The corridor leading to Bane's personal chambers was colder than the rest of the command level, the air still and heavy with disuse. Fred and two other guards stood by a heavy steel door, their faces grim. It was a place they had likely never been permitted to enter, the inner sanctum of the god they had both feared and served. The door was sealed not with a simple key, but with a complex mechanical lock of rotating discs and interlocking gears, a testament to Bane's paranoid mind.
Jonas had been summoned, tools in hand, ready to begin the long, arduous process of forcing it open.
"Stand aside," Damien commanded, his voice quiet.
He stepped up to the lock, his eyes tracing the intricate lines of the mechanism. To the others, it was a random assortment of symbols and gears. To Damien's mind, accustomed to dissecting complex systems, it was a puzzle with a clear, logical sequence. He placed his fingers on the discs, his touch light and precise. A soft click, a turn, another click. He worked with a silent, focused intensity. The guards watched, their awe growing with each sound. In under a minute, a final, heavy thunk echoed in the corridor as the internal bolts retracted. Damien pushed the heavy door inward.
The air that wafted out was stale and cold, carrying the faint, sterile scent of cleaning chemicals, old metal, and something else… a strange, almost undetectable trace of ozone. He stepped across the threshold, his team staying behind to guard the entrance.
The room was not the den of a hedonistic brute. It was the sterile laboratory of a paranoid genius. Unlike the grotesque, public brutality of the throne room, this space was spartan, functional, and ruthlessly organized. A simple cot was made with military precision in one corner. A weapon maintenance station occupied another, a high-end pulse-rifle completely disassembled, its components laid out on a dark cloth in perfect order.
The walls were not adorned with trophies of vanquished foes, but with detailed anatomical charts of various beasts—a Muscle Maw, a Scrab-hog, even a creature labeled a 'Spine-Ripper.' Their musculature, nerve clusters, and internal organs were meticulously detailed, with weak points circled in a faded red ink. Shelves were filled not with plunder, but with geological samples, strange crystalline fragments, and dozens of smaller, neatly-labeled logbooks detailing combat encounters and personal research. This was not the room of a man who ruled by strength alone; it was the den of a predator who studied his prey with the cold focus of a scientist.
Damien began a systematic search. He was no longer just looking for clues about the disappearance; he was trying to build a complete psychological profile of his predecessor, to understand the mind of the man he had killed. He ran his hands along the walls, tapping gently, listening for any hollow spaces. He checked the floor panels, the cot's frame, the base of the workbench. Everything was solid. Bane's paranoia was deep.
Finally, behind a large anatomical chart of a Ratamon, his knuckles rapped against a section of the wall that sounded different—a dull thud instead of a solid clang. A false panel. He found the subtle catch and slid it open, revealing a small, recessed safe embedded in the concrete, a key-like device already in its lock. Damien turned it. Inside, resting on a bed of faded black velvet, was something far more grotesque and personal than gold or gems.
Preserved in a clear container filled with a yellowish preservative fluid was a severed, humanoid hand—a large, powerful right hand, scarred from countless battles. The flesh was pale, the nails yellowed. It was clearly a trophy.
Damien stared at the object, a feeling of profound unease settling over him. It was an anomaly. It didn't fit the pattern of a purely pragmatic leader. What was the strategic purpose of keeping such a grotesque souvenir? Confused, he carefully took the container and the main logbook from the throne room, intent on finding an explanation.
Back in the cold authority of his new command center, he searched the logbook for any entry that could explain the strange trophy. He found it in a section dated several years prior, the script tight and angry.
"Encountered the self-styled 'Viscount of the Rust Canyons' today," the entry began. "A true Tier 2 Conduit, arrogant in his power. He thought his ability to manipulate kinetic force made him invincible. He was fast, and his infused attacks were potent. He got lucky. A parry failed, and his blade took my hand at the wrist. The pain was… instructive."
The entry shifted, the angry script becoming more clinical, more filled with a sense of scientific awe.
"The wound should have been fatal. The blood loss alone, or the subsequent infection. But my Origin Force Shield… it did more than just passively reinforce. My body's core ability, the five-fold enhancement to my constitution, began to assert itself. It was not merely healing. It was true regeneration. The process was agonizing, a fire that burned from the inside out, consuming nearly all my stored Saupa over three days. The area around my cot was leached of all energy; even the blood on the floor seemed to pale. But the limb returned. Flesh, bone, and sinew, knitting themselves from nothing. A perfect new hand. I have kept the old one. A reminder. A reminder of my own resilience, and a warning that the limits of what it means to be an Ember are still unknown."
The world seemed to slow down. The distant sounds of the shelter, the low hum of the lamps, the very air itself seemed to freeze as Damien's mind connected the clues with the force of a physical impact.
He saw it all in a flash: The preserved hand in the container—Bane's own. The logbook entry proving a history of impossible regeneration. And the strange state of the pit where he had left Bane's body—the faded, leached bloodstains on the floor, evidence of a massive, localized energy drain.
His Old World logic, the rational, ordered mind that had built a corporate empire, shattered against the impossible, terrifying truth. He had been so focused on finding a conspiracy, a hidden traitor, a physical breach. His assumptions were all wrong. He had failed to account for the single most insane possibility, because he had failed to truly comprehend the meaning of Bane's simple-sounding ability.
Bane was alive.
He hadn't been stolen. He hadn't been eaten. He had lain there, broken and dying, and his own body, fueled by the terrifying potential of his "simple" enhancement, had performed the same miracle again. He had regenerated and walked away.
The mystery was solved, but it was replaced by a certainty that was infinitely more dangerous. The threat was not a ghost. It was a wounded, desperate, and brilliant tyrant who now had nothing left to lose. A high-level Ember with a proven healing factor and a singular, all-consuming focus: revenge on the man who had taken everything from him.
Damien's frustration, his confusion—it all burned away in an instant, replaced by a wave of cold, predatory focus. The investigation was over. The hunt had to begin, now, while his enemy was still recovering from his "agonizing" ordeal.
He stood, his movements sharp and precise. He picked up the comm device, his knuckles white. His voice, when he spoke, was a low, lethal command that cut through the silence of the throne room.
"Fred, Kenji. To the throne room. Now. The rules of the game have changed."