The nights in Ironhollow had grown dark and drenched in blood. In the oily, grimy streets of this dying city wandered Jonathan H. Simpson—a man half flesh, half machine—searching for something that many said was impossible: the perfect arithmetic. They called it the "calculus of decay," a cursed formula carved into the ruins of ancient gods and whispered in the blood of old wars. Legend had it that right after the brutal battle against the Seven Perfection, a mad calculation had been spoken into life—a mix of numbers and gore that unleashed an age of ruin. Only by finding this lost sum could Ironhollow—and maybe the whole damned world—be pulled back from the brink of eternal decay.
Jonathan's quest came at the behest of a hidden group of scholars and outlaw priests who believed this cursed arithmetic was the spark that lit the downfall of the city. His strange body, a patchwork of living tissue and cold machine metal, pulsed with a wild, unstable power. This gift came from the cursed Hue crystals and the constant decay that had fused to his left arm. Each grueling day of training pushed him past the edge, forcing him to channel that power in hopes of bending time itself, or at least slowing it down long enough to crack the code of destruction.
A Rough Lesson in Time
In a forgotten workshop deep in Ironhollow's industrial guts, Jonathan stared into a cracked, grimy mirror. His image was split into jittery, flickering reflections. His left arm—an unsettling mix of rusted steel and rotting flesh—buzzed with raw energy. Under the sickly light of a faded violet lamp, he practiced his strange, time-warping skills.
"Focus," he growled at himself, his voice coarse and sincere. "Let time's rhythm soak into the decay. I need to slow it down… freeze it, even if just for a moment."
He shut his eyes tight and listened to the relentless pounding of his grafted arm—the sound like distant, echoing drums. In a heartbeat of silence, he reached out and stretched his arm toward a droplet of rain clinging to a broken pipe. The droplet trembled, as if time itself had hiccupped. In that fragile moment, Jonathan felt a pull, a whisper from the red moon high above. He concentrated with every fiber of his being, willing the droplet to hang suspended for one extra heartbeat. And it did. When he finally let go and exhaled sharply, a small victory surged through him.
"Not bad," he muttered, his voice low and heavy with determination. "Maybe one day I can string these bloody numbers together like the real calculation they're meant to be."
Nearby, an old automaton clattered by, its joints creaking as it shuffled along. Its rough voice muttered something like, "Time's a real bitch, ain't it?, I've dealt with it and memorise it sister" Jonathan couldn't help but smirk. Each win, however tiny, was a step closer to the grim arithmetic that had cursed Ironhollow.
----
After leaving the workshop, amid the constant clatter of dying machinery and the stench of rot, Jonathan met a jittery informer in a back alley. The man, Corrin, was thin and nervy, always looking over his shoulder as if the nightmares themselves could catch him. In a poorly lit alley where broken neon signs buzzed out half-baked messages, Corrin leaned on a crumbling brick wall, his eyes darting like cornered rats.
"Jonathan," he hissed, "you're chasing ghosts. They say the perfect arithmetic is hidden in the ruined remains of the Old Calculation, deep in the Catacombs of the Fallen Gods." He paused, glancing nervously around. "It's protected by monsters that make even the hardiest of souls shudder."
Jonathan's face hardened. "Monsters don't scare me—not when my own metal-blooded arm burns Hue with the tick of time. Tell me everything you know."
Corrin swallowed hard. "The story goes that a mad priest, foreseeing the collapse, carved the formula into a stone monolith. After the war with the Seven Perfection, he calculated a sum that weighed the loss of everything. But somewhere along the way, the numbers got twisted—mixed with anger, blood, and a damned bit of divine error. Now the gods themselves rot, their decay fueling the endless rot of the city."
A low, rumbling clatter echoed from a nearby machine. Jonathan gripped his arm tighter. "So my job is to find that stone and work out this insane formula?"
"Exactly," Corrin replied, his voice barely steady. "But mark my words: when you get close, you will be pushed to the limit. You'll feel your heart tearing itself apart. Your arm will scream in ways you've never imagined."
Jonathan's lips curled into a mocking smile. "Let it scream. I've dealt with time being a bastard long enough."
They talked then about where the ancient ruins lay, which rough factions might help, and what rumors the dark corners of Ironhollow whispered about in hushed, fearful tones.
"Remember," warned Corrin, "the house of nobles won't hand over anything so easily. They'll see the perfect arithmetic as a weapon to lock in their power. And the cults—damn, the cults will want to use it to summon nightmares. W-watch your back, Warden."
Jonathan nodded slowly. "I'll find it. And when I do, I'll carve a new destiny out of all this cursed decay."
