Chapter 18 – Controlled Burn
Four years, 358 days until Aloy's Proving
POV: Rion
The Reaver's body lay twisted behind me, one arm flopped backward like it had tried to crawl out of its own death. The axe had caught me high on the left side—just under the collarbone. The pain wasn't sharp anymore. It was thick. Radiating. Every breath dragged heat across the break like someone had wedged in a branding iron and left it there.
I stumbled back into the wall, left arm limp, shoulder drooped forward and useless. I'd felt fractures before. This wasn't just bone. It was something deeper. Something that made my ribs echo.
I dropped to my knees, jaw locked so tight I felt the crack behind my molars. My right hand went for the belt kit.
Two stimpaks. One chance to get it right.
I yanked the coat open, peeled the vest away, and drove the first needle into the swollen muscle just above the collarbone. The burn hit instantly. My fingers were already moving, pressing the second injector lower—just near the joint where arm met chest. Right into the damage.
Click. Click.
The chemicals surged like fire in reverse—cold racing up the nerves, then heat, then everything all at once. I forgot how to blink. Couldn't hear over the blood in my ears. Couldn't feel anything except the pulse of pressure moving up my neck and down my spine.
Then it broke.
Everything released in a slow, violent exhale.
I slumped sideways, head thudding back against the wall, breathing like I'd just come up from drowning. My arm still hung useless at my side. But I could flex my fingers. No grip not yet. But movement. Strength will return eventually.
It'd have to do.
Didn't feel like a win. But I wasn't dead.
I forced myself to sit upright. Every motion was mechanical, like my body was waiting to see if the healing held. The stim casings clattered to the floor beside me. Empty. Used. Already irrelevant.
I pushed myself to my feet slowly, one palm braced against the wall for balance. The broken Reaver's axe still lay nearby, half-buried in cracked tile. I nudged it aside with my boot. The handle twitched like it still remembered the last swing.
Couldn't stay here long. But I'd bought myself enough time to stand.
I rolled my left shoulder, cautious. The joint resisted, nerves flaring for a second, and then something shifted—slid back into place with a deep, wet pop. I winced, but it wasn't sharp. Just familiar.
That sound. That feeling.
It took me back. Old body. Old injury. Friday night football—third quarter hit, linebacker to the ribs. Same shoulder. Same joint. It'd never healed right. It popped back then, too. Usually when I reached too far, swung too wide, or slept wrong.
Now?
Different world. Different bones. New body. Same damn bone.
I moved my arm again. Pop. There it was.
I glanced down and peeled the coat back fully to inspect the damage. The skin above the collarbone had sealed, but not clean. The wound was closed, but the flesh had twisted—raised, angry, still hot. A scar was already forming. Not a thin line. A jagged streak of burnt, healing tissue. Brutal. Permanent. The stimpaks had done their job—mostly. But they worked fast, not pretty. Across the top of my chest, just below the collar, a dark, twisted scar had already begun to form. Raised. Red. Angry.
A jagged line carved by a Reaver's axe and sealed by Old World chemistry. No symmetry. No ritual. Just a scar. The kind that wouldn't fade. The kind people would see when I stripped down for medical, or cleaned a wound by the fire, or bled out under a broken moon.
Not pain. Not weakness.
Just a mark.
I ran my fingers lightly over it, feeling the ridged texture.
In a few days, the ache would fade. The pop would come back—now and then, random and ugly. But it wouldn't stop me. Wouldn't hold me back.
It was a reminder now.
Another piece of who I was. Another scar that whispered: you survived this too.
Good.
I cinched the coat tighter and let the edge of the Reboot Suit settle back into place, torn fabric still exposed around the collar. The damage was clean enough to fix—technically. A needle, some heat-seal mesh, maybe thread stripped from a Focus harness.
But I wasn't doing it.
I hadn't sewn anything since middle school. Home ec. A padded square pillow I never even stuffed right, stitched with uneven lines and half the thread knotted into the wrong side. I took the class for an easy grade. Did the bare minimum. Got the grade anyway. That was the deal.
Now?
Now I'd pay someone to do it properly.
There were stitchers in Ironwood Grove who could mend armor like they were dressing wounds. Quiet hands. Steady work. They knew how to blend utility with respect. They'd patch the suit and preserve the mesh underneath without tearing out what little thermal regulation I still had.
Better than I'd ever manage.
I'd drop it off next time I passed through. Maybe ask for blackout stitching this time—no color, no symbols. Let the scar speak for itself.
Until then, the tear would stay.
A reminder.
Of what got through. And what didn't.
As long as the climate mesh held?
I didn't care what it looked like.
The world could try to take pieces of me.
But it didn't get to take my comfort.
I grunted, cinched the coat tighter across the break, and started walking.
Scar, click, torn fabric and all.
The corridor stayed quiet, but I didn't move on. Not yet.
I walked back toward the Reaver's body. Up close, it looked worse. His skin was like sun-dried leather pulled too tight over swollen muscle. The armor he wore wasn't standard issue. It was makeshift—scrap plastic, melted plates, and broken machine parts fused directly to the flesh. The corridor ahead stayed quiet, but I didn't move. Not yet.
I turned and walked back to the Reaver's corpse. Up close, it looked even less human. The skin had hardened into something like cracked leather, brittle in places, glossy in others. The armor wasn't anything standard—just layers of scavenged machine parts, boiled plastics, and melted plates fused straight to the flesh. It wasn't protection. It was insulation for the monster underneath.
I crouched and started checking the body. My fingers brushed over a few useless straps, then caught on something sealed beneath the upper chest plate. A small reinforced holster, tucked where it wouldn't be seen unless you knew to look. Inside was a data shard. Personal format. Still powered.
I scanned it with my Focus. The display blinked once.
[MATCH FOUND – PERSONAL LOG]
[LOG AUTHOR: "Moth-Eater" | WORM NODE 12]
[STATUS: UNCORRUPTED – TEXT ONLY]
[FILE: #19 – Serum Trial: Vocal Retention in Late Decay]
The words filled my vision. No preamble. No emotion. Just observation.
Subject: male, approximate age sixty, possible Vault-adjacent background. Compound used: Strain W4, fusion catalyst variant. Vocal cords held for three hours. Subject hummed an old commercial jingle. Final intelligible words: "Can't feel my legs." Feral onset occurred at hour nine point two. Entry flagged for rhythm-memory testing.
I kept reading. More entries followed. Trial 20 focused on optic response under neural decay. Trial 21 on larynx stability. Trial 22 involved self-mutilation with retained motor control. Every log read the same. No names. No context. Just results.
There was no fear in the writing. No hesitation. Just a cold rhythm. Like he wasn't studying people—just systems that had failed his design.
And buried between the lines was something worse. The timestamps went back days before the meltdown. That meant he knew. He saw the reactor instability before it blew, and he didn't run. He stayed. Not out of courage—but opportunity.
The lockdown hadn't trapped him.
It gave him a lab full of test subjects.
He let the lights go out and started writing.
I ejected the shard and slipped it into the Nanoboy. It wasn't for barter. It wasn't even for leverage. It was evidence. The kind you keep for the day someone tries to tell you the Worm just got out of hand.
No. This was who they were.
