Chapter 186: All for Power
Alka closed the door behind her.
The hallway was narrow, dimly lit by flickering neon strips, pulsing like the lazy breath of a sedated giant. A clinical silence reigned there, almost religious, in stark contrast to the muffled screams she’d heard earlier.
She didn’t linger. Her steps rang out sharp on the polished concrete, measured, precise, without hesitation. At her belt, nestled in a rigid leather case sealed with three engraved clasps, rested the gem. She could feel it even through the protective casing — a muted, latent heat, pulsing — like a stone heart still warm from the sacrifice it had been torn from.
She hadn’t needed to search Dylan. Of course he’d kept it on him. She knew him well enough to be sure he trusted no one. Not even her. But he hadn’t hidden the gem well enough, too confident in his instincts, too obsessed with his own survival to think of discarding an artifact so valuable. In the end, he’d swallowed the bait.
Everything had gone according to plan.
Or almost.
Alka passed a coded door, climbed two floors, and slipped into a private room of the technical complex. A disused maintenance chamber, seldom used anymore. She locked the door behind her.
"Finally alone..."
She took out the gem.
A bluish glow flared from the crystal, pulsing slowly, like the eye of a living being in slumber. An almost organic shape, both angular and fluid, seemed to shift within. Heroic Fragments... That’s what the Pilaf researchers called them.
They were only found in the central ruins, according to reports. War artifacts, created by a civilization that believed neither in gods nor in natural laws. Raw sorcery, devoid of morality.
Capable of engraving the mark of a spiritual or demonic beast onto another being and claiming its power. But on a human, the engraving would manifest as a Stigma, an alternative to the beasts’ original marks. Even if it meant giving up the awakening of one’s own natural stigma.