The lie the machine told was one of progress.
It hummed a low, placid tune as it worked, its sterile chrome arms tracing invisible patterns in the air above Zane's chest. The air in the therapy ward was cold, smelling of antiseptic and the faint, coppery tang of Aethel energy being forced through damaged pathways. Zane hated it. He hated the quiet, the clean surfaces, the condescending pity in the Med-techs' eyes. He hated the hum most of all. It was the sound of a system reporting a fault it could not fix.
"Core pathway scarring is extensive," the diagnostic report had read. "Potential for high-yield energy channeling is… permanently compromised."
Compromised. The word was a joke. A polite term for shattered. For ruined. His Aethel Frame, once a deep, resonant thrum of earthy power—the Stonetusk Boar, a force of nature—was now a discordant, staticky whine. It was a broken engine that sputtered and sparked, threatening to shake itself apart if he ever tried to truly open the throttle again.
The therapy was supposed to smooth the scars. To coax the fractured energy pathways into some semblance of order. It was like trying to un-break glass. He felt the machine's energy probes, delicate and precise, sink into his Frame. It wasn't a physical pain. It was a deeper, more fundamental violation. A sensation of being seen, measured, and found wanting. Every pulse of the machine was a reminder of his failure. Not the failure of the fight—he could have stomached a simple defeat. It was the failure of his own hubris. The memory of reaching for the Glass Weaver's Echo, a prize he saw as his right, and having it detonate his entire world.
A soft chime signaled the end of the session. The machine's arms retracted with a whisper of servomotors.
"Vitals are stable, User Zane," the Med-tech said, not looking up from his console. The kid was young, his own Frame a clean, boring thrum of baseline health. He'd never seen a real fight. "One hour of low-impact physical conditioning, then your nutrient cycle. Try not to… strain yourself."
Zane didn't answer. He swung his legs off the slab, the muscles in his back and shoulders knotting in protest. He was a ghost in his own body. He caught sight of his forearms, of the faint, dark web of lines that snaked beneath his skin. They looked like frozen lightning, a permanent roadmap of his own stupidity. The mark of the Weaver.
He limped to the ward's viewport, a vast sheet of reinforced crystal that looked out onto the upper spires of Enclave 3. It was meant to be a calming view, a panorama of their civilization's triumph. A city of light and impossible geometry. To Zane, it was just a bigger cage, and he was no longer one of the lions. He was just another piece of meat.
And then he saw them.
Two figures, small and insignificant against the grand scale of the Valerius estate spire. A flash of utilitarian grey against a backdrop of polished obsidian and glowing gardens. He knew their Aethel signatures instantly. One, a faint, silvery flicker, a nervous moth. The other… the other was a complex, discordant hum. The signature of the scavenger. The Scuttler.
Kael. And the girl, Maya.
They weren't just in the Core Spires. They were leaving the Valerius estate. The seat of the oldest, most powerful House in the Enclave. A place Zane himself had only ever dreamed of being invited to. And this gutter-rat from Enclave 7, this boy with a coward's Echo, was walking out of its front gate like he belonged there.
Something inside Zane didn't just break. It curdled.
The air went thick. A phantom pressure built in his chest, a ghost of the Stonetusk Boar's rage. He felt the instinct to charge, to smash, to prove through overwhelming force that this was wrong. But when the power tried to answer the call, it sputtered. A sharp, ugly pain lanced through the scars in his Frame, and the rage fizzled into a pathetic, impotent ache. He gripped the viewport's railing, his knuckles white, his whole body trembling with a hatred so pure and cold it was almost a religious experience.
It wasn't fair. It was a violation of the natural order of things. He was the hammer. Kael was the nail. But the hammer was broken, and the nail was being invited to dine with kings.
He watched them disappear into the flow of the city's arteries, two insignificant specks swallowed by the machine. But the image was burned into his mind. Kael. Walking away from the seat of power, while he, Zane, was left a cripple in a charity ward. The universe had made a clerical error, and the injustice of it was a poison with no antidote.
Later, he was approached. He was sitting in a sterile, white common area, staring at a wall, replaying the moment in his mind, when two figures simply… appeared at his table. There was no sound, no preamble. One moment he was alone, the next he was not.
They wore the matte-black armor of House Thorne. It drank the light, leaving them as humanoid voids in the brightly lit room. Their Aethel signatures were muted, disciplined, like sheathed knives. They were everything he wasn't anymore: controlled, dangerous, purposeful.
"User Zane," the first one said. The voice from his helmet's external speaker was flat, clinical. "We have a mutual interest."
Zane said nothing. He just stared. He knew who they were. The shadows. The rivals to the lions of Valerius.
"Lord Valerius does not entertain scrappers from the outer territories," the second Thorne agent continued, her voice just as devoid of inflection. "He is a collector of weapons, not stray dogs. The fact that he summoned Kael of Enclave 7 is… an anomaly."
They knew. Of course they knew. In this city, information was the real power, and House Thorne were its most ruthless merchants.
"The boy has demonstrated a unique ability," the first one said, his head tilting slightly. An analytical gesture. "A primitive but effective form of Synthesis. A lost art. A dangerous one. Valerius wishes to own it. To own him."
The word 'Synthesis' meant nothing to Zane. It was just a sound. But the meaning behind it was clear. Kael had a new trick. A better one. And the great Houses were circling. The cold jealousy in Zane's gut twisted into something sharper. Resentment.
"What do you want from me?" Zane finally asked, his voice a low growl.
"You know him," the female agent stated. It wasn't a question. "You know his history. His tactics. His weaknesses. You understand how a brute thinks, and you understand how a scavenger fights. We find your perspective… valuable."
They weren't offering pity. They weren't offering a cure. They were offering a job.
"Valerius will try to cultivate him. To control him. We prefer to understand him," the first agent said. "We want to know his movements. His contacts. The true nature of his abilities. We want an asset on the inside of his life."
An asset. A spy. They wanted him to be a whisper. A shadow. Everything he despised.
"And what do I get?" Zane sneered, the motion feeling hollow. "A pat on the head?"
"You get a purpose," the woman replied, her voice cutting through his pride like a scalpel. "You are a warrior with a broken sword. Your path to power through strength is closed. House Thorne can offer another. We have resources. Archives that rival Valerius's. Technologies. We value intellect and information as much as brute force. There is a place for a man of your experience in our House. A man who is not afraid to get his hands dirty."
The offer hung in the air. It was a life raft made of filth, but it was the only one in the ocean. They were offering him a way back. Not as a hammer, but as the hand that guides it from the shadows. They were offering him relevance.
And they were offering him Kael.
The thought was a revelation. His rivalry with Kael had been one of physical dominance. A simple, clean contest of who was stronger. He had lost that contest before it even began, not in the Scar, but in the tomb of the Glass Weaver. But this… this was a new kind of war. A war of whispers, of secrets, of knowing. A scavenger's war.
If he was going to beat Kael, he had to become him. He had to become the thing he hated most.
Zane looked at the two shadows before him. He thought of Kael's quiet confidence, of Maya's trusting eyes, of the impossible sight of them leaving the Valerius estate. The bitterness in his soul was a powerful fuel.
"I'm in," he said.
The word felt like a betrayal of everything he had ever been. And it felt like the first honest step he had taken since the day his Frame had shattered. The rivalry wasn't over. It had just put on a new, blacker armor.