37: Shattered Heart
The massive heart beat, a heavy drum under murky water.
Lilith stood to the side, watching it throb in midair like a lung trapped in glass.
The Little White Dragon’s gut said a key lay inside that lump of meat, a pearl sealed in a rotten oyster.
But she couldn’t just crack it open on a whim, like kicking a wasp nest in the dark.
Even if the Void Sect didn’t swarm her like ants on sugar, the dark‑purple ichor would gush like ink from a cut squid.
So she held her hand, a hunter still as frost, and watched.
The heart had no mind, no eyes; even with her breath brushing it, it offered no reaction, a rock in a blind stream.
“So strange. I’m just standing here. No one sees me, no one throws me out?” Her voice fell like a pebble into a dry well.
She’d wondered that since the sewers swallowed her, like a snake swallowing light.
On the surface of Morris, the cultists could claim they were hiding from officials, clouds dodging the sun.
But down here, in their home turf, not a single believer showed, and she’d walked to this heart as if strolling through morning mist.
She’d gone to Udis for the sect’s flame and gotten pounded by a stone giant meters tall, a cliff that decided to punch back.
Yet here, investigating the Void Sect, she hadn’t seen a soul, and even the good gear had practically fallen into her bag like ripe fruit.
The more she thought, the more off it felt, a cold thread under the skin guiding her feet.
Like someone had set the board, baited her steps, and lured her to this pulsing core, a moth to a lantern with no flame.
Drawing her in wasn’t a bad plan; she knew her stealth and counter‑recon were only so‑so, a fox with muddy paws.
If they’d found her and set an ambush, that would be normal, thunder after lightning.
What wasn’t normal was emptiness—no one here at all, a stage with curtains but no players.
Her sense of smell was useless in the sewers, like wind lost in a maze.
She couldn’t track where they’d gone; the storerooms were lifeless, dust sleeping thick as ash.
Even if she rifled through them, no one cared; the tunnels didn’t feel lived in, like ribs of a dead whale.
She half wondered if she was the only living thing down here these past months, a lone spark in wet stone.
Her instinct hissed of fraud, sharp as a knife on bone.
She’d been burned by sly devs too many times, a veteran battered by cruel puzzle design; her danger sense was a cat arched and ready.
“So where are the mobs? The bodies? The jump scare?” Her humor was dry as tinder.
She braced for a sudden strike.
She didn’t draw her blade, but her right hand cupped the hilt of Shattered Ark, a storm held under skin.
Her left gripped Astrolabe, and the staff drank power in silence, a tide rising under the moon.
She waited for something blind to leap up and donate its head.
No one came.
The sewers felt like an empty theater, just her and the thudding heart, two actors without lines.
“Don’t tell me I really have to cut this heart open. Feels like trouble brewing,” she muttered, a cloud tasting rain.
She studied the heart.
Urge surged to cleave it in two, a blade hungry for knot.
Reason tugged her sleeve; don’t lunge off a cliff for a glimpse of the sea.
Who knew what one stroke would wake.
If the outcome soured, the pot would boil over.
She decided to report to Eliza first.
The Little White Dragon drew out the comms crystal the princess had gifted her, cool as river stone, and pressed it to her ear.
“Lilith.” Princess Eliza’s voice came through tired, like wind crossing long fields.
The artifact hunt must have been thorny; Lilith rarely heard her sound this worn.
“Something’s off. In the Morris sewer system I found a huge quasi‑organic structure.
My guess: the Void Sect used it to link all their ritual arrays, a root net under the city.
But I haven’t seen a single believer—alive or dead.”
“Understood. Wait a bit; I’ll bring people to rendezvous. Judge on the spot until then.
Scout the area lightly, but don’t push it. I’m on my way.” Her words were steady, steel wrapped in velvet.
The crystal went dim, a star going cold; Lilith tucked it back into her satchel, a leaf into shade.
All she had to do was stand and wait, a stake in a slow river.
She let her shoulders loosen, and the heart twitched wrong, a fish jerking on a hook.
She noticed, but she let it pass as a quirk of muscle, no more than a heartbeat in fog.
A black shadow uncoiled from her right hand, a night snake striking.
Before she could react, it seized her hood and yanked, hauling the Little White Dragon out of the spot like wind snatching a lantern.
A tentacle—nothing good in its shape—slammed down where she’d stood, a hammer on dull stone.
Lilith jolted, pulse kicking; she hadn’t breathed in the scene yet.
The black phantom moved faster, a cut of moonlight.
Before Lilith caught up, it lopped a whipping tentacle in one stroke, then turned and barked, “Battle!”
“I know. Don’t need the reminder!” Lilith snapped back, heat before flame.
She raised Shattered Ark, and the Little White Dragon hopped sideways, a sparrow dodging hawk’s shadow, slipping past the heart’s next lash.
The dark‑purple tentacle crashed into the floor. Crack. Stone split like dry bark under frost.
Lilith shot a glance at the blow, ice sliding down her spine.
While the striking limb was still out, she cut it clean, a river severed by steel.
The heart’s volley broke.
She sprang back and landed beside the Black Swordsman’s phantom, two shadows sharing one edge.
“Fine,” Lilith said, face calm as still water. “Time to shatter the heart.”
