Detroit was worse than Chicago.
That was saying something. Chicago had drowned. Detroit had burned, then drowned, then been picked clean by scavengers, then burned again for good measure. What was left was a skeleton of a city—blackened towers leaning against each other like drunkards, streets buried under toxic silt, and a sky that never quite shook the ash-gray pall of the Fires.
We moved through the ruins at dusk. Rook took point, as always. I followed. Behind us, Sargo drove a modified crawler—a six-wheeled beast of a vehicle loaded with enough firepower to level a city block. He'd insisted on bringing it. "If we're hunting a Tier-6, I want more than claws and bad attitudes."
Lena rode in the crawler's passenger seat, eyes glued to her tablet. She'd built a crude tracker from the Lunacy readings Sargo had captured at the Chicago fragment site. It wasn't perfect—the signal kept drifting, fading, spiking in patterns that made her curse under her breath—but it pointed us east.
Toward the corpse of Detroit.
Toward the first fragment.
"The signature is unstable," Lena said through the comm. "It's not like the one in Chicago. That fragment was dormant. Buried. This one is active. Broadcasting. Like it's being used."
"Used by what?" Rook didn't look back.
"I don't know. But the Lunacy output is an order of magnitude higher than anything I've recorded. If this is a Rager, it's not a normal one."
I closed my eyes as I walked. Reached for the silver thread. The map Vera had burned into my blood.
The fragment was close. Two miles north. And it was wrong. The other twelve points on the map were cold stars—distant, quiet, waiting. This one was a bonfire. Raging. Unstable. It pulsed in time with something vast and hungry, and every pulse made my scar ache.
"It's alive," I said. "The fragment. It's inside something alive."
Rook glanced back. "The Rager?"
"Maybe. Or maybe the Rager is inside it. I can't tell. The signal is... messy."
"Fantastic." She turned forward. "Sargo, find us high ground. I want eyes on the site before we walk into another ambush."
The high ground was a collapsed overpass.
We climbed the rubble, keeping low, and looked down on what remained of the Detroit Industrial Zone. It was a wasteland of rusted factories and chemical pits, the kind of place that had been toxic long before the Collapse. In the center, surrounded by a ring of twisted metal and shattered concrete, was a crater.
It was massive. Two hundred feet across. The edges were smooth, almost glassy—the signature of a high-energy impact. And at the bottom, half-buried in blackened earth, was something that had once been a Rager.
"Tier-6," Rook breathed. "Maybe Tier-7. Look at the size of it."
The creature was enormous. Thirty feet from snout to tail, covered in armored plates that gleamed with an oily, iridescent sheen. Its eyes were closed. Its breathing was slow. Deep. It looked like it was sleeping. Hibernating. But its chest—its chest was open.
A crystalline structure grew from its sternum. The same dark, silver-veined material as the chain fragment in Chicago. But this wasn't a broken link. It was a shard. Jagged. Glowing. Pulsing in time with the creature's massive heart. Veins of silver Lunacy spread from the shard into the Rager's flesh, threading through its body like a second circulatory system.
"It's been feeding on the fragment," Lena whispered. "For years. Maybe decades. The Lunacy is keeping it alive. Making it stronger."
"But it's asleep," Sargo said. "We could hit it now. Heavy ordnance. Collapse the crater on top of it."
"And risk destroying the fragment?" Rook shook her head. "We need it intact. Or at least intact enough for Cade to interact with. Vera said to break them. Not blow them up."
I stared at the sleeping giant. At the shard in its chest. The silver thread in my blood was screaming. This close, the fragment's call was overwhelming. It wanted me to come closer. To touch it. To—
Rip. Kill. Howl.
The beast stirred. It recognized the fragment. Recognized the power sleeping inside it. And it wanted it.
My mind is mine.
I forced the hunger down. "We can't fight that thing head-on. Not even with the crawler's guns. A Tier-6 with a Lunacy shard in its chest? It'll heal faster than we can damage it."
