Chapter 197: Hunger Seat

The five fragments started to come together.

Hunger road light wound into the echo’s roots. Frost sealed its stone joints. Ledger ink ran beneath its bones. Grave residue filled its upper half, and living earth formed a lower half that dragged and crawled along beneath it.

The echo walked toward the black Hunger Seat.

The First Table rumbled. The vibration came from somewhere far below Austin Veyron, traveling up through his feet and into his body. From the darkness beneath the platform, he heard a groan like an old building struggling to hold itself together.

Each of the seven source seats sent out a thread to lay its claim on the echo: black root, pale ice, red ember, bone marrow, ledger slate, grave stone, and living earth. All the Table needed was one seat for hunger and another seat to sit across from it. Then it could arrange every other source power in between those two.

Austin Veyron felt the pull of the white seat.

TAKE THE SEAT ACROSS FROM HUNGER.

It wouldn’t make him the hunger sovereign. It would give him the power to oppose hunger. He would be its enemy. And because he sat across from it, he would have the power to hold every source accountable.

It sounded like what he had been working toward his whole life, and that was what made him sick to his stomach. He pictured himself sitting in that seat forever, staring across at the black Hunger Seat.

Every decision he made for the rest of his life would be measured against the thing he was fighting. He would never be a king. But he would always be the opposite force, and nothing more.

DEVOUR rumbled.

Veyra noticed him staring at the white stone.

"Name it."

"I want to sit across from hunger."

"And what would it make?"

"The other half of the trap."

Sable held the shard of her crown between the white seat and the black seat. "Then no one claims either seat."

The echo laughed.

"Deny yourself, and your world is left open for stronger hungers to take over."

Tessa laid the three map copies on the middle of the table. "Give your world one leader, and it’s left open to that leader’s blind spots."

Ceryn set the clean route sheets beside the map copies. "Every source you’ve touched has shown you that already."

The echo took its position at the Hunger Seat.

Black roots wrapped around its legs, and each of the five fragments began to sink into its body.

Nyra held up the heart shard, with the debt chime and the pale splinter in her other hand, each piece surrounded by its own blue-black boundary. "I won’t let you reach convergence."

The echo looked at her.

"You are already surrounded by its pieces."

"I’m holding a boundary," Nyra said. "Not a seat of power."

She was shaking from the pressure, but her voice was steady. Austin Veyron remembered her in the Marrow Vault, refusing to become the source’s vessel. Now she stood holding pieces of a hunger older than any civilization, and she refused to let them become one.

Seven source echoes poured out of the Hunger Seat and filled the room.

One was the Hunger Emperor, wearing his crown. One held the pale blade from the Ice Crown. One had Vordessa’s forge claws. One was made from the roots and bones of the harvest. One dragged the chains of a ledger. One wore a demon general’s armor, and the last crawled out of living stone.

Each source echo took a position around the team. Austin Veyron recognized every one of them. They were all the source powers the team had already fought, thrown at them all at once.

ONE TABLE. ONE SOVEREIGN.

Rin shot at the ledger echo. Her arrow hit its chains, and ink spread across the ground. Orena attacked the grave general with her spear, using the edge of the table to defend against its swinging banner.

Veyra fought the forge echo, deflecting its red claw strikes, sparks flying every time steel met claw.

Sable held the crown shard to the ice echo and stripped away its frost of debt, leaving nothing but water. Calder kept the living stone echo away from the map copies without attacking it.

Austin Veyron stood in front of the Hunger Emperor echo.

The Hunger Emperor held up an empty bowl.

"Sit in the white seat, and I will take the black," it said. "You will save the world by fighting me for the rest of your life."

"The rest of my life is just another way to keep a table full," Austin Veyron said.

The Hunger Emperor’s bowl opened.

Inside it, Austin Veyron could see every place they had visited where hunger had taken hold. Grand Meridian’s lobby. Frostmarket buried in snow.

Glasswake’s port. Lanternfall’s cisterns. All of them were suffering because no single person had made the decision to fix things quickly enough.

