Thousands of contracts lit up across the northern districts at once.
My three-million debt was no exception. For years, the Li family had handed out loans for medical treatment, education, repairs after attacks and beast registration. The same line was hidden in every contract: the debtor transfers a portion of their life force to support the city's defences.
People had considered it a formality.
Now Kane demanded payment.
In the square, a dyehouse worker clutched his chest. Beside him, a woman they had led out of the drainage tunnels collapsed. Light streamed out of their seals and rose towards the tower.
"They signed," Kane said.
"They didn't know."
"Ignorance does not cancel a debt."
He said it without anger. The way an accountant explained an overdue payment.
I thrashed inside the coils. The basilisk squeezed harder.
Styx could sting Kane. He stood three paces away. One leap through his armour, one strike to the carotid artery.
"Kill me, and the circuit will take everything at once. I'm the only regulator."
Styx vanished.
Kane covered his neck with one hand.
But she flew past him.
The violet spark entered the titanic core's mounting. Not a person, but the metal conduit carrying the stolen energy upwards.
Someone else's sensations flooded me through the bond.
An old man signing a contract to buy medicine for his wife. A boy pressing his fingertip to the page for a place at the academy. A mother agreeing to anything as long as the craftsmen reinforced the wall of her house before beast season.
Thousands of people. Thousands of small concessions joined into a single machine.
Styx tried to sever the flow from within, but human energy burned her worse than beast blood. Other people's memories flared inside her body.
I felt her lose her sense of direction.
"Come back."
She did not hear me. The bond had not weakened; a voluntary pact no longer carried commands.
All I could do was call to her.
"Styx."
The violet speck stopped inside the white current.
"I'm here."
She turned towards me.
Kane used that second. The basilisk struck the mounting with its tail, and the core fragment opened like a black flower.
The Crown's third pulse swept through the city.
The lights went out.
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