I looked down at the Reaver's corpse again. Whatever his name had been before, whatever uniform he once wore—it didn't matter anymore. He hadn't died in this place. He'd lived here.
I crouched beside the corpse and started peeling back the scrap-welded armor layered across the left forearm. The metal had fused to the skin, but the ink beneath was still visible. It had held through blood, heat, and time. Black segments wrapped around the forearm in tight, coiled rings. The design was exact, deliberate, symmetrical. Clawed legs. Hooked jaws. A centipede, etched into the flesh like a warning.
I didn't need the Focus to tell me what it meant. I recognized it from another life. Back before this world. Before the collapse. It was the same mark carved into backs and printed across character sheets. A symbol tied to monsters who used their blood like a creed. I had seen it in manga. In anime. In art that glorified strength through pain. But here, in this world, it wasn't fiction. It was real. And it was rotting on a dead man's arm.
That was enough.
I drew the machete. This wasn't going to be clean work.
I planted my boot on the Reaver's chest and brought the blade down across the upper arm. The steel bit deep, catching between bone and tendon. The skin tore slow and wet, splitting in uneven waves as the pressure pushed through. The bone didn't crack clean—it shattered, splintering with a jagged pop that echoed through the corridor. I wrenched the blade free and dropped to one knee, grabbing the arm by the wrist.
I twisted hard. The elbow joint popped with a sharp snap, ligaments tearing in clusters. Muscles ripped free in sticky strands. It took two more twists before the whole limb tore loose with a final crunch of gristle and decayed connective tissue. Black-red blood oozed from the open socket, thick and clotted, like oil leaking from a dead machine.
I turned the severed limb and checked the tattoo again. Still intact. Still readable.
I tapped the Nanoboy. The panel slid open, releasing a hiss of chilled vapor. The storage field flickered to life. I fed the limb in slowly. Finger by finger, it dissolved into threads of compressed light. When it was gone, the compartment sealed with a low click, and the weight shifted on my wrist.
Evidence. Not just for me. For whoever came next.
I stood and wiped the blade on what was left of the Reaver's coat.
He hadn't just worn the mark.
He believed in it.
Now he was missing a limb.
And a legacy.
I turned and walked away.
Let the Worm wonder where its centipede went.
I didn't go far. Just down the hall, past the worst of the blood and heat, until the echoes of the Reaver fight felt like they belonged to someone else. I found a place in the lee of a buckled doorway and leaned against it, letting the silence settle. The air was heavy with rust and old blood. My collarbone still ached beneath the sealed scar, but it wasn't the pain I was thinking about.
It was Walker.
I should've reached him. I'd tried. Words that felt right at the time. Honest. Desperate. But they hadn't landed. They hadn't mattered. Whatever pieces of him were left behind those eyes, I couldn't touch them.
That was on me.
I tapped the Focus, and the HUD blinked to life—clean, precise, waiting. Thirty-nine points available.
I dumped thirteen into Speech.
The change wasn't loud. It was structural. Internal. I felt it in the breath between words. In the way I now instinctively paused to find weight, not volume. I didn't just speak better—I understood the difference between being heard and being felt. Walker had slipped through because I hadn't known how to speak to the man beneath the rot. Next time, I'd know.
Thirteen more into Medicine.
That hit sharper. The data pulled through like a wire tightening in my veins. I felt it in my fingers, in the way my mind mapped muscle to bone. Stimpak calibration. Suture tension. Where to cut, where not to. The kind of knowledge that saves someone before they even realize they're dying. I wouldn't let someone bleed out in front of me again just because I lacked the tools.
The last thirteen went into Martial Arts.
That one hit deep.
My stance shifted. Just standing still—I felt it. The angle of my knees. The spacing of my feet. The way my weight naturally dropped to center. No instruction. No thought. My body adjusted like it had just remembered something it never should've forgotten. I rotated my wrist, and my elbow aligned instantly into a guard shape I didn't have a name for—but it felt right. Not just a brawler's rhythm. Not Kansani weight. This was clean. Sharpened. Calculated.
I breathed in through my nose and exhaled slowly.
Even that felt different.
I moved my hand through an arc—short, tight, efficient. Less wasted motion. More control. My body wasn't just stronger. It was understood. Every strike had a blueprint now. Every step had an anchor.
This wasn't just technique.
It was fluency.
The interface hovered in the air, bright against the dark, its glow flickering slightly from the radiation haze clinging to the sublevel. The stats were in. Points spent. Muscles adjusted. Breath steadier.
But something else waited.
The Focus didn't shut down after the stat allocations. A new icon blinked in the corner of my HUD, sharp and deliberate. It wasn't there for decoration. It was an acknowledgment. The system had seen what I'd survived, what I'd chosen to improve, and now it was responding.
[PERK SLOT UNLOCKED]
I opened the list. Only two options pulsed with clarity. No filler. No bloat. Just choices I had earned the hard way.
The first was called Pain Map. The description was simple, but it hit like a blade pressed against exposed tendon. You know how to break people because you know how to fix them. It would unlock weak point targeting for humanoid enemies based on real nerve cluster behavior and joint structure. Critical melee hits against vulnerable areas would deal significantly more damage.
[Pain Map]
You know how to break people, because you know how to fix them.
Unlocks weak point targeting for humanoid enemies based on known nerve clusters and joint structure. Critical melee hits against organ-rich targets deal +25% damage.
I didn't hesitate. I had felt it already—during the Reaver fight, when the blade sank too easily into a gap at the base of the neck. When my strike hadn't been lucky. It had been precise. That wasn't guessing. That was something learned in blood and pressure. I confirmed the selection. The screen pulsed and shifted to the second.
[Ash in the Throat]
Your voice carries the weight of those you couldn't save. People pause when you speak—because they hear the regret behind it.
+10% chance to interrupt hostile intent with conversation. First failed speech check in a scene becomes a tie instead of a loss.
Ash in the Throat. The name alone made my jaw clench. The text underneath didn't soften it. Your voice carries the weight of those you couldn't save. People pause when you speak—because they hear the regret behind it. The effect wasn't dramatic, but it was real. A ten percent chance to stop a hostile act with words. A safety net for when persuasion failed.
It wasn't hard to see the face behind that description. Walker. The words I didn't find fast enough. The silence between us that swallowed the last chance he had to come back. That failure had settled deep. If I ever faced another like him, I wasn't going to let it happen again.
I selected it.
No dramatic sound. No flashing banner. Just the quiet shutdown of the menu and the sensation that something inside had shifted into place. These weren't power-ups. They were markers. Triggers stamped into my soul through experience, not mechanics. The Focus had just put a name to them.
I leaned my head back against the wall and exhaled. The scar under my collarbone still ached. My shoulder still clicked when I moved. The severed arm was sealed inside the Nanoboy, proof of what the Worm had become. The air around me hadn't gotten any cleaner. Still stale. Still burnt.
But now, I had two new weapons.
My hands knew where to strike.
And maybe, finally, my voice would be enough.
I stood up, slow and steady, then turned toward the hallway ahead.
It was time to keep moving.
I stood, rolled my shoulder once, and headed deeper into the dark.
I moved with a limp.
