Chapter 80: Black Pylon!!
The pylon had been driven diagonally into the wall behind the extractor, as if someone had hammered a black iron spine through both stone and flesh. Red knots clung to it. A pipe joint pulsed at its center. Cables ran through the cracks and disappeared into the creature’s ribs, the chains, and the hooks hanging over the survivors. Kael understood it at once. The extractor was not guarding the pylon; the pylon was using the extractor’s body to reach everyone on the ledge.
The extractor spread its four arms. Its pipe-lungs opened until the bone plates along its chest separated. The door of hooks leaned forward, and the off-center pulse behind it beat once through the wall.
BOOM!
The ledge dipped, hands weakened, and the air thinned. The pylon pulled through every cable at once, trying to fold the survivors toward the gap. It used chains, straps, hooks, wounds, and even a hand on another shoulder as places to pull.
"Keep hold of one another," Kael said. "It is using every connection it can find."
Renn seized the nearest shoulder with his burned hand. Vaela caught Tavin’s harness. Orrek locked his uninjured arm around the chain and showed all his teeth as if pain had insulted him personally. Jaro grabbed Kael’s belt, realized what he had done, and flinched.
"I am sorry," he said. "I thought the chain was behind me."
"Then hold on," Kael said. "You can apologize after we are out."
A second beat passed through the pylon.
BOOM!
This time the false count came with it. The wall told every hand on the ledge that only thirteen people remained.
The raised hands shook. The pylon did not care about truth, but it had learned where truth was being held. Red strips snapped toward fingers, wrists, sleeves, straps, and the dirty places where people held one another. The extractor used the same beat to shove its lower arms into Kael’s path.
The Root answered the full force of the pylon.
ALLOCATE!
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[ SOVEREIGN ROOT INTERFACE OVERLAY ]
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≫ HOSTILE WALL-PYLON PRESSURE DETECTED: FULL CABLE COLLAPSE
≫ EXISTENTIAL SHARDS EXTRACTED: +6
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≫ MANUAL ALLOCATION COMMAND RECEIVED
▶ SHARD ALLOCATION REGISTERED: +6 TOTAL
▶ ALLOCATION DISTRIBUTION:
- Core Mass Density -> 25
- Gravity Vector Impact -> 23
- Velocity Movement Authority -> 21
- Regenerative Dominion -> 20
- Primordial Marrow Layer -> 18
[!] SYSTEM NOTICE: FULL WALL-PYLON RESISTANCE INITIATED.
====================================================================
After the allocation, Kael had no shards left to spend.
Kael planted one foot in a chain groove and one hand against the wall. The pressure hit. Old cuts split open across his shoulders, but his bones held. He did not fight every cable because that was the trap.
The pylon split the field around him: one hand for the child, one shoulder for the ledge, one knee for the extractor, one eye for every red strip racing toward the line. It offered emergencies the way a blade offered edges. Too many, too close, each one loud enough to look like the only thing that mattered.
Kael let some of the smaller attacks land. A strip cut across his forearm and opened him to the wrist. A hook scraped along his ribs. The ledge kicked under his left foot. Behind him, someone cried out and did not fall. The line still held because the others were doing their part, so he did his.
He watched the pylon’s pulse travel through the cracked joint at its center. It reached the joint half a beat late, the same flaw Jaro had found in the creature’s chest.
The pylon tried to hide the delay by moving everything else. A cable snapped out of the wall and struck the plate under Renn’s burned hand. The plate tilted. Renn’s fingers slid toward the edge, skin leaving red streaks behind. Vaela caught his wrist before the plate finished turning, but the motion dragged her cut palm across hot metal.
She hissed through her teeth, and Kael said, "Keep his hand above the edge. Do not let the plate take him."
"I noticed," Vaela snapped. "Keep your eyes on the pylon."
The old ash-cough woman braced her shoulder under Renn’s elbow. Tavin shoved his knee against the plate’s lower lip. Sella pressed the child’s fist against her own cheek, forcing his hand to stay visible even while he shook. The pylon found old joints, burned hands, loose straps, sweat-slick fingers, and the fear that made people clutch too hard. It did not need anyone to fall. It only needed one touch to break.
