I need some ideas on creating book covers. It for a LitRPG/isekai. My question; do you think the focus should be the MC, the abilities, an enemy, important scenery, the UI stating class and such, or something completely different? I've tried looking for inspiration from different covers out there, there is such a variety, not sure which avenue to take. Also, is there a certain type of art style people prefer with this genre? I plan on breaking out the sketch pad and drawing it up myself, just needed some ideas.

Many of us never really realized they wanted to write, until they get that creative spark. That spark is usually triggered by something external, maybe someone or something. For me it was online audio series. Some of these require the use of AI. The use AI as there voices. They force you to use it to create covers. It's encouraged by the algorithm to use it to create enough episodes to meet the demand. So many who start this way may see it as the status quo, and not even realize that many find it disgusting, tasteless, cheap, a cheat, and effortless. We are capable of doing things either way, but we are led to believe by certain platforms that it's ok and needed. Just, some food for thought.

Chapter 1

The stairwell from the goblin warrens twisted downward, extending far longer than Cooper expected. As he descended, the air shifted from the heavy, organic stink of garlic and burnt meat to a sharp, metallic scent of vinegar and iron. Tick crawled up to perch on Cooper’s shoulder, his brass eyes clicking as they adjusted to the gloom.
“Smells like a stink bug's ass,” the cog goblin noted.
Cooper ignored him, though his boot caught on a loose pebble and sent it rattling into the dark. The stairs eventually gave way to a hand-dug tunnel carved straight into the earth. Lacking the stone walls of the floor above, the passageway was reinforced by thick wooden beams that creaked under the weight of the overhead soil. At the end stood a wooden door marked with a crude, carved number two. When Cooper pushed against it, the hinges groaned, allowing a draft of cold air to swirl through the gap before he stepped inside.
The chamber opened into a vast valley of dry earth and carved trenches. Cooper stopped just beyond the doorway, struck by how the immense, open space dwarfed the cramped halls he had just left. The ground stretched outward in long ridges and shallow valleys, scarred by deep, organized trenches that ran across the field in precise rows.
Tick leaned forward, staring at the horizon. "Well, the view is better," he muttered.
Across the valley, tall structures fashioned from hardened insect shells rose above the dirt. Curved plates had been layered to form towers that overlooked the network of trenches, while banners stitched from molted bug wings hung between them, rattling softly in the dry wind. The ground was packed hard from constant, heavy movement, and the paths running between the trenches suggested a military precision entirely unlike the chaotic junkyard above. Tick studied the towers, his ears twitching.
“That’s not just an infestation," he said, gesturing toward the field. “That’s a full-blown army. I hope you brought some bug spray, Brick.”
An ant soldier pulled itself onto a ridge, followed by a steady stream of others. They moved in rhythmic, disciplined rows, each carrying a stinger-tipped spear and wearing snail-shell shields strapped to their forearms. In the distance, a bugle played a charge song that rolled across the flat dirt, prompting the soldiers to immediately gear up. Some took positions along the dugout edges while others descended ladders into the trenches, and a patrol unit began navigating toward the outer perimeter.
Tick climbed higher on Cooper’s shoulder to squint across the valley. “They are more organized than your Playboy collection,” he cracked.
Cooper crouched down, keeping his profile low as he spotted two soldiers taking positions atop a shell tower while another group hauled crates along the trench line. Tick pointed at them. “Wonder what they’re carrying.”
The bugle blared again, this time playing a melody that sounded distinctly like Danger Zone. The soldiers reacted instantly: two patrols turned in the opposite direction, while another group moved to secure one of the trenches. Tick scratched his chin. “Was that the song from—?”
Cooper moved along the dirt ridge, keeping low and silent. Tick leaned close to his ear, his voice barely a breath. “Do not let the buggers see us, Brick.”
The valley was carved with three parallel defensive lines, each reinforced with hard-packed dirt and sturdy wooden braces. Tick glanced back toward the doorway they had exited. “That goblin floor was chaos,” he whispered, gesturing toward the army. “This is a military-grade infestation.”
Another tune echoed, and soldiers formed rows along the ridge of the nearest trench. They were close enough now that Cooper could see the fine, etched markings on their armor.
Tick lowered his voice further. “If they find us, we’ll be a picnic.”
Cooper slid down the ridge toward the nearest trench, using the dirt wall as cover. His knee scraped against a sharp root, tearing his pants, but he didn't stop until he reached the edge, where voices drifted up from below. Tick froze and held up a hand. “Listen, Brick.”
Inside the trench, a line of soldiers stood at attention. An ant officer, his armor darker than the rest, paced slowly in front of them with a narrow baton carved from bone.
“Roll call,” the officer commanded.
The soldiers sounded off in sequence: "Harris!" "Collins!" "Redd!"
“Here!”
“Sir!”
“Present!”
The officer’s voice sharpened as he reached the next name. “Private Ryan.”
Silence followed. The officer exhaled slowly, repeating the name, but still received no answer. He sighed, waiting until a soldier named Private Pyle slowly raised his hand.
“Sir?”
“Yes?” the officer asked.
“I think Ryan wandered off again,” Pyle said, scratching the back of his head.
A larger, muscular ant, Sergeant Rambo, stepped forward. “He didn’t just wander off; he disappeared. We’ve been looking for him all week.”
Rambo turned toward Pyle, his voice booming. "Now listen to me, Private Pyle. You are no longer a maggot; you have just been promoted to the rank of the dumbest soldier in history."
Pyle grinned. “Thank you, sir. I’ve been trying really hard.”
The other soldiers chuckled, but the officer rubbed his head in frustration. “Private Pyle, I’ve always believed that the mind is the best weapon, but you're so dense, you could be a modern art piece. Roll call continues.”
Tick whispered, “This unit has serious management problems.”
Cooper remained crouched beside the ridge as the roll call continued, but the mood shifted instantly when a soldier near the end of the trench looked up. Its eyes locked onto Cooper’s position; the ant froze, then slowly raised an arm to point.

What are everyone's thoughts on novel covers created by AI?

Are they recognizable and disliked like most of the writing?

Has anyone had any positive or negative positions on it?

Has anyone had any luck using them?

Is it better to use a standard normal cover?

Do people look at them and think it's just filled with AI writing?

Are there certain styles that work better?

Are there certain styles that work well with certain genres?

What are everyone's thoughts on novel covers created by AI?

Are they recognizable and disliked like most of the writing?

Has anyone had any positive or negative positions on it?

Has anyone had any luck using them?

Is it better to use a standard normal cover?

Do people look at them and think it's just filled with AI writing?

Are there certain styles that work better?

Are there certain styles that work well with certain genres?

What are everyone's thoughts on novel covers created by AI?

Are they recognizable and disliked like most of the writing?

Has anyone had any positive or negative positions on it?

Has anyone had any luck using them?

Is it better to use a standard normal cover?

Do people look at them and think it's just filled with AI writing?

Are there certain styles that work better?

Are there certain styles that work well with certain genres?

So I was an artist before ever thinking of writing. I just recently started writing. I am good with a pen and pencil, but I can't use that for book covers. Can't afford a big investment. Any ideas would be appreciated.

What are everyone's thoughts on novel covers created by AI?

Are they recognizable and disliked like most of the writing?

Has anyone had any positive or negative positions on it?

Has anyone had any luck using them?

Is it better to use a standard normal cover?

Do people look at them and think it's just filled with AI writing?