Not dramatic. Just enough to remind me that the stimpaks had fixed the break, not the bruises. My collarbone still clicked if I turned too fast. My ribs throbbed every time I breathed too deep. But I was upright. Functional. That was enough.
The bunker stretched out ahead of me—dark, half-collapsed, humming with residual power like the place hadn't decided whether it was dead or asleep. No fresh threats. Just silence. Worn tiles. And the promise of salvage.
So I looted.
Not fast. Not greedy. Just deliberate. Recovering the usable spikes for my rifle, most were the ones Ubba supplied me, I had been lucky that the improvised spikes had work.
Each room had its own mood—desks overturned, chairs frozen mid-collapse, wiring strung out like veins through the walls. I moved through it like a ghost with a checklist. Every few steps I found something worth keeping. A scorched fuse plate. A half-melted dataport that might still spark under Ironbone hands. A bundle of twisted wiring that looked more like art than tech.
The Nanoboy hummed as I fed items into its compression chamber. One by one, pieces of the old world disappeared into blue mist and vanished into my wrist. Wires. Coil brackets. Circuit fragments. A dented frame from what might've been a vending machine or a terminal backplate.
None of it was special. None of it mattered on its own.
But together? It was weight. Value. Currency the Grove could melt down, repurpose, or just argue over until something new was born from it.
And then it hit.
I bent to pick up an old wiring sleeve—nothing big, just one more piece for the pile—and nearly tipped forward onto my face. My boots scraped against the tile, knees locked up, back screaming like I'd been carrying a corpse.
I checked the Nanoboy.
NANOBOY STORAGE: [TOTAL COMPRESSED MASS: 498.6 LBS / 500 LBS]
[WARNING: MAXIMUM LOAD NEAR THRESHOLD – MOVEMENT PENALTY ACTIVE]
I stared at the number and let out a sharp exhale through my nose.
"Goddamn it."
I hadn't paid attention. Hadn't managed the load like I should've. At least two hundred pounds of that weight was the compressed body of the Striker Boxer unit I'd dragged out of Newton. I'd killed it clean. Carried it out like a trophy. Told myself I'd study it. Maybe sell it. Maybe hand it off to Ubba so she could turn it into something violent and brilliant.
But I hadn't done any of that.
It had sat in my Nanoboy ever since, dead weight tucked away like some kind of reminder. A week of hauling its corpse through every ruined corridor, every ruined stairwell. Through blood and broken ribs and radiation haze, it had followed me like a ghost I forgot to bury.
Ubba could've stripped it for parts. Rebuilt it into something dangerous, or at least something that exploded with style. She probably would've named it too. Some awful, stupid, brilliant name that would've stuck.
But instead, here I was—barely able to move, lungs tight, legs shaking—and I had no one to blame but myself.
I looked down at the blinking weight warning. It wasn't just a number. It was an accusation.
I could purge it now. Free up a third of my capacity. Walk lighter. Breathe easier.
But I didn't.
I'd carried it this far. Letting it go now felt like admitting I'd wasted something I was supposed to understand.
I shook my head and muttered under my breath.
"Stupid."
The word bounced off the walls and came back hollow. I didn't bother arguing with it.
I adjusted the straps on my coat, ignored the throbbing in my shoulder, and kept moving. The Boxer would stay—for now. Whether it made sense or not.
The weight didn't ease up. Every step felt like I was dragging a second version of myself made from broken scrap and bad decisions.
I stopped near the mouth of a cracked storage wing and sat down against the wall. The Nanoboy was digging into my spine through the coat, pressing with that quiet, pulsing weight that had been building all day. I opened the diagnostics panel again and expanded the contents list.
It was worse than I thought.
Out of ten storage slots, five were full of salvage that wouldn't fetch more than a handful of shards. The Focus had flagged them already—low trade value, poor material integrity, minor curiosity at best. Things I'd grabbed on impulse. A heat-warped display lens. Burnt-out fuses. A structural panel from an unknown machine frame, half-melted and impossible to trace.
My thumb hovered over the list as I scrolled.
Three shards. Two shards. Maybe one.
I could almost hear Ubba laughing in the back of my head. Her voice already rising into that forge-howl cadence.
"You carried that through a bunker? What, was there a prize for hauling the dumbest parts?"
I sighed and started purging.
The display blinked with each release. Items disintegrated into light and static, vanishing from the internal grid. The weight counter ticked down with every piece of junk I sent into the ether. It took less effort to destroy than to dump. And there wasn't anything I would come back for, so a pile of metallic sand fell to the ground and seeped into the cracks.
Four pounds gone. Then twelve. Then another six. My spine started to breathe again.
I kept the high-density cores. The sealed med-compartment I'd pulled from the back hall. The microframe bracket that still pinged with a partial power signature. But the rest?
Useless.
When I finished, the load read three hundred seventy-two pounds.
Still heavy.
Still rough.
But manageable.
I closed the display, leaned my head back, and let the quiet settle in.
"I'm not a trash hauler," I muttered.
No one answered.
But at least now I wasn't lying to myself.
I check my storage once for bullshit to dump when I saw the time.
The Focus clock said it was 11:42 PM.
I hadn't realized how deep I'd gone. Or how long I'd been down here. Time didn't mean much in the dark, but the weight dragging at my legs said enough. Between the scar, the strain, and the overloaded Nanoboy, I was running on fumes.
I kept moving, but slower now. Less for loot. More for shelter.
A few turns past the last wrecked security checkpoint, I found it. A side wing. Long hallway. Burned-out signage above the door that probably once read "RECOVERY." Most of the rooms were useless—caved in, flooded, reeking of mold and meltwater. But one, halfway down the row, was different.
The door was cracked, but the hinges were solid. I nudged it open and stepped inside.
It was still.
Dust clung to the corners. A few old boxes stacked against the wall. But no corpses. No stains. No shattered IV poles or twisted gurneys.
And in the center?
A hospital bed.
Old, metal-framed, hydraulic. And—by some miracle—not covered in grime or blood.
I didn't trust it, of course.
I stepped over, grabbed the edge of the mattress, and flipped it.
It landed with a dull thud. Clean underneath. Dry. Foam still soft enough to matter. I ran a hand across the surface, checking for mold or punctures. Nothing crawled. Nothing hissed.
That was good enough.
I sat down, stripped off the coat, peeled away the outer layers of gear. Left the essentials within reach—Focus on, revolver holstered, machete just beside the bed.
Then I tapped the side of the HUD and brought up the time controls.
Set alarm: 6:00 AM.
Just enough to rest. Not enough to forget where I was.
The Focus pinged back confirmation with a soft chime.
I laid down slowly, one arm behind my head, the other resting across my chest where the stim had sealed in the day's worst wound. The mattress shifted beneath me, weight redistributing like it remembered how to hold people.
I didn't expect comfort.
But the silence was close enough.
Sleep came fast.
And when it did, it came without dreams.
The Focus chimed soft against my temple.
6:00 AM.
I opened my eyes, half expecting something to be standing over me. But there was nothing. Just stillness and the faint electrical hum bleeding from the old lights up the hall. The mattress had flattened under me overnight, like it had tried to carry the weight and failed halfway through.
I sat up slow.
Nothing in the room had moved. No tracks on the floor. No signal pings.
Good.
