Chapter 73 The fault lines
Kai's POV
I didn't know what Dr. Voss was playing at. A whole celebration for what? Am announcement for what? The separation. I didn't know what she was looking for, and that terrified yet empowered me. She was playing some sort of game with Zara, yet it felt like she was pulling through my strongholds.
"Kai." I heard Mira call out to me.
I had actually forgotten that she was here with us. It just happened that when Zara was around, everything about me seemed to vanish till it was just me and her left.
"Mira." I responded.
"What is really going on?" She questioned.
"Do you have an idea as to what Dr. Voss really wants from us?"
"She just wants to break us. Once that's achieved, every other thing can follow through." I said.
"It seems we're on a big heirachy."
"It seems that way to me too."
Mira studied my face like she was trying to read a language she’d only just discovered existed.
“Break you how?” she asked quietly.
I didn’t answer immediately. Because the truth wasn’t something you said out loud without giving it teeth.
“By forcing choices,” I finally said.
“By isolating pressure points until we fracture on our own.”
Her jaw tightened.
“And Zara is the biggest pressure point.”
“Yes.”
Saying her name did something to my chest. The bond responded instantly sharp, alert, stretched thin like a wire pulled too far. I could still feel her, but not the way I usually did. It was as if something had been wedged between us. Not severed. Filtered.
“She’s not here,” Mira said, following my gaze down the corridor where Voss had taken Zara hours earlier.
“She hasn’t been since the demonstration room sealed.”
I nodded once. I already knew.
“What did Voss do to her?” Mira pressed.
“Nothing she hasn’t been planning to do for years,” I replied.
“She didn’t take Zara to hurt her.”
I looked at Mira fully then.
“She took her to study her.”
Mira went pale.
“That’s worse,” she whispered.
“Yes.”
The academy had shifted since the celebration ended. The lights were dimmer. The air heavier. Wards hummed constantly now, no longer pretending to sleep. Every corridor felt watched, measured. The building wasn’t just a structure anymore. It was a machine warming up.
“Where are they holding her?” Mira asked.
“Below,” I said.
“Not the labs. Deeper.”
“How do you know?”
I tapped my chest once.
“Because whatever’s down there is loud enough that even the bond can hear it.”
Something old stirred beneath my ribs as I said it. Not the alien consciousness. Not the alpha instincts.
Something… prior. Mira exhaled shakily.
“She’s trying to trigger Zara.”
“Yes.”
“To see how much she can take.”
“No,” I corrected.
“To see what it takes to make her stop caring who gets hurt.”
Mira’s eyes widened.
“That’s...”
“Exactly.”
We started walking. Not toward the lower levels not yet but toward the eastern wing, where the old command offices sat abandoned. Voss thought she’d stripped me of authority when she sidelined me publicly.
She’d forgotten something important.
I didn’t need permission to move in my own war.
“You said she wants to break you too,” Mira said after a moment. “How?”
I slowed.
“By making me fail her.”
Mira frowned.
“Zara?”
“Yes.”
“She thinks if I hesitate, if I choose the academy, the future, the species over Zara…”
I didn’t finish. Mira did it for me.
“…Zara will see it as betrayal.”
“And if Zara believes that,” I said quietly.
“Whatever restraint she still has will shatter.”
We stopped outside a sealed door etched with symbols so old they made my teeth ache.
Mira stared at it.
“This place wasn’t on any map.”
“No,” I agreed.
“Because it predates the academy.”
I pressed my palm to the door. The wards flared and then hesitated.
Inside my head, something shifted.
Access granted, a voice echoed. Not Voss’s. Mine.
The door slid open.
The room beyond wasn’t large. No tech. No observation glass. Just stone walls, moon-carved symbols, and a single pedestal at the centre holding something wrapped in black cloth.
Mira stepped in slowly.
“What is this?”
I approached the pedestal.
“A contingency,” I said.
“One Voss doesn’t know still exists.”
I pulled the cloth away.
Silver gleamed under the low light.
A blade.
Not just any blade. Old. Lunar-forged. Balanced perfectly for a hand that could both destroy and protect.
Mira sucked in a breath.
“That’s a Moon Relic.”
“Yes.”
“They were all destroyed.”
“So everyone was told.”
I wrapped my fingers around the hilt. The metal hummed, recognition, not resistance.
“This was made to kill Devourers,” Mira whispered.
“And to anchor them,” I said.
Her head snapped up.
“Anchor?”
“Yes. To remind them who they are when the hunger tries to rewrite them.”
Understanding dawned slowly on her face.
“You’re planning to use that on Zara?”
I shook my head immediately.
“No.”
Relief flashed across her features, then confusion.
“I’m planning to use it on myself.”
Silence crashed between us.
“Kai,” Mira said carefully.
“If that blade binds lunar essence and devourer energy.”
“It’ll either stabilize me,” I finished.
“Or tear me apart.”
“That’s insane.”
“Yes.”
“But if Voss is right,” I continued, voice steady despite the storm in my chest.
“And this comes down to a moment where Zara thinks I chose the world over her…”
I tightened my grip on the blade.
“…then I need to be strong enough to survive what she becomes.”
Mira’s voice broke.
“And what if she kills you anyway?”
I closed my eyes.
“Then at least she’ll never doubt that I stayed.”
The bond pulsed suddenly hard, erratic.
Not pain. Fear. Not mine. Zara.
I staggered a step as something slammed through the connection, so cold, invasive, ancient.
Mira caught my arm. “What is it?”
“They’re doing something,” I growled.
“Something they shouldn’t.”
The walls trembled faintly. Somewhere far below, a sound echoed just like stone grinding against bone.
I turned toward the door.
“Get out,” I told Mira.
“Lock this place down. No matter what you hear.”
“What about you?”
I didn’t look back. “I’m done waiting.”
As I strode into the corridor, the bond flared again but more hot this time. Furious. Confused. And threaded through it… Disappointment. Zara’s.
Dr. Voss was moving faster than I’d anticipated. And for the first time since I arrived at the academy, I felt it clearly:
The fracture had begun.