Are there certain styles that work better?

Are there certain styles that work well with certain genres?

Feedback, please, and Thankyou.

• At what sentence or paragraph did you first become invested?
• At what sentence or paragraph did you first think about stopping?
• What made you keep reading?
• What confused you, if anything?
• Did the narrator (the MC/the blade) feel unique and interesting?
• Did the fight hold your attention?
• Would you read Chapter 3? Why or why not?
• If you could change one thing about Chapter 1 or 2, what would it be?

PROLOGUE — BREACHFALL

The night the sky split, nobody called it an evolution.

They called it terrorism at first. Then invasion. Then war. By Sunday evening, most people had stopped trying to name it.

The power grids went dark first, city by city. After that, the horizons split open. A strange fog spilled out of the breaks. It had color in it when light hit it, and it smelled like copper and wet concrete.

Rifts appeared across every global capital at the same time. They were tears in open air. They did not spread slowly. They arrived, and the world changed around them. Human civilization did not decline. It broke over one weekend.

People named five types later, once enough survivors had time to compare what had happened.

Beast Rifts released monsters into the streets. Essence Rifts filled the air with Flux, a volatile energy that changed whatever it touched for too long. Void Rifts distorted space and damaged minds. Gate Rifts opened into places that did not follow our physics. Anchor Rifts drove deep into the earth and held the whole broken system in place.

Billions died in the first wave.

That should have been the end of them.

It was not.

When the Flux settled over the dead, it started reading what was left. Not thoughts. Not memories in full. Just the last hard impression left at the moment of death. Fear. anger. hunger. protection. refusal. need.

Then it used the bodies.

Violent people became beasts. Protective people became weapons or armor. Intellectuals became artifacts full of stored information and strange functions. The result did not care what anyone had wanted before they died. It only used what was strongest at the end.

Most people fit somewhere.

I did not.

Before the world ended, I was a night-shift security guard. I was not a soldier. I was not trained for any of it. I died in a crowded stairwell while trying to hold a fire door shut.

There were people behind me. Maybe twelve. Maybe more. I remember shoes on concrete, hands on the railings, someone crying too loudly, and the door jumping against my shoulder each time the thing on the other side hit it.

My feet kept slipping.

The metal was hot near the hinges.

My hands hurt from gripping the frame.

Then the door gave way.

I did not wake up as a man.

I woke up as a weapon.

I could not breathe because there were no lungs. I could not move because there were no arms or legs. I could feel metal instead of skin. Long metal. Cold metal. A hard central spine, a sharpened edge, a point, a grip wrapped around the part where a hand should hold me.

The edge felt wrong. Too sensitive. Every scrape of dirt against it registered. Every shift of my own weight felt slow and heavy. I was lying on something uneven, probably broken concrete, and I could feel small pieces of grit stuck against the blade.

There was also hunger.

Not in a stomach. I did not have one. It sat inside the metal and pulled at everything near me. It wanted warmth. Movement. A hand. A body. A way to act.

Because I had died where a Beast Rift and an Essence Rift overlapped, the transformation did not finish cleanly. The system tried to classify me more than once. Weapon. Beast. Something else. It failed to settle on one result.

In the end, it marked me as an anomaly.

Multi-Form Cursed Relic.

CHAPTER 1 — THE BEAST WITH THE BLADE

The air inside the concrete intake tunnel tasted of wet lime and old zinc. Moisture clung to the cracked walls and gathered on the ceiling. Drops fell onto the rusted iron grating below with flat clicks.

Three years of Rift exposure had turned the old water treatment plant into a swamp. Gray vines pushed through the concrete. Some were as thick as a human thigh. Stiff bristles covered their surface. They wrapped around turbines, cut through old wiring, and forced roots into the brickwork.

Six hunters moved through the sludge in a tight group.

They did not look clean or rested. The man in the center, Miller, had greasy canvas tied around his left bicep. Blood had soaked through it and kept dripping into the water around his boots. The team still held formation, but the front was open. Their shield man was gone. His harness lay back in the corridor, chewed through at the rivets.

“Aether is at twelve percent,” the tracker said.

She kept her eyes on the ventilation shafts above them. Her fingers were tight around her carbine. “Vance, pressure’s rising. If the green gate doesn’t clear in four minutes, the flux will start hitting our lungs.”

“Shut up and check the corners,” Vance said.

He did not raise his voice. His hand stayed near the revolver at his hip. His thumb kept rubbing the hammer. His personal shield generator gave off a weak orange glow.

“The core payout covers burial fees for Miller’s kid and the scout,” he said. “We’re not leaving the loot in the moss.”

They crossed a collapsed retaining wall. Their boots scraped over grit and wet brick.

None of them looked up.

They had come in expecting something big. A brute. A charger. Something that would run straight into a firing line. The claw marks near the highway had made them think that.

They were wrong.

The beast hung above them.

Its weight was spread across three old iron support bars. Its shoulders were too large for the rest of its body. The front half carried most of the mass. The rear legs were short and bent tight under it. Its hide was charcoal gray, dry in some patches and wet in others. Its head sat low between its shoulders. No real neck. Small eyes. Wide jaw.

In its right paw, it held me.

Three thick fingers pinned my hilt against its palm. The claws pressed into the wire wrap instead of closing around it properly. My blade was crude. Dark steel. Uneven edge. Jagged spine. Too many rough spots where the metal had not settled cleanly. Steel Fang was sharp, but not refined. The edge had chips that were not quite chips. The balance was wrong unless a wielder forced it.

The beast did not care.

It did not look at me. It did not look at the black fluid leaking from its ribs. Its eyes followed the tracker’s carbine as the hunters moved into the next chamber.

A simple Beast Rift creature would have roared and dropped into the middle of them.

This one waited.

It had old scars across its left shoulder. A human blade had split the skin there once and failed to reach bone. It shifted on the beam in small uneven movements. Its rear legs pushed. Its shoulders caught the weight. One claw moved. Then another. It kept stopping before the iron could creak.

Below, the hunters widened into a wedge.

Vance stayed low. His revolver cleared the corner before his boots did. He was looking for a brute. He was not looking behind him.

The beast’s jaw opened slightly. A wet hiss stayed low in its throat. Its lower fangs stuck past the lip even when the mouth closed. It stretched its left arm down and dragged its claws through moss to steady itself.

The connection between us did not give me sight the way eyes would. I did not see the chamber clearly. I felt contact, pressure, heat, and movement. I felt the beast’s palm around my grip. I felt grit under my edge. I felt drops hitting metal below. I felt boots through brick and standing water.

I also felt the beast dying.

Its Aether sat inside it as a thick hot mass, but there were holes in it now. For three weeks, it had carried me through the Deadland Corridor. It had used me against other beasts and scavenger packs. Every time it swung me, I made it faster. I gave the edge more bite. I let it cut bone, hide, armor, and shell.

Every time, I took payment.

The hunters thought the beast was slowing because they had injured it.

They were wrong.

The muscles along its shoulders were drying out. Its joints were late to respond. The heat in its chest was not normal strain. It was soul-burn. The cost did not change because the hand around my hilt belonged to a Rift beast instead of a human.

The beast’s eyes leaked black fluid. Its lungs worked badly. Its back legs shook when it shifted on the beam.

Drop me, I thought.

It could not understand me.

Let go.

Its claws tightened around the wire wrap.

The last hunter cleared the pillar.