Kael saw what the pylon was asking of them: not strength, but the choice to keep holding another person when pain gave them an excuse to let go. Orrek saw it a heartbeat later.
"If you drop him," he growled at Dorran, "I will haunt your bad ankle."
"You are still alive," Dorran snarled.
"Then do not waste the threat."
Dorran barked a cracked laugh and pulled harder.
"The low-left knot is late," Kael said. "That is the one we need."
Vaela looked across the wall. "There are nine knots. Which one are you seeing?"
Jaro pointed with his torn hand. "Low left, under the red knot. It is feeding the spine through the crack."
The extractor lunged to cover the wall, and Orrek heaved the chain around its lower legs. The movement nearly tore him off the ledge. His uninjured hand slipped, caught, slipped again, then locked around the link. Dorran threw his weight onto the chain from the side, bad ankle useless, both arms shaking.
"Pull the chain sideways," Orrek barked. "Do not let it plant both legs."
"I am already sideways," Dorran shouted.
"Then lean harder before it puts us all in the gap."
Dorran cursed and pulled. The extractor’s lower leg shifted half an inch, enough for Vaela to reach the last cable above the child. She cut it with a short, brutal pull.
RIP!
The hook over the child’s raised hands died. Sella dragged him down against her chest. The child tried to keep one fist visible. His arm shook.
"Keep his hand where we can see it," Renn rasped.
Sella lifted the child’s fist again, her own wrapped around it, as the pylon gave thirteen hard pulses.
"There are fourteen of us," Renn answered. "It does not get to choose otherwise."
Kael used the moment before the pylon could correct its rhythm and rammed his shoulder into the wall.
BOOM!
Stone cracked, but the pylon held. The extractor’s hooks tore across Kael’s back. He let the pull draw him half a step, dropped his weight, and drove his shoulder, forearm, knee, and skull into the broken wall.
BOOOOM!
The wall burst inward and exposed a cramped, wet cavity packed with root knots. Heat struck Kael’s face. The black spine flexed inside the wall like a metal back trying to crawl away. Cables jerked through the cavity and sliced at his wrists. He ignored the thin cuts because the off-center joint could not wait.
The extractor folded around him. Its upper hands caught his shoulders. Its lower hands came for his ribs. The pipe-lungs opened close enough for hot black breath to wash over his face. The breath carried the false count again, insisting that only thirteen people were still alive behind him.
Behind Kael, fourteen hands stayed raised, and the lie broke against the hands they kept in sight.
Kael reached into the cavity and closed both hands around the black spine.
The spine twisted under his grip as root knots tore free from stone. The extractor shrieked through its pipe-lungs and drove all four hooks inward. Two caught Kael’s back. One scraped his neck. One sank into the meat above his hip.
Vaela saw the hook buried in him and went for the rib cable feeding it. A red strip snapped toward her wounded palm. She dragged her palm through ash and cut anyway.
RIP!
The hook in Kael’s hip loosened. Jaro threw himself against the wall crack and shoved his torn fingers under the low-left knot.
"Now, Kael," he screamed. "The knot is open."
The knot pulsed under Kael’s hand. It was late again, and Kael twisted.
The spine resisted. The pylon had been made to hold more than this ledge. It held chains, hooks, false counts, breath roots, red strips, and the buried pull of the shaft below them. It had survived people dying against it until their names vanished into use.
The resistance drove back through Kael’s arms hard enough to shake his elbows loose. His teeth clicked together. The broken wall ground against his shoulder. Heat poured from the cavity until the air tasted like wet iron.
The extractor used that moment to change tactics. It stopped trying to pull everyone down and forced the ledge upward in uneven slabs, changing the height of the floor beneath their feet until hands and knees lost their hold. Sella nearly lost the child when the stone under her lurched. Old Noll jammed his cane between two rising slabs and screamed when the wood split down the middle.
"Get your weight down," Renn shouted. "It is lifting the floor under us."
