Chapter 43: Interrogation in the Sand-Crystal Cage

The bars of the sand-crystal cage shimmered with a venomous, ghostly blue. Each crystal resembled an oversized ice needle, its tip hovering three inches from Alicia’s eyes. Her wrists were shackled to the bars, the metal grating against fresh wounds. Beads of blood trickled down the chains, only to be instantly sucked dry by the grains of sand beneath her feet.

"Click."

The heavy iron door was pushed open. Williams’ leather boots crunched against sand-crystal shards that felt like broken glass, producing a teeth-gritting sound. His mechanical arm was still stained with the black-purple ash of the Calamity Fire, and fragments of a silver bird necklace hung between his alloy fingers—pieces he had torn from Alicia’s throat.

"You hid it well," Williams said, tossing a transparent test tube onto the floor. The remaining ghostly blue liquid splashed out, sizzling as it burned small holes into the sand—the very bone-core sample Alicia had secretly extracted. "Did you think I didn't know you were researching the bone core? Or did you think your measly royal bloodline could outplay me?"

Alicia’s nails dug deep into her palms; the metallic tang of blood bloomed on her tongue. She stared at the fragment of the Requiem Bone Flute embedded in Williams’ mechanical arm. The crescent-shaped white shard glowed faintly in rhythm with his breathing, creating a bizarre resonance with the black Calamity Fire outside the cage.

"You killed my mother and expect me to be your puppet?" Alicia’s voice was hoarse but carried a bone-chilling coldness. "Williams, aren't you afraid my father's soul will crawl out of the bone core to settle the score with you?"

Williams burst into manic laughter. The red light of his mechanical eye swept across her face as if examining an interesting collector’s item. "A soul? That thing shattered into dust the moment it was consumed by the bone core. You think the 'hand' Jones saw was real? It was nothing more than a remnant of the dead's memory, used to fool fools like you."

He leaned in, his mechanical claw gripping Alicia’s chin and forcing her to look up. "Even the bone-core sample inside you—I let you take it on purpose. The more active your bloodline, the more it stimulates the evolution of the bone core. Once you fully awaken..."

He leaned close to her ear, his voice like a viper’s hiss, "You will become the perfect 'Sand Scorpion Vessel.' Even I will have to show you some respect, dear niece."

Alicia’s stomach churned violently. She jerked her head to the side and bit down on Williams’ mechanical claw with all her might! Her teeth left clear marks on the alloy casing, but she failed to harm him at all. Instead, he slammed her against the bars, the impact on the back of her head leaving her vision black.

"Ungrateful," Williams muttered, wiping the saliva from his claw. He pulled a metal syringe from his black robe, filled with a viscous, black-purple liquid. "I intended to let you live a few more hours, but since you’re so eager to 'awaken'..."

The needle’s tip glinted coldly, aimed directly at Alicia’s carotid artery. She could feel the terrifying energy held within the liquid—like countless tiny scorpions squirming inside. It was a concoction of bone-core Calamity Fire and fragments of the Requiem Bone Flute—a stimulant a hundred times more potent than sand-blood serum.

"Let me go!" Alicia struggled frantically, the chains cutting deep into her wrists until her skin tore. "You madman! Aren't you afraid I’ll lose control completely and take the bone core down with me?"

"Take it down with you?" Williams laughed even more insanely. "That is the best outcome! Your soul will merge with the bone core, and I will seize the opportunity to intrude. By then..." His mechanical arm pointed toward the pillar of black fire raging outside the window, "The entire Great Desert will be our playground!"

Just as the needle was about to pierce her skin, Alicia’s pupils suddenly turned pure gold.

A voice that was not her own emerged from her throat, low and gentle, like a spring under the moonlight: "Williams... do you still remember the snow at Black Wind Pass?"

Williams’ movements froze abruptly.

This voice... it was Isabella! Alicia’s mother’s voice!

"You... how could you..." The red light of his mechanical eye flickered violently. Williams instinctively took half a step back, as if witnessing something impossible.

Alicia—or rather, the consciousness occupying her body—slowly raised her head, a sorrowful smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "You thought that by injecting my genes into the bone core, you could control everything? You forgot... I chose to become the vessel."

She brushed her fingers against the cage bars, and the sand-crystals began to melt slowly, like ice meeting a heat source. "I have waited eighteen years inside the bone core for this day... to watch you be consumed by your own greed."

"Nonsense!" Williams snapped back to reality, raising the syringe with his mechanical claw again. "Just a trick of the dead's remnants! Shut your mouth!"

"Shut my mouth?" Another voice suddenly rang out, gravelly and angry, carrying the manic fury of a desert storm—it was the voice of Alicia’s father!

Alicia’s body arched violently, like a puppet pulled by invisible strings. She stared fixedly at Williams’ mechanical arm, eyes burning with the fire of vengeance. "When you turned me into your first sacrifice, you should have expected retribution! The bone core remembers every blood debt. The more energy you give it, the clearer it knows who to tear apart first!"

The syringe trembled violently in mid-air, the black-purple liquid nearly spilling. Cold sweat soaked Williams’ black robes; he could feel the bone flute fragment growing scorching hot, as if responding to this angry consciousness, even beginning to resist his control.