The beast dropped.

It landed behind Miller in the silt. The sound was low and dull. Miller started to turn.

The beast swung.

Steel Fang moved with the paw. I felt the grip twist. I felt the poor angle. I felt my rough edge catch, bite, then tear through. Miller lifted his short blade on instinct. It did not matter. My edge went through the reinforced sleeve, then through bone and meat to the elbow.

His hand hit the floor still holding the tactical blade.

Miller did not scream right away. He hit a pipe, looked at the stump, and opened his mouth. Gray spit ran over his lower lip.

“Behind us!” Vance shouted.

He did not look at Miller’s arm.

His revolver was already up.

Three shots cracked through the chamber. Glass broke in the old monitors overhead.

The slugs hit the beast’s left flank. Flesh burst open in wet chunks. Pale ribs showed under the gray skin. The beast slid two feet across the wet floor, rear legs scraping for grip.

The tracker fired twice while backing toward the green gate. Her rounds hit the raised neck and left smoking holes.

Vance held position. His thumb reset the hammer. His face had gone gray under the grease paint.

“Get him up!” he shouted. “Get him through the gate. Now!”

The beast stayed low near the intake valve. Its arms hung down until the claws scraped brick. It did not feel the holes in its ribs. Pain had stopped reaching the right places.

It tried to spring again.

The rear legs failed.

Inside the hilt, the connection went thin. The beast’s Aether reservoir dropped under the usable line. Then it kept dropping. I was pulling from empty reserves now.

The beast staggered forward. Its shoulders sank. The skin along its spine turned pale gray. The cracks around its joints dried and flaked. Greasy vapor came from its mouth. It smelled of burnt meat and hot iron.

“It’s falling!” Vance yelled. He snapped a new cylinder into the revolver. “I hit something important. Tracker, flank it. Keep firing. Don’t let it recover.”

The tracker raised her carbine toward the beast’s eyes.

They still thought they were killing it.

The beast forced its fingers around my hilt again. The claws cut into its own palm. Its thoughts were simple. Kill. Eat. Move. Survive.

Stop, I thought.

It did not stop.

It dragged my edge through a vine and swung at Vance’s throat.

The swing was wide. Too wide. Its shoulder locked halfway through. The cut had power from body weight, not Aether.

Vance could not outrun it. The sludge was too deep.

He dropped low.

He stepped inside the arc.

His left gauntlet snapped up and hit the flat of my blade.

There was no clean ring of metal.

The beast’s forearm snapped.

Its fingers opened. The claws peeled back. My hilt tore free from the ruined palm. I spun twice through the wet air and struck a rotting timber beam. My point sank three inches into the wood.

Without me, the beast had nothing left.

It stayed upright for one second. Its upper body pulled it forward. Black smoke poured from its mouth.

The tracker moved under its arms and drove her knife up beneath its jaw. The blade punched through the top of its skull.

The beast fell into a rusted pipe. Metal screamed under the weight. Dark fluid spread across the floorboards and reached the timber beam where I was stuck.

The gate stabilized.

Green light filled the chamber. Mist twisted along the ceiling. Water kept ticking against the turbine.

Vance leaned against a concrete pillar. His left arm hung numb. His right hand stayed near his revolver.

“Miller’s stable,” the tracker said.

Her voice shook. She pulled the tourniquet tighter with her teeth. Miller’s blood covered her sleeves. “Pulse is shallow. If we don’t get him through the gate in three minutes, the pressure will make his blood toxic.”

She dragged Miller toward the portal. His boots left dark ruts in the moss.

Vance looked at them.

Then he looked at me.

My Steel Fang form did not shine under the green light. The steel was too dark and too uneven. The edge was jagged. The spine had rough raised sections. The hilt wrap was stained and cut in several places. I looked crude. Useful, maybe, but not valuable to anyone careful.

The moss around my blade turned black and crumbled into dust.

The monster’s fluid stopped short of my hilt. It dried into a hard ring around the beam.

“Look at that blade,” Vance said.

He stood slowly. His knees clicked when he moved. He walked toward me and kept his eyes on the hilt.

“Vance, leave it,” the tracker said. “Hearthpoint quarantine won’t clear an unclassified relic without a hold. We don’t have the credit.”

“The quarantine teams don’t see what happens inside the tunnels,” Vance said.

He stopped near my hilt. His fingers hovered over the wire wrap. “This thing split Grade-3 plate.”

“The beast’s wrist was rotten,” she said. “Look at the floor. It was dead before we hit it. Come on.”

Vance did not look back.

His hand came down.

His fingers closed around my hilt.

His palm was hot. Human. Stronger than the beast’s dying grip. His Aether was clean and mostly untouched.

The channels inside me opened.

[Bond Detected]

[Compatibility Anomaly Identified]

[Bond Level 1 Initiated]

My form did not change, but the balance did. The crude blade adjusted to his hand. The weight shifted through the hilt. I felt his grip tighten as three pounds of ugly steel became easier for him to move.

Vance gasped.

His shoulders straightened. His injured arm still hung useless, but he stopped paying attention to it. New speed entered his legs. He looked down at his hand and clenched his jaw.

“The gate, Vance!” the tracker screamed.

He moved.

Not carefully. Fast.

His boots cleared rubble in one jump. He crossed the chamber and shoved me through the leather loop at his belt. My edge cut the canvas of his trousers but missed skin.

He did not notice the blood starting from his nose.

He did not feel the twitch in his thumb where it touched my guard.

He thought he had found a prize.

He thought the strength belonged to him.

The green light closed around us.

The connection settled.

He would not make the morning outpost.

They never did.

CHAPTER 2 — STEEL FANG

The gate did not feel like walking through a door.

It squeezed Vance hard from every side and dropped him onto shale at the outpost. His knees hit first. His right hand stayed locked around my hilt. His left arm hung loose and useless.

The outpost smelled of sulfur, dirty wool, diesel exhaust, and old blood. Two armored transport rigs idled near the perimeter wire. Their engines shook the gravel under them. Rows of gray tents spread across the staging area, mixed with salvage stalls, ammunition crates, fuel drums, and racks of drying beast hide.

A warning siren groaned from a horn mounted near the center of camp.

Unstable Rift closure.

Three miles north.

Vance stayed on his knees for four breaths. Blood from his nose had dried over his mustache and caught gray dust from the flats. His fingers were still white around my wire wrap.

“Vance,” the tracker said.

She dropped Miller’s tactical harness onto a stack of empty ammunition crates. Her shoulder dipped under his weight. “Put the steel down. Gate-wardens are looking at the glow.”

Two men from a salvage crew stopped near one of the rigs. Both wore greasy leather aprons and welder’s goggles pushed up on their foreheads. Their eyes went to my hilt first. Then to the edge, where the beast’s blood had refused to stick.

“That’s no Grade-1 iron,” the taller worker said. He kept his hand back, but his eyes traced the jagged line of my blade. “Vance, what did you pull out of that hole?”

Vance forced himself up. His knees popped loudly enough that a guard by the perimeter gate turned to look.

He did not put me in the loop at his belt. His hand stayed on the handle. His thumb pressed against the flat guard.

“The titan’s core is in the sack,” Vance said.

His throat sounded scraped raw. He took two slow steps toward the medical tent. His boots dragged through the gravel. “The blade stays with the ledger.”

“It’s unclassified,” the tracker told the workers.