My body ached, but the sharp edge was gone. What was left was tight and tired—functional. I stretched once, felt the collarbone click, and forced my legs to swing over the side of the bed. The floor was cold on my boots.
I dressed in layers. Vest, coat, belt, gear. Every strap felt heavier than it had yesterday. The Nanoboy was still at full load. No getting around that unless I started dumping again, and I wasn't ready to part with anything else just yet.
I stepped out into the hall and began the climb.
The sublevels felt different in the morning—if you could call artificial light and stale air morning. Still dark, still rusted, but something had shifted. Less pressure. Like whatever ghosts had wandered the night had moved on, just a little further underground.
I hit the second stairwell before I remembered.
I stopped.
Just stood there, hand on the railing, breathing steady.
The Focus pulsed gently at the edge of my sight, waiting.
There was still one thing I hadn't spent.
The special perk point.
Not from stats. Not from milestones. Just a clean reward—the kind that shows up after the system decides you've survived something particularly brutal and didn't flinch.
I opened the interface.
The glow flickered once before stabilizing.
[1 SPECIAL PERK POINT AVAILABLE]
Unlocked after surviving lethal damage, sustaining full Nanoboy overload, and completing a precision-level takedown while injured.
The list was short.
Just three options.
And all of them looked like they were written by someone who thought death was a great teacher.
The list didn't scroll.
There was no debate.
Just one entry pulsing at the center of the Focus, etched in clean, angular script.
[UNLOCK: KURE BLOODLINE – Enhancement Threshold 35%]
Status: Inactive
Activation Cost: 1 Special Perk Point
Description: Latent strength condition detected. Bloodline enhancement will begin at base threshold—grants low-level muscular override protocol and preliminary nervous reinforcement. Further enhancements require additional Special Perk Points.
Projected Trait: Increased damage output, strike velocity, and joint locking force. Adrenaline ceiling raised. Suppression resistance increased.
I stared at it.
Didn't select it.
Not yet.
I knew what it meant. The Kure Clan—whatever they had been in the old world, whatever ghosts they'd left behind—weren't just stories. They were legacy. Assassins. Monsters shaped like men. Bloodline warriors who didn't need machines to tear the world open.
I'd seen hints of it already.
That moment in Newton, when I moved too fast to think. The first time I redirected a blow that should've broken my spine. The strange way my body coiled when my back was against a wall.
And now the system was acknowledging it.
A dormant piece of me. Waiting.
This wasn't just a perk. It was permission.
A path.
The description was simple, but I knew what it really meant. Strength now—but more later. If I earned more of these rare point triggers, the enhancement wouldn't just double. It'd scale. Tenfold. Maybe more.
And not just power.
Control.
I thought about Jorta. About what it meant to build your strength, not just wear it. About what it meant to take every hit and still move forward. The Kure weren't Kansani. They didn't teach by warpaint or firewalks.
They taught with silence.
They taught with bones.
I hovered my finger just over the confirmation glyph.
This was permanent. No re-rolls. No turning back. Once I said yes, the system would start building toward something else—something heavier.
Stronger.
Meaner.
But maybe that's what I needed.
I took one last breath.
The second I tapped YES, I felt the Focus twitch.
Just a flicker of resistance in the system.
Then pain.
The moment I tapped confirm, the Focus twitched. Not visually—physically. A shiver through the neural interface, like the signal had hit bone.
Then the pain started.
It began behind my eyes, a slow building pressure like altitude sickness, then bloomed outward. A heat spike crawled down my spine, followed by something colder and meaner. Every nerve in my body lit up. My fingers snapped into fists on reflex. My jaw locked. My left shoulder jerked up into my neck as if my tendons were being rewired in real time.
Then it all hit at once.
Every signal in my body fired at full voltage. My legs buckled. The stairwell vanished beneath me as I dropped like a sack of meat. I hit the tile hard, back arching, arms seizing. My vision collapsed into red pulses and white static. My mouth opened, but nothing came out. Not a scream. Not a breath.
My limbs flailed like they were fighting themselves. I felt something snap in my left hand, maybe a tendon, maybe just tension—didn't matter. My chest seized. My muscles locked into a full spasm, then another, then another.
The Focus flared. Sparks hissed across my HUD. Systems failed and rebooted. A warning blared across the top corner, but I couldn't read it. I couldn't see.
My helmet sealed too tight. Pressure built in my skull like it wanted to split open. I clawed at the straps, fingers shaking uncontrollably, and ripped it off just in time to vomit.
Everything came out.
Dry rations, roots, half-processed water, acid. I choked on it and went again. My body convulsed as blood mixed into the bile. I coughed hard enough to tear my throat raw.
Then my nose started bleeding.
My ears followed.
I could feel it. Thick warmth trailing down my neck and jaw. My head rang like someone had dropped a hammer inside it.
Then it stopped.
Not gradually. Just gone.
Like someone had thrown a switch.
I collapsed forward, hands scraping against the cold tile. My body trembled, the aftermath of full-system overload rippling out in long, slow waves. My skin felt bruised from the inside. My stomach was empty and my mouth tasted like metal and ash. My left eye wouldn't focus right. My ears rang with dull, underwater static.
The Focus was dark.
No acknowledgment. No confirmation. No label.
Just silence.
I lay there, chest heaving, blood trailing from my nostrils and ears.
Whatever had been buried inside me had woken up. And it hadn't come quietly.
The Kure didn't arrive with ceremony.
They arrived like a blood memory.
And now that it was awake…
It wasn't going back to sleep.
I stayed on the floor, chest heaving, arms trembling, blood cooling on my face and hands. Each breath came faster than the last, like I was trying to pull more air into my lungs than the room had to give. My ribs ached. My head felt hollowed out. But beneath all of that, something else was building.
The trembling stopped. The dizziness began to fade. My pulse slowed—but the pressure in my chest didn't ease. It shifted.
I wiped the edge of my mouth on my sleeve and sat up, using the wall for support. The last of the bile clung to my teeth, but even that felt like it belonged to someone else now. I spat again and blinked hard. The blood in my nose had stopped. The ringing in my ears had flattened into a low hum.
That's when I noticed it.
Something was off. Not wrong—off. My breath filled my lungs easier than it had in days. My limbs felt like they weren't dragging for once. My body didn't feel light, exactly—but it felt ready. Awake.
I shifted my shoulders and my balance corrected instantly. No lurch, no catch in the joint, no hesitation in my legs. My hands moved faster when I checked my belt rig. Not frantic. Just precise. Tight. There was no delay between thought and movement. My eyes tracked the far end of the hall, and I saw it all—dust trails, uneven shadows, a chip in the wall three meters down that I knew hadn't registered before.
Even the air smelled different. Not cleaner, but clearer.
The Focus pinged softly in the back of my mind.
[+1 PERCEPTION]
[+1 AGILITY]
[+1 STRENGTH]
No voice. No commentary. Just the numbers.
I let out a short, dry breath and wiped the sweat off my forehead with the back of my wrist.
So that was what a special perk point did. Nearly killed me. Made me crawl across the floor, vomit my guts out, bleed from every orifice.
And then it made me better.
Not just stronger. Sharper. Balanced.
Like my body had been fighting itself this whole time and finally decided to start cooperating.
