Kaelen didn’t wait. He found a dry corner behind a collapsed mag-lev train, pressed the needle to his neck this time—closer to the brain—and pushed the plunger.
Reality didn’t crack. It shattered .
“Kael?” Her voice echoed across dimensions. “You idiot. You took the tenth?”
Back in the Warrens, the rain washed over a body in a collapsed mag-lev train. The eyes were open. The pupils were gone. And somewhere, in a cathedral beneath the world, two siblings worked side by side for eternity, building cages for other fools who chased the crack.
“I came to save you.”
Jakes shrugged—the gesture of a man who had sold a thousand tickets to hell. He handed over a vial of sunset-and-lightning. “Your tenth is free. Courtesy of the house.”
He found the dealer, a wizened man named Jakes who had no pupils, only twin voids. “More,” Kaelen said, sliding a stolen data-slate across the table.