Location: The Spine of the World, Elevation 20,000 ft.
Time: 09:00 Hours.
The wind didn't blow here; it screamed. It was a physical force, a wall of pressurized air trying to scrub them off the face of the earth.
The climb was a vertical nightmare of slick obsidian glass and razor-sharp ice that shattered under the blow of a pick. They were roped together—Dante, Valerius, Havoc, and Silas—crawling up the spine of the sleeping god like fleas on a dying beast.
Silas was the weak link. The mechanic was pale, his skin translucent. Blood trickled from his nose, freezing instantly into a red icicle on his upper lip. He was hallucinating.
"My gums itch," Silas mumbled over the comms, his voice wet and slurred. "And the snow... why is the snow purple? It tastes like pennies."
"Keep moving," Dante ordered, checking the Geiger counter strapped to his wrist. The needle was vibrating violently in the red zone. "We are at the radiation threshold. If we stop, we cook. Your cells are just confused, Silas. Ignore the purple."
Commander Lyra led the way, moving with supernatural grace. She didn't use pitons; she jammed her obsidian daggers into the ice, hauling herself up one-handed, her boots finding purchase on ledges invisible to the human eye.
"We are approaching the Death Zone," Lyra shouted over the wind. "The air is thin here. And the Shadows are thick."
They crested a ridge. Ahead, the slope leveled out into a massive, bowl-shaped plateau. The visibility was zero—a wall of white snow and grey ash swirling in a vortex.
But through the whiteout, they saw them.
The Lost Ones.
They were standing in the storm, perfectly still, like statues in a garden of ice.
They were tall, like the women of the Enclave, but broad-shouldered. They wore the ragged remnants of Enclave furs mixed with rusted iron plating grafted directly into their skin. Tubes hung from their necks, leaking green anti-freeze fluids onto the snow. Their eyes were gone, replaced by glowing red optical sensors that cut through the fog.
There were fifty of them. Waiting. A silent legion of the damned.
"Guardians," Havoc whispered, unslinging his heavy rifle. "They don't look friendly."
"They aren't," Lyra said, her voice shaking for the first time. She pointed a trembling finger. "That one... the one with the steel jaw... that was Kaelen. The Baker. He made bread for my naming day."
Valerius stepped forward. He unclipped his safety line. Click.
"Hold your fire," Valerius commanded.
He walked into the blizzard, his scrap-metal spear held loosely in his right hand. He didn't look like a mechanic anymore. He moved like the Sword-Saint he was born to be—balanced, lethal, and sad.
The Lost Ones turned their heads in unison. Whirrr-Click. The sound of rusted servos cutting through the wind.
"Brothers," Valerius called out. "I am Valerius. I am the end of the line."
One of the Husks—Kaelen—twitched. A garbled, static noise erupted from his throat speaker, bypassing the vocal cords that had rotted away years ago.
"...Hu...nger..."
"They are gone," Dante said, stepping up beside Valerius, his mechanical arm glowing with thermal energy. "There is no one home, Valerius. Just the programming. Just the meat."
"I know," Valerius whispered.
He spun his spear.
"Let us free them."
The Husks charged.
It wasn't a disorganized mob; it was a military phalanx. They moved with the synchronized precision of machines networked together.
Havoc opened fire.
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
High-caliber rounds slammed into the front rank. The bullets punched through rotting flesh but sparked off the hidden subdermal armor plates. They didn't fall. They just kept coming, absorbing the kinetic impact like sponges.
"Aim for the joints!" Dante yelled. "They are hydraulic! The flesh is dead; break the metal!"
Dante lunged. A Husk swung a rusted axe at his head. Dante ducked, the wind of the swing cutting his cheek.
"Rust-Accelerant."
Dante grabbed the axe handle. The iron turned to orange dust in seconds.
He followed up with a palm strike to the Husk's chest.
"Kinetic Impact."
The Husk flew backward, its chest cavity caved in. It hit the ground and didn't move.
But Valerius... Valerius was dancing.
He moved through the horde like water. He didn't hack or slash. He targeted the life-support systems.
Zip. A spear thrust severed a coolant line. Green fluid sprayed.
Snap. A kick shattered a frozen knee joint.
Crunch. A palm-strike to the temple destroyed the central processor.
He killed them efficiently, silently. Every time a Husk fell, Valerius whispered a single word.
"Sleep."
"Sleep."
"Sleep."
Lyra watched from the ridge, her obsidian daggers drawn but unused. She was crying. She watched the monster (Valerius) killing the monsters (Her Kin), and for the first time, she understood the tragedy of it. He was killing his own reflection.
"He is not fighting them," Lyra whispered. "He is grieving them."
The last Husk—the massive one with the steel jaw, Kaelen—grabbed Valerius's spear. It was strong enough to crush stone. It pulled Valerius close, its red optic lens inches from his face.
The Husk's hand looked exactly like Valerius's hand. Same long fingers. Same pale skin.
"...Kill... me..." the Husk groaned, a spark of the original soul surfacing for a microsecond through the code.
Valerius looked into the red eye.
"Rest now, brother," Valerius said softly.
He dropped the spear. He grabbed the Husk's head with both hands.
CRACK.
He twisted. The neck snapped. The red light faded.
The Husk fell into the snow.
Valerius stood alone in the circle of bodies. The wind howled, burying the dead in white.
Dante walked over. He didn't say anything. He just handed Valerius a canteen of water.
Valerius took it. His hands were shaking violently.
"We move on," Valerius said, his voice hollow. "The summit is ahead."
They pushed past the carnage. The slope grew steeper, the radiation intense enough that Dante could taste metal in his mouth.
They broke through the cloud layer.
And there it was.
The summit wasn't a peak. It was a Face.
The top of the mountain was carved—or perhaps fossilized—into the visage of a sleeping woman. It was colossal, her features measuring miles across. She was lying on her back, staring eternally at the sky.
Her mouth was open in a silent scream.
The "Mouth" was a cave entrance three hundred feet wide. The stalactites hanging from the roof were literal teeth, calcified and sharp. The cave glowed with a sickly, pulsing violet light.
This was the Throat of the World.
"The Geo-Titan," Silas gasped, leaning on Havoc for support. "It's... she's beautiful. And terrifying."
"She's leaking," Dante corrected. "Look at the violet light. That's raw Axiom mana. It's bleeding out of the engine room."
Dante turned to Lyra.
"This is as far as you go, Commander."
Lyra looked at the Mouth. She looked at the bodies of the Lost Ones down the slope.
"You will kill it?" Lyra asked. "You will stop the heartbeat?"
"I will silence the noise," Dante promised.
Lyra nodded. She pulled a small black stone from her neck—a protective charm carved with the Enclave's sigil—and pressed it into Valerius's hand.
"For luck," she said stiffly, looking him in the eye. "Cousin."
She didn't wait for a response. She turned and vanished back into the blizzard, descending to her people.
Valerius looked at the stone. He clenched his fist around it.
"Alright," Dante said, facing the glowing cavern. "Into the belly of the beast. Silas, pop a radiation pill—the blue ones from the Depot. Havoc, safety off. Valerius, point."
They walked into the mouth of the Titan.
The darkness swallowed them whole.