The alley was silent again.
Silas was gone, melted into the smog like a ghost.
Zane was left alone with the rain, the reek of the Sump, and two fresh corpses.
He stood up, his body, infused with the hot, brutal Essence of Gart and Slag, felt dense. His cracked ribs had mended for the second time, and the new bone felt thicker and heavier.
But the high was fading and fading fast.
The hyper-focus, the feeling of the world slowing down, the god-like confidence—it was all evaporating, leaving behind the cold, familiar ache of the void.
The hunger was back.
It wasn't the shredding, convulsive agony of withdrawal, not yet. It was the need of an addict just after the last hit wore off. The gnawing, hollow promise of the agony to come.
"Fuck," Zane whispered.
He was standing over two dead bodies in the middle of a street, and this was bad.
He looked at Slag, the man Silas had killed, and the man Zane had fed on.
He saw the hilt of his own rusted knife still sticking out of Gart's armpit.
He was a mess. He was loud and he stank of death.
Silas's words echoed in his head.
…like a fucking bonfire of death. …ringing a dinner bell.
He had to get out of here and he had to hide.
He looked at the bodies, knowing he couldn't move them and couldn't hide them.
He had to leave quickly.
But Silas's other words—Learn to siphon. Learn to store. Control your stink—held his attention.
What did that even mean?
Zane closed his eyes and looked inward at the power he had just consumed.
It did feel like a bonfire which he described as a chaotic, flaring, greasy fire of rage and terror. It was burning hot and fast, just as the Umbral Cloak had burned through the Essence he had stored before.
He was leaking power and wasting it. That's why the high faded so fast and why the hunger returned so quickly.
"Control..." he muttered, his voice a low growl.
He tried to will the power to calm down, picturing a bonfire and trying to dampen it, to smother it.
Nothing. The power just kept throbbing.
"Okay, wrong metaphor, I guess…"
He thought about the Essence, which was the grey-blue mist. It was gaseous, but also a liquid.
'Store it.'
He pictured a jar in his gut and pictured the hot, greasy power of Gart and Slag, not as a fire, but as a liquid, willing it to settle, to condense.
He pushed the power down, out of his shoulders, out of his chest, and into the black void in his gut.
He pushed.
It hurt.
It was like trying to clench a muscle he didn't know he had. He gritted his teeth, his face contorting with the effort.
He felt the power resist, and then, it moved.
The oily, corporeal shadows that had been boiling off his skin flickered and retracted. The throbbing in his veins quieted. The feeling of heavy, brutal strength didn't disappear, it just settled.
It condensed into a cold, heavy stone in his stomach.
Zane let out a gasping breath he didn't know he was holding.
He felt normal.
He felt tired. Sore. Human.
But he also felt the stone—the cold, dense reserve of power waiting.
He wasn't a bonfire anymore.
He was a battery.
He had stored it.
The hunger was still there, but it was muffled and being pushed back by the cold weight of the stored souls.
"Okay," Zane breathed, opening his eyes. "I can learn this."
He looked at the corpses and knew he still had to run.
He couldn't go back to the Sump-Pit because the innkeeper was gone and Rivet's entire gang would be tearing it apart by now, looking for him or the old man.
He was homeless again.
He bent down and yanked his rusted knife out of Gart's armpit with a wet schlick. He wiped it on the dead man's tunic and shoved it into his belt.
He didn't loot them. Silas had already taken Slag's sword and he didn't have time to check their pockets.
He was a murderer standing at a murder scene. Time to fucking leave.
He slipped out of the small street and back into the main thoroughfare of the Sump.
The acid rain was thinning to a miserable drizzle and the pre-dawn sky was a sickly grey-green.
He kept his head down and his hood up.
And now the Whispers came back.
But without the bonfire of his own power raging in his head, they were clear.
[...I can't feel my fucking toes... it's the rot... I know it's the rot...]
[...one more shift... just one more... then I can buy the good stuff... just got to make it through the dark...]
[...she's not coming back... she's gone... and I'm alone...]
The voices were individual now. Clear. It was a thousand times worse.
He wasn't just hearing static. He was hearing people.
He clenched his jaw and walked faster, pushing through the miserable, huddled crowd.
He needed a new hole to crawl into and a new safe house.
He avoided the main streets, sticking to the narrow, filth-choked alleys that crisscrossed the Sump.
He was a rat in a maze.
He found it after ten minutes of walking: a condemned sector. A street of collapsed tenements whose fronts were caved in. At the end of the street, a massive, circular iron grate was set into the wall of a factory basement—a sewer outflow.
The grate had been partially pulled away, leaving a gap just wide enough for a man to slip through.
It was perfect.
It was dark and defensible and hidden. It stank so bad of chemicals and shit that it would cover his scent.
He looked left and right, confirming the street was dead.
He started to move toward it.
He was ten feet from the sewer when he heard it.
Clank.
Clank. Clank.
The sound was of heavy, clean boots on stone, measured and rhythmic.
It wasn't the heavy, clumsy THUD of the Rusted-Nails, but professional.
Zane didn't think, diving behind a pile of crumbled masonry, tucking himself into the shadows.
He peeked through a crack.
Three men walked onto the street.
They weren't Nails.
They were dressed in immaculate, high-collared black tunics with gleaming silver breastplates. They wore helms that covered their faces, with only a narrow slit for their eyes, and carried long, steel-tipped spears.
They looked like fucking knights and moved with a chilling, precise unity.
Zane activated his Whispers, but he got nothing.
No despair. No anger. No fear.
Just cold, calm, silence.
They weren't hunters; they were machines.
They stopped in the middle of the street, the one in the lead holding up a hand.
He knelt, touching a gloved finger to the cobblestones.
Zane strained, pushing his Whispers skill to its limit, trying to get anything.
He caught a single, icy thought from the lead knight.
It wasn't a thought of despair. It was a report.
[...Harvest-site detected. Two assets, Gart and Slag. Signatures are chaotic. The anomaly is close...]
Zane's blood froze.
The knight stood up, his helmed head turning, slowly sweeping the street.
[...Alert the Sanctum. The vulture was here...]
He was looking for him.
Exterminators.
Silas had been right.
And they were already on his trail.