I stood again, slower this time. Not because I needed to, but because I wanted to feel it happen. The transition. The balance. I climbed the stairs testing each step as I ascended.
The last stairwell led to a familiar junction—wide corridor, buckled under years of corrosion and fire. My steps echoed heavier now, not from exhaustion, but from weight. Strength back in my legs. Focus still dim from the Kure flare, but functional.
The exit loomed ahead: a decontamination arch long since fused by heat, half-covered in collapsed ducting. Just past it, I saw them again.
Twelve of them.
Still.
The same Faro Scarabs I'd passed on the way down.
Wrecked. Charred. Their crablike chassis frozen in mid-scatter across the corridor. Some crumpled against the walls. Others piled at awkward angles, as if torn apart mid-motion. The firefight that gutted this place must've been hell. Judging by the scorch patterns and fused composite armor, these machines didn't die quietly.
I stood there a moment, eyes scanning the carnage.
The same Faro-built monsters I'd passed on the way down.
I stepped closer.
The damage told a story. Not surgical. Not precise. Blunt in places. Hacked apart in others. They hadn't been dissected—they'd been torn open by desperation and whatever passed for weapons at the time.
Salvage work. But not modern.
This was the work of the New World Newborns—the first of the Kansani, back before the paint and the creed had names. Back when survival came before philosophy. Before the Grove had walls and war chants. Before they had a name. They were just people with nothing left but fire and fury, crawling through machine corpses and learning how to live again.
They'd found this place. Fought through it.
And when they reached this corridor, they made a choice.
They took what they could from the Scarabs—power coils, shard ports, anything that sparked. But they didn't understand override tech. Didn't have Focuses. Couldn't scan, couldn't decode, couldn't risk what they didn't understand.
Then they hit the sealed door to Level Three.
No response.
No key.
No way in.
So they did what survivors do—they moved on. Marked the route, maybe. Told a story about it later. But the place became a footnote. A caution. A curiosity half-remembered by firelight. The kind of ruin a shaman might mutter about without ever walking again.
And now, a thousand years later, I'd walked through it.
I stepped over a shattered limb assembly and crouched beside one of the cleaner kills. The plating had been smashed inward, but not peeled. A seam near the chestplate still looked sealed.
I slid my knife in and twisted.
A panel popped free with a sharp hiss.
Inside: a module. Hexagonal. Burnt around the edges. But intact enough to respond.
[FOCUS SCAN ACTIVE]
[DEVICE: OVERRIDE MODULE – V4.3 FORMAT]
[STATUS: DAMAGED – PARTIAL FUNCTIONALITY POSSIBLE]
[CLASS: OBSOLETE, UNCOMMON]
Override tech.
Not useful now. Maybe never. But real.
And back then? The New World Newborns wouldn't have known what they were looking at.
I slid the module into the Nanoboy, felt the field accept it with a faint ripple. It wasn't stable, but it was intact. That meant options. Might be junk. Might not even boot. But if anyone could tell me, it was Grosh. He'd probably seen five of these rot in a bin under his workbench. Or maybe shouted at an apprentice for breathing near one. Either way, he'd know.
Sula had said it clearly. They don't throw anything away just because they don't understand it. The Ironbone kept what they couldn't name. Waited for the forge to make sense of it. This was one of those pieces. Maybe they'd seen another. Maybe one was still sitting somewhere in the Pile—untouched, forgotten, waiting.
If not Grosh, then Ubba. She might've already tried strapping one to a flamethrower. Or wired it into a toaster just to see what it did when overloaded. Either way, the module was going to get looked at.
But not today.
I had a bounty to finish.
The Snapmaw at Broken Shallows wasn't going to wait. The tag still sat in my coat, ink pressed deep into the plate. Every moment I lingered was another minute the trail went colder, the beast drifted further downstream. I'd lost time in the bunker, but I hadn't lost the mission.
I turned toward the stairwell. The exit loomed ahead—wide, cracked concrete slick with time, air thinning as the ruin gave way to light. I climbed, step by step, shoulders stiff, Nanoboy heavier than I liked. Each footfall felt cleaner than before. My balance was tighter. My eyes sharper. The Kure blood was awake now, and the world moved slower in front of me.
One last look back. Twelve Scarabs. Dead. Stripped. Still offering lessons.
I left them behind and stepped into the dawn.
Snapmaw time.
The walk to the Broken Shallows started quiet. Wind low. Sky slate-colored, with just enough haze to make the world feel slow. The route cut east out of the Grove's outer paths, slipping through runoff channels and ridge breaks. It wasn't marked on any map, but someone had carved trail signs into the stone—Kansani glyphs etched just deep enough to last.
I followed them.
Snapmaw country wasn't far. Two hours at a steady pace. Maybe less if I pushed. But the ground didn't want speed. The terrain got worse the closer I came—damp earth, fractured clay, old riverbanks turned into jagged mud cliffs. The kind of place that remembered what it meant to flood, even if it hadn't in years.
Halfway there, I saw it.
The bridge.
Or what was left of it.
Twisted steel bones jutted from the river chasm like a ribcage that forgot what it was holding. Concrete decking hung in shattered slabs from rusted rebar, and one side of the support tower had collapsed entirely—long ago, by the look of it. Chunks of old-world signage lay scattered at the base, half-swallowed by the mud. A stoplight dangled from a wire above the waterline, still twitching in the breeze.
I stopped walking.
Just stared at it.
I'd driven that bridge. Once. Maybe twice. Couldn't say for certain, but something about the way the guardrail curled inward, the slope of the approach—familiar. Late-night drives. Half-empty gas tank. Radio static humming over the engine hum. I might've crossed it on my way home from work, back when roads had names and bridges had numbers instead of ghosts.
That was someone else's life.
Mine now belonged to mud and silence.
The Focus pulsed.
[ZONE: BROKEN SHALLOWS]
[STATUS: ACTIVE]
[HAZARD: TERRAIN UNSTABLE / MACHINE ACTIVITY PRESENT]
I adjusted the Railwhistle across my back. The weapon felt heavier in wet air—steam-housing thicker, vents twitching like they didn't trust the moisture. Ubba hadn't designed it for river combat, but she'd made it loud. And loud meant leverage.
I dropped to a crouch at the ridge edge and scanned the basin below.
The Broken Shallows lived up to their name. What had once been a riverbed was now a sunken mosaic of flood-split channels and rocky islands. Pools of stagnant water sat between the rocks like traps. Green film floated across some. Others steamed faintly in the early cold.
And there—near the base of the broken bridge's far end—movement.
Low. Sleek. Metal glint under pale light. The curve of a synthetic tail slipping between reeds. Then the telltale arc of armored jaws breaking the surface—brief, sharp, then gone.
Snapmaw.
Still here.
I checked the bounty tag again. Jaw assembly required. Lens bonus if it stayed intact.
Didn't say how I had to kill it.
I slid down the ridge slowly, boots hitting slick stone. The wind shifted—just enough to carry the scent of algae and something sour, like melting Blaze. My eyes stayed forward. My hands stayed ready.
No Watchers.
No backup.
Just one kill between me and a payday.
And the ghost of a bridge I might've crossed before I ever knew how far I'd fall.
