Chapter 166: Caldera Throne

"We go in with witnesses," Austin Veyron said.

To reach the Caldera Throne, they would have to descend the volcano. It took them almost an hour to climb down the cliff beneath the arch they had broken through. The path was covered in loose black rock, and they slipped with nearly every step. The lower they went, the more unbearable the heat became, until they had to struggle just to breathe. When they finally reached the bottom, they found themselves facing an iron gate surrounded by lava. It had no lock, only a crown symbol burned into the stone above it. Ash sentinels lined the cliff walls on both sides, tall figures of slag and paper that rustled faintly in the hot wind.

The envoy from the east was standing at the gate, perfectly still. It looked as if it had been expecting them and had all the time in the world to wait.

The cracks in its closed-mouth mask had gotten worse since it left Cinder Citadel, and fire leaked out through the visible crack like light under a door. In its hand, it held the piece of ember it had stolen from the Hunger Furnace.

"You arrived quickly. Vordessa expected that of you." It spoke in the same calm voice it had used at the furnace, and somehow that made it worse.

"Step away from the gate," Veyra said. She kept her sword in its sheath, but she readied herself to attack.

The envoy ignored her and looked at Austin Veyron’s wrist. "The Maw knows the Caldera, and the Caldera knows the Devourer. There is no need to resist what you are. Take on the throne mark, and the gate will open for you alone."

A red symbol formed in the air above Austin Veyron’s wrist.

FIRST HUNGER OF THE THRONE.

DEVOUR activated.

The title wasn’t just a name. It actually meant something. Austin Veyron felt it hovering over his skin like a crown that wanted to be worn. He could feel the gate ready to open for him if he accepted it. All of the ash sentinels would kneel before him, and the lava would clear a path straight to Vordessa. It would be easy. But he knew that if he took the title, the Caldera would want more from him, and it would keep wanting more.

Veyra didn’t tell Austin Veyron what to do. She just stood next to him and asked, "What is it offering?"

"A path I can claim." It didn’t sound nearly as good out loud as it had in his head. Saying it made it sound smaller, and uglier.

"Then it’s asking for too much," Sable said.

Nyra walked up to the gate with the heart shard in her hands. "I will not enter as an attunement key. I will enter as myself, or not at all."

The crown above the gate turned red, and the heat around them seemed to press in closer.

"There must be a key for every source," the envoy said.

"No," Nyra said. "Sources only demand keys because they think they deserve one." Her face was steady, but her hands were shaking.

Tessa opened her map case, and Halren stood beside her with the route books they had freed from Cinder Citadel. Halren had come through the conduit with the team after handing the citadel’s relay system over to the volunteers. Together, they looked over the old route markings carved into the gate, tracing the worn grooves with their fingers.

"The original route was made for trade," Halren said. "This path to the throne was added later."

"Then we’ll take the addition away," Austin Veyron said, and the mark on his wrist throbbed as if it disagreed.

The ash sentinels began walking down from the cliffs where they had been standing. Each one carried a spear tipped with red glass, and route paper fluttered inside their hollow chests as they walked.

BOW BEFORE ENTRY, the papers read.

Rin shot an arrow at one of the sentinels. It struck the glass tip of its spear and threw off a shower of sparks. Orena took that as her signal and led the team to a ledge beside the gate, sheltered by an overhang of stone.

The envoy raised the piece of ember it had taken from the furnace.

A trap went off beneath Austin Veyron’s feet. Lines of fire wrapped around his legs and forced him down onto his knees.

KNEEL TO PASS.

The mark on his wrist glowed, and DEVOUR tried to eat everything in front of him: the gate, the sentinels, every route that was clawing toward him.

"Target," Austin Veyron said through gritted teeth. "The throne-mark entry clause. Not the gate. Not the sentinels."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

He wrapped the white root chain around the red lines, and DEVOUR devoured the clause. It tasted like hot iron and a bowed head.

KNEEL TO PASS.

He ate the word kneel, and it felt heavy in his mouth, leaving a bitter taste like ash behind.

The lines disappeared, and the sentinels stopped moving. Their route paper fluttered in the wind as they stood frozen, with no idea what they were supposed to do.

Austin Veyron got back to his feet. Veyra drew her sword and sliced one of the sentinels’ spears in half. Rin shot an arrow at another, and it struck the light inside its chest and knocked it over. Orena stabbed her spear through the third sentinel’s route paper and pinned it to a stone wall. She didn’t destroy it. She just held it there.

The envoy hissed through its mask, and the red light behind it flickered. "You have destroyed every path to power, and yet you still seek to rise."

