[Bearer No.10: deployed.]
[Bearer No.10: Eliminated]
[Bearer No.11: deployed.]
[Bearer No.11: Eliminated]
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.
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[Bearer No. 14 selected]
[Deployed to Area No. 14]
[Power Assigned: Bone Thread]
In another distant land, a black portal opened, throwing a man out of it. He landed hard, face scraping against coarse red sand.
He grunted, pushed himself up, and spat out the sand. The taste of iron lingered in his mouth.
His name was Corin. In his world, he had been a puppet maker, a quiet and lonely man working with wire and wood to create beauty. Now, the silence here was deafening, and there was nothing beautiful about this place.
The sky was dull gray, cracked like old paint. The land stretched out flat in all directions, spotted with jagged bones half buried in the dust. A wind blew with no direction, and it carried the doubt of faint whispers, like threads brushing each other.
He stood, fingers twitching, as something inside him responded. Thin bone white strings extended from his fingertips. They shimmered when the wind hit them. He didn't question how they came, he just moved with them. With each motion, they danced and curled in the air like obedient pets.
Corin walked cautiously, his strings trailing behind. He had no idea what he was walking towards, but standing still felt worse.
After an hour, he found a shape moving in the distance. He ducked low and approached slowly; he knew that this might not work as land was plain, but doing it felt safer.
A creature sat hunched over a broken skeleton. Its limbs were too long, skin stretched and pale, with black holes for eyes. It didn't eat, just pressed its hand to the bones as if reading them.
Corin tried to turn away, but a crunch beneath his foot gave him away. The thing turned its head toward him.
Corin didn't run; his strings responded. They lashed out, wrapping around the creature's limbs, tightening instantly.
It screeched, high and awful, but the strings held. Corin moved them with his fingers like a marionette; for the first time in years, he felt control. With real control, he made the creature fall to its knees, then twisted it down. It killed itself with its own hands.
He took a deep breath and smiled a little. "I can survive here," he said to himself. "I just need to be careful."
He started walking again, finding an underground hole to rest inside. Inside, the air was colder, but it gave him a sense of safety. He used the strings to build a tripwire across the mouth of the cave.
After looking around and seeing everything safe, he rested. That night, he dreamed of his puppets, of wooden dolls with black eyes.
In the early morning, he woke up suddenly and stood slowly; the tripwire was broken. He was ready with strings to attack. There was nothing at the cave's mouth.
Then he heard the sound of something scraping, but it didn't come from outside, it came from the ceiling.
He looked up just in time to see the entire roof of the cave peel open, like a mouth full of bone and jagged stone. He threw his strings upward, trying to hold it back, but they snapped.
The massive white jaw crushed the cave shut.
[Bearer No.14: Eliminated]
[Survived: 1.1 days]
[Cause of death: Consumed by subterranean apex predator, the Mawtop]