Time to see what the Railwhistle could do when it screamed across water.
I crouched on a rock shelf just above the waterline, eyes locked on the Snapmaw's trail where it vanished behind a collapsed chunk of bridge support. The water shimmered faintly in the gap between reed clusters and sunken debris. The machine hadn't surfaced again—but I could see the occasional ripple. It was still hunting. Still watching.
I tapped the side of the Focus and brought up a scan overlay. It took a few seconds to resolve—too much glare off the water, too many reflections—but it locked eventually.
[SNAPMAW – CLASS: MID-SIZE AQUATIC PURIFIER]
[VARIANT: STANDARD | BLAST CONFIGURATION: CHILLWATER SACS INTACT]
[WEAK POINTS: CHILLWATER SAC (Freeze Detonation) / PURGEWATER CANISTERS / BLAZE BACKUP PORTS]
[LOOT TARGET: JAW ASSEMBLY – FULL SALVAGE REQUIRED]
I exhaled through my nose and studied the projected outline. Chainsaw mandible, coolant gullet, Blaze canisters bolted near the shoulder blades—older configuration. That was good. No Metalbite. No Glowblast. No Apex signature. This one was from the original run—maybe even pre-Derangement if I was lucky. Meant the canisters were still Blaze-based, not Purgewater or worse.
I glanced back toward the remains of the old bridge. The Snapmaw had swum in from beneath it—maybe using it as a den. It made sense. The shade, the metal, the old rebar—it had thermal sink potential. Good cover. Good ambush zone.
I ran a hand along the edge of the Railwhistle's receiver, then flipped open the side port. The custom spike clinked into place with a weighty, satisfying thunk. Machine-bone salvaged from Newton. Not precision-forged, but enough velocity and this thing would punch straight through plating.
This wasn't going to be like the Reaver fight.
The Snapmaw wouldn't scream or mock. It wouldn't hesitate or study my stance. It would lunge the second I moved wrong. Freeze projectiles. Tail strikes. Full-body leaps. And in water, it would be faster than me.
That meant I had one chance.
Lure it to land. Wait for the charge. Make the shot.
The Snapmaw surfaced slow—like it didn't need to prove anything.
I saw the head first. Sleek, angular. The twin optics flared gold as it scanned the bank, nostrils just above the waterline, jawline cutting a ripple across the shallows. Then the rest followed. A low, serpentine rise of black-and-chrome plating, shimmering with dew and grime. Its back gleamed—panels catching sun in staggered flashes.
Solar panels. Not just armor. Energy harvesters. Integrated across the spine in tight, interlocking plates.
I crouched lower and kept my silhouette tight against the ridge rock.
The thing climbed partway onto a sloped rock shelf, then stilled. Just lay there—tail half in the water, shoulder plates rising and falling with its breathing simulation.
I studied it.
The Chillwater sac bulged beneath its throat, pale blue and twitching with each shift. That was the bomb. One clean shot, and it would freeze itself. Maybe drop in place. Maybe flail. But I had to hit it just right.
The Blaze canisters sat on either shoulder. Older model. No Purgewater, no Apex variance. That was good. If the thing got spooked and turned broadside, I had options.
But none of that would matter if it made it back into the deep water.
I adjusted the Railwhistle again. Scoped the arc. The wind cut left, but the air was still. No birds. No Watchers. Just this thing and the sound of distant water breaking over fractured concrete.
I remembered what the Focus said back in the ruins.
[WARNING: FROST EXPLOSION – AREA DENIAL]
[DO NOT ENGAGE IN CLOSE QUARTERS POST-DET]
[AVOID BINDING IN WATER – DEATH ROLL PROBABLE]
Yeah.
No hero dives. No binding wire. Just pressure, angle, and violence.
I brought the Railwhistle up.
Exhaled.
And waited for the Snapmaw to blink.
I took the shot.
No wind-up. No warning. Just a breath, a twitch, and the Railwhistle screamed.
The spike punched into the Snapmaw's shoulder with a crack like a dropped anvil. For a second, nothing. Just a loud impact and a twitch of armor.
Then it exploded.
A jet of fire ripped out from the side of the machine. The Blaze canister burst in a flash of heat and pressure, molten fuel spraying in a wide arc across the rocks. The Snapmaw howled—loud, glitchy, pissed—thrashing sideways and back into the water like it had been stung by lightning.
I flinched behind the edge of a rock shelf, heat still rolling off the impact zone. Steam hissed up from the water, misting the air.
I blinked. Glanced down at the Railwhistle.
The barrel was still smoking. The spike housing glowed faint red near the chamber seal.
Wait.
Blaze canister. Rail spike.
I stared for a beat longer.
Then it clicked.
"They come out hot."
Of course they did. I remembered it now—back in the games, hitting Blaze canisters with fire or high-heat rounds always triggered a blast. Wasn't just impact. It was temperature. The Railwhistle spike wasn't just fast—it was scorching.
I grinned and shook my head.
"Well, that's gonna be useful."
The spike hissed into place. Steam curled from the Railwhistle's vent like it was exhaling. I stayed low behind the ridge, watching the Snapmaw thrash in the shallows. Its damaged shoulder spit sparks, the Blaze canister venting smoke and pressure like a punctured boiler.
I glanced down at the rifle. The metal near the muzzle still glowed faint red.
Didn't even need fire arrows. Just the spike's heat.
I smirked. That was going to save time.
Back in the old world—my world—Aloy had to do it the long way. Gather Blaze. Craft special arrows. Swap them in mid-fight. Aim for the tank and hope the timing worked. It wasn't bad. It worked. Blaze arrows were solid. But this? This was easier.
Hot spike. Pressurized fuel. Boom.
No prep. No menu. Just pressure and pull.
I moved right, keeping low, steps light over slick rock. The Snapmaw spun in the water, tail slamming sideways into a half-submerged boulder. Its gullet puffed, the Freeze sac bulging under its throat. It was about to get mean.
I raised the Railwhistle again. The barrel hissed. Steam pressure steady.
The Snapmaw thrashed below, tail whipping through the water, optics burning with focused rage. The fire was out, but the damage was done—and now it knew exactly where I was.
The Snapmaw reared back.
Its optics narrowed. The damaged shoulder spat a gout of steam. The whole machine went low for half a second—like it was drawing breath—and then it launched.
Not a lunge. Not a splash.
A full-body leap.
I moved.
Boots scraped rock as I dove sideways off the ridge just in time to hear the impact behind me.
The Snapmaw hit the ledge like a wrecking ball. Stone exploded under its weight. Chunks of slate and shale burst outward as it landed, jaws snapping, tail coiled for another swing.
It had aimed for where I was.
Not where I was going.
I hit the slope hard and rolled, armor grinding over rock, shoulder catching on a root just sharp enough to bruise. The helmet took most of it. Heads-up display flickered once and stabilized.
When I stopped, I came up in a crouch. Railwhistle still in hand. Pressure stable.
The Snapmaw turned, claws tearing furrows through the gravel. Its optics burned red-gold through the morning haze. It hadn't missed by much.
But it had missed.
I straightened slightly, shook the sting from my left wrist, and muttered inside the helmet.
"Not bad."
The Snapmaw let out a roar that shook my ribs.
