Chapter 14 — The Subtle Resonance

The roaring purple-red sky swallowed Emberfall Camp.

The decay radiation storm vomited from Tartarus's destruction rift coiled like a great serpent of metal poison-dust and high-energy particles, raving across the blind-spot wasteland. The heavily distorted magnetic field reduced all radio to a shrieking white-noise; thin corrugated iron sang a nausea-inducing creak in the gale, as if it might be torn to pieces by this violent heaven and earth at any moment.

"Move! Reinforce the Number Two ballast hold! Get the high-energy cells down to the cellar!"

Caleb's bellow came broken and ragged through the storm's howl. The self-defense mortals, facing sand that could strip skin, were nailing heavy lead-plates around the hovels with frenzy. High-radiation dust hissed and seared on their goggles.

Elias stood on the wind's fiercest outer line, both hands locked on a heavy cable, fixing it to a buried ground-anchor. The rough rope flayed his palms bloody, but he seemed to feel no pain, his deep lake-green eyes fixed on the violent dark-purple wind-sky.

In this world-ending decay storm, he faintly felt a tremor of the same frequency as the dark energy in his own body. The trace left by the god who brought destruction — even light-years away, the lingering law-aftermath still ravaged mortal life.

Riiiip—!

A shrill crack erupted: the side armor of the neighboring hovel was torn open by a violent gravity-eddy! Sick-purple radiation dust flooded in like a breached dam, swallowing the whole room in an instant.

"Alarm! Flank defense collapsed!" Caleb's cry came distant and sharp.

Elias's pupils snapped shut.

That torn hovel was the dwelling of the amnesiac refugee woman who called herself "Vespera"!

Without a thought, without any rational calculation, Elias let go the cable and, against a wind-pressure that could blow a man off his feet, launched like a hunting leopard at the breach choked with dust.

Inside was a shambles. Scrap instruments blown askew by the storm; the stink of decay radiation spiking to the lethal red line.

In a corner swallowing purple-black sand, a slender figure curled soundless by a toppled iron cabinet. Her thin linen clothes whipped in the storm, tiny and helpless.

In that instant, Elias seemed again to see his sister, dissolved in Tartarus's death-light.

"Grab me!"

Elias roared and flung himself forward. He caught the curled woman and, in one motion, unwound the heavy, stinking, mud-caked lead-weave radiation blanket from his own shoulders.

The long blanket unfurled in the gale; Elias whipped it around, wrapping the whole lead-weave blanket tight and seamless over "Vespera's" thin shoulders. Then he planted his rough, powerful torso against the torn iron-wall breach behind her, blocking the pouring gravity-dust!

Poison-dust hammered Elias's back, a branding-iron sting. He clenched his teeth, a dull groan — but those lake-green eyes never left the woman he shielded in his arms.

Wrapped in the lead blanket, Umbra went utterly still.

As the higher-dimensional God of Darkness who governed the universe's death and ending, across ten million long years she had looked down on countless galaxies extinguishing in the dark, had heard countless gods and mortals tremble and beg at her feet. In the power-hub of the God-King's cabinet, even the arrogant Aries Lord bowed before her; Jupiter the God-King gave three parts dread to her cold authority.

Never had any being — neither the supreme God-King nor a dust-mote mortal — dared enclose her in an embrace so near to reckless.

And never had any being used his own flesh and blood, to try to "protect" a god who commanded annihilation.

The lead blanket reeked of wasteland grease and metal — but clearer still was the warmth off the mortal boy before her. Not the glaring heat of burning divine power, but a fierce bodily heat born of muscle, bone-blood, and stubborn life.

That warmth came through the blanket's seams, pressing on the mortal shell she had condensed from dark matter, bringing a strangeness so acute it stung her god-core.

"What… are you doing?" Umbra's voice was hoarse and cold; lowered lashes hid the higher-dimensional dark-light flaring in her eyes.

A thought and the higher-dimensional negative energy coiled around her could turn this reckless mortal to drifting ash in an instant.

"Shut up, don't move!" Elias's voice came ragged with breath; he clenched his teeth and pulled the lead blanket further over her head, covering her wholly. "Radiation's over the line — if you want to live, stay tucked!"

Umbra lifted her head; through the blanket's seam she saw the blood-gash the gravity-dust had opened on Elias's cheek. Blood mixed with purple dust ran from his jaw, dropping onto her pale collar, blooming stark crimson flowers.

