I find a corner. Press my back against cold stone. My chest burns. When I touch it, my hand comes away sticky with blood.
Bad. This is bad.
Even if I don't bleed out, infection will kill me. Slow. Agonizing.
My mind goes hazy. My eyelids droop. I want to sleep. Just for a moment.
No. I can't.
The blood will attract beasts. If I sleep, I die.
I'm tired. In pain. Beaten down. Maybe death would be easier.
The thought almost takes me. Then I remember the old man. Remember my promises. I haven't left the ruins. Haven't seen the world. Haven't found that dream.
I can't die here. I won't.
The fire inside me flickers. Then catches. Burns.
I tear strips from my shirt, bandage the wound as tight as I can. The fabric is already stiff with dried sweat and dust from weeks in the Shatterlands. It smells like rust and fear. Have to find the exit. Have to get out.
The fluorescent lichen gives off weak light. But the tunnels are a maze. I have no idea which way to go. The walls here are different than the upper levels—older, smoother, like they were carved by something other than human hands. Strange symbols mar the surface, worn almost flat by time.
Then I feel it again. That pull. Something calling to me from deep below.
Real or imaginary? Doesn't matter. I have no other options.
I follow it down.
My body weakens with each step. Minutes pass. Dozens of them. The air grows thicker, harder to breathe. It tastes metallic, like licking copper coins. The sensation grows stronger. Then I see light ahead.
The exit. I found it!
I quicken my pace, hope surging through me. Then I stop.
No.
Not an exit.
Torches. A five-way intersection. Walls lined with bone spears and tools. Wind-dried meat hanging from hooks. The smell hits me like a fist—rancid fat, smoke, and something sweeter. Something human.
And sweepers. Thirty. Maybe forty.
I found their base. The heart of the maze.
Four or five scavengers are tied up against the wall. Gagged. Eyes wide with terror. Waiting to be slaughtered.
There are young sweepers too. Children. All of them covered in those cancerous growths, knotted flesh like tree bark. They can breed. Pass down their mutations. Rare in the Shatterlands.
They're gathered in front of a raised platform. Kneeling. Mumbling words I can't understand. Praying. The sound is rhythmic, hypnotic. It echoes off the stone until it feels like the walls themselves are chanting.
At the top of the platform, a black jewel hovers in the air. Defying gravity. Glowing faintly. The light it gives off isn't like torch light—it's deeper, darker, like staring into a well at midnight and seeing stars at the bottom.
That's it. The source of the pull.
I stare, transfixed. I've never seen anything like it. A scavenger doesn't see marvels. Only dirt and death.
Two sweepers drag a guillotine forward. The blade catches the torchlight, gleaming wetly—already stained with old blood that never fully washes away. Others pull a scavenger over. Press his hands beneath the blade.
"No. NO!"
The blade falls. Crunch.
His hands separate from his wrists. Blood spurts. They fill a vessel, pour it over a young sweeper. The child's skin absorbs it like dry earth drinks rain.
The sweepers celebrate. Chop the scavenger's arms into pieces. Hang them on hooks to smoke.
Brutal. Insane. They delight in torture.
The screaming snaps me back to reality. Sweat covers my body. Cold sweat now, mixing with the grime coating my skin.
What am I doing? Standing here like an idiot while dozens of killers are ten meters away?
Run. Now.
I edge backward. Slow. Careful. The stone beneath my feet is slick with condensation and things I don't want to name.
Then the last scavenger breaks free. Terror gives him impossible strength. He tears from the sweepers' grip, dodges past them. Runs blind.
Straight toward my tunnel.
A hook sinks into his leg. He falls. Gets dragged back, clawing at the ground.
But he sees me. Our eyes meet.
No. No, don't.
"Save me!"
"Save me!"
"SAVE ME!!!"
He screams, fingernails splintering as he claws the earth. Desperate. Doomed.
I know he can't be saved. But he's drowning. Grasping at any straw.
The sweepers stop their celebration. Look toward the tunnel. Puzzled. Vigilant. Several grab spears.
Damn it.
They kill the screaming scavenger with one thrust. Then five spear-wielding sweepers start walking toward me.
Danger wraps around me like a noose. I can barely breathe. My hands shake as I pull my metal shard.
It's all I have. Useless against their thick skin, but it's something.
Fight? I'll die.
Run? They're faster. And I don't have the energy.
Wait? I die slower.
Each step they take, death gets closer. Their footfalls are heavy, deliberate. I can hear their breathing—wet, rattling sounds from throats that don't work quite right.
Five meters. Four. Three.
I press against the wall, frozen with fear. Don't even dare breathe. Just pray. The stone behind me is cold enough to hurt, leaching warmth from my body through my torn shirt.