Challenge accepted.
I rose with the rifle already braced.
The Snapmaw was turning toward me, tail swaying wide, limbs digging into the stone like it meant to leap again.
I didn't give it the chance.
Brought the Railwhistle up, sighted the opposite shoulder—where the second Blaze canister sat nestled between reinforced plates—and pulled the trigger.
The spike screamed through the air and hit off-center.
Not the tank.
But something.
The impact rang out like a snapped girder. Sparks burst from the Snapmaw's spine. One of the resource containers on its back tore loose with the force of the hit—ripped straight from the mounting bolts and sent tumbling down the rocks in a clatter of metal and coolant hiss.
The Snapmaw reeled sideways, limbs scrambling for balance.
I adjusted my grip and exhaled, watching the reservoir container bounce once and vanish into the water with a splash.
"Missed," I muttered. "Still counts."
The Snapmaw shook violently, trying to reorient. One shoulder vented smoke now. Its stride was uneven. Not crippled—but disrupted.
If nothing else, the Railwhistle's ability to tear off machine components was definitely above spec.
Good to know.
I slung the Railwhistle and reached for the other rig.
The Iron Bind.
Heavy. Crude. Brutally simple.
I snapped the launcher into position, pulled a barbed cord from the magwell, and locked it with a sharp twist. The Snapmaw was still stumbling, one container gone, sparks trailing from its back.
I aimed low—just behind the front limb, into the thicker muscle cluster where weight met movement—and fired.
The cord snapped out with a violent hiss, the barbed head punching into the machine's side. It drove deep. The spike bit through plating, then deployed, the tether yanking tight as the anchor claw gripped into the stone behind me.
The Snapmaw reared back and lunged.
I didn't move.
It hit the end of the tether mid-leap. The Iron Bind screamed under tension, the cord going tight with a whiplash crack.
The Snapmaw jerked backward, momentum killed in an instant. Its claws skidded over the rock. Jaws snapped shut inches from where I'd been.
It roared in frustration, tail flailing, limbs churning in place like it didn't understand why the world had stopped moving.
I watched it twist against the line, muscles straining, cords groaning with the sound of flexed steel.
The Snapmaw thrashed against the tether, jaws snapping, tail carving trenches into the rock as it tried to twist free.
The Iron Bind held.
Tension screamed down the line, every muscle in the machine flexing against the cord. It wasn't giving. Not yet.
I watched it jerk and strain, then let my eyes flick down to the weapon in my hands.
The Iron Bind didn't carry as many shots as the Ropecasters I remembered—Nora and Carja rigs could fire off a dozen lines before needing a reset. Lightweight. High capacity.
But they didn't hold like this.
Every shot from the Iron Bind was heavier, thicker, loaded with barbed teeth and anchored tension coils. Less rope. More prison.
Fair trade.
I shifted my stance, keeping the line taut as the Snapmaw kept pulling, its movements slowing with every second it failed to break loose.
"Keep fighting," I muttered. "See how far it gets you."
The Snapmaw jerked once more—hard enough to rattle the cord but not break it. The anchor dragged two inches, then stopped. Locked again.
I raised my other hand and reached for the Railwhistle.
Pinned and pissed off.
Time to finish what I started.
I didn't go for the Railwhistle.
Not yet.
Instead, I dropped the Iron Bind to hang slack from the harness and reached over my shoulder for Windspine.
The bow slid into my hand like it belonged there. Light. Fast. Familiar in a way the rifle never was.
The Snapmaw strained again, but slower now—its movements restricted, the tether biting deeper with every twist. It was stuck. Off-balance. Exposed.
I drew an arrow and lined the shot.
One of the remaining containers on its back sat crooked after the earlier hit—half-torn, plating bent, ready to come loose. I loosed.
The arrow snapped through the air and punched into the weld seam. Sparks kicked. The Snapmaw shrieked and recoiled.
I drew another. Fired again.
This one struck lower—tore clean through the container's bracket. The entire unit ripped free and clanged down the rocks before rolling into the shallow pool below.
I shifted right, keeping pace, another arrow already nocked.
The benefit of a bow wasn't power. It was speed.
The Snapmaw couldn't keep up. Every time it turned, I moved. Every time it tried to brace, I took another shot. Container after container tore loose, dropping coolant, fragments, or vaporized fluid in a trail behind it.
Windspine hummed in my hands. The line trembled, but it wasn't from strain.
It was rhythm.
I stepped left again. Nocked a fresh arrow.
Just one container left.
Then the real target.
The sac.
The last container tore free with a satisfying snap of sinew and metal. The Snapmaw howled, staggered, tail dragging like it had finally realized the fight wasn't going its way.
I drew again, this time aiming lower.
The Chillwater sac pulsed beneath its gullet—large, exposed, twitching with every breath simulation. I could've spared it. Could've gone for a clean kill and kept the resource.
But Chillwater?
That was everywhere.
Almost every machine carried some version of it. Chill sacs. Coolant lines. Dispersal tanks. I didn't need this one.
But I did need the machine to stop moving.
I loosed.
The arrow struck dead center.
The sac exploded in a flash of white mist and shrapnel ice. Frost shot out in a radius, coating the Snapmaw's chest and left flank. The roar that followed was half-audible, half-system feedback. Metal groaned as plates locked up from the sudden freeze.
It slumped forward, limbs jittering.
I nocked one final arrow. No flair. No trick. Just aim.
I drew and fired into the exposed neck seam.
The arrow buried itself with a wet, mechanical crack.
The Snapmaw collapsed.
Not gracefully. Not in pieces. Just all at once—like the system finally decided it had enough.
I held still, bow half-lowered, eyes on the body.
No twitch. No surge. No follow-up.
It was done.
I exhaled inside the helmet and straightened.
"Good fight," I muttered. "Now stay down."
I approached the body slowly, bow still in hand, just in case.
No twitch.
No reboot cycle. No final lunge.
The Snapmaw was dead.
Up close, the thing was massive. Twice my length snout to tail, and heavy in a way that didn't translate from a distance. Its armor was already frosting over from the burst sac, fine mist still rising off the joints.
I holstered the bow and crouched near the shoulder.
The lens was intact. Good.
The jaw assembly took some prying, but it came loose after a few solid minutes—snapped free with a wet metallic crack, leaving cables and coolant hanging like shredded tendons. The Focus chimed softly as it registered the kill objective.
[Bounty Condition: MET – Jaw Assembly Acquired]
[Optional Bonus: MET – Snapmaw Lens Intact]
[Payout Tier: Full]
I nodded to myself and tapped the Nanoboy.
The panel opened. Mist spilled.
I slid the lens and jaw inside. Watched the light compress the parts down to shimmering lines of data and metal. Then I opened the rest of the inventory.
Junk.
Half of it was salvage from the bunker I should've dumped hours ago. Charred vent hatches. Melted dataport housing. A vending machine coin tray. I didn't even remember grabbing that one.
I sighed and started purging.
Piece after piece vanished in flickers of static and metallic sand. The weight dropped line by line. The pressure on my back eased.
By the time I was done, I'd cleared almost eighty pounds.
I kept the machine parts—the core plating, the joint servos, the hydraulic clamps. The stuff Ubba could melt down or rebuild into something that screamed. Everything else went.
