My vision was split. My right eye saw the world in its cold, terrifying reality the roiling crimson vortex, the jagged obsidian cliffs, and Hazel's blood dripping slowly onto the dust. My left eye, flooded with the violet light of the Mantle, saw the world in terms of pressure, lines, and raw, pulsing energy.
Every instinct in my blood screamed at me to unleash the shadow blade. The hunger inside my chest wanted to rip through the caldera, to tear the answers directly out of Jordan's perfected throat and carve the truth into Hazel's marble skin.
Let it go, the darkness whispered in my ear. They are both monsters. Crush them.
I took a slow, deep breath, tasting the ozone and copper. I forced my fingers to open. The vibrating blade of kinetic shadow around my right hand dissolved back into my skin, though the black veins on my forearms remained dangerously dark.
I couldn't let the rage win. Not today. If I lost my mind now, I would just be a pawn in whatever game they had been playing since before I was even old enough to remember my own name. I needed to be a detective. I needed to look at the facts, look at their body language, and find the crack in the wall.
"A slaughter," I said, my voice dangerously calm, cutting through the roaring gale of the Ley Line. I didn't turn to look at Hazel, but I kept her exactly in the periphery of my violet vision. "That's a specific word, Jordan. If she wanted me dead, she could have left me to the Mana-Wraith in the Hollow Heart. She could have let the corruption eat my brain back in the bottleneck. Why bring me all this way just to hand me over to you?"
Jordan's white eyes flickered slightly, a microscopic shift in his pristine expression. He stepped off the first tier of the ancient stone staircase, his silver Vanguard armor clinking softly. "Because you're a container, Jake. You always have been. The Mantle you're holding isn't a power you found by accident; it's a key. And a key is completely useless until you bring it to the lock."
"And who holds the lock?" I asked, my eyes narrowing. I was watching his stance. He was standing perfectly straight, completely balanced, but his fingers were twitching in a rhythmic, mechanical pattern. It was the exact same nervous habit our father used to have whenever he was calculating a trade deal in the old district.
My chest went cold. Father. "He does," Jordan said, as if reading my mind. He tilted his head toward the blinding column of red light at the top of the Rim. "The Vanguard didn't build the Altars to protect the world, brother. Our father built them to filter the energy. He needed someone pure to sit at the summit, and someone marked by the dark to stabilize the base. You're the anchor. I'm the catalyst."
"And Hazel?" I finally turned my head slightly, my left eye locking onto her.
She hadn't moved an inch. Her head was still bowed, but her trembling had stopped. The blood from her thumb had formed a small, dark pool at her boots. But looking at her through my violet vision, I realized something the normal eye couldn't see: her own mana channels weren't empty. They were locked down. She was deliberately suppressing her own power, tightly coiling it like a spring ready to snap.
She wasn't defeated. She was waiting.
"The General has a habit of failing her assignments," Jordan scoffed, his voice carrying an unnatural, layered echo. "Twelve years ago, she was ordered to eliminate the remnants of the Lawrence bloodline. She was supposed to erase the circle completely. Instead, she wiped our mother's mind, hid the girl, and dropped you in a frontier village, hoping the shadow would never find you. She gave you a fake life, Jake. A fake name."
"I know my name," I said softly.
"Do you?" Jordan smiled, a cold, empty expression that didn't reach his pristine white eyes. "Then tell me, brother if you're just a farm boy named Jake, why does the ancient ledger of the Vanguard Elite have your signature under the deployment orders for the Ridge Altar collapse?"
The question hung in the air, heavier than the canyon pressure.
I didn't panic. I looked at Jordan's eyes, then looked down at Hazel's clenched fists. If Jordan was telling the truth, I was a weapon hidden in plain sight. If he was lying, he was trying to isolate me from the only person who could get me out of this caldera alive.
"You're talking a lot for someone who claims to be perfected, Jordan," I said, taking a slow step forward, my boots grinding the ash. "If I'm just an anchor, why haven't you used that pristine white magic of yours to drag me up the stairs yet? Why are you standing at the bottom, trying to convince me to hate her?"
I caught it. A brief, sharp tightening of Jordan's jaw.
"He can't touch you, Jake," Hazel's voice finally broke through the dark, her tone completely devoid of its earlier weakness. She slowly raised her head, her sharp eyes locking onto Jordan with absolute malice. The cold, calculating General was back. "Look at the staircase behind him. Look at the base of the pillars."
I used my violet eye, focusing past the blinding red light.
At the base of the ancient stone stairs, the silver mana-silk wasn't just humming it was wrapped tightly around Jordan's ankles, fusing his silver boots directly into the obsidian stone of the first tier. He wasn't standing guard at the bottom of the climb because he chose to.
He was trapped. He was a prisoner of the Altar, completely unable to move away from the staircase.
"He's already a slave to the machine," Hazel whispered, her daggers finally sliding from her sleeves with a twin, metallic shrick. "He needs you to walk to him willingly, Jake. Because if you don't step onto that first tier of your own free will, the anchor won't lock. And the circle stays broken."
Jordan's expression completely hardened, the pristine, divine mask vanishing to reveal an ugly, desperate rage underneath. The white light in his eyes flared, cracking the stone beneath his frozen boots.
"She's a murderer, Jake!" Jordan roared, his voice losing its harmonious layer. "She executed our mother's mind! She's using you!"
I stood exactly halfway between them the brother who looked like an angel but was bound like a dog, and the guide who had lied to me from day one but was currently the only thing standing between me and the slaughter.
I reached up, wiping the last bit of dark blood from my split lip, my left eye glowing with a fierce, calculating violet light.
"Then it's a good thing I'm a detective," I whispered to the dark. "Because I think it's time to start asking the real questions."