Loud clanking echoed up to them as the boy struggled to remove the heavy pieces of gleaming iron. He didn’t put them on himself, though.
He put them on the revenant.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The boy ordered the revenant to be still, and it obeyed, just as before, standing unflinching as he carefully placed the armor on its corpse.
Now it was no ordinary revenant. It was an iron revenant.
Then the boy—the ghostsmith, for now there could be no doubt that was what he was—was touching the revenant with his bare hands, as if there were no threat of deathrot, even though the revenant’s ghost pulsed from within its body, weaving through muscle and bone and shining brightly out of sunken eyes.
Despite looking brand new, the armor was old-fashioned in style, like the illustrations of the Iron Legion Wren had seen in history books, and quite different from what Julian wore. It was rigid and boxy, leaving no gaps or weak points, and once every piece was in place save for the helmet, the boy turned toward the recessed pit. There were steps leading inside, like a soaking pool in a bathhouse, meant to be traversed from one end to the other.
He didn’t walk into it, however. Instead, he crouched by the edge, reaching forward with his hands alone.
There seemed to be some kind of resistance, an invisible barrier that slowed his movements. But eventually he pierced the hidden veil, and his hands plunged into the pit.
There was a sudden, blinding surge of molten white light. The boy flinched, but only to brace himself against the onslaught.
The pool swirled and rippled, growing impossibly brighter as it illuminated the entire space. Wren saw a throne carved into the far wall, a high seat with two smaller ones on either side, plus other details like broken columns and scattered debris. There were deep cracks emanating from the pool, and they too began to fill with light, the entire thing pulsing like a heartbeat, the glow traveling from the source outward like veins.
Soon the stones that surrounded the pit also began to shine with some inner radiance, and beneath her feet, Wren felt a bone-deep vibration. The air itself was charged, like a storm, and her hair started to stand on end.
She looked to Julian, who clearly felt it too, and then placed her palm flat on the ground. Her skin tingled, then a burst of magic shot up her arm. She took a breath, the power crackling in her lungs and surging through her body.
Limitless power.
Dark power.
Fear quivered inside her.
This, surely, was the magic that created the revenants in the first place. The reason the ghostsmiths had built their kingdom so deep.
The power that may very well have destroyed the ironsmith army, the Dominion army, and Locke Graven himself. The “something evil” Odile talked about.
Had the ghostsmiths discovered this well of power or had they built it themselves, somehow finding a way to trap the magic of the earth? It felt wrong to Wren, the idea of containing magic. No one person was meant to draw so much, but the ghostsmiths had created an entire society around doing so. As she tried to pull away, Wren noticed for the first time that the ground was shaking, the entire building groaning with tremors. Bits of rock fell from the ceiling, distant cracks and crumbles telling her other, larger items were being shaken free.
Was this how their necropolis was buried in the first place? Not by some natural disaster but by constantly pulling on this source of magic and drawing it up from the depths of the earth, destabilizing the world around them? It was no wonder the Breach happened after this place was accidentally rediscovered. It was obviously unstable.
Again Wren tried to detach her hand, but she couldn’t. Staring down in alarm, she saw tendrils of white light had seeped up from the stone and wrapped themselves around her wrist, steadily climbing.
Seeing her struggle, Julian took hold of her arm and, with difficulty, pried it away from the ground, breaking the contact. The reaching strands of light evaporated, and Wren blinked, still feeling the effects, but she shook them off and returned her attention to the boy below.
Like what had happened to Wren—but with far more potency—tendrils of light were crawling up his arms, swirling over his skin, then sinking deeper. He glowed, the light coming from his very bones, each standing out in stark clarity as the magic filled him from within. His skeleton must be holding the power his body drank in, acting as storage containers, as reserves, and after each bone had taken its fill, the magic spilled over, flooding the next and the next.
His face was frozen in something like pain, jaw clenched and muscles straining. The light reached his skull… but it didn’t stop there. The magic kept going, traveling from the tip of his head and into the horns, illuminating what appeared to be a partial ram’s skull worn over the top of his face like a mask. It must aid him somehow, enhancing his magic or his ability to store it. The light pooled there, around the horns, as well as in his right hand.
There was a final burst of light before he withdrew and staggered away.
He breathed deeply, and the magic glittered and swirled within him, becoming even brighter, while the pool softened and settled, the glowing cracks and stones surrounding it dimming. The building grew darker, and the tremors ceased, the boy’s illuminated skeleton and glowing flesh standing out all the more as he turned back to the suited revenant.
All that remained to put on the revenant was the helmet, but he didn’t lift it.
That’s when Wren noticed for the first time that he held something in his hand. A long, narrow object, dark against his faintly glowing skin… and pointed at the end, like a spike.
Before she could react, he lifted it in one hand and a small hammer, withdrawn from his belt, in the other. He lined it up with the center of the skull’s forehead, then struck it home with one precise hit, the brittle crack of bone ringing out. Wren’s knowledge of reapyr lore had always been patchy, but she was quite certain it had pierced the revenant’s ley line.
An otherworldly wail filled the silence, reverberating off the walls in a painful cascade.
Wren clapped her hands to her ears, though again Julian appeared unaffected. He stared at her with concern, but she gritted her teeth, determined to watch what was happening below.
Apparently in pain, the revenant reached for the spike with gauntleted hands, tugging and scraping, but the boy paid it little mind.
“Stop,” he ordered, almost distractedly, and the revenant stilled.
Then, carefully leaning forward, he examined what he had done. Wren got the impression something had gone wrong.
Indeed, wisps of ghostlight emerged, and the boy muttered under his breath. If the spike had traversed the ley line, then the ghost should lose its tether to its body. But apparently, that was not what the boy had intended.
As the spirit began to release before their very eyes, swirling through the suit of armor like steam, the boy raised his hammer again. Heedless of the ghost, he carefully lined it up with the spike, then tapped it with a single, ringing impact, embedding it half an inch deeper. Wren suspected too much force would rent the skull in half, but that didn’t happen.
The screeching ceased, and the boy’s shoulders slumped in apparent relief.
The ghost, which had been steadily dissipating, froze in midair, tremulous.
Then it retracted. Sucked into the suit of armor like water swirling down a drain.
Somehow, the boy had brought it back, remaking the tether. Binding the ghost to its body through its anchor bone.