She dragged Miller’s boots across the shale. Her face looked pale under the grease paint. “Tell Corlen we need an Aether test before noon shift clears.”

Vance’s chest was cooling already.

I could feel it through his hand.

His pulse reached me in uneven knocks. Fast. Then slower. Then a pause too long to be safe. The Aether I had pulled from him during the gate crossing had settled badly in his body. His fingers were stiffening around my hilt because the tendons in his forearm were drying and locking.

Let go, I thought.

Put me down.

He did not.

Wielders almost never understood the first hour. To Vance, the numbness probably felt like normal Aether burnout. He thought food, water, and a cot would fix it. He thought the lighter balance in his hand meant compatibility.

It did not.

It meant I had room to draw more.

I could remember the others in the dark parts of my steel. The hunter who laughed when I split a brute’s skull. The scavenger who found me behind a collapsed diner. The boy who still had clean cheeks when he picked me up with both hands. They all held the hilt the same way. Too tight. Sweating. Thumb jammed against the guard.

Vance’s nose started bleeding again.

The line ran to his chin and dripped onto his coat.

You’re already gray, I thought.

You won’t cross the ditch.

The appraiser’s tent smelled of kerosene, wet dog, and old canvas.

A zinc-topped table stood in the center. Its surface was scarred by acid tests, blade cuts, and small relic needles. Wooden crates lined both sides of the tent. Corlen, the appraiser, had two fingers missing from his left hand and an iron-plated ledger chained to his belt.

He did not look at the titan core when Vance dropped the leather sack on the table.

He looked at me.

“That’s not from the Bronze list,” Corlen said.

He did not reach for the hilt. He took iron tongs from a drawer and tapped the flat of my blade.

The sound was dull.

“Where’s the registration stamp?”

“There isn’t one,” the tracker said from the tent flap.

She had changed her shirt, but blood still stained the skin around her nails. “It came out of the intake well. It split Miller’s guard, then the brute’s wrist. Vance wants it logged under personal salvage.”

“Personal salvage is for certified finds,” Corlen said.

His eyes moved to Vance’s face. Then to his hand. “This thing has an open draw. Look at the moss on the hilt. That’s not rust. That’s active rot.”

“It’s three pounds of steel,” Vance said.

His voice came out too loud.

“It cleared the gate. The core covers the squad’s share. The iron stays in my belt.”

Corlen leaned over the table. “I’ll give you four hundred ration cards for it now. Unregistered. I put it in a lead box before the quarantine team checks the logs. You take the cards. Miller gets a real prosthetic from a Hearthpoint wagon. Then you don’t go back into the tunnels with a dead arm and a cursed relic chewing through your hand.”

Vance’s fingers tightened. The wire wrap cut into his gray palm.

“Four hundred doesn’t cover the burial fees for the kid’s family,” he said.

His teeth clicked together when he spoke.

“The blade stays.”

“Vance, look at your face,” the tracker said.

She stepped into the lamplight and pointed at his chin. “You’re bleeding from both sides now. Salt pork won’t fix that.”

“I said the blade stays.”

By sunset, the gravel outside Corlen’s tent had turned dark red-brown in the low light.

Vance did not make it to the third row of tents.

His right boot caught the edge of a rusted cable trench. He went down hard. His shoulder hit an empty oil drum with a hollow boom.

He still did not drop me.

He lay on his side in the dirt. His breath came in short dry whistles.

“Get away,” he gasped when the tracker reached for him.

He tried to push himself up with his left arm. The elbow did not move right. The joint had swollen under the sleeve, round and tight and purple.

“It’s just the pressure shift,” he said. “My lungs haven’t cleared the lime.”

“You’re turning gray, Vance.”

Her voice went quiet. Hunters used that voice around wounds they could not fix. “Corlen was right. The iron is drawing from the marrow. Let go so I can work on your arm.”

“The iron is fine.”

He forced himself onto his knees. His jaw clenched hard enough that a chip of enamel came off and landed in the silt.

His eyes were wide. The pupils had spread until only a thin blue ring showed around them. He could see the tents, but not clearly. His head kept turning a little too far, then correcting.

He shoved me deeper through his belt loop and kept one hand fixed on the hilt.

He thought if he reached a cot, the heat in his chest would come back.

The siren changed.

It screamed.

Short. High. Sharp.

The perimeter wire had gone dead.

At the western edge of camp, near the refuse trench, something cracked through wood. Three Rendjaws came over the gravel bank.

They were the length of large wolves but heavier in front. Their shoulders were too big for their narrow hips. Their rear legs twitched sideways when they landed. Their heads sat low between the shoulder blades, with jaws split far back along the skull. Yellow teeth showed even when their mouths were almost closed.

“Breach!” a guard shouted from the rig platform.

His kinetic rifle fired twice. Then a third Rendjaw hit the side of the cab.

Canvas tore open beside Vance.

A Rendjaw stood in the clearing. Its long arms ended in thick paws with digging claws. The claws dragged through shale as it turned.

Its eyes ignored the guards.

They fixed on Vance.

It could feel the unstable Aether leaking from him.

Vance did not reach for his sidearm.

His hand was already on my hilt.

Don’t, I thought.

You do not have five minutes left.

Put the point down.

He pulled me free.

His wrist bones clicked as he raised the blade.

The System did not warn him in any useful way.

It only took what was left.

[Aether Draw: Critical]

[Current Reservoir: 2%]

The wire wrap turned cold against his palm.

His forearm shrank under the sleeve. The bones stood out. The veins on the back of his hand turned black. The color moved up his wrist and toward his neck in three fast pulses.

Then the speed arrived.

The Rendjaw’s claws were close to his face when Vance moved. He slipped under the jaw and drove forward.

My edge hit the front limb at the shoulder.

Steel Fang did not chop. It went through hide, muscle, and bone without dragging. The severed claw hit the shale. Before the Rendjaw could make a sound, Vance drove my point through the flat bone of its forehead.

The blade came out clean.

The Rendjaw dropped.

Vance stayed low. His head hung between his shoulders. His mouth was open. No breath came out. Black dust settled on the dead creature’s fur.

The other two Rendjaws retreated before the guard could reload. They went back over the wire and into the refuse trench.

Nobody cheered.

Smoke from a broken kerosene lamp thickened the air. It smelled of burnt oil and beast blood.

Vance fell forward. His forehead hit the Rendjaw’s ribs with a soft thud.

“Vance!” the tracker shouted.

She stopped three feet from him and did not touch him. Her carbine stayed low. Her eyes stayed on the black fluid leaking from his ears and from beneath his fingernails.

The camp medic dropped beside the body. He had a brass Aether meter strapped to his wrist and glass needles in his pocket.

He did not check Vance’s pulse.

He pushed the iron probe under Vance’s jaw.

The needle stayed flat against zero.

“The core is gone,” the medic said.

He looked up at Corlen, who had followed them from the tent. “Not burnout. Nothing left to patch. The tissue is dry.”

Vance’s right hand was still frozen around my handle. His gray fingers had clenched so hard that bone joints had pushed through the skin in small white points.

He did not look like a hunter who had won a fight.

He looked dried out.

The salvage workers backed away.

No one looked at the dead Rendjaw for long.

They looked at the jagged steel sticking out from under Vance’s chest.

“He used it twice,” the taller worker whispered. “The beast in the well used it for weeks. Vance didn’t last three hours.”

“It’s a multi-path,” Corlen said.

