The fire was gone, but the embers lingered like the last stars before dawn, burning with silent resolve.
Koshiro stood at the edge of a dune as the gray dawn broke over the Wild Ring. Ash floated on the wind like snow. His glass rod hung at his side, the symbols along its shaft still faintly illuminated.
Zen stirred behind him, blade against his shoulder. "We can't stay near the Thread site. Someone will come looking."
"Let them come," Koshiro muttered, but he turned.
They moved eastward into terrain even more crooked and broken, where the land looked torn by claws from below. In the distance, pillars of black stone sticking out from the ground at wierd angles, as if the world had tried to rebuild itself but failed.
The humming started faint, a rhythmic pulse in the air, mechanical and wicked.
Koshiro froze. "Do you hear that?"
Zen's expression hardened. "Walker."
They climbed the ridge, crouching behind a shattered monolith.
Down in the clearing, it stood towering and still, a machine-walker, twenty meters tall, shaped like a skeletal centipede wrapped in armor. Its eyes blazed with twin fires of blue, and glowing sigils of Asereth pulsed along its plated body.
It wasn't alone.
Six Syndicate scouts surrounded it with their white masks, robes lined with circuit-thread, weapons sharp with hums of energy. One of them knelt by the ruins, scanning the ground with a silver prism.
Koshiro whispered, "Thread tracers. They're looking for the one I claimed."
Zen shifted his grip on the sword. "We're leaving."
But Koshiro didn't move. His eyes were locked on one of the scouts—taller, masked differently. Their robe bore a golden clasp in the shape of an eye. This one was important.
He spoke without turning. "That's an Ascendant."
Zen frowned. "You're not ready."
"Maybe, But I'm angry."
The Ascendant tilted its head suddenly—as if it heard him.
"Up there!"
Too late.
A bolt of light cracked the stone beside them. Koshiro rolled to cover, pulling Zen down. The walker shrieked, an unnatural sound, halfway between a violin and static, then it began to descend.
"Split left!" Koshiro shouted.
Zen charged down the slope, blade flashing. Koshiro leapt from the rockface and landed in the path of two scouts.
He didn't hesitate. The rod flashed into his hand with a twist of his wrist.
He struck it once against the ground.
The air sang.
The blast came suddenly a pulse of raw regret forged into force. The first scout screamed and dropped his weapon. Koshiro was already in motion, ducking under the second's guard, sliding low, and jamming his rod upward into their gut.
Zen moved like a storm. His blade sang a brutal chorus. Two more scouts fell before they drew breath.
But the Ascendant had drawn a weapon of its own, something like a staff, but spiky and wrong. Its tip split open, revealing a flickering core of light.
"Unauthorized harmonics detected," it said. Its voice echoed through its mask, layered, cold.
It raised the staff.
A beam of silence erupted no light, no sound, just pure pressure. It hit Zen square in the chest and hurled him into a wall of stone. He didn't rise.
Koshiro's mind went blank.
He ran forward, rage tightening his grip. The Ascendant raised the staff again, but Koshiro's rod met it.
The two clashed light and sound, silence and memory.
For a moment, the Veil thinned.
Koshiro saw something in the Ascendant's eyes… fear?
Then the rod screamed. The Thread inside it released a burst of memory so powerful, the air fractured.
The Ascendant staggered. His mask cracked.
Koshiro lunged, striking the staff from his hands. A final blow sent the Ascendant crashing down.
Silence returned.
Zen groaned, rising slowly. "Still think you're not ready?"
Koshiro dropped to one knee, panting. "I'm starting to think none of us are."
In the distance, the walker reeled from the backlash and began retreating into the horizon, its legs clicking in fury.
Koshiro stared after it.
He didn't say it aloud—but he felt it.
This was just the first wave.
They made camp beneath a broken bridge, shadows hiding them from the sun and the scanners alike.
Zen adjusted the cloth around his ribs. "That was Asereth technology. I've seen it before somewhere… the frontlines?"
"They're not supposed to come this far out," Koshiro said, "That walker wasn't scouting it was hunting."
Zen hesitated and then said, "You know how the Syndicates operate. Asereth runs with logic. Every move calculated. If they're here... it means something."
Koshiro nodded. "Each Syndicate's building its own god-machine. That's what the rumors say. They're not just harvesting Threads anymore. They're trying to rewrite the Veil."
Zen tossed a stone into the fire. "You ever heard of a project called Eidolon Rebirth?"
Koshiro's head snapped toward him. "That's myth, a forbidden technology, a synthetic soul."
Zen looked grim. "Asereth found a prototype, that walker, it wasn't piloted, it was alive."
Silence hung between them, colder than ash.
Koshiro looked toward the dark horizon.
"Then we're already too late."