Knight's Sacred Burden
R.soextracting billions of toxins and tempering an unsullied bodythis damned thirst for survivalconsumed by darknesswaiting to exsanguinate
"Don't open that door. If you open that door, the city will never be the same."
"We don't have a choice," Julian said, his hand trembling as he reached for the rusted iron handle of the heavy vault door. "If I don't open it, the city dies anyway."
He pulled.
The door gave way with a screech of tortured metal, revealing a chamber filled with a blinding, pulsing violet light that seemed to swallow the very air. In the center, suspended in a cage of twisted, obsidian-forged pipes, hung the Heart. It wasn't metal. It wasn't stone. It was a mass of shifting, living darkness, beating with a rhythm that felt like the pulse of the earth itself.