The chain on his ledger rattled as he stepped back. His eyes had lost the merchant look. “The System didn’t clean the slate when the guard died. The curse is active.”

“We aren’t logging it,” the tracker said.

Her voice held, but she did not look at Vance’s face.

“If the gate-wardens see this signature, they’ll lock the squad’s credit for three migration cycles. They’ll say we brought a Void strain into the perimeter.”

“Dump him,” the taller worker said. “Use the rig. Push the body into the refuse ditch before noon shift clears. Let the trench-brutes have the iron.”

“Nobody touches the hilt,” the medic said as he packed his needles. “The skin is fused. Try to pry those fingers loose, and the draw catches your wrist next.”

I lay against Vance’s ribs.

The connection was empty now. A flat wall where his life had been.

I expected the ditch. Salt. Mud. Teeth. Maybe months under trash and carcasses until some other desperate hand found me.

The stranger did not come through the primary gate.

He came from the western side of the wire, his boots making no more sound in the shale than wind through canvas flaps.

He was thin. Thinner than Miller. Thinner than Vance. His gear looked scavenged from several different decades. He wore an oversized vanguard coat with the brass rivets torn out. Copper telephone wire held the shoulders together. Mismatched leather greaves were strapped to his shins. One had a faded Hearthpoint stamp. The other was burned down to the gray backing.

His face was covered in alkali dust. Tinted glass lenses were tied to his temples with a strip of canvas.

“The warden says the wire is clear,” the stranger said.

His voice was light and out of place beside the dying siren.

“You leaving the meat in the middle of the row?”

Corlen turned on him. “Back off.”

The tracker raised her carbine halfway. “Step away from the body.”

The taller salvage worker grabbed a pry hook from beside the oil drums. “You deaf? Move.”

The stranger did not answer any of them.

He looked at the ground first. The torn canvas. Miller’s broken blade guard. The black moss around my hilt. Vance’s hand locked around the grip.

Then he walked forward.

Not fast. Not slow. Just straight.

The tracker’s carbine came up the rest of the way.

“I said stop.”

The stranger stopped three inches from Vance’s shoulder and tilted his head at my handle.

“That’s a messy wrap,” he muttered.

He reached down with a bare hand.

Scarred knuckles. Salt dust on the skin. No glove. No tongs. No ward cloth.

“Don’t touch it!” the tracker shouted. “It’s an open draw! It killed Vance!”

The stranger did not pause.

His palm came down over Vance’s dead fingers. His thumb slid into the narrow gap between bone and my guard.

I reached for the warm furnace of a human soul.

There should have been a pulse. A threshold. A reservoir. Something I could pull from.

There was no flow.

Only a dense violet-black mass with no rhythm inside it.

The System tried to read him.

The data broke.

[Bond Detected]

[Compatibility Anomaly Identified]

[Bond Level 1 Initiated]

The three pounds of salvaged steel did not become weightless.

They became almost nothing.

The drag vanished. The bad balance corrected all at once. My jagged edge settled with the angle of his wrist as if the blade had always belonged there.

The camp went quiet.

The tracker kept the carbine raised. Her finger stayed on the guard. Everyone waited for blood to run from the stranger’s nose.

Nothing happened.

He did not gasp. His shoulders did not straighten. His forearm stayed the same dusty pale tan.

He turned his wrist and cracked Vance’s dead fingers loose. One by one. Dry clicks. Then he pulled my hilt free from the corpse.

“Huh,” the stranger said.

He checked my rough edge with his thumb as if I were a kitchen tool.

“Thought it’d be heavier.”

Deep inside the steel, something shifted.

The hunger did not open.

The draw did not catch.

For the first time, the connection stayed quiet without becoming empty.

You should have died, I told him.

The stranger did not drop the blade.

He did not look around the camp.

He adjusted his tinted lenses with one finger and ran his thumb over the jagged tooth near my point.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“Probably.”

I want some feedback on my first few chapters. Let me know if it's too slow, if it doesn't make sense, if it doesn't keep expectations. Any feedback is welcome.

PROLOGUE — BREACHFALL

The night the sky split, nobody called it an evolution.

They called it terrorism at first. Then invasion. Then war. By Sunday evening, most people had stopped trying to name it.

The power grids went dark first, city by city. After that, the horizons split open. A strange fog spilled out of the breaks. It had color in it when light hit it, and it smelled like copper and wet concrete.

Rifts appeared across every global capital at the same time. They were tears in open air. They did not spread slowly. They arrived, and the world changed around them. Human civilization did not decline. It broke over one weekend.

People named five types later, once enough survivors had time to compare what had happened.

Beast Rifts released monsters into the streets. Essence Rifts filled the air with Flux, a volatile energy that changed whatever it touched for too long. Void Rifts distorted space and damaged minds. Gate Rifts opened into places that did not follow our physics. Anchor Rifts drove deep into the earth and held the whole broken system in place.

Billions died in the first wave.

That should have been the end of them.

It was not.

When the Flux settled over the dead, it started reading what was left. Not thoughts. Not memories in full. Just the last hard impression left at the moment of death. Fear. anger. hunger. protection. refusal. need.

Then it used the bodies.

Violent people became beasts. Protective people became weapons or armor. Intellectuals became artifacts full of stored information and strange functions. The result did not care what anyone had wanted before they died. It only used what was strongest at the end.

Most people fit somewhere.

I did not.

Before the world ended, I was a night-shift security guard. I was not a soldier. I was not trained for any of it. I died in a crowded stairwell while trying to hold a fire door shut.

There were people behind me. Maybe twelve. Maybe more. I remember shoes on concrete, hands on the railings, someone crying too loudly, and the door jumping against my shoulder each time the thing on the other side hit it.

My feet kept slipping.

The metal was hot near the hinges.

My hands hurt from gripping the frame.

Then the door gave way.

I did not wake up as a man.

I woke up as a weapon.

I could not breathe because there were no lungs. I could not move because there were no arms or legs. I could feel metal instead of skin. Long metal. Cold metal. A hard central spine, a sharpened edge, a point, a grip wrapped around the part where a hand should hold me.

The edge felt wrong. Too sensitive. Every scrape of dirt against it registered. Every shift of my own weight felt slow and heavy. I was lying on something uneven, probably broken concrete, and I could feel small pieces of grit stuck against the blade.

There was also hunger.

Not in a stomach. I did not have one. It sat inside the metal and pulled at everything near me. It wanted warmth. Movement. A hand. A body. A way to act.

Because I had died where a Beast Rift and an Essence Rift overlapped, the transformation did not finish cleanly. The system tried to classify me more than once. Weapon. Beast. Something else. It failed to settle on one result.

In the end, it marked me as an anomaly.

Multi-Form Cursed Relic.

CHAPTER 1 — THE BEAST WITH THE BLADE

The air inside the concrete intake tunnel tasted of wet lime and old zinc. Moisture clung to the cracked walls and gathered on the ceiling. Drops fell onto the rusted iron grating below with flat clicks.

Three years of Rift exposure had turned the old water treatment plant into a swamp. Gray vines pushed through the concrete. Some were as thick as a human thigh. Stiff bristles covered their surface. They wrapped around turbines, cut through old wiring, and forced roots into the brickwork.

Six hunters moved through the sludge in a tight group.