----
As Jonathan prepared for his journey, the very streets of Ironhollow were in upheaval.
Different groups and factions clashed daily, not only for power but to wrest control over the abominations born from endless decay. In the murky dead zones near the Whorl Market, a band of Mind-Wardens clashed with hideous, malformed creatures—beasts grown from the corrupted hue and twisted machinery.
In one brutal fight, a Mind-Warden leader bellowed, "Keep them off our bones, you bastards!" while swinging a rusted cleaver through a creature that was nothing more than a tangle of metal, rotting flesh, and broken limbs. The creature let out a gut-wrenching shriek that sounded like pure, raw terror before it was forced back into the festering, dark puddles.
On another side of the city, a priest from the fallen Church of the Fungal Soul shouted orders at a ragtag group armed with shotguns and crude tools. "Clear out the infected! These abominations aren't us—they're here to steal our future!" One soldier, his face smeared with grime and fear, fired his weapon at a writhing mass that moved like a swarm of rotting snakes, scattering blood and fungal spores everywhere like macabre confetti.
Every whisper and shout in Ironhollow was laced with raw fear. In low, trembling voices, people recalled battles they'd seen in the alleyways: "I watched a grown man turn to jelly when that thing opened its maw," one man croaked, his voice trembling with horror. "It was like watching the very soul of decay unravel right before your eyes."
Even the elite tried to keep order through sheer brutality. In the private halls of the Bonehall, a noble captain barked at his guards, "Don't let those freaks come close. I want every mutant dragged back to the dungeons or thrown to the machines." The guards grumbled, their faces smeared with sweat and dirt, as another massacre echoed from the lower wards with the clamor of an automaton's roar.
In every conversation on the streets of Ironhollow, there was a desperate, bitter need to either control or purge the horror that had taken root. Curses, crude humor, and bone-chilling details mixed freely in the cold night air. "Man, I'd give anything to not see another of those rotting beasts tear through these alleys," a street vendor muttered while tending his stall of scrap relics.
"Memory's a luxury," replied another, barely audible above the din. "Every moment reminds you that the past is eating us alive."
-------
Not far from the chaos of the industrial center, tucked away from the endless screams and clatter, stood a small, strange cabin. Its walls were built from rusted metal and blackened wood, scarred by time and neglect. Inside, a roaring fire lit up a simple stone hearth, and bundles of wood crackled as the aroma of cinnamon mixed oddly with the tang of iron. Outside, red fog and twisted vines pressed against grimy windows, but inside the cabin, there was a flicker of warmth—a brief, fragile reprieve from the endless decay of Ironhollow.
In a modest, sparsely furnished room, a heart-wrenching scene unfolded. On a creaking, old bed lay a fragile child, no more than seven years old, shivering with cold and fear. Her tiny, almost skeletal frame trembled as she whispered, "Can you please stop?" Her voice, barely louder than a sigh, was drowned out by the sickening sound of tearing flesh.
At the foot of the bed, a woman with hollow eyes and a face twisted in grim determination was in the middle of a horrifying ritual. Her teeth, modified to be hard as steel, sank into her own flesh. With each bite, large chunks of skin fell away, drawing gory streaks of red across the warped floor. "Mom, it's me—please stop, I'm dying," the child begged weakly. But the woman continued, her actions a wild, desperate attempt to chew away the pain and emptiness that consumed her. The sight was gruesome—a raw display of despair and broken memories that left deep, bloody marks on the floorboards.
The room was dimly lit by the red glow of the moon that seeped through cracks in the old, rusted window. Every creak of the wood, every drip of blood, spoke of the cruelty and hopelessness that defined Ironhollow. Outside, the ceaseless chirp of crickets mingled with the distant moans of the dying city.
----
Back on the grim streets, Jonathan's quest pressed on like a violent storm. Every day, every savage encounter with the night's terrors, honed his strange temporal powers and drove him ever closer to discovering the perfect arithmetic—the twisted formula that had unleashed the decay of the old gods and condemned Ironhollow to its cursed fate.
One evening, as dusk settled over the ruined city, Jonathan met an aging archivist in what remained of an abandoned library. The old place reeked of mold, stale blood, and burnt paper. The archivist—a gaunt man known as Silas—spread ancient scrolls and stained tablets across a broken oak table, each piece filled with cryptic symbols and desperate warnings.
"Listen, Jonathan," Silas rasped, leaning in until his words were barely more than a conspiratorial whisper. "This calculation isn't just numbers on a page. It's a dark chant—a litany that a mad priest once carved into stone before everything burned to ash. They say it held the power to tear down the old gods and bring forth a new world order, a time when the Seven Perfection would rule. If you can recover even fragments of it, you might rewrite our fate."
