The silence in the holding cell was different.
Not quiet—never quiet, not in a place like this. The divine architecture hummed faintly, like a giant breathing behind the walls. Chains vibrated with passive wards. Even the stone beneath Kael's boots felt alert, somehow... expectant.
But above all of that, there was a silence inside him. A void where the crowd's laughter had been—replaced by the kind of stillness that comes after a building collapses and you're the only thing left standing in the dust.
Kael sat against the far wall, rubbing his wrists where the shackles had burned faint lines into his skin. The warding runes hadn't stopped until he stopped thinking about using magic.
Not that he had any. Not really.
He upended his gear pouch again. The same greasy mess spilled out.
Half a heat coil. A shattered fragment of a monoblade. A bolt that still smelled faintly of rot. Even the sandwich had somehow survived.
Kael picked up the monoblade fragment and turned it in the light.
"You should've left me in that corpse," it whispered, bitter and faint.
"Charming." He set it down.
He cycled through the rest. Same nonsense. Same regrets and complaints from useless junk that didn't know it was useless. He'd been made a joke. A walking punchline for gods who wanted drama and bloodsport.
He leaned back against the wall and sighed, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes.
That's when he heard it.
Not a whisper. Not a mutter.
Something cleaner. Sharper. Like a note struck from black glass.
"You are wasting my time."
Kael opened his eyes.
There, among the wreckage of his spilled pouch, sat a stone he didn't remember putting there.
It was small, palm-sized, jagged and black with hairline cracks that glowed faintly from within. It pulsed—not with light, but with attention. Like it knew it was being looked at.
Kael reached out slowly.
"Alright," he muttered. "What the hell are you?"
The voice returned. Calm. Cold. Calculating.
"I am a Core Fragment. Classification: World-Eater. Binding incomplete. Identification: Obfuscated. Purpose: Containment, consumption, correction."
Kael stared. "Correction?"
"Of imbalance. Of hubris. Of the false divine."
A chill licked his spine. The voice didn't sound like the others. It wasn't whining. It wasn't mad. It wasn't even alive in the way he understood. It was like speaking to a black hole that had learned sarcasm.
He turned the fragment in his fingers. "How did you get in my bag?"
"I whispered. You heard. We found each other."
"And what exactly are you offering me?"
The glow inside the fragment deepened. It wasn't warm.
"Power. Hunger. The ability to cut gods from their thrones."
Kael's heartbeat quickened.
The fragment continued, voice velvet now. Almost amused.
"You want revenge. Not justice. Not fairness. Revenge. I can give you that."
He swallowed. "And what do you want in return?"
A long pause.
Then:
"Release me. Bind me. Feed me. Survive."
Kael looked at the stone.
Then at the rune-etched door of the holding cell.
And then—
He smiled.