The first Loom-Scavenger struck the obsidian wall with the sound of a thousand hammers hitting a hollow pipe. Its copper-wire legs, tipped with serrated glass, gouged deep lines into the "Iron Memory" stone. The creature screeched—a high-frequency electronic wail that made the survivors in the plaza collapse, clutching their bleeding ears.
"They aren't just attacking the wall," Nelluru shouted, her lime-green blade vibrating as she parried a lashing cable. "They're trying to harvest the vibrations! They're hungry for the King's heartbeat!"
Alicia stood her ground at the edge of the battlement. She could see the core of the scavenger—a rotating drum of red glass that pulsed with a stolen, flickering energy. It was a mockery of a heart. She dipped the raven-bone pen into the boiling indigo ink and didn't draw on the wall. She drew in the air, tracing a jagged, aggressive script that looked like barbed wire.
"You want to harvest us?" Alicia's voice was cold, echoing with a hint of the King's own resonance. "Then taste the weight of a story that refuses to be forgotten."
She flicked the pen. The ink didn't fall; it expanded into a whip of liquid gravity. The strand lashed out, wrapping around the scavenger's glass heart. The moment the indigo ink touched the red glass, the stolen energy inside turned black. The "Stained Reality" of the ink acted like a virus, rewriting the scavenger's internal logic from *Take* to *Give*.
The scavenger froze. Its copper legs locked. Then, with a groan of stressed metal, its entire body began to unspool. The rusted wires didn't fall away; they were drawn into the obsidian wall, filling the gouges the creature had just made. The enemy was literally becoming the repair kit.
"Alicia, look up!" Nelluru warned.
The horizon of the Iron Velvets was darkening. Thousands of red glass eyes were opening in the tangled scrap-mountains. The scavengers weren't just a swarm; they were the continent itself, and they had realized that the Citadel was the richest vein of "Realness" they had seen in eons.
From the violet sky, a heavy, distorted chord of indigo lightning struck the center of the scrap-heap. Clevatess was signaling. He wasn't just pulling the city; he was marking the target.
"The Iron Velvets aren't just scrap," Alicia realized, her pen glowing brighter. "They're a stockpile. We're not just passing through. We're here to loot the graveyard."