"Then we don't fight it head-on." Rook's amber eyes narrowed. "We need to separate it from the shard. Pull the fragment out. Without it, the Rager's just a big animal. Dangerous, but killable."
"Pull it out how?"
She looked at me. "You're the silver-eyed chosen one. The fragments respond to you. If you get close enough, maybe you can... call it. Convince it to detach."
"That's a lot of maybes."
"You got a better plan?"
I didn't.
Lena spoke up. "If Cade can get within touching distance, I might be able to disrupt the Lunacy bond. The shard is feeding the Rager through those silver veins. If we sever the connection, the fragment should go dormant. The Rager will be weakened. Vulnerable."
"And if it wakes up while I'm poking around in its chest?"
"Then you run very fast." Lena's voice was dry. "And we provide covering fire. Sargo's got anti-material rounds in the crawler. Won't kill a Tier-6, but it'll slow it down."
Rook nodded. "It's a plan. Bad one. But a plan." She looked at me. "You ready for this?"
I wasn't. But I nodded anyway.
We descended into the crater.
The air grew heavier with every step. The Lunacy radiating from the shard was thick enough to taste—copper and ozone and something else. Something ancient. The same presence I'd felt in the deep Nocturne. The same vast, watching consciousness.
The Primeval was aware of this fragment. Aware of me.
The Rager didn't stir as we approached. Its breathing remained slow. Rhythmic. The shard in its chest pulsed in time with its heart, casting faint silver shadows across the crater walls. Up close, the creature was even more wrong. Its armored plates were covered in patterns—not natural markings, but symbols. The same shifting, unreadable script I'd seen on Vera's walls.
The Architects' language.
"This thing isn't just infected," I murmured. "It's been modified. The fragment changed it. Rewrote it."
"Can you still pull it out?" Rook's voice was tight.
"Only one way to find out."
I stepped forward. Alone. Rook hung back, claws extended, ready to move if things went wrong. Behind her, Sargo manned the crawler's turret, the barrel aimed at the Rager's skull. Lena crouched beside him, tablet in hand, monitoring the Lunacy fluctuations.
I reached the Rager's chest.
The shard was warm. Hot, even. The silver veins pulsed under my gaze, threading through the creature's flesh like roots. I could see where they anchored—deep in the Rager's heart, in its spine, in its brain. The fragment had colonized it. Made it a part of itself.
Find the chain. Break it.
I raised my hand. Touched the shard.
The world inverted.
I wasn't in the crater anymore. I was standing in a void—the same void I'd seen in the deep Nocturne. The same endless darkness filled with distant stars. But this time, I wasn't alone.
The Rager was there. Not the physical creature. Its mind. A fragment of consciousness, trapped inside the shard. It was old. Ancient. It had been human once. A Stalker. Bitten, changed, driven Feral. And then the fragment had found it. Claimed it. Kept it alive for centuries as a vessel. A guardian.
Release me.
The voice wasn't words. It was a feeling. A desperate, aching plea. The Rager—the Stalker—wanted to die. Had wanted to die for a very long time. But the fragment wouldn't let it. The fragment needed a host. A body to anchor it to Earth.
Release me.
I reached deeper. Past the Rager's mind. To the fragment itself.
It was a piece of the chain. A broken link, same as the one in Chicago. But this one was charged. Active. It had been feeding on the Rager's Lunacy for so long that it had become something more than an anchor. It was a beacon. A signal fire, broadcasting across the Nocturne.
And it was calling to something.
The Warden Absolute.
The realization hit me like ice water. This fragment wasn't just a piece of the prison. It was a trap. Left behind by the Warden, waiting for a silver-eyed Stalker to find it. The moment I touched it, the Warden would know exactly where I was.
Break it. Now.
I grabbed the shard with both hands—physical hands, back in the crater—and pulled.