It was painful, because it wasn’t entirely untrue. Shared power took time to make a decision. People had to count, and sometimes, while they argued, things fell apart that could never be repaired. He knew that happened. And every time it did, there was always someone who said they should have had one sovereign.

"Smaller," Veyra said from behind Austin Veyron.

Austin Veyron could see the phrase beneath the images in the bowl.

THE TABLE REQUIRES TWO SOVEREIGNS.

The trap wasn’t hunger and a seat to oppose it. The trap was the claim that every conflict needed two permanent owners.

"Target," Austin Veyron said. "The two-sovereigns requirement. Not the seats. Not the source powers. Not the route facts."

"Witnessed," Veyra said.

"Witnessed," Sable said.

Austin Veyron took the white root chain and laid it over the open bowl.

DEVOUR opened. The requirement tasted like a room with only two chairs and no door to leave by.

THE TABLE REQUIRES TWO SOVEREIGNS.

He consumed requires.

The First Table cracked.

The white seat let go of him.

The black Hunger Seat shook under the echo’s weight.

Its five fragments failed to converge. The hunger road light left first, circling the room above them.

Frost fell from the echo’s upper body. Ledger ink dripped from its ribs, and the grave residue cracked.

The living earth dropped away from its lower half.

The echo screamed at him.

"You are destroying every structure that could help your world!"

"No," Austin Veyron said. "We’re only destroying what would take it over."

The source echoes lost their power as the Table cracked.

Without the rule of two sovereigns, they had no idea which side they were supposed to be on. The forge echo’s claws stopped glowing red. The ledger chains turned into loose route pages that fluttered to the ground. The grave general’s armor fell to the floor with nothing inside it. The living stone echo stopped crawling and became nothing but stone at the edge of the Table.

Tessa and Ceryn gathered the route sheets as the Table continued to break apart. Calder took the map copies, and Nyra kept the debt chime and the pale splinter from being dragged toward the black seat one last time.

The echo fell from the Hunger Seat.

It was missing two of its fragments. Hunger road light and living earth had both been lost from its body. It still held the frost of debt, the ledger ink, and the grave residue, but it could no longer converge.

A neutral route appeared on the First Table between all seven seats. It was neither black nor white. It was a road of plain stone, and there was no claim on it.

THE WITNESS ROAD.

Austin Veyron stared at the plain road lying at the bottom of the world.

The echo glared at it with hatred.

"That will never let you control every route."

"Correct," Tessa said.

The echo compressed its body into a smaller black-white core. Before anyone could grab it, it shot across the neutral road and disappeared into one of the lines leading away from the First Table.

"It still has three fragments," Nyra said, looking at the heart shard in her hand. "Enough to form a body, but not enough to claim a table."

The map copies changed to show where the echo was going.

It was heading up toward the surface, away from the Deep Table.

It was heading for Grand Meridian.

Ceryn read the destination aloud.

THE ORIGINAL COMMON LEDGER.

Before anyone could respond, Tessa’s relay token lit up, and she held it up for everyone to hear.

"Something’s happening under the Freehold," Marcus said. "The old foundation archive is opening on its own."

"The common ledger is still intact, but the foundation pages are older than the Freehold’s rules," Elena said. "We’ll mark every door and keep the lobby open."

"The echo hasn’t forced anyone to do anything yet," Nahlia added. "It’s trying to find the first ledger a group of people chose together instead of naming a sovereign. If it corrupts that ledger, it can claim every shared decision since then was a mistake."

Austin Veyron looked at the Witness Road, then back at the map copies Ceryn, Calder, and Veyra were holding. He didn’t have a weapon that could stop what was coming. All they could do was keep opening doors to people.

"Keep the doors open," Austin Veyron told Marcus. "We’re heading home."

As they left the First Table, the neutral road began to sink back into the darkness.

The sovereign echo had failed to claim the seat of hunger.

Now it was heading for the place where shared decisions had first become strong enough to deny it.