Jonathan narrowed his eyes as he scanned the ancient glyphs on the torn scrolls. "Rewrite time, huh? Figures. Time's been chewing on our guts for too long. I'll track down every scrap of that damned formula," he said, his voice low and determined. "Then maybe I can finally understand why the gods crumbled and how to fix this mess."
Silas sighed—a sound like brittle paper tearing apart. "But be warned, the path ahead is lined with nightmares. Not just beasts that shriek and claw, but horrors that will claw at your mind. Some say the calculation lies hidden deep in the Catacombs of Lost Echoes—a place where memories bleed and the past is as real as your worst nightmares. It's guarded by things that feed on fear and confusion, waiting to drag you into madness."
Jonathan's gaze shifted toward the stained window where the red moon hung low in the sky, turning every speck of dust into a streak of crimson light. "I've lived with fear my whole life," he murmured. "And my grafted arm is a constant reminder that time isn't on our side. I'll train harder until I can peel apart the layers of time like the rotting layers of an old, dead onion."
---
[Journal Entry | WAT 22:03]
Today, I almost lost my mind. The whisper of the old clockwork nearly drove me mad. Training with my graft is like dancing with death and time itself. I can taste the rusted numbers on my tongue—it isn't just what it appears to be. It's a curse, a bloody promise written in blood . I will piece it together, no matter how many lives it takes.
In the grim corridors of Ironhollow, the struggle for survival was as raw as it was constant. At a makeshift food stall near a forgotten factory, two scavengers argued, voices rough and laced with despair.
"You'd think after all these years someone would figure out how to stop the rot," grumbled one man, wiping his grimy hands on a threadbare apron.
"Rot? That's life!" spat the other, his voice rising in anger. "Every drop of blood, every lost memory, is what keeps us alive—even if it's all fucked up. You don't know despair until you've seen a dying man losing everything he ever knew."
Nearby, a mother cradled her child as she whispered the latest fears from the upper wards. "They're planning another ritual," she said fiercely. "The nobles want to lock away all our memories except what they choose. We'll end up as empty husks—nothing more than walking ghosts, just like that poor kid from the cabin who sees his own flesh ripped away."
The grim memory of that cabin—a place of horror where a woman's crazed ritual tore chunks of her own skin while a fragile child begged for mercy—haunted everyone. The scene was burned into the minds of those who spoke it—a brutal reminder that the past was never dead; it was a living, throbbing wound.
"Love's often mistaken for lust," an old man slurred between bitter gulps of cheap ale, "and that's one of our worst sins. The urge to destroy, to murder, shows how the land and sky weep over the hypocrisy that swallows us all."
A heavy silence fell over the crowd as the weight of his words sank in. Ironhollow was a mosaic of pain, a blend of violence and broken hope, where each new day was a savage struggle against decay.
------
Late one night, beneath a blood-red moon hanging like a bleeding wound over Ironhollow, Jonathan met with a small band of trusted scholars in a forgotten temple under a ruined Buddha. The crypt was cold and damp, its stone walls echoing with the murmurs of lost souls. They gathered to share the latest shards of information—the only clues that the perfect arithmetic was more than a myth.
A gaunt woman with eyes that shimmered with sorrow spoke first. "I found a reference in the old Scroll of Lamentations—a single line, a calculation: 'Three souls entwined, one blooded sum, the seventh perfection undone…' It's half a riddle, but maybe it's a key."
A wiry man nicknamed Scriv leaned forward, his voice edged with both fear and determination. "Incomplete or not, this proves something. The arithmetic isn't just a fairy tale. It's real—a formula that, if cracked, might undo the decay that's eating away at the city's core."
Another scholar, his voice trembling with both hope and terror, added, "We must combine our fragments with those gathered by the Mind-Warden on his quests. Only then might we rebuild what has been torn to shreds."
They argued in low, desperate tones, their words carrying the weight of loss and the spark of hope. Then Jonathan stepped from the shadows, his tone sharp and certain: "Enough talk. I will get the remaining pieces." His eyes burned with wild intensity. "I've seen enough horrors in the twists of time to know that the calculation is the key to undoing the damned fate of this city. I'm not here to listen to pretty words—I'm here to break this curse, even if I have to tear the world apart to do it."
Outside the crypt, the sounds of clashing metal, the shrieks of beasts, and the mournful wails of the night blended into a single, unholy dirge—a sound that carried the promise of both loss and defiance.