Don't come closer. Please.
But prayers are useless. They keep coming.
I grip the shard so tight my knuckles turn white. If I'm dying, I'm taking an eye with me.
Two more steps and they'll see me. I tense, muscles coiled.
Then gunfire explodes from another tunnel.
Clear. Ringing. Jarring in the stillness.
Slyfox.
That bastard used us as bait. Let us die while he tracked the sweepers. Now he's launching his attack.
Damn him for getting us killed.
But right now, I have to thank him.
Two more shots ring out. The fat man leads his mercenaries charging into the camp.
The sweepers can't ignore that. They raise their weapons, charge toward the invaders. Even the ones about to discover me join the fight.
The sounds of battle echo through the tunnels. Fierce. Savage. Steel on bone. Screaming. The wet sounds of bodies being torn apart.
Can Slyfox and Mad Dog defeat forty sweepers? I don't know. Don't care.
I pant, dizzy from holding my breath so long. One thought screams in my mind.
Run.
I crawl from my hiding spot. About to flee.
But I hesitate.
The jewel. Still hovering there. Unguarded.
This is insane. I should run. Most people would run without looking back.
But I'm a scavenger. Born into nothing. If I don't take risks, I'll die as nothing.
That jewel called to me. It has power. Properties I can't explain. It might change everything.
I'm taking it.
I charge into the camp. Step over mangled corpses. Blood slicks the ground. Fresh blood, still warm. It soaks through my boots, makes each step treacherous.
The walls are covered in paintings. Crude but deliberate. Not painted—carved into the stone, then filled with ash and blood and ochre.
One shows a massive group of mutants. Hideous. Tree-like. Surrounding an armored figure. A general. Leading them into battle.
Their enemies are humans with firearms. Led by a tall, shining figure. Resplendent. Divine.
On one side, demons. On the other, gods.
Mutants versus humans. Darkness versus light. Evil versus good.
A war from another age. The Era of Divine Dominion, maybe. Or before.
No time to study them. I sprint toward the platform.
Almost there. Then danger screams through me.
I stop dead.
A javelin whistles past my nose. So close the wind kisses my face. So close I feel the heat of its passage.
If I hadn't stopped, I'd be skewered.
Terror floods me. I spin.
A sweeper stands in the shadows. Massive. It never left. Its eyes catch the torchlight—reflective, animal. Watching me like a predator watches prey.
No hiding now. No escape.
The sweeper pulls another javelin from its back. Hefts it. Aims. I can see the muscles in its arm tense, bunching beneath the diseased skin.
I'm finished.
But I've come this far. If I'm dying, I'm dying with that jewel in my hand.
I roar. Charge up the platform steps.
The sweeper throws.
The javelin cuts through the air. I dive sideways. It grazes my shoulder, tearing skin. Pain explodes down my arm.
But I'm still moving.
I hit the platform. Roll. Come up on my knees in front of the hovering jewel.
Up close, it's beautiful. Black as night. Smooth. Pulsing with faint light. The surface isn't solid—it shifts, flows, like oil on water. Like looking into the space between stars.
I reach for it.
The sweeper charges. Heavy footsteps pounding stone. The platform shakes with each impact.
My fingers close around the jewel.
It's warm. Alive. It hums against my palm, vibrating at a frequency I feel in my bones.
Then everything changes.
The jewel blazes. Light erupts from it, blinding. Searing. The warmth becomes heat. Becomes fire.
Pain lances through my hand. Up my arm. Into my chest. The jewel burns like a star, but I can't let go. My fingers won't open.
It's fusing to me. Bonding with my flesh. I feel it burrowing, sending roots into muscle and bone.
I scream. The light fills my vision. My mind. My soul.
The sweeper reaches the platform. Raises its spear.
The light explodes outward.
The sweeper flies backward, slammed by invisible force. It crashes into the wall twenty feet away. Doesn't get up. The impact leaves cracks in the ancient stone.
The jewel's light fades. Goes dark.
I'm on my hands and knees, gasping. The jewel sits in my palm. Cold now. Dormant. But the blood-red veins across its surface pulse in time with my heartbeat.
It's part of me now.
I don't understand what just happened. Don't have time to think about it.
The sounds of battle are getting closer. Mercenaries pushing deeper. Sweepers falling back.
I shove the jewel into my pocket. Stumble down the platform steps.
The sweeper I hit is dead. Its chest caved in. Like something crushed it from the inside. Ribs jutting out at wrong angles, organs visible through split skin.
Did I do that?
No time. I run into the maze of tunnels. Away from the battle. Away from everything.
My chest wound doesn't hurt anymore. Neither does my shoulder.
I don't know what that jewel did to me.
But I'm alive.
And I'm getting out of here.