That stupid, inefficient, yet purely extreme instinct to protect — like a great hammer, slammed onto her god-core that had not wavered in ten million years.

The kill-intent in her eyes, in this moment, hung suspended, strange.

A moment later, Caleb's repair crew arrived and welded the breach shut with heavy joining-plates. The raving sand was shut out; the room sank again into dimness and dead silence.

Elias slumped to the floor, gasping hard; his back-clothes were scorched black in patches by the high-radiation dust. Only after confirming the woman behind him had taken no grave radiation did he wave a tired hand: "I'm fine… take the gas canisters to the sick next door."

That night, the storm kept raving.

From the severe radiation burn on his back, compounded with the rejection between the higher-dimensional negative energy settled in his body and the day's hard labor, Elias fell into violent fever and convulsions deep in the night.

He lay on the crude scrap bunk, face paper-white, brow beaded with cold sweat. In the depths of his dream, Tartarus's melting death-light and his sister's dissolving cold gaze wove together like a great serpent, strangling his soul, drawing from him a pained, raw moan.

"Aira… go… go now…"

The hovel's heavy door opened without a sound.

Stepping over the floor's dim purple light, "Vespera" in her coarse cloth dress walked in slow.

Her step was light as if soundless, secret higher-dimensional particles drifting off her. Looking at the boy who, for all his convulsions of pain, still clutched that half star-core pendant, Umbra's gaze was utterly cold.

"The karmic buffer is rejecting energy severely," she assessed coldly in her heart. "Mortal meridians are too fragile; left to ferment, his soul breaks tonight."

That would mean losing her only heat-sink vessel, and facing again the negative-energy backlash of the Silent Strike.

"For the sake of your foolish act by day…" Umbra murmured.

She walked slow to the bunk and sat. Then she extended those slender, pale, cool palms that shed a faint night-glow.

No roar of higher-dimensional divine power — only the faintest dark-matter pulse flowing at her fingertips. She laid her cold palm gently on Elias's burning, sweat-soaked brow.

Hum—!

The instant palm met brow, a supremely secret higher-dimensional soul-resonance burst open!

The moment she guided the energy out, Umbra meant, as always, to force Elias's pain down with cold higher-dimensional reason. But this resonance escaped her control entirely.

Because Elias's body-temperature was too hot.

Not the fever of sickness, but the blazing life-force of a soul utterly lit by hatred and bond!

Along that secret negative-energy channel, the body-heat surging in Elias's blood, the deep love for his sister in his soul's depths, the fury at divine oppression, and the stupid, stubborn protectiveness that had thrown itself before him by day — like a mountain flood, reversed along her palm and poured, sky-covering, into Umbra's higher-dimensional awareness!

"Mm…"

Umbra's slender body jolted; the higher-dimensional dark-light in her eyes trembled violently!

It was absolute cold and absolute heat, slamming head-on in the soul's depths.

Across the long eons, she was the incarnation of night, the mouthpiece of ending. No life could touch her divine soul, no warmth pierce her shadow.

But in this moment, in this crude, rust-stinking, foul hovel, her lonely, cold god-soul of a thousand eons was, solidly, "caught" — by this mortal boy's body-heat and stubborn will!

A shock no physical constant could measure.

In the fevered chaos of dream, Elias felt himself falling into an endless cold abyss. Just as his consciousness was about to be swallowed by darkness, a cool, solid, yet utterly clear touch appeared on his brow.

It was the only thing, amid storm and destruction, that could anchor his soul.

Elias lifted his soaked arm by instinct, across the void; fingers burning with heat and trembling, he locked hard onto the cool slender palm on his brow.

"Don't go…" he mumbled in dream, his knuckles whitening with force, pressing Umbra's hand tight to his cheek.

Umbra's form froze, suspended.

She looked down at the boy on the bunk. His cheek rested in her cold palm; his scorching breath sprayed between her fingers, a burning, real touch. He gripped so hard, as if letting go would drop him again into Tartarus's annihilating silence.

The lofty God of Darkness looked at her hand locked tight by a mortal, and did not withdraw it for a long while.

Night flowed outside the hovel; and in this wasteland corner the Divine Court had forgotten, the cold god-core and the fervent mortal soul, in this night's resonance, quietly branded the first mark that could never be erased.