The lower levels didn't smell of rot. They smelled of dead, choking air that hadn't moved in centuries. Corvin led Kael through a tunnel lined with translucent, amber-like membranes—the hardened remains of a Titan's circulatory system. Every few minutes, a deep, tectonic groan shook the floor, rattling their bones. It wasn't an earthquake; it was the massive weight of the dead god settling, crushing everything caught in its internal folds.
"Why did you save me?" Kael asked, his voice echoing in the claustrophobic silence. Corvin stopped. He reached into his belt and pulled out a small, jagged shard of black obsidian—the only thing he had left of his sister Elara, from the days he served as a holy executioner. "I didn't save you," he said, his back turned to the boy. "I just stopped being a killing tool for one moment." Kael took a step closer. "I can feel the echo of the girl from this stone. Her resonance is silver, like mine. But her silver is... quiet."
Corvin's fingers tightened around the obsidian shard until the sharp edges sliced into his palm. Drops of hot blood spattered onto the bone floor, but he didn't loosen his grip. "Her name was Elara," the words scraped out of his throat, rough and torn. "She was my sister. And I silenced her, because the Synod ordered it. Her resonance was a heresy to them."
The air in the tunnel grew heavy, freezing the breath in their chests. Out of the shadows, a scratching sound emerged—a rhythmic tapping of many limbs grating against dry bone.
"The Forgotten," Corvin hissed, drawing his fractured blade. Figures dragged themselves out of the gloom. They were husks of men, their thin, grey skin stretched taut over exoskeletons of metal gears fused with bone. They had no eyes; only hollow pits burning with the violet light of raw resonance. They weren't hunting for meat; they were hunting for vibrations. The heat in Corvin's skull spiked instantly, and blood began to boil at the corners of his eyes again. His body was bracing to pay the toll.
"Stay behind me and don't panic," Corvin warned without looking back, a hot drop of blood gliding down his cheek. "They're blind, but they smell resonance. If even a fraction of your energy leaks out now, they will tear you apart."
A dozen of the 'Forgotten' lunged forward. Corvin raised his blade for the first strike, but a terrifying realization froze the blood in his veins. The monsters weren't rushing at him. And they weren't attacking. They bypassed him completely, bowing their mangled heads to the floor... in reverence to the boy.