They did not look clean or rested. The man in the center, Miller, had greasy canvas tied around his left bicep. Blood had soaked through it and kept dripping into the water around his boots. The team still held formation, but the front was open. Their shield man was gone. His harness lay back in the corridor, chewed through at the rivets.

“Aether is at twelve percent,” the tracker said.

She kept her eyes on the ventilation shafts above them. Her fingers were tight around her carbine. “Vance, pressure’s rising. If the green gate doesn’t clear in four minutes, the flux will start hitting our lungs.”

“Shut up and check the corners,” Vance said.

He did not raise his voice. His hand stayed near the revolver at his hip. His thumb kept rubbing the hammer. His personal shield generator gave off a weak orange glow.

“The core payout covers burial fees for Miller’s kid and the scout,” he said. “We’re not leaving the loot in the moss.”

They crossed a collapsed retaining wall. Their boots scraped over grit and wet brick.

None of them looked up.

They had come in expecting something big. A brute. A charger. Something that would run straight into a firing line. The claw marks near the highway had made them think that.

They were wrong.

The beast hung above them.

Its weight was spread across three old iron support bars. Its shoulders were too large for the rest of its body. The front half carried most of the mass. The rear legs were short and bent tight under it. Its hide was charcoal gray, dry in some patches and wet in others. Its head sat low between its shoulders. No real neck. Small eyes. Wide jaw.

In its right paw, it held me.

Three thick fingers pinned my hilt against its palm. The claws pressed into the wire wrap instead of closing around it properly. My blade was crude. Dark steel. Uneven edge. Jagged spine. Too many rough spots where the metal had not settled cleanly. Steel Fang was sharp, but not refined. The edge had chips that were not quite chips. The balance was wrong unless a wielder forced it.

The beast did not care.

It did not look at me. It did not look at the black fluid leaking from its ribs. Its eyes followed the tracker’s carbine as the hunters moved into the next chamber.

A simple Beast Rift creature would have roared and dropped into the middle of them.

This one waited.

It had old scars across its left shoulder. A human blade had split the skin there once and failed to reach bone. It shifted on the beam in small uneven movements. Its rear legs pushed. Its shoulders caught the weight. One claw moved. Then another. It kept stopping before the iron could creak.

Below, the hunters widened into a wedge.

Vance stayed low. His revolver cleared the corner before his boots did. He was looking for a brute. He was not looking behind him.

The beast’s jaw opened slightly. A wet hiss stayed low in its throat. Its lower fangs stuck past the lip even when the mouth closed. It stretched its left arm down and dragged its claws through moss to steady itself.

The connection between us did not give me sight the way eyes would. I did not see the chamber clearly. I felt contact, pressure, heat, and movement. I felt the beast’s palm around my grip. I felt grit under my edge. I felt drops hitting metal below. I felt boots through brick and standing water.

I also felt the beast dying.

Its Aether sat inside it as a thick hot mass, but there were holes in it now. For three weeks, it had carried me through the Deadland Corridor. It had used me against other beasts and scavenger packs. Every time it swung me, I made it faster. I gave the edge more bite. I let it cut bone, hide, armor, and shell.

Every time, I took payment.

The hunters thought the beast was slowing because they had injured it.

They were wrong.

The muscles along its shoulders were drying out. Its joints were late to respond. The heat in its chest was not normal strain. It was soul-burn. The cost did not change because the hand around my hilt belonged to a Rift beast instead of a human.

The beast’s eyes leaked black fluid. Its lungs worked badly. Its back legs shook when it shifted on the beam.

Drop me, I thought.

It could not understand me.

Let go.

Its claws tightened around the wire wrap.

The last hunter cleared the pillar.

The beast dropped.

It landed behind Miller in the silt. The sound was low and dull. Miller started to turn.

The beast swung.

Steel Fang moved with the paw. I felt the grip twist. I felt the poor angle. I felt my rough edge catch, bite, then tear through. Miller lifted his short blade on instinct. It did not matter. My edge went through the reinforced sleeve, then through bone and meat to the elbow.

His hand hit the floor still holding the tactical blade.

Miller did not scream right away. He hit a pipe, looked at the stump, and opened his mouth. Gray spit ran over his lower lip.

“Behind us!” Vance shouted.

He did not look at Miller’s arm.

His revolver was already up.

Three shots cracked through the chamber. Glass broke in the old monitors overhead.

The slugs hit the beast’s left flank. Flesh burst open in wet chunks. Pale ribs showed under the gray skin. The beast slid two feet across the wet floor, rear legs scraping for grip.

The tracker fired twice while backing toward the green gate. Her rounds hit the raised neck and left smoking holes.

Vance held position. His thumb reset the hammer. His face had gone gray under the grease paint.

“Get him up!” he shouted. “Get him through the gate. Now!”

The beast stayed low near the intake valve. Its arms hung down until the claws scraped brick. It did not feel the holes in its ribs. Pain had stopped reaching the right places.

It tried to spring again.

The rear legs failed.

Inside the hilt, the connection went thin. The beast’s Aether reservoir dropped under the usable line. Then it kept dropping. I was pulling from empty reserves now.

The beast staggered forward. Its shoulders sank. The skin along its spine turned pale gray. The cracks around its joints dried and flaked. Greasy vapor came from its mouth. It smelled of burnt meat and hot iron.

“It’s falling!” Vance yelled. He snapped a new cylinder into the revolver. “I hit something important. Tracker, flank it. Keep firing. Don’t let it recover.”

The tracker raised her carbine toward the beast’s eyes.

They still thought they were killing it.

The beast forced its fingers around my hilt again. The claws cut into its own palm. Its thoughts were simple. Kill. Eat. Move. Survive.

Stop, I thought.

It did not stop.

It dragged my edge through a vine and swung at Vance’s throat.

The swing was wide. Too wide. Its shoulder locked halfway through. The cut had power from body weight, not Aether.

Vance could not outrun it. The sludge was too deep.

He dropped low.

He stepped inside the arc.

His left gauntlet snapped up and hit the flat of my blade.

There was no clean ring of metal.

The beast’s forearm snapped.

Its fingers opened. The claws peeled back. My hilt tore free from the ruined palm. I spun twice through the wet air and struck a rotting timber beam. My point sank three inches into the wood.

Without me, the beast had nothing left.

It stayed upright for one second. Its upper body pulled it forward. Black smoke poured from its mouth.

The tracker moved under its arms and drove her knife up beneath its jaw. The blade punched through the top of its skull.

The beast fell into a rusted pipe. Metal screamed under the weight. Dark fluid spread across the floorboards and reached the timber beam where I was stuck.

The gate stabilized.

Green light filled the chamber. Mist twisted along the ceiling. Water kept ticking against the turbine.

Vance leaned against a concrete pillar. His left arm hung numb. His right hand stayed near his revolver.

“Miller’s stable,” the tracker said.

Her voice shook. She pulled the tourniquet tighter with her teeth. Miller’s blood covered her sleeves. “Pulse is shallow. If we don’t get him through the gate in three minutes, the pressure will make his blood toxic.”

She dragged Miller toward the portal. His boots left dark ruts in the moss.

Vance looked at them.

Then he looked at me.

My Steel Fang form did not shine under the green light. The steel was too dark and too uneven. The edge was jagged. The spine had rough raised sections. The hilt wrap was stained and cut in several places. I looked crude. Useful, maybe, but not valuable to anyone careful.

The moss around my blade turned black and crumbled into dust.