"Impossible... this is impossible..." Williams’ voice was filled with incredulous fear. He had always believed the consciousness within the bone core had been crushed long ago. He never expected...

"There is one more."

A third voice sounded, aged and hollow, like a sigh from the abyss. It was neither Isabella’s, nor Alicia’s father’s, nor anyone they knew.

Alicia’s eyes turned a pure, ghostly blue, identical to the color of the bone core. Her lips did not move, yet the voice seemed to surge from all directions, carrying countless overlapping echoes: "The sacrifice will eventually consume the host... it was so a thousand years ago, and so it is now..."

Her gaze pierced through the cage, landing on the black Calamity Fire in the distance. "Daughter, run... don't look back..."

The last three words were like a thunderclap, splitting Alicia’s chaotic consciousness. She snapped back to herself, her pupils shifting frantically between gold, brown, and ghostly blue. A painful sob escaped her throat as her body convulsed as if being torn apart.

Williams suddenly grew calm.

He watched Alicia struggling between the three-colored pupils, a manic excitement flashing in the red light of his mechanical eye. "So that’s it... it’s not the remnants of the dead; the bone core is helping you! It is actively merging with your consciousness!"

This was a godsend! It saved him the risk of forced catalysis; the bone core was completing the "vessel adaptation" on its own!

"Good! Very good!" Williams raised the syringe. This time, he did not hesitate. The needle pierced steadily into Alicia’s carotid artery, pushing the entire dose of the black-purple serum inside. "Since you want to merge so badly, let’s speed it up! Let me see... what kind of monster the Sand-Keeper’s bloodline and royal genes can create!"

The moment the serum entered her veins, Alicia let out a heart-rending scream.

Countless golden veins burst out beneath her skin, spreading like a spiderweb across her body and weaving into the original sand-crystal thorns to form eerie patterns. The cage bars began to vibrate violently; the ghostly blue sand-crystals resonated with the golden veins, emitting a piercing, high-frequency noise that made the sand on the floor dance in a frenzy.

"Hah... hah..." Alicia’s consciousness was being stripped away. She could feel her mother’s gentle embrace, her father’s angry roar, and the sigh of that strange voice. All these consciousnesses were being pulled and merged by a powerful force, falling toward the deepest part of the bone core.

Williams retreated to a safe distance, watching this "evolution" with great interest. Alicia’s back began to split open, revealing a pulsing golden heart within. Wrapped around the heart were ghostly blue veins, resembling a burning nebula.

"Almost... it's almost there..." Williams murmured, the bone flute fragment on his mechanical arm glowing blindingly. "Once you fully awaken, that will be the moment the Calamity Fire spreads across the land..."

Just then, Alicia suddenly stopped convulsing.

She slowly raised her head. Her eyes had turned a pure gold-blue; the left side of her face was covered in golden veins, while the right was embedded with ghostly blue sand-crystals. A smile that belonged to no known consciousness tugged at her lips.

"Williams." Her voice was terrifyingly calm, as if countless voices were speaking at once. "Do you know... why the Sand-Keeper priests of a thousand years ago hid the Three Rings?"

Williams’ smile froze on his face.

Alicia—or rather, "It"—reached out a finger and tapped her own heart. "Because... what truly seals the bone core isn't the ring, but the will of the 'vessel' itself."

Before the words had finished, the golden heart behind her suddenly erupted with blinding light, forcibly pushing the sand-crystal cage until it cracked! The black-purple Calamity Fire was repelled by the golden light, sizzling into white smoke at the fissures.

Williams’ mechanical eye suddenly emitted a piercing alarm—the energy fluctuations of the bone core were dropping rapidly, replaced by a brand-new, more powerful energy field originating from Alicia’s heart!

"No! That's impossible!" For the first time, Williams felt fear. "How could the vessel resist the bone core?!"

Alicia—"It"—did not answer. She merely smiled and reached out. The golden veins spread out through the cracks like living vines, growing toward Williams. Each vein sang an ancient ballad—the lullaby her mother had sung to her as a child.

The black Calamity Fire outside the cage suddenly turned chaotic. Some continued to burn, while others inexplicably extinguished, revealing the struggling sand grains beneath—as if the consciousness of the bone core itself had fallen into a schism.

Williams watched the encroaching golden veins and suddenly recalled the words of the Sand-Speaker: "Everyone strengthened by the bone core's energy harbors the fragments of countless dead within them..."

Could it be... Alicia wasn't being consumed; she was consuming all the consciousnesses within the bone core?

The moment this thought surfaced, the golden veins had already coiled around his mechanical arm. A searing, intense pain followed; the bone flute fragment began to melt, flowing along the veins toward Alicia’s heart!

"No—!" Williams let out a desperate roar. He tried to sever his mechanical arm, only to find that the alloy casing had fused with the veins, making it impossible to separate.

The smile on Alicia's—"It's"—face grew wider. In her gold-blue pupils, she reflected Williams’ terrified face and the golden Calamity Fire beginning to coalesce in the distance.

This gamble between the vessel and the bone core seemed to be sprinting madly toward a conclusion no one had anticipated.

And outside the cracked cage, a single golden grain of sand caught the wind, quietly flying toward Black Wind Pass—it was a sand-trace from the old knife's bone blade, carrying the scent of a sunken land, like a silent messenger.