Chapter 9 Dead Magic
The outpost smelled wrong.
Not wrong in the way battlefields did—no blood-rot or scorched metal—but stale, like air sealed too long in a tomb. Dust, iron, the faint trace of burned sage. I crouched at the doorway, palm hovering just above the surface. The steel was cool, the sigils dull. No hum of active wards. No sound from inside.
“Dead magic,” I whispered. “Either drained or… fed on.”
Drake’s shadow leaned close behind me. “Fed on,” he murmured. “Something’s been drinking the power in the walls.”
“That’s not a thing,” I said automatically.
“It is now.”
I shot him a glare over my shoulder. “If you plan to keep correcting the laws of magic, at least pretend to be nervous about it.”
He smiled, faint and humorless. “I don’t do nervous.”
“Then do quiet,” I muttered, and pressed my hand to the door.
The sigils rippled faintly under my palm, recognizing something familiar in my blood—then the metal groaned and slid inward. The sound echoed down the corridor like a throat clearing before a scream.
Inside was a narrow hallway of stone and reinforced steel. Emergency lights along the ceiling flickered a dull red. My boots crunched over shards of glass. Air filters hissed somewhere deeper in, but the rhythm was uneven, like a dying heartbeat.
Drake followed a pace behind me. The chain between us dragged softly against the floor, pulsing in time with our steps. He ducked under a sagging beam, gaze scanning the shadows.
“Stay sharp,” I said.
“I’m chained to you,” he replied. “Sharpness is implied.”
The first body waited just beyond the corner.
A man in a torn Syndicate uniform slumped against the wall, eyes open, mouth slack. No visible wounds. No scorch marks. His skin was gray, lips blue. When I crouched, the faint shimmer of a spell clung to him like cobwebs.
“Extraction spell,” I murmured. “Someone drained his energy clean through his veins.”
Drake’s eyes narrowed. “You people do that often?”
“Not like this.” I brushed my fingers over the sigil burned faintly into the corpse’s throat. It wasn’t Syndicate design—too old, too fluid. The lines looped in on themselves, forming a spiral that hurt to look at. “Whoever did it wasn’t one of ours.”
“Rebels,” Drake guessed.
“Or scavengers, like you said.”
He crouched beside me, his heat rolling over my skin. “Or something worse.”
“What’s worse?”
He met my eyes. “Something hungry enough to eat power instead of flesh.”
My stomach knotted. “We should find the relay and get out before we meet whatever did this.”
He straightened. “Lead on, witch.”
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The deeper we went, the colder it became—unnatural, considering the furnace walking beside me. The walls sweated condensation; frost edged the corners of old wards.
My breath ghosted white in the air.
“This isn’t possible,” I muttered. “We’re below ground. It shouldn’t—”
A crash cut me off. Metal on stone. I spun, knife up, magic sparking at my fingertips.
The sound came from a storage bay at the end of the corridor. The door hung ajar. A faint blue light pulsed inside, rhythmic, like breathing.
Drake motioned me back with one hand. I ignored him and stepped forward anyway. The chain tightened, forcing him to follow. He muttered something that sounded like stubborn woman under his breath.
The bay was a mess of overturned crates and shattered vials. The blue light came from a containment capsule cracked down one side. Inside it, a figure twitched—a woman in rebel leathers, hair matted with sweat, arms tangled in broken tubes.
“Alive,” I said, disbelief threading through the word.
Drake inhaled sharply. “No. Not entirely.”
I ignored him and dropped to my knees beside the capsule. Her chest moved, shallow and uneven. Her skin shimmered faintly, veins glowing the same blue as the capsule fluid. The energy around her was wrong—flickering between living and not.
“She’s human,” I said. “I can fix this.”
Drake’s voice was low. “You can’t fix what’s already feeding.”
I looked up at him. “Feeding?”
He nodded toward the mark on her neck—the same spiral sigil as the dead soldier. It pulsed weakly, drawing light from her body with every beat.
“She’s a conduit,” he said. “Whatever killed the others left this one as a tap.”
“Then we cut the line,” I said, already digging through my pack. “Hold her still.”
“Christine—”
“I said hold her!”
He hesitated, then crouched opposite me and pinned the woman’s shoulders gently but firmly. His hands looked enormous against her thin frame.
I pressed my fingers to the sigil and summoned heat. Magic crackled down my arm, gathering at my palm. The smell of ozone filled the air.
“By flame unbound,” I whispered, “by spark and ash, release—”
The sigil screamed.
Light flared through the room, blinding blue. Pain shot up my arm; I bit down on a curse. The tether between me and Drake surged, molten gold. For a heartbeat, I felt his power rushing through me, amplifying mine. The sigil on the woman’s throat blackened, cracked—and burst.
The blue light died.
I fell backward, gasping. The chain hissed between us, sparks skittering across the floor.
The woman slumped, chest rising in slow, steady breaths. Color seeped back into her face. Not much, but enough.
“Saints,” I breathed. “It worked.”
Drake’s expression was unreadable. “You took my fire.”
“I borrowed it,” I corrected, wiping blood from my nose. “Big difference.”
He leaned closer, voice low. “Next time, ask before you draw on a dragon’s power. The bond might not care who’s in control.”
“I’ll risk it.”
His eyes searched mine for a moment, something fierce and complicated flickering behind the gold. Then he looked away.
The rescued woman stirred, groaning softly. Her eyes fluttered open—clouded gray, unfocused.
“Hey,” I said gently. “You’re safe. Can you hear me?”
Her gaze darted between us, panic flaring. “Get out,” she rasped. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s coming back—”
“What’s coming?” I asked.
“The shade,” she whispered. “It eats the light.”
Then her body arched once, violently, and went still.