The monster’s fluid stopped short of my hilt. It dried into a hard ring around the beam.

“Look at that blade,” Vance said.

He stood slowly. His knees clicked when he moved. He walked toward me and kept his eyes on the hilt.

“Vance, leave it,” the tracker said. “Hearthpoint quarantine won’t clear an unclassified relic without a hold. We don’t have the credit.”

“The quarantine teams don’t see what happens inside the tunnels,” Vance said.

He stopped near my hilt. His fingers hovered over the wire wrap. “This thing split Grade-3 plate.”

“The beast’s wrist was rotten,” she said. “Look at the floor. It was dead before we hit it. Come on.”

Vance did not look back.

His hand came down.

His fingers closed around my hilt.

His palm was hot. Human. Stronger than the beast’s dying grip. His Aether was clean and mostly untouched.

The channels inside me opened.

[Bond Detected]

[Compatibility Anomaly Identified]

[Bond Level 1 Initiated]

My form did not change, but the balance did. The crude blade adjusted to his hand. The weight shifted through the hilt. I felt his grip tighten as three pounds of ugly steel became easier for him to move.

Vance gasped.

His shoulders straightened. His injured arm still hung useless, but he stopped paying attention to it. New speed entered his legs. He looked down at his hand and clenched his jaw.

“The gate, Vance!” the tracker screamed.

He moved.

Not carefully. Fast.

His boots cleared rubble in one jump. He crossed the chamber and shoved me through the leather loop at his belt. My edge cut the canvas of his trousers but missed skin.

He did not notice the blood starting from his nose.

He did not feel the twitch in his thumb where it touched my guard.

He thought he had found a prize.

He thought the strength belonged to him.

The green light closed around us.

The connection settled.

He would not make the morning outpost.

They never did.

CHAPTER 2 — STEEL FANG

The gate did not feel like walking through a door.

It squeezed Vance hard from every side and dropped him onto shale at the outpost. His knees hit first. His right hand stayed locked around my hilt. His left arm hung loose and useless.

The outpost smelled of sulfur, dirty wool, diesel exhaust, and old blood. Two armored transport rigs idled near the perimeter wire. Their engines shook the gravel under them. Rows of gray tents spread across the staging area, mixed with salvage stalls, ammunition crates, fuel drums, and racks of drying beast hide.

A warning siren groaned from a horn mounted near the center of camp.

Unstable Rift closure.

Three miles north.

Vance stayed on his knees for four breaths. Blood from his nose had dried over his mustache and caught gray dust from the flats. His fingers were still white around my wire wrap.

“Vance,” the tracker said.

She dropped Miller’s tactical harness onto a stack of empty ammunition crates. Her shoulder dipped under his weight. “Put the steel down. Gate-wardens are looking at the glow.”

Two men from a salvage crew stopped near one of the rigs. Both wore greasy leather aprons and welder’s goggles pushed up on their foreheads. Their eyes went to my hilt first. Then to the edge, where the beast’s blood had refused to stick.

“That’s no Grade-1 iron,” the taller worker said. He kept his hand back, but his eyes traced the jagged line of my blade. “Vance, what did you pull out of that hole?”

Vance forced himself up. His knees popped loudly enough that a guard by the perimeter gate turned to look.

He did not put me in the loop at his belt. His hand stayed on the handle. His thumb pressed against the flat guard.

“The titan’s core is in the sack,” Vance said.

His throat sounded scraped raw. He took two slow steps toward the medical tent. His boots dragged through the gravel. “The blade stays with the ledger.”

“It’s unclassified,” the tracker told the workers.

She dragged Miller’s boots across the shale. Her face looked pale under the grease paint. “Tell Corlen we need an Aether test before noon shift clears.”

Vance’s chest was cooling already.

I could feel it through his hand.

His pulse reached me in uneven knocks. Fast. Then slower. Then a pause too long to be safe. The Aether I had pulled from him during the gate crossing had settled badly in his body. His fingers were stiffening around my hilt because the tendons in his forearm were drying and locking.

Let go, I thought.

Put me down.

He did not.

Wielders almost never understood the first hour. To Vance, the numbness probably felt like normal Aether burnout. He thought food, water, and a cot would fix it. He thought the lighter balance in his hand meant compatibility.

It did not.

It meant I had room to draw more.

I could remember the others in the dark parts of my steel. The hunter who laughed when I split a brute’s skull. The scavenger who found me behind a collapsed diner. The boy who still had clean cheeks when he picked me up with both hands. They all held the hilt the same way. Too tight. Sweating. Thumb jammed against the guard.

Vance’s nose started bleeding again.

The line ran to his chin and dripped onto his coat.

You’re already gray, I thought.

You won’t cross the ditch.

The appraiser’s tent smelled of kerosene, wet dog, and old canvas.

A zinc-topped table stood in the center. Its surface was scarred by acid tests, blade cuts, and small relic needles. Wooden crates lined both sides of the tent. Corlen, the appraiser, had two fingers missing from his left hand and an iron-plated ledger chained to his belt.

He did not look at the titan core when Vance dropped the leather sack on the table.

He looked at me.

“That’s not from the Bronze list,” Corlen said.

He did not reach for the hilt. He took iron tongs from a drawer and tapped the flat of my blade.

The sound was dull.

“Where’s the registration stamp?”

“There isn’t one,” the tracker said from the tent flap.

She had changed her shirt, but blood still stained the skin around her nails. “It came out of the intake well. It split Miller’s guard, then the brute’s wrist. Vance wants it logged under personal salvage.”

“Personal salvage is for certified finds,” Corlen said.

His eyes moved to Vance’s face. Then to his hand. “This thing has an open draw. Look at the moss on the hilt. That’s not rust. That’s active rot.”

“It’s three pounds of steel,” Vance said.

His voice came out too loud.

“It cleared the gate. The core covers the squad’s share. The iron stays in my belt.”

Corlen leaned over the table. “I’ll give you four hundred ration cards for it now. Unregistered. I put it in a lead box before the quarantine team checks the logs. You take the cards. Miller gets a real prosthetic from a Hearthpoint wagon. Then you don’t go back into the tunnels with a dead arm and a cursed relic chewing through your hand.”

Vance’s fingers tightened. The wire wrap cut into his gray palm.

“Four hundred doesn’t cover the burial fees for the kid’s family,” he said.

His teeth clicked together when he spoke.

“The blade stays.”

“Vance, look at your face,” the tracker said.

She stepped into the lamplight and pointed at his chin. “You’re bleeding from both sides now. Salt pork won’t fix that.”

“I said the blade stays.”

By sunset, the gravel outside Corlen’s tent had turned dark red-brown in the low light.

Vance did not make it to the third row of tents.

His right boot caught the edge of a rusted cable trench. He went down hard. His shoulder hit an empty oil drum with a hollow boom.

He still did not drop me.

He lay on his side in the dirt. His breath came in short dry whistles.

“Get away,” he gasped when the tracker reached for him.

He tried to push himself up with his left arm. The elbow did not move right. The joint had swollen under the sleeve, round and tight and purple.

“It’s just the pressure shift,” he said. “My lungs haven’t cleared the lime.”

“You’re turning gray, Vance.”

Her voice went quiet. Hunters used that voice around wounds they could not fix. “Corlen was right. The iron is drawing from the marrow. Let go so I can work on your arm.”

“The iron is fine.”

He forced himself onto his knees. His jaw clenched hard enough that a chip of enamel came off and landed in the silt.

