The throne room was a silent tomb, the only occupants Damien and the ghost of the man who had built it. Fred and Kenji stood before him, awaiting orders, their faces a mixture of confusion and readiness. They expected a hunt, a swift and violent pursuit. They expected him to unleash the same overwhelming force that had annihilated the Muscle Maw.
Damien looked at their expectant faces and saw the fragility of his new-found authority. He saw two capable men, but men who were part of a shelter full of five hundred others who had been terrorized into submission by Bane for years. What would they do if he told them the truth? That the tyrant they thought was dead and gone was, in fact, alive? That he had survived an impossible wound and was now out there, in the dark, regenerating and plotting his return?
Panic. Mass panic was the only logical outcome. A stampede for the exits, mutiny, a complete collapse of the fragile order he had just established. They would see Bane not as a wounded fugitive, but as an immortal monster. They would not see it as a hunt; they would see it as a death sentence for the entire shelter.
He could not trust them with this truth. Not yet. The secret was his alone to bear. A blind hunt was inefficient anyway. He needed to prepare. He needed to study. He needed to forge himself into a weapon capable of killing a man who could not die.
"The immediate threat is gone," Damien said, his voice calm and measured, betraying none of the cold urgency coiling in his gut. "But our security is lax. Double the guard rotations on all levels. Maintain the seal on the pit. I want reports on any unusual activity, no matter how minor. For now, we consolidate our position."
"Lord?" Fred asked, confused. "What of Bane?"
"Bane is a mystery for another time," Damien lied smoothly. "Our priority is order. That is all. You are dismissed."
As they left to carry out his commands, Damien knew his next move. The first step in preparing for war was to claim the battlefield. He walked to Bane's personal chambers, the door still standing open from his earlier search. This would no longer be a dead man's room. It would be his.
He had Fred command a small team to move his simple cot and the footlocker of Bane's research into the spartan quarters. Then he dismissed them, sealing the door himself from the inside. For the first time since waking in the pit, he was truly alone.
The chamber had a private, functional bathroom, a luxury that was likely unparalleled in the entire shelter. He turned a tarnished valve and, after a moment of sputtering, hot water—a byproduct of the Heat Convector—poured into a deep concrete basin. He stripped off the black overalls he'd been given and sank into the steaming water.
He scrubbed away the grime of the past few days, the phantom sensation of dried blood, the lingering filth of the pit. It was a purely functional act, but it felt like a ritual. He was washing away the man who had been tortured, the victim who had been splayed on the wall. That man was a liability. When he rose from the water, his skin clean and his muscles relaxed, he felt a renewed sense of clarity.
He found a sharp, clean flensing knife among the tools at the weapon maintenance station. Standing before a polished sheet of metal that served as a mirror, he began to methodically shave off his mohawk. Each pass of the blade was steady, precise. He was shearing away the last vestige of his old life, of the man who had been captured. When he was finished, his head was clean-shaven, severe, and disciplined. The man in the reflection was no longer a rebellious icon of a forgotten era. He was a lord. A general preparing for his most critical campaign.
Now cleansed and focused, he began his true work. He sat at the simple metal desk and opened the texts he had recovered. They were not Old World manuals as he might have expected. They were New World texts, their pages made of tough, yellowed fiber, their diagrams depicting figures wielding strange, powerful abilities. The titles were stark and practical. One was "The Gallowglass Method: A Primer on Applied Force for Enhancers." Another, its cover more worn, was "The Sunder Codex: Principles of Shield-Breaking and Asymmetric Engagement."
He started with The Gallowglass Method. It was a doctrine of overwhelming power, a fighting style built around the strengths of an Enhancer like Bane. It detailed how to use superior strength and speed to break an opponent's guard, how to leverage an Origin Force Shield not just for defense, but as a battering ram. It was a manual for a straightforward, head-on brawler. Bane's notes in the margins were confident, clinical.
Then he opened The Sunder Codex. Here, he saw the other side of his enemy. This book was not about honor or overwhelming force. It was about winning. It detailed tactics for fighting superior opponents: feigning weakness to draw an enemy into a prepared trap, using environmental hazards like collapsing tunnels or explosive flora, targeting an opponent's allies to create psychological and tactical openings. Bane's notes in these margins were sharp, vicious, and deeply paranoid.
Damien now had a complete picture of his foe. Bane was not just a brute. He was a trained, disciplined student of warfare who preferred to win with overwhelming force, but who would use any dirty trick, any underhanded means, to survive and achieve victory if cornered. He was a survivor, just like everyone else in this era.
Having studied his enemy, Damien now prepared his own arsenal. He stood in the center of the room and extended his hand. He knew his bias from his old life leaned towards firearms. But the manuals had been clear: a duel between Awakened was often decided at close quarters, where one could bypass the other's shield with an infused weapon. He needed a primary blade. He considered a heavy greatsword, but the Saupa cost for its mass would be too high for a prolonged fight. He needed speed and precision.
He focused, the blueprint of a weapon forming in his mind. The air shimmered, and a perfectly balanced, sabre-shaped cutlass materialized in his hand. Its dark, matted metal drank the light. The grip felt like a natural extension of his own arm. It was perfect.
Now for practice. He spent the next hour not just swinging the blade, but on the true challenge his ability presented: speed and versatility. He would conjure the cutlass, feel its weight, then dismiss it into motes of light. Then he would conjure it again, trying to shorten the time between thought and reality. Faster.
He dismissed the cutlass and conjured a pulse-pistol. It felt familiar and comfortable. He aimed at a far corner of the room and mentally pulled the trigger. A bolt of energy silently streaked across the room and dissipated against the wall, leaving a small, scorched mark. He fired again, and again, a dozen times. He paused, instinctively going to check the ammunition. He conjured the magazine out of the weapon and looked inside. It was full.
A jolt went through him. He reinserted the magazine and fired a continuous stream, twenty, thirty, forty shots. The weapon didn't even grow warm. He dismissed the magazine again. Still full.
The ammunition wasn't stored. It was being created, a new bullet for every pull of the trigger, drawn directly from his Saupa. His weapons didn't need to be reloaded.
He then examined the pistol itself. He had just fired it dozens of times, yet the barrel was cool, the mechanism pristine. No residue, no heat warping, no wear and tear. His creations were idealized forms, perfect and perpetual, immune to the entropy of the physical world as long as he willed them to exist. This discovery fundamentally changed the nature of his power. His limitation wasn't ammunition or weapon failure. It was only his own internal reservoir of energy.
The extended practice had taken its toll. The deep, hollowed-out feeling of Saupa drain had returned, a silent warning against overexertion. He sat down at the desk, the newly conjured cutlass resting before him, and opened The Sunder Codex again.
A soft knock came at the door.
"Enter," Damien commanded.
The door opened, and Elara stepped inside, carrying a small tray with a covered plate and a cup. She paused for a moment, her eyes taking in the scene: the transformed man with his clean-shaven head, the intense focus in his eyes, the strange, perfect weapon resting on the desk beside the combat manual.
"My Lord," she said, her voice a low, smooth purr. "I thought you might require your evening meal. You have been... cultivating for some time."
To her, he was simply a new Lord settling into his power, exploring the depths of his abilities. She could have no idea that she was looking at a man quietly preparing for a life-or-death duel with a ghost.
"Leave it on the table," he said, not looking up from the book. "And tell Rhys to increase the heat output of the Convector by five percent tomorrow. I want the bathing water hotter."
The sheer normality of the command, a simple request for a minor comfort, was a perfect mask for the secret war he was about to wage. Elara curtsied and left, closing the door softly behind her, leaving him alone once more in the quiet, coiled tension of his new sanctum.