The Scrap Pile didn't sleep. It festered.
Bonfire light painted the central clearing in feverish orange.
Mama Knox stood atop a stack of crushed school buses, her crowbar resting on her shoulder like a judge's gavel.
Below, bound and gagged at her feet, Razor squirmed. His melted face was a mask of terror.
Every survivor…miners, hunters, children,stood silent. Even the clanging workshops had stilled. Dawn was coming. Aris's ultimatum hung like a noose. But first… justice.
Mama's voice cut the silence like a sawblade:
"Razor sold your homes. Your lives. To the golden bastard who'd burn you all for kindling."She nudged him with her boot. "Defend yourself."
Razor spat out his gag. "Lies! That F-Tier freak framed me! The Geargrinder's his pet! He's the trai—"
THUNK.
Mama