The Rager's eyes snapped open.
They were white. Blind. Burning with silver fire.
It screamed.
The sound was a physical force. It threw me backward, ears ringing, vision swimming. I hit the crater wall hard enough to crack stone. The beast was already rising, the shard still embedded in its chest, silver veins flaring bright.
"Rook!"
She was already moving. A blur of amber eyes and black claws, hitting the Rager's flank. Her strikes carved deep, but the wounds closed almost instantly. The fragment's power was flowing through the creature, healing it faster than she could damage it.
Sargo opened fire. The anti-material rounds punched through the Rager's armored plates, leaving crater-sized wounds. They healed. The beast turned toward the crawler, jaws opening wide, and a wave of pure Lunacy blasted from its throat.
The crawler's front armor melted. Sargo dove clear. Lena scrambled behind a rock formation, tablet clutched to her chest.
"Cade!" she shouted. "The shard! You have to sever the connection!"
I pushed myself up. My ribs were cracked. Healing. The beast inside me was roaring, demanding to be let loose. Demanding to fight.
My claws are tools. My fangs are weapons. My mind is mine.
I ran toward the Rager.
It saw me coming. A massive claw swept down. I dove under it, rolled, came up beside its chest. The shard was right there. Pulsing. Humming. The silver veins were thicker now, feeding the beast's rampage.
I grabbed the shard again.
The void swallowed me.
Release me.
The Rager's mind was screaming. The fragment's power was overwhelming. And behind it all, I felt something else. A presence. Vast. Cold. Watching.
The Warden Absolute.
It knew I was here. It was coming.
Break the chain.
I didn't pull this time. I twisted. The shard was crystalline. Brittle. It had been soaking in Lunacy for centuries, but it was still just a piece of a broken prison. And prisons could be broken further.
I wrenched the shard sideways.
It cracked.
The Rager screamed. The silver veins flickered. Dimmed. The fragment's hold on the creature faltered.
I twisted harder.
The shard shattered.
Silver light exploded outward. I was thrown clear, tumbling across the crater floor. When I looked up, the Rager was collapsing. The fragment was gone—dissolved into motes of silver dust that drifted up toward the bleeding moon.
The Rager hit the ground. Its body was already crumbling. Without the fragment's power sustaining it, centuries of decay caught up in seconds. Flesh turned to ash. Bone turned to dust.
Within moments, nothing remained but a dark stain on the crater floor.
And in the center of the stain, something gleamed.
Not a shard. A seed. Small. Dark. Pulsing with faint silver light. The fragment's core. The part that couldn't be destroyed—only transferred.
I picked it up. It was cold. Quiet. Dormant.
"One down," I breathed. "Twelve to go."
Rook appeared beside me. She was bleeding from a dozen wounds, but they were already closing. Her amber eyes fixed on the seed in my hand.
"What is that?"
"I don't know. But the Warden wanted me to find it. It was a trap. A beacon." I closed my fist around the seed. "I broke the beacon. But the Warden knows I'm here now. It knows what I'm doing."
Rook's expression hardened. "Then we move faster."
She turned toward the crawler. Sargo was already assessing the damage. Lena was staring at her tablet, eyes wide.
"Cade." Her voice was strange. "The other fragments. The twelve remaining signatures. They just... shifted. They're moving. Converging."
"What?"
"They're not dormant anymore. It's like breaking the first one woke them up. They're heading toward a central point." She looked up. "Somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Old NORAD territory. Pre-Collapse military installation."
I felt the silver thread in my blood pulse. The map Vera had given me was changing. The fragments were no longer scattered. They were gathering.
And I knew, with cold certainty, who was gathering them.
Kael. The Iron Maw. And behind them, pulling the strings, the Warden Absolute.
"Then that's where we're going."
I looked at the seed in my hand. Then at the bleeding moon overhead.
"To the mountains. To the fragments. And to whatever's waiting for us there."