Chapter 74
The air grew heavier with every step.
Kiro moved through the stone gulch, guided by instinct, Blood Sense, and a strange pull—not from the System, but from something older. Something deeper than code or mutation.
The ravine opened into a bowl of shattered obsidian, where twisted statues of beasts and stars loomed. A wind, dry and constant, blew upward from cracks in the earth.
At its center lay a shrine built into the bones of a giant.
Chains of glass-light and flesh-metal spiraled around a throne.
And on it sat a creature older than words.
Tall—though hunched—its skin was etched with starmaps, its mouth sewn shut with black thread. Its eyes, closed. Its limbs, long and slender, ending in fingers shaped like fractured keys.
Kiro stepped closer.
The creature stirred.