The air in the sterile white room tasted of lies. It was a clean, antiseptic flavor that promised healing and progress, but Zane knew the truth. He could feel it in the discordant, staticky whine of his own Aethel Frame, a constant, low-grade testament to his failure. The therapy machine hummed its placid, condescending tune, its sterile chrome arms a mockery of the power he had lost.
Permanently compromised. The words from the diagnostic report were a brand seared into his soul. His Frame, once a deep, resonant thrum of earthy power—the Stonetusk Boar, a force of nature—was now a broken engine, sputtering and threatening to shake itself apart if he ever tried to truly open the throttle.
A soft chime signaled the end of the session. He swung his legs off the slab, ignoring the phantom ache that was now a permanent resident in his bones. He caught sight of his forearms in the polished chrome of the machine. The mark of the Weaver, a faint, dark web of lines like frozen lightning, was a roadmap of his own stupidity. He had reached for a star and it had burned him, leaving him a ghost in a city of gods.
Two figures materialized in the doorway, their matte-black armor drinking the sterile light and leaving only humanoid voids. House Thorne. They didn't walk; they simply arrived, their Aethel signatures muted, disciplined, like sheathed knives.
"User Zane," the first one said, the voice from his helmet's external speaker flat and clinical. "You are required."
They didn't lead him to a command center or a briefing room. They led him to a place that felt like a morgue for ideas, a deep-level observation chamber walled in polished chrome and black glass. In the center of the room, a high-fidelity hologram played on a loop. The battle in the Sunken Cathedral.
Zane's breath caught. He watched the data-ghost of Kael move through the chaos. It wasn't the clumsy scavenger he remembered. This was something else. A whisper of motion, an artist painting with the laws of physics.
"The Nomad, Anya, is a known quantity," a new voice murmured, a dry rustle of old data-slates. A woman, the senior Thorne handler he'd only seen in field reports, stood before the hologram. Her face was a mask of detached analysis. "Her combat style is aggressive, efficient. Predictable." She gestured with a long, elegant finger, and the hologram froze, freezing Kael mid-leap as he dodged a kinetic pulse from the Bell-Warden. "This, however, is not."
The image zoomed in, resolving into the fine, shimmering weave of Kael's Aethel signature, the impossible liquid-mercury sheen of his [Kinetic Rebound Armor].
"He didn't add a new Echo," the handler noted, her voice devoid of surprise. "He rewrote the existing synthesis. Valerius sees a new sword for his collection. He will try to acquire it. He will offer power, protection, a gilded cage. If the asset refuses, he will try to break it. Both are… inefficient."
"He refused," Zane said, the words grinding out from the ruin of his pride. He remembered the impossible sight of Kael and the girl leaving the Valerius estate, untouched.
"We are aware," the handler said, without looking at him. "Which is why a direct approach is insufficient. We require more data. The Gauntlet was a controlled environment. The factory was a reactive one. We need to see him in a proactive, high-stress scenario. We need to see him build. We need to see him break." Her gaze finally fell on Zane. It was not a human look. It was the gaze of a technician diagnosing a faulty component, wondering if it could be repurposed.
The hologram shifted. A new schematic appeared. It wasn't a weapon. It wasn't armor. It was a crude, brutal-looking thing, a lattice of tarnished silver and a dull, red crystal that seemed to pulse with a sickly, internal light. It trailed wires and conduits that looked disturbingly like veins.
"The archives of the Ancients are full of their failures," the handler said, her voice a synthesized whisper of conspiracy. "Most are useless. Some, however, are merely… unstable. This is a Berserker Module. A crude tool designed to bypass all of a Frame's natural safety limiters. It forcibly overclocks the user's Aethel Core, granting a temporary, and quite frankly absurd, amplification of power."
Zane stared at it, a cold fascination overriding the disgust. He could feel the wrongness of it even through the hologram. It was a tumor made of metal and crystal.
"The cost, of course, is significant," the handler continued, her tone as flat as if she were discussing resource logistics. "The feedback loop is catastrophic. It burns the user's Frame from the inside out. Irreversibly. It also induces a state of extreme aggression, eroding higher cognitive functions. It turns the user into a weapon, and nothing more. A weapon with a very short operational lifespan."
The offer settled in the sterile air. A life raft made of filth, but it was the only one in the ocean. They weren't offering him a way back. They were offering him a way down, but in a blaze of glory.
Zane thought of Kael. The quiet confidence. The impossible power. The boy who fought like a technician, the scavenger who was becoming a god. The injustice of it was a pure, perfect thing. It was the only thing he had left.
"Kael and his new allies have fled Enclave 3," the handler stated. "They are heading into the Wasteland Frontier. We have a location. We have a mission. Lord Valerius has lost his asset. We, however, prefer to understand ours. We want to know the limits of this new art. We want to know if it can be broken. Or if it can be taught." She turned to him fully. "We need an instrument for this task. Your familiarity with the subject, your… personal investment… makes you the ideal candidate."
Instrument. The word didn't sting anymore. It was just a fact. He was a broken hammer. They were offering him a chance to be a shard of glass.
"What's the objective?" he asked, his voice a low growl.
"Observe," the handler said. "Report. And if the opportunity presents itself… test him."
The subtext was a serpent. They wanted him to fight Kael. To push him. To try and break him. They wanted to see if Kael's art was stronger than their abomination.
He looked from the handler's impassive mask to the hologram of the Berserker Module. He had craved power, and it had destroyed him. Kael had craved answers, and it was making him a king. This was his chance to correct the universe's clerical error. He would become the monster they wanted him to be. He would watch the scavenger. He would learn his secrets.
And then, he would pick up the hammer again, one last time.
"I'll do it." The words felt like a betrayal of everything he had ever been. And they 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.
The module was not a piece of equipment to be worn. It was a violation to be endured. The Thorne technicians, faceless figures in sterile grey suits, worked with the detached precision of surgeons performing an autopsy on a living man. They affixed the module to the back of Zane's combat suit, the central crystal aligning with his spine. He felt the cold touch of its conduits against his skin, a promise of the pain to come.
"Activation is keyed to your Aethel signature," one of the technicians said, his voice muffled by his mask. "Once it's on, it stays on until it burns out. Or you do. We recommend… judicious use."
Zane didn't reply. He was on a transport, a sleek, silent Thorne skimmer, cutting through the Wasteland Frontier. He had been given a target. A purpose. It was enough.
He closed his eyes. He reached for the tatters of his Aethel Frame. He found the module. It was a cold, silent thing, a leech waiting for a taste of blood. He let a single, hesitant thread of his own ruined power touch it.
The world did not explode. It… sharpened.
The pain was a clean, white fire, a thousand times worse than the Glass Weaver's chaotic rage. But it was a focused fire. The module roared to life, a parasite that didn't just drain power, but force-fed it back into the system. He felt his scarred, fractured pathways being violently wrenched open, the energy of the Stonetusk Boar, a ghost he thought long dead, surging back to life, a hundred times stronger than before.
The low, staticky whine of his Frame became a screaming, high-pitched roar. The hate in his soul, that cold, stable thing, now had a fuel source. The walls of the skimmer seemed thin, insubstantial. He could feel the vibrations of the desert floor a hundred feet below. He could smell the fear-sweat of the pilot in the cockpit ahead.
The world was a map of things to be broken. And on that map, a single, irritatingly bright light pulsed somewhere to the west. A complex, harmonious signal. An anomaly.
Kael.
The name was no longer a source of envy. It was a destination. A final, beautiful problem to be solved. He was no longer Zane, the failed User. He was an instrument of observation. He was a rival, returned. And his hunt had begun.