They arrived singing.
Elias heard them before he saw them. Hundreds of voices beyond the northern wall, repeating an old invocation Elias had translated from a fragmentary Greek text twenty years earlier. They pronounced it incorrectly. That annoyed him almost as much as the guns. Security cameras showed more than three hundred people moving through the darkness.
Some carried rifles.
Others carried torches.
Many wore the broken-circle symbol. At their centre walked Silas Vane. He looked different from his old videos.
Larger.
Not merely muscular.
Denser.
Veins glowed faintly beneath his skin. Red symbols had been cut into both arms and scarred over.
He wore no armour.
He did not appear to need it.
"Doctor Vale!" Vane called through an amplified speaker.
Elias stood in the command room watching the feed.
"He's dramatic," Priya said.
"He's always been dramatic."
"You created this."
"Don't be cruel."
Vane continued.
"For forty years you searched. For twenty years we followed. We believed when you would not."
Elias opened an external microphone.
"You believed incorrectly. I explicitly told you so."
Vane stopped.
Several people around him looked uncertain.
"You hid the deeper work."
"I restricted procedures after you murdered people."
"Sacrifice is older than your morality."
"So is diarrhoea. Age does not establish value."
Someone in the command room laughed. Vane's expression tightened.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
"This convergence belongs to those who prepared for it."
"I own the land."
"Your papers mean nothing now."
"Interesting position from a man attempting to use an interstellar claim process."
Vane smiled.
"You always were clever."
"You always weren't."
Harcourt muted Elias's microphone.
"Stop provoking the blood-powered lunatic."
"He came here."
"Yes. With three hundred people."
"Most are frightened."
"Some are armed."
Elias watched the crowd.
Myrddin's facial recognition found missing-person reports. Runaways. Former Circle members. People dismissed from shelters after violent incidents. People whose Path Impressions were weak. Vane had collected the discarded. Then given them belonging.
And power.
That made him more dangerous than an ordinary cult leader.
He had results.
Harcourt reopened the microphone herself.
"Silas Vane, this is Deputy Director Anna Harcourt. You and your people are trespassing inside a restricted emergency zone. Lay down your weapons and you will be detained safely."
Vane laughed.
"The old government still issuing orders."
"Yes. It turns out bureaucracy is harder to kill than monsters."
Elias looked at her.
"Good line."
"Thank you."
Vane raised one hand.
The crowd stopped singing.
"Show them," he said.
Twelve people stepped forward. Each carried a human captive. Elias went completely still.
"No," Priya whispered.
Ritual circles had been painted on the road outside the estate. Portable versions of Model Eighty-Nine. Vane smiled at the camera.
"You developed a weaker imitation. We retained the truth."
Elias's hand tightened around the console.
"If you kill them-"
"People die every hour now. At least these deaths create something."
"Silas."
For the first time, Elias used his first name without mockery.
Vane hesitated.
Elias spoke softly.
"You have spent twenty years wanting me to admit you understood my work."
Silence.
"You don't."
Vane's face twisted.
"I have power you cannot imagine."
"You have a crude parasitic transfer model with approximately eighty percent energetic loss and catastrophic pattern contamination."
That landed harder than an insult. Vane's smile disappeared.
Elias continued.
"Your eyes are red because you're haemorrhaging into tissues that are not adapting correctly. Your left hand is shaking. Your skin temperature is elevated. You have incorporated pathways from incompatible donors."
Vane looked at his left hand.
A tiny movement.
Enough.
"Myrddin modelled your footage," Elias said. "You're dying."
The crowd shifted.
Vane roared.
Red light exploded from him. The nearest captive screamed. Harcourt shouted an order.
Snipers fired.
The night erupted.
Vane raised a barrier.
Bullets struck red light and flattened.
His followers charged.
The estate defences activated. Blue barriers appeared between trees.
Automated lights flared.
Drones rose.
Rifle fire thundered from prepared positions.
Elias watched numbers.
Not the battle.
The field.
The anchor was incomplete. But the attack was pushing mana through every conditioned line on the property. Patterns strengthened under use. Conflict itself was conditioning the network.
"Priya."
She understood before he finished.
"No."
"We activate now."
"It's not finished."
"It may never be more ready than this."
"That's not how readiness works."
A blast shook the house. The northern barrier collapsed.
People poured through.
Harcourt drew her sidearm.
"How long?"
Elias looked at the anchor model.
"Four minutes."
"You have two."
She ran.
Elias and Priya descended underground. Above them, humans killed humans over a magical resource neither side fully understood. The apocalypse had not made humanity one people. It had merely given every old division new weapons. And somewhere beyond the planet, Elias was certain, people were watching.