His eyes were wide. The pupils had spread until only a thin blue ring showed around them. He could see the tents, but not clearly. His head kept turning a little too far, then correcting.

He shoved me deeper through his belt loop and kept one hand fixed on the hilt.

He thought if he reached a cot, the heat in his chest would come back.

The siren changed.

It screamed.

Short. High. Sharp.

The perimeter wire had gone dead.

At the western edge of camp, near the refuse trench, something cracked through wood. Three Rendjaws came over the gravel bank.

They were the length of large wolves but heavier in front. Their shoulders were too big for their narrow hips. Their rear legs twitched sideways when they landed. Their heads sat low between the shoulder blades, with jaws split far back along the skull. Yellow teeth showed even when their mouths were almost closed.

“Breach!” a guard shouted from the rig platform.

His kinetic rifle fired twice. Then a third Rendjaw hit the side of the cab.

Canvas tore open beside Vance.

A Rendjaw stood in the clearing. Its long arms ended in thick paws with digging claws. The claws dragged through shale as it turned.

Its eyes ignored the guards.

They fixed on Vance.

It could feel the unstable Aether leaking from him.

Vance did not reach for his sidearm.

His hand was already on my hilt.

Don’t, I thought.

You do not have five minutes left.

Put the point down.

He pulled me free.

His wrist bones clicked as he raised the blade.

The System did not warn him in any useful way.

It only took what was left.

[Aether Draw: Critical]

[Current Reservoir: 2%]

The wire wrap turned cold against his palm.

His forearm shrank under the sleeve. The bones stood out. The veins on the back of his hand turned black. The color moved up his wrist and toward his neck in three fast pulses.

Then the speed arrived.

The Rendjaw’s claws were close to his face when Vance moved. He slipped under the jaw and drove forward.

My edge hit the front limb at the shoulder.

Steel Fang did not chop. It went through hide, muscle, and bone without dragging. The severed claw hit the shale. Before the Rendjaw could make a sound, Vance drove my point through the flat bone of its forehead.

The blade came out clean.

The Rendjaw dropped.

Vance stayed low. His head hung between his shoulders. His mouth was open. No breath came out. Black dust settled on the dead creature’s fur.

The other two Rendjaws retreated before the guard could reload. They went back over the wire and into the refuse trench.

Nobody cheered.

Smoke from a broken kerosene lamp thickened the air. It smelled of burnt oil and beast blood.

Vance fell forward. His forehead hit the Rendjaw’s ribs with a soft thud.

“Vance!” the tracker shouted.

She stopped three feet from him and did not touch him. Her carbine stayed low. Her eyes stayed on the black fluid leaking from his ears and from beneath his fingernails.

The camp medic dropped beside the body. He had a brass Aether meter strapped to his wrist and glass needles in his pocket.

He did not check Vance’s pulse.

He pushed the iron probe under Vance’s jaw.

The needle stayed flat against zero.

“The core is gone,” the medic said.

He looked up at Corlen, who had followed them from the tent. “Not burnout. Nothing left to patch. The tissue is dry.”

Vance’s right hand was still frozen around my handle. His gray fingers had clenched so hard that bone joints had pushed through the skin in small white points.

He did not look like a hunter who had won a fight.

He looked dried out.

The salvage workers backed away.

No one looked at the dead Rendjaw for long.

They looked at the jagged steel sticking out from under Vance’s chest.

“He used it twice,” the taller worker whispered. “The beast in the well used it for weeks. Vance didn’t last three hours.”

“It’s a multi-path,” Corlen said.

The chain on his ledger rattled as he stepped back. His eyes had lost the merchant look. “The System didn’t clean the slate when the guard died. The curse is active.”

“We aren’t logging it,” the tracker said.

Her voice held, but she did not look at Vance’s face.

“If the gate-wardens see this signature, they’ll lock the squad’s credit for three migration cycles. They’ll say we brought a Void strain into the perimeter.”

“Dump him,” the taller worker said. “Use the rig. Push the body into the refuse ditch before noon shift clears. Let the trench-brutes have the iron.”

“Nobody touches the hilt,” the medic said as he packed his needles. “The skin is fused. Try to pry those fingers loose, and the draw catches your wrist next.”

I lay against Vance’s ribs.

The connection was empty now. A flat wall where his life had been.

I expected the ditch. Salt. Mud. Teeth. Maybe months under trash and carcasses until some other desperate hand found me.

The stranger did not come through the primary gate.

He came from the western side of the wire, his boots making no more sound in the shale than wind through canvas flaps.

He was thin. Thinner than Miller. Thinner than Vance. His gear looked scavenged from several different decades. He wore an oversized vanguard coat with the brass rivets torn out. Copper telephone wire held the shoulders together. Mismatched leather greaves were strapped to his shins. One had a faded Hearthpoint stamp. The other was burned down to the gray backing.

His face was covered in alkali dust. Tinted glass lenses were tied to his temples with a strip of canvas.

“The warden says the wire is clear,” the stranger said.

His voice was light and out of place beside the dying siren.

“You leaving the meat in the middle of the row?”

Corlen turned on him. “Back off.”

The tracker raised her carbine halfway. “Step away from the body.”

The taller salvage worker grabbed a pry hook from beside the oil drums. “You deaf? Move.”

The stranger did not answer any of them.

He looked at the ground first. The torn canvas. Miller’s broken blade guard. The black moss around my hilt. Vance’s hand locked around the grip.

Then he walked forward.

Not fast. Not slow. Just straight.

The tracker’s carbine came up the rest of the way.

“I said stop.”

The stranger stopped three inches from Vance’s shoulder and tilted his head at my handle.

“That’s a messy wrap,” he muttered.

He reached down with a bare hand.

Scarred knuckles. Salt dust on the skin. No glove. No tongs. No ward cloth.

“Don’t touch it!” the tracker shouted. “It’s an open draw! It killed Vance!”

The stranger did not pause.

His palm came down over Vance’s dead fingers. His thumb slid into the narrow gap between bone and my guard.

I reached for the warm furnace of a human soul.

There should have been a pulse. A threshold. A reservoir. Something I could pull from.

There was no flow.

Only a dense violet-black mass with no rhythm inside it.

The System tried to read him.

The data broke.

[Bond Detected]

[Compatibility Anomaly Identified]

[Bond Level 1 Initiated]

The three pounds of salvaged steel did not become weightless.

They became almost nothing.

The drag vanished. The bad balance corrected all at once. My jagged edge settled with the angle of his wrist as if the blade had always belonged there.

The camp went quiet.

The tracker kept the carbine raised. Her finger stayed on the guard. Everyone waited for blood to run from the stranger’s nose.

Nothing happened.

He did not gasp. His shoulders did not straighten. His forearm stayed the same dusty pale tan.

He turned his wrist and cracked Vance’s dead fingers loose. One by one. Dry clicks. Then he pulled my hilt free from the corpse.

“Huh,” the stranger said.

He checked my rough edge with his thumb as if I were a kitchen tool.

“Thought it’d be heavier.”

Deep inside the steel, something shifted.

The hunger did not open.

The draw did not catch.

For the first time, the connection stayed quiet without becoming empty.

You should have died, I told him.

The stranger did not drop the blade.

He did not look around the camp.

He adjusted his tinted lenses with one finger and ran his thumb over the jagged tooth near my point.

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“Probably.”