They kept moving down. The next room was even more damaged than the first. Springs and glass were scattered across the ground, which was pitted with gnarled black lines. Blue liquid pooled around the remains of a tube cap, slowly seeping through a thin crack.

“Based on the size of this cap, it’s been a few hours since the tube was broken,” Angel said, inspecting the liquid. “Someone was awful bold. Breaking Old World Magic traps like this is exceedingly dangerous. You’re just as likely to blow yourself up as you are to clear the trap. It does look like the catacomb is all but deactivated, though.”

“How so?” Lilian asked. “I thought the traps could be independent.”

“They are,” Angel said. “But catacombs don’t look kindly on people destroying traps. That’s one of the rules you just follow. If you don’t, the catacombs will expend a bunch of extra energy to kill you so you can’t break everything.”

Lilian just shook her head as Angel rose and they continued on. The wreckage continued with them. Whoever had gone through had done a thorough job – every single trap had been destroyed. There were even a few artifacts scatted across the ground, completely ruined.

“I don’t think whoever did this was a Seeker,” Angel said, his voice a low murmur.

“The Reawakening, then,” Lilian said, glancing down at a scorched line on the ground. “This could be Reave’s work.”

Angel nodded. They continued further into the bowels of the earth. The smell of mildew and copper grew stronger still, and a thin blanket of green smoke appeared at the top of the rooms.

After stepping through yet another room full of rubble and destroyed traps and heading into the hall behind it, Angel stopped. They’d come before a large, four way fork in the road. A heavy chalk marking had been drawn over one of the pathways. Lilian started towards it, but Angel stopped her.

“What?”

“Not that one,” Angel said, shaking his head. “I recognize where we are. Some of Soul’s teachings rubbed off a bit too much on me, and I hadn’t had enough time out from under his thumb to realize it was wrong. Let’s just say I wanted to make sure nobody accidentally stumbled across Soul.”

“It’s fake?” Lilian realized.

“Yup. Leads straight into a pit. We nearly got killed by it too. The floor drops into a slide and there’s almost no way to escape.”

Angel led her down the tunnel to the right of the marked one. The unmistakable hum of Magitech, as faint as it was, reached his ears.

He glanced back at Lilian and held a finger to his lips. She nodded and they crept forward through the hall to peek out from within it.

A grand stone door rose up in an equally large room before them. The door had rows upon rows of runic script running down it. Machinery connected to the door whirred in the walls, and a large vent belching out green smoke showed Angel where the fog had come from.

He clenched his hands and peered inside the room. There was no ceiling in sight. It looked like an endless cave rising up above them, disappearing into the darkness. As for company, there was no sight of anyone.

“This is it,” Angel murmured, walking out. “I sealed Soul behind that door.”

“And the Reawakening?” Lilian asked.

Angel flicked his eyepiece down and stared up into the darkness above them. It remained black, and no lines of orange light outlined anything.

“Nothing, as far as I can tell. Just us.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Lilian said. “Unless you actually tricked them with the whole fake doorway?”

“It’s possible,” Angel allowed. “But I’m not optimistic. I need to figure out exactly how I trapped this door. It’s been too long. Keep an eye out so we don’t have any surprise visitors.”

He walked up to the door and pressed his lips together, examining it. On top of the countless runes carved into the door, there was rushed, jagged chalk on top of them. Chalk was probably the worst possible way to write runes, but it was all he’d had at the time.

A purple spark jumped from his arm. Angel chuckled. “Hold on, buddy. I want to take a look at this before you break it.”

He pulled the System artifact out from his bag and activated it. “Memorize these runes, please,” Angel said, scanning over them himself. It was mostly protective work, but more than any other catacomb he’d ever seen. The door was practically indestructible, and Angel suspected that its protection extended to the machinery within the walls. The runes ran from the edges of the door down and across the bronzed Magitech.

The miniscule script was so small that it almost looked like scratches. The only way he could even see some of it was through the help of his eyepiece.

“Scanning completed,” the artifact reported cheerfully. “Processing will take a short amount of time.”

“That’s fine,” Angel said, waving his hand. “As long as you’ve got it all. Anything immediately dangerous? I didn’t see much, but…”

“Processing is not complete. The runes present in the requested area are too complex to determine quickly,” the artifact said. “Processing is estimated to be finished in two hours.”

Angel rolled his eyes and put it away. He raised his hand and purple energy leapt to bear. He swallowed, then pressed it against the door. Arcs of lightning leapt free of his arm, scoring across the stone surface.

There was rumble from deep within the stone. Cracks spread across it as the construct shuddered. The Magitech in the walls creaked and groaned in protest. A gear ground to a halt and a motor sputtered as the door started to crumble. Like a cracker dropped into a pool of water, the thick stone door dissolved. Angel hopped out of the way as rubble crashed to the ground where he’d been standing.

“Is that normal? I don’t recall your Star Fragment doing that much before,” Lilian said.

“The whole door must have been filled with runes,” Angel said in wonder. “How much priceless technology and magic did I just destroy?”

“Best to worry about that later,” Lilian suggested, walking up to him. Angel spotted her putting a small metal disk into her pocket.

“What’s that?”

“The device I used to contact Silver,” Lilian replied, taking it back out to show him. “I sent him a message. Figured that, if the Reawakening is really here, it might be good to have some backup. Maybe he can get Vanessa to convince her mom to send help.”

Angel inspected the disk for a moment, then handed it back to her. They both approached the rubble of the door and squinted into the shadows behind it. At first, there was nothing. Then, a small square glow blinked to life in the center of the room.

With a series of clicks, a dozen yellowish orange lights blinked on, revealing that the square glow was actually a small monitor in the center of the room. About a hundred paces behind the monitor was a plain stone door. Jagged scars and gouges ran across the room’s metal walls and floor. Some of them were as deep as the length of Angel’s forearm.

And there, sitting in the dilapidated chair before the monitor, was a man. His head was bowed forwards and his hands curled over the edges of the armrests. Long, mangy hair fell around his shoulders, hiding his features from view.

Angel froze in place and Lilian drew in a sharp breath. They watched the man for several moments, but he didn’t even twitch.

“Soul?” Lilian whispered, almost not daring to say the word out loud.

“I wasn’t sure he’d be here,” Angel muttered. “Some small part of me thought he’d somehow escaped.

He stepped into the room as silently as he could. Every single hair he had felt like it was standing on end as Angel’s feet carried him up to the body. It didn’t smell rotted, but who knew how much of Soul was still flesh.

Orange light danced across the man as Angel scanned him, but it didn’t remain. His artifact didn’t pick up any signs of life, and no information appeared on the glass. Even so, Angel’s arm crackled with energy as he approached the body.

“Is he dead?” Lilian asked.

“Nobody can survive this long without energy,” Angel said, but he didn’t sound confident of his words. Every fiber of his being was screaming that Soul was standing right before him, just waiting for the worst moment to rise up and discipline him once again.

Angel gritted his teeth and grabbed the man’s shirt. There was no response as he tore it off, revealing a metal hatch in Soul’s side. Angel pulled the hatch open and reached inside, but he didn’t take his eyes off the man’s face for an instant.

His fingers touched a metal orb. It was at the far back of the man’s chest, evidently fallen from where it had once been suspended. He pulled the orb out and took a step back. Soul’s body slumped forward without his support and the corpse crumpled off the chair, hitting the ground with a thud.

Angel opened his hand, revealing a small metal ball. It was perfectly polished and uniform aside from a tiny red crystal embedded within it.

“Yeah,” Angel said, drawing in a deep breath and letting it out slowly. “He’s dead.”