The city ruins stretched before them — skeletal buildings, hollowed streets, a graveyard of human ambition.
Evan stood atop the shattered highway overpass, surveying the dead zone below. His telekinesis flared subtly, masking their presence from the roving horrors Gravemind had unleashed.
Behind him, Aidan, Sera, and a small unit from Solaris Reach waited for his signal.
---
> "This is it," Evan said, voice low. "Gravemind seeded something deep under the old Academy testing grounds. If we don't burn it out now, it'll spread like a cancer."
> "Then let's end it," Aidan said, stepping forward without hesitation.
Evan allowed himself a small, grim smile.
The kid had guts.
Maybe too much.
---
They moved quickly through the ruins, slipping past patrols of corrupted creatures — twisted mockeries of former students and instructors, their minds eaten away by Gravemind's influence.
Evan's telekinesis wrapped around the group, bending light, dulling sound.
An invisible ghost drifting through enemy territory.
---
At the entrance to the underground facility, Evan paused.
The massive steel blast doors were warped and partially melted, as if something had clawed its way out.
Not a good sign.
---
> "Stay sharp," Evan ordered.
He reached out with his senses, brushing the edges of the void below.
What he found made his blood run colder than the grave.
---
They descended carefully, weapons drawn.
Inside, the halls were coated with strange organic growths — vines of black flesh pulsing with faint bioluminescence.
Gravemind's infection was accelerating.
The Academy's old sins couldn't stay buried forever.
---
They found the first survivors huddled in a sealed laboratory — a handful of rogue scientists who had tried, and failed, to contain the outbreak.
Their minds were fragmented.
Their bodies wasted.
But one of them, a gaunt man with haunted eyes, managed to gasp out a warning:
> "It's not just an infection... it's a seed."
> "What seed?" Aidan asked, alarmed.
> "A mind... a new Gravemind... growing stronger every minute."
---
Evan's jaw tightened.
They weren't here to just burn out an infestation.
They were standing in the cradle of Gravemind's rebirth.
And it was almost ready to be born.
---
Before they could retreat, the walls themselves seemed to shift.
Creatures poured out from the darkness — fused abominations, half-human, half-memory, dripping black bile.
The team opened fire.
Blades and energy bolts tore into the horde.
Evan unleashed his power, ripping monsters apart midair, shielding Aidan and the others with barriers of pure will.
---
It wasn't enough.
The ground shuddered violently as a massive figure emerged from the breach.
A twisted colossus — eyes burning with sickly light — something that had once been human, now a vessel for Gravemind's will.
---
> "Fall back!" Evan roared.
But Aidan didn't move.
He stood his ground — fists clenched, energy crackling around him like a living star.
> "We can't leave it here! It'll only follow us!"
> "You idiot—!" Evan cursed, but deep down... he knew the boy was right.
---
Together, they fought.
Aidan struck like a hammer, overwhelming with raw force.
Evan danced like a knife, precise and devastating.
Side by side.
Not as master and apprentice.
But as something closer to equals.
---
Finally, with a titanic crash, the creature fell — evaporating into black mist.
The facility groaned, walls fracturing.
The infection had been wounded — not killed.
But it bought them time.
---
Panting, bleeding, and scorched, the group stumbled back into the night.
Above them, the stars seemed colder somehow.
More distant.
---
> "That wasn't the end," Sera said grimly, wiping blood from her brow.
> "No," Evan agreed, staring back at the burning ruins. "It was only the beginning."
End of Chapter 19