"I rise with people who can correct me," Austin Veyron said as he walked toward it.

The envoy threw the piece of ember into the river of lava, and fire erupted from the surface.

A wall of flame rose between the team and the gate. Tessa covered her face with her arm, and Orena grabbed Halren and held them back. The envoy made it across the small stone bridge that led to the entrance of the Caldera. Nyra lifted the heart shard and opened a path through the fire for the rest of the team to follow. By the time everyone had made it across, she was drenched in sweat, and her arms were trembling.

The gate opened slowly, iron grinding against stone, and hot air rushed out toward them.

They stood at the top of a path that wound down the inside of the crater. On one side of the path, there was nothing at all, just a cliff dropping straight down into the lava. At first, the Caldera seemed empty except for rocks and fire. Then they saw the people chained to the walls.

Route keepers. All of them still alive.

Some of them wore old court clothes, frayed at the hems and stained with soot. Others wore the chains of market couriers, and some even had badges from the Ember Marches, blackened by the heat. Each of them had a tube connected to their neck that ran into the wall. Every time they breathed, route symbols traveled through the tubes toward the fire in the middle of the crater. There were at least a hundred of them chained along the walls.

Halren stopped so suddenly that Tessa almost collided with them. "They’re using them to feed the source," Halren whispered.

For a moment, no one moved. Then Ceryn was the first to approach one of the captives. They knelt next to an older woman who had dirt in her hair and a mark on her arm that looked like a courier’s. "We’re here to help you," Ceryn said gently. "Do you want us to remove your collar?"

The woman opened her eyes. They were red and exhausted, but clear. "If you remove the collar, the Caldera will kill the person it’s attached to. You have to break the route claim first."

Nyra touched one of the tubes with her fingers and immediately pulled them back, as though it had bitten her. "It’s not only feeding on food routes. It’s feeding on their fear of scarcity."

The woman looked at Austin Veyron’s wrist. "You have a hunger mark on you. It will try to convince you that you’re the solution."

"I know," Austin Veyron said.

"Don’t let it," she said, and she held his gaze until he nodded.

She wasn’t begging him. She was warning him.

Halren studied the tubes attached to the nearest person, lips moving silently as they worked through the problem. "There are three things we need to break: the collar, the route claim, and the pressure release valve. We’ll have to find another place to release the pressure before we can save them."

Tessa pulled one of the old maintenance maps from her case and held it up against the walls of the crater, comparing the lines one by one. Then she pointed toward a line of old inspection platforms farther down. "Those were used to maintain the routes. If we can get to the first one, we can release the pressure into an empty conduit."

One of the other route keepers nodded weakly. "There are others here who know how to use them. Speak to them, and don’t remove a collar without their help."

Veyra looked down the path, counting the route keepers on each ledge. "Then we reach the platforms first. After that, we can remove the collars."

The fire in the crater began to glow brighter, and an image of Vordessa appeared in the flames.

Her forge body was more damaged than it had been the last time they saw her. The red shard embedded in her chest had grown larger, fed by the Caldera’s command fire. Behind her stretched a fire map extending from the Caldera to the Black Mouth Exchange, Cinder Citadel, Hunger Reef, Ossuary Harbor, and Grand Meridian.

"You’ve been very active," Vordessa said. "Destroying machines, freeing routes, and showing people that hunger doesn’t have a master."

"Hunger doesn’t have a master," Austin Veyron replied.

Vordessa smiled, and it looked unnatural on her broken metal face. "Well, you are about to see what happens when hunger is given a path."

The fire map lit up, and the flames raced down each of the routes toward Grand Meridian, faster than anyone could follow.

Nyra fell to her knees as the heart shard blazed blue and black. "It’s building a hunger path," she gasped. "It’s not just one plague sample. It’s building a road that will spread hunger to the entire Freehold."

Austin Veyron’s mark glowed red and black, and DEVOUR roared inside him. The Caldera wanted him to become the path. It wanted to make him the first hunger of the throne. For a split second, he felt as if that was exactly what he was meant to be.

Veyra grabbed his shoulder hard enough to hurt and yanked him back to reality. "Stay with us."

"Stay witnessed," Sable said, holding up the crown shard and letting its pale light shine on him.

The route keepers began to scream as fire traveled through their tubes. The woman with the courier mark gritted her teeth and refused to scream, her eyes still fixed on Austin Veyron as if to remind him of her warning. The walls started to shake, and rocks began to tumble down into the crater.

Somewhere far away in Grand Meridian, the first pulse of the hunger path was about to begin.