The fifth anchor fell in four minutes thirty.
He didn't rotate approaches. Didn't think about technique. Full Class projection, first thread, pull. The network was degrading — three anchors lost, a fourth upgraded one gone, the remaining three burning brighter as the Veil compressed its integrity into fewer points.
[VEIL INTEGRITY: 29%]
[EXP GAINED: 200,000]
[LEVEL UP — LEVEL 45]
Twenty-nine percent.
Two anchors left.
[VOSS — STATUS UPDATE]
[HE KNOWS ANCHORS ARE FAILING.]
[HE DOES NOT KNOW WHERE YOU ARE.]
[HE HAS DISPATCHED 12 WATCH UNITS TO THE UNDERGROUND TUNNELS.]
[THEIR LEVELS: 28-35.]
[THEY ARE SEARCHING FROM THE HALL OF ASCENSION OUTWARD.]
[YOU ARE MOVING TOWARD THEM.]
Twelve Watch units. Level 28 to 35. Moving through the tunnels toward him while he moved toward them.
Sera read the notification over his shoulder. Her stylus stopped.
"The sixth anchor," she said. "University district. The tunnel route passes through the junction beneath Copper Lane." She put her finger on the map. "The Watch units searching outward from the Hall — they'll reach that junction in approximately — " she calculated " — twenty minutes."
"How long to the sixth anchor from here?"
"Twelve minutes."
Twelve minutes to the anchor. Unknown time for the anchor itself — the network was burning hot, the remaining two anchors drawing everything the Veil had left. Could be four minutes. Could be eight.
Twenty minutes to collision.
He looked at his formation — twenty-one minions, the Commander, Daren, Thresh. Level 28 to 35 Watch units were manageable for this formation easily. But fighting Watch units in the tunnels was loud, left evidence, and most importantly took time he didn't have.
"Can we avoid the junction?" he said.
Sera was already checking the map. A pause that lasted long enough to mean no. "The only alternative route adds thirty-one minutes."
Not an option.
He looked at the Commander.
The Hollow Knight had been silent for most of the night — moving, directing, organizing, doing its job with the wordless efficiency of something that had been doing that job for centuries. But it had been listening. He could feel it through the bond, the particular quality of a mind that processed tactically processing everything it heard.
"The junction," Kael said to it. "If we need to hold Watch units there while I work the sixth anchor — can you manage twelve Level 28 to 35 fighters with this formation?"
The Commander's burning eyes moved over the twenty minions it had been organizing all night.
"Yes," it said. Simply. Finally.
One word. Absolute certainty.
Kael nodded. "Then that's the plan."
They ran.
The sixth anchor was the hottest yet.
Fifteen percent Veil integrity compressing into one point — the remaining anchor and the primary one beneath the Hall of Ascension each holding half of what remained, burning with the desperate intensity of a system that knew it was losing and was putting everything into what it had left.
He touched the channel.
The resistance was enormous.
Not upgraded like the noble quarter anchor — just dense. A hundred and forty years of accumulated power with nowhere left to distribute, all of it present, all of it pushing.
He heard the Commander engage the Watch units at the junction behind him — distant sounds, the clash of formation combat, the Commander's voice calling positioning instructions in that low formal tone. Twenty minions against twelve Watch soldiers. He gave it half his attention and kept the other half on the anchor.
[SPIRIT: 78%]
[THIRD DRAUGHT COOLDOWN: 8 MINUTES]
He didn't wait for the cooldown.
Full Class projection. Everything at once. He found the thread in forty seconds through the burning density — the original binding, the second Grand Inquisitor's hand, a hundred and forty years old and suddenly very fragile compared to what had grown around it.
He pulled.
The anchor fought.
He pulled harder.
[VEIL ANCHOR — UNIVERSITY DISTRICT — UNRAVELING]
[RESISTANCE: MAXIMUM]
[SPIRIT: 78% → 51% → 38% → 24%]
Twenty-four percent.
He kept pulling.
The sounds from the junction — the Commander's formation holding, he could feel through the bond that all twenty minions were still active, losses zero, the Watch units hitting the formation the same way the Hollow Knights had hit the crawlers in the Greymaw and finding the same answer.
Dead things don't tire.
He pulled the thread through the last of its resistance and felt the anchor come apart with a sound that wasn't a sound — a System-level unraveling that he felt in his bones and his Class and every death-touched part of what he'd become.
[VEIL ANCHOR — UNIVERSITY DISTRICT — DESTROYED]
[VEIL INTEGRITY: 14%]
[SPIRIT COST: 54%]
[EXP GAINED: 200,000]
[LEVEL UP — LEVEL 46]
He drank the third draught before he'd fully stood up.
[SPIRIT: 24% → 84%]
He walked out of the chamber.
The Commander was standing at the junction entrance, twenty minions arranged in a tight defensive formation, twelve Watch soldiers unconscious or pinned against the tunnel walls — none of them dead, he noticed. The Commander had been precise about that. Disabled. Not killed.
He looked at the Commander.
"You didn't kill them," he said.
"They were following orders," the Commander said. "They did not choose to be here any more than I chose to be on the Ashenmoor." A pause. "I killed enough people following orders when I was alive. I saw no reason to start again."
The tunnel was quiet except for the distant sounds of the city above.
Kael looked at the twelve unconscious Watch soldiers — Level 28 to 35, people with families probably, people who had warrants and assigned routes and no idea that the ground under their feet had been systematically dismantled tonight.
People in a system that hadn't asked their opinion before deciding what they were worth.
"Tie them," he said. "Gently. They'll be free when this is done."
The Commander organized it without further instruction.
Sera appeared at his shoulder. Her face was doing something he hadn't seen on it before — not the professional mask, not the sharp calculated look, not the grief-underneath-everything that had driven her since her brother died.
Something that might have been hope. Carefully held. Not trusted yet.
"Fourteen percent," she said quietly.
"One anchor left," he said.
"Voss is in the north tower," she said. "Above the primary anchor. He'll feel every approach — the suppression wards will trigger, the chamber will alert — "
"I know."
"He's Level 61."
"I know."
"And you're — "
"Level 46." He looked at the tunnel leading northeast toward the Hall of Ascension. "With Undying. And twenty-one minions. And a Sovereign Lich above ground who has been studying Voss's architecture for two days." He paused. "And a Commander who held twelve Watch units without losing a single minion."
A silence.
"The plan was always to reach this point," he said. "We planned for everything else. We plan for this too."
She held his gaze for a long moment.
Then she opened her notebook to a page she'd prepared — he could see from the density of the writing that it covered Voss's guard rotations, the north tower layout, the primary anchor's expected resistance level, and three separate contingency routes back to the surface.
Of course she had.
"Tell me what you know about the primary anchor," he said.
She told him.
Above them, in the Hall of Ascension's north tower, a Level 61 Inquisitor stood at his window looking down at a city whose foundations were cracking beneath his feet and didn't yet know why.
He was about to find out.
[VEIL INTEGRITY: 14%]
[PRIMARY ANCHOR: HALL OF ASCENSION — SUBLEVEL 3]
[VOSS — CURRENT LOCATION: NORTH TOWER — DIRECTLY ABOVE PRIMARY ANCHOR]
[LEVEL DIFFERENCE: 15]
[UNDYING: AVAILABLE]
[SPIRIT: 84%]
[YOUR MOTHER IS AWAKE. SHE HASN'T SLEPT.]
[FINISH THIS.]
Six anchors down. One left. Voss is awake and waiting above the primary anchor. Next chapter: the final confrontation — coming fast. Drop a Power Stone! 🔥