet born. "I am Lord-Captain Veyris Kaelthar of the Crown's Inner Guard. I am not here to request an audience. I am here to inform the Commander that I will be joining her for breakfast."

Mira's Cold Mind kept her face neutral, but something cold and real settled in her stomach. She had not been here for long, but she had heard that name, but she could not remember where, perhaps from one of the members of the Asylum.