Hoarding machine salvage? That was smart.
Trash hauling? That was just being stupid with extra steps.
I sealed the Nanoboy and stood.
Bounty completed. Load lightened. Parts secured.
I gave the Snapmaw's body one last look and turned toward the path back west.
The walk back was quicker.
Same ridges. Same mud-choked trails. But now I knew where to step. Where the stone held. Where the slope dipped. The map was in my legs, and my legs moved cleaner.
The Snapmaw's jaw and lens were tucked away. The Nanoboy rode lighter after the purge. No more clatter. No more strain.
It made a difference.
The weight still sat across my shoulders, but it wasn't deadweight anymore. It was purpose. Something the Ironbone could use. Something that mattered.
The sky stayed low and grey as I moved west. No machines. No travelers. Just the quiet rhythm of my boots against packed dirt and old-world ruin.
I passed the broken bridge again on the return.
Didn't stop this time.
Didn't need to.
Whatever ghosts had lingered there could wait. I had Shards coming.
By the time Ironwood Grove's outer glyph posts came into view, the sun had started to burn through the haze. The forge smoke rising from the Pile in the distance caught the light, curling gold and black across the sky.
Home—if I ever had one.
I reached the outer gate just as the first bell sounded from the watchtower.
The guards were already posted—two Kansani, both in light travel harnesses and ash-marked paint. One had a poleaxe resting across his shoulders. The other stood straight as a war post, eyes locked on my approach the moment I crested the ridge.
He stepped forward, hand raised.
"Hold."
I did.
He eyed the helmet. I didn't blame him.
It was newer. Sealed. Tinted lens. The kind of headgear that didn't belong to the average scavver. To them, I probably looked like another outsider trying to sneak in with tech I hadn't earned.
I didn't say anything. Just waited.
The second guard circled wide, keeping a ten-foot perimeter as he scanned my gear. He stopped short of the Nanoboy, eyes narrowing at the wrist port.
The first one spoke again, voice even.
"Remove the helmet."
I hesitated just long enough to make a point, then reached up and unclasped the seals. The hiss of air release cut through the morning quiet. I pulled it off and let them see my face.
Recognition clicked a second later.
"The one from the Spine," the second guard said. "Sula vouched for him."
The first one nodded, easing off the line.
"Didn't recognize the new shell. You got a name, outsider?"
"Rion," I said.
He gave a short nod.
"We'll remember it."
I resealed the helmet and passed through without another word.
The grove opened around me. Smoke curled from chimneys. Traders haggled under canvas flaps. A few kids darted between wood pillars with scraps of wire and bark in their hands. No one gave me a second glance now.
I turned toward Tarn's shack.
Time to log the kill and collect my Shards.
I didn't walk straight to Tarn's shack.
He didn't know about the Nanoboy, and I wasn't about to explain it. Too many questions. Too much tech.
So I ducked into a narrow alley between two storage sheds, made sure no one was watching, and tapped the wrist module.
[NANOBOY: SECURE EXTRACTION – SNAPMAW JAW ASSEMBLY]
The panel hissed open. Vapor curled out. A shimmer of compressed mass reformed into solid steel and polyalloy with a quiet click.
The Snapmaw jaw dropped into my hand. Heavy. Still streaked with coolant and claw residue. I checked the bracket seam for cracks, wiped it down once, then slid it into the carry loop on my hip like I'd walked it out of the basin myself.
I stepped back onto the main path and walked through the market's edge until I hit the shack.
The door creaked open. Same musty smell. Same smoke-threaded air. Tarn looked up from his ledger, chewing the same strip of pepperroot like it had never left his mouth.
His eye caught the jaw immediately.
Then it drifted over me. Blood, grime, the scar visible through the collar. One of the coat buckles still scorched.
He chewed once more, then gave a small nod.
"Good."
I stepped forward and dropped the jaw onto the table beside the stamped tag.
"Bounty complete," I said.
Tarn took the tag, checked the glyphs, then reached beneath the counter.
The payout pouch hit the wood with a satisfying clink.
He didn't speak at first.
Then: "You carry yourself different now. Like Jorta when he was young."
I said nothing.
He looked me over again—top to bottom. His gaze didn't rest on any one part, but I knew what he saw. Less hesitation. More weight.
"Jorta was one of mine," he said. "Before the machines went mad."
His voice was even, but there was a note under it—something older than pride, heavier than grief.
"Trained him myself. He was fire, even then. But he was aimed."
He tapped the table once—soft, deliberate.
"Aimed at the Legion. At something that needed burning."
Then he looked at me.
"You've got the same spark. But not the same direction."
I didn't reply.
He nodded once.
"The world doesn't need a wildfire. It needs a controlled burn."
Then he pushed the pouch toward me.
"Figure out what you're meant to scorch."
I took the Shards without a word.
Tarn leaned back, already scribbling in his ledger again.
I stepped out into the daylight.
One job done.
One fire still waiting.
Tarn didn't know the half of it.
The dangers out here weren't just things with claws and glowing eyes. Some enemies didn't scream. They didn't even breathe. They waited. And when they moved, it was with the silence of rot and the arrogance of memory.
The Worm wasn't just a cult. It was a process—calculated, systemic, cold. I'd seen Moth-Eater's logs. The way he recorded his victims like chemical reactions. No names. No sorrow. Just failure rates and physical responses. He didn't see people—he saw material. But I'd bet my left arm he wasn't alone. Not a chance.
This was a pattern. One lab beneath Kansas. If I used Walker's map I'd bet I would find another. A hundred more buried under broken cities and cratered vaults. Sealed places filled with the desperate and forgotten. I could see it clearly now: someone always slips in. Someone always finds a way to turn survival into a scalpel. They wait for the panic, then start cutting.
The Worm didn't endure the apocalypse.
They waited for it to end.
They waited for the Faro swarm to burn itself out. For GAIA to rebuild the world into something green again. They needed soil, clean air, stable systems—and once she gave them that, they crawled out of their holes like locusts. Not to live in the new world.
To feed on it.
And the Enclave? No different.
They didn't dig in to weather the fire. They buried themselves to wait it out. Waited for GAIA to reforge the Earth—so they could reclaim it without lifting a finger. They want the future clean. Obedient. Soft enough to mold back into flags and hierarchy and dead ideals. They don't want to rebuild. They want to overwrite.
And Far Zeniths… they didn't wait. They ran.
They abandoned Earth, called themselves gods, and built a kingdom in the stars. And like every empire made of ego and fear, they ruined it. Burned their paradise to ash with their own decadence and arrogance. And now they're back—not in shame, not in repentance. They're here to pick Earth clean. Strip GAIA's work down to meat and memory, take whatever shines brightest, and vanish again when the bones are picked dry.
That was always the plan.
Let the system heal itself—then harvest it like a carcass.
The Worm. The Enclave. The Zeniths.
Different names. Same hunger.
And me? I was just one torch. One flame on the line between what survives and what gets devoured.
But I wasn't alone anymore.
Jorta was healing. Sula was sharper than ever. The Ironbone were building weapons with names and weight. And my blood was no longer dormant.
They wanted a second garden.
When I formed my Brotherhood.
We were going to show them the flaming sword.