Location: Scrapper's Cove — Disposal Yard — Night
The rings hummed.
Five on each arm. Ten points of light that pulsed in uneven rhythm—bright, dim, bright—like hearts that couldn't decide whether to beat or stop. The bandana covered the lower half of the man's face, but his eyes were visible. Dark. Cold. Empty of anything that looked like hesitation.
Elijah stared at him.
Behind the mask—Nathan Drayke's smug, punchable face—his own expression was unreadable. But his voice, when it came, was flat.
"Are you part of the subclans?"
The man's brow furrowed.
Not recognition. Confusion. His head tilted slightly, the way someone tilts their head when they hear a word in a language they don't speak.
"Sub... what?"
"The subclans. The seven bloodlines. The Sutran."
Nothing. The man's expression didn't change. He didn't know what Elijah was talking about. He didn't care.
He was just there to kill.
Fine, Elijah thought. Different kind of enemy then.
His internal thoughts churned.
The necklaces. The rings. They're not Sutran artifacts. They're something else. Something the Mysterium cooked up in their laboratories.
Vein frames.
I've heard of them. Weapons forged from orrhion condensates—broken down, reformatted, shaped into runic patterns that can be worn. Each turf clique has them. Given by the families they serve. Halverns. Wycliffe. Saiyan.
This one has ten rings. That's more than I've ever seen.
"Those," Elijah said, gesturing at the man's arms. "Are those Vein frames?"
The man's eyes widened.
Just a fraction. Just enough to be noticeable.
"You know what these are?"
His voice was muffled by the bandana, but the surprise cut through.
"No outsider knows about Vein frames. No one outside the families. No one outside the..."
He stopped.
"You're either one of the cliques trying to stir trouble. Or you're from that shitty organization that's been poking its nose where it doesn't belong."
Elijah's head tilted.
Behind the mask, something that might have been a smile.
"Your boss—that bozo you work for—really takes me that seriously? Willing to sacrifice his own godson just to kill me?"
"Nico was expendable."
The man's voice was cold. Flat.
"If you're trying to buy time, think again. You're not walking out of here alive."
Elijah's posture shifted.
Not into a fighting stance. Something looser. Something that looked almost relaxed.
"Who said I was planning to walk?"
---
The man attacked.
His body moved like he was underwater—smooth, continuous, each motion flowing into the next without pause or hesitation. His feet didn't stomp. They glided. His fists didn't punch. They extended, as if the air itself was carrying them toward Elijah's face.
He's not thinking, Elijah realized. He's not executing techniques. He's... becoming them.
The rings on his arms flared.
Aetherflux conflux poured from them—not in jagged bursts like Nico, not in hungry waves like Silver-tongue. In streams. Controlled. Directed. The energy wrapped around his fists, his forearms, his elbows.
"You're a Vaultform," Elijah said.
He stepped back. The first punch passed where his chin had been.
"A-rank. From the Mysterium clan's classification system."
Another punch. He ducked.
"That explains why they gave you a Vein frame. They don't hand those out to just anyone."
The man's eyes narrowed.
"How do you know about the Mysterium? Who are you?"
Elijah didn't answer.
His body was already moving.
---
The fight changed.
Not faster. Slower. Each movement became something that could be seen, felt, anticipated. The air between them thickened. The gravel beneath their feet shifted.
Pebbles trembled.
Small stones vibrated where they lay, as if something beneath them was pushing up, trying to escape. Dust particles rose from the ground—not in clouds, but in individual specks, floating in the space between the two men.
Elijah's Aetherastrum was quality.
Dense. Refined. It didn't leak from his body. It radiated—waves of warmth that pressed outward, that made the air feel heavier, that made the floating dust particles orbit him like tiny moons.
The man's aetherflux conflux was quantity.
Vast. Hungry. It licked at the edges of Elijah's field like flames in a windstorm—pushing, testing, searching for weakness. But it was unstable. The rings couldn't maintain it for long. Each pulse was weaker than the last.
Not his power, Elijah thought. Borrowed. Like the necklaces. Just... more of it.
More doesn't mean better.
---
The man threw a combination.
Left hook. Right cross. Knee to the midsection. Each strike flowed from the last—no pause, no reset, no tell. His body was a single weapon, and every movement was a part of the same attack.
Elijah's perception expanded.
He saw the hook before it was thrown—the tension in the man's shoulder, the rotation of his hip, the way his weight shifted to his back foot. He saw the cross before it was thrown—the recoil of the hook feeding into it, the twist of the torso, the extension of the arm.
He saw the knee before it was thrown—the rise of the thigh, the curl of the toes, the way the man's breathing changed as he prepared to strike.
He didn't dodge.
He wasn't there.
The hook passed through empty air. The cross whistled past his ear. The knee found nothing but space.
"Well," Elijah said. "I'm sorry to break it to you, buddy. But I've been on your level for a long time."
He stepped inside the man's guard.
"Back when I didn't have hair below my... you know. Little."
The man's eyes widened.
"Now?" Elijah's voice dropped. "I'm just built different."
---
His palm struck the man's chin.
Not hard. Precise. The impact traveled through the jaw, up the cheekbone, into the temple. The man's head snapped back. His eyes lost focus for a fraction of a second.
Elijah's knee came up.
It drove into the man's midsection—just below the ribs, just above the stomach. The air left his lungs in a rush. His body folded forward.
Elijah's elbow descended.
The point of it—the sharpest part, the part that concentrated all the force of the strike into a single point—cracked against the back of the man's neck.
He fell.
Not gracefully. Not heroically. His body crumpled—knees first, then hands, then face. The gravel scraped his cheek. The rings on his arms flickered—dim, dimmer, dark.
He was still breathing.
But he wouldn't be getting up anytime soon.
---
Elijah stood over him.
The mask—Nathan Drayke's punchable face—stared down at the unconscious figure. The bandana had shifted, revealing a mouth that was slack, open, bleeding from a split lip.
"I'm really tired of that fatso trying to kill me," Elijah said.
His voice was quiet. Tired.
"Takes it so seriously. Like I'm some kind of existential threat."
He shook his head.
"I'm just trying to survive, mate. Same as everyone else."
He turned.
The disposal yard stretched behind him—broken boats, scattered buoys, the pyramid of rusted barrels. The yellow light flickered. The waves sighed against the beach.
Somewhere in the distance, a gull cried out.
Elijah walked toward the parking lot.
He didn't look back.
---