Chapter 32 · Rust and Relic - Chapter 32: Something Wakes Below

"Aiden Crowe." Vald's voice cut through the crowd like a blade finding bone. "Software engineer. San Francisco. Born March seventh, nineteen eighty-five."

I froze halfway across the courtyard. The kids scattered behind me, smart enough to run when the priests stopped caring about them. Liv's hand locked on my elbow.

"Don't stop," she hissed.

"He knows my birthday."

"I don't care if he knows your mother's maiden name, move—"

Vald stepped through the gate. The crowd parted. He was holding something small and dark, and the air around it bent wrong, like heat off summer asphalt. The second shard.

"You came a long way, Aiden." His smile was the kind you'd see on a man holding a winning lottery ticket. "Thirty-one hundred years. Give or take."

My shard burned against my ribs. Not hot. Angry.

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Because mine told me." He lifted the dark stone. It pulsed once, slow, like a heartbeat. "Yours talks too, doesn't it? It told you to run. Told you to hide. Told you that you're the only one who can stop what's coming."

I didn't answer. Liv's grip tightened.

"It lied," Vald said. "You're not the key.