The pull didn't stop.
It intensified.
Arem's feet slid across the fractured floor as if gravity itself had changed its mind. Red threads screamed from his arms, stretching downward into the open shaft, vibrating so violently his bones felt like they were rattling apart from the inside.
"Kade—!" Arem shouted.
Kade wrapped both arms around Arem's torso, digging his heels into the concrete. The floor cracked beneath them, fissures spiderwebbing outward. Muscles stood out along Kade's arms and neck, his teeth clenched so hard Arem could hear it.
"Listen to me," Kade growled into his ear. "This is where people disappear."
The failures stood at the edge of the shaft, unmoving. Watching.
Waiting.
Their threads extended downward too—not pulled, but connected. Anchored.
Arem's Web thrashed, torn between resistance and surrender. The pressure climbed rapidly, passing pain and entering something worse—loss of sensation. His fingers went numb. His vision blurred at the edges, crimson creeping inward.
Inside his chest, something clicked again.
Not instinct.
Recognition.
The Web wasn't dragging him.
It was calling him home.
"No," Arem whispered, more to himself than anyone else. "I'm not yours."
The pressure spiked in response.
Kade cursed. "It's responding to your intent—stop talking to it!"
"I'm not—!" Arem gasped as another surge ripped through his arms.
The failures spoke in unison.
"Descent authorized."
The shaft widened.
Metal groaned as hidden mechanisms activated. Old ones. Forgotten ones. The academy itself seemed to resist, walls trembling as if protesting what was being unleashed beneath it.
Warning lights flickered back to life—dim, red, and ancient.
DESCENT PROTOCOL ACTIVE
Kade's eyes widened. "That system shouldn't still be online."
One of the failures turned toward him. "Containment was never permanent."
The floor beneath Arem gave way.
For half a second, weightlessness.
Then Kade roared and jumped.
They fell.
The shaft swallowed them whole, walls rushing past in a blur of red-lit steel and ancient markings carved directly into the structure—symbols Arem didn't recognize, but somehow understood.
Pressure diagrams.
Human silhouettes.
Fracture points.
Arem slammed into Kade mid-fall as Kade twisted, slamming his threads into the wall to slow them. Sparks exploded. The sudden deceleration tore a scream from Arem's throat.
They hit a platform hard.
Arem rolled, coughing violently, the taste of blood sharp in his mouth. His arms burned like they'd been flayed. His Web snapped back into him abruptly, the recoil so intense his vision went black for a heartbeat.
When it cleared—
They weren't alone.
The chamber was vast. Circular. Old. Thick cables ran along the walls like veins, all leading toward the center of the room.
Where something was suspended.
A structure—no, a core—hung in the air, wrapped in layers of red threads thicker than steel cables. They pulsed slowly, rhythmically, like a heart.
Thump.
Thump.
Arem felt it in his chest.
Kade staggered to his feet, eyes wide with something dangerously close to fear. "So it's still alive…"
"What is that?" Arem whispered.
Kade didn't answer immediately.
Instead, he looked at Arem.
And for the first time since they met, Kade looked uncertain.
"It's the first carrier," he said finally. "The one who didn't break."
The core pulsed again.
A voice echoed through the chamber—not from the failures, not from the walls.
From everywhere.
"IDENTITY CONFIRMED."
Arem froze.
The red threads around the core tightened, then loosened, reacting to him. New threads uncoiled, stretching outward, inching toward his body.
"COMPATIBILITY: HIGH."
Kade stepped in front of him instantly. "No."
The voice paused.
Then—
"SECONDARY CARRIER DETECTED."
Arem's heart dropped.
The failures emerged from the shadows, stepping onto surrounding platforms, forming a circle around them. Their threads connected to the core, stabilizing the chamber.
Kade's Web flared violently. "You don't get to choose for him."
The voice responded calmly.
"CHOICE WAS NEVER A PARAMETER."
The core's threads surged.
Arem screamed as his Web erupted uncontrollably, every strand lighting up at once. The pressure was unbearable—beyond recoil, beyond fracture. Something inside him felt like it was being measured, weighed, judged.
Images flooded his mind.
Bodies breaking.
Minds snapping.
A single figure standing alone, wrapped in endless red threads, screaming silently as the world bent around him.
Arem dropped to his knees.
"Kade…" he whispered. "It's showing me… everything."
Kade grabbed his shoulders hard. "Do not accept it. Do you hear me? The moment you accept it—"
The core pulsed violently.
The chamber shook.
"INITIATING TRANSFER."
The threads lunged.
Arem's scream echoed through the chamber as the Web tightened around his body, lifting him off the ground—
And the core opened.