The survivors dropped their weight together, badly and without grace. They fell on elbows, knees, and each other. Tavin caught Sella’s shoulder between his teeth and spat blood without letting go of her sleeve. The child’s fist vanished for half a breath.
The pylon answered with thirteen pulses.
Vaela grabbed the child’s wrist and hauled it up again. "Say it loud enough to hear yourself," she said, her voice rough with pain. The child sobbed once, then screamed through the fear. "There are fourteen of us!"
Kael did not need the pylon’s history. He needed the joint that kept its power moving.
He planted his knee into the wall cavity, braced his shoulder under the extractor’s chest, and twisted again.
CRUNCH!
The spine cracked but did not break. The pylon answered through every cable, and the ledge bucked. Sella slammed into the wall with the child under her. Dorran lost the chain and grabbed Orrek’s belt. Orrek dropped another inch toward the gap and roared so loud the pipe mouths shivered. Renn’s burned hand slipped from the plate.
The false count surged through the ledge and told them thirteen bodies remained.
For one breath, the line almost believed it. Then the ash-cough woman grabbed Renn’s wrist and shoved his palm back onto the plate.
"Count us again," she wheezed. "Do not let it take the number from you."
Renn’s eyes cleared. "There are fourteen," he said.
Old Noll answered. The twins answered. Tavin answered. Dorran answered through clenched teeth. Sella answered for herself and the child until the child shoved his own voice out, thin and furious.
"There are fourteen of us," the child cried, thin and furious.
The pylon stuttered, and Kael felt the missed beat through the spine. He twisted for the third time.
This time, he drove Gravity Vector Impact down through his feet as he pulled. The ledge under him groaned. Core Mass Density turned his grip into a closing vise. Regenerative Dominion sealed the worst tears in his back just enough to keep his arms from losing force. Primordial Marrow Layer made the strain feel like something his bones could hate without surrendering to.
The low-left knot tore free.
CRACK!
The pylon’s pulse ran backward. The extractor’s chest plates opened too far. Black marrow poured through them. Its lower arms snapped against the ledge. The pipe-lungs filled with their own spilled fluid and collapsed.
Kael braced his feet and twisted the spine until it broke across the cracked joint.
CRUNCH!
The pylon shattered, and the extractor folded inward with it. Bone plates popped. Hooks curled into its chest. Black sap struck the wall and went still. The red strips that had been reaching for raised hands dried in midair and fell like dead thread.
For a few breaths, nobody moved because movement had punished them too often. Renn moved first anyway.
He touched shoulders, one after another. His fingers shook. The count came back through contact: sleeve, wrist, harness, strap, chain, child, old hand, wounded hand, ash-black hand, Kael’s blood on the wall.
"There are fourteen," he said, touching each shoulder in turn.
The survivors answered him together, each voice rough but certain. "There are fourteen."
Orrek laughed once and almost dropped the chain.
"Do not celebrate by dropping the chain," Vaela snapped.
"I am celebrating with my entire damaged reputation," Orrek said.
"Use less of it until we are clear of the edge."
Dorran and Old Noll dragged him back from the edge. The chain came with him an inch at a time, scraping blood across stone. When Orrek finally rolled onto the ledge, he lay on his back and stared at the broken pylon as if it had personally disappointed him.
Jaro crawled to the cavity. He did not touch the spine again. He only looked at the cables buried in its broken iron.
"It fed everything," he said. "Every hook and chain came back to this place."
Kael stood over the broken pylon with blood on both hands.
"I know," he said. "That is why we keep moving."
Below the ledge, a pipe somewhere in the shaft gave one deep, wounded knock.
BOOM!
The knock traveled downward first, then sideways, then farther than the shaft should have carried anything. Pipe mouths clicked shut one by one. Root threads withdrew from cracks. The broken extractor did not twitch.
Far from the shaft, Ivara Thane opened her eyes in the dark. A cold tremor passed through the chain set into her wall. Rescue had not arrived yet, but something buried beneath the stone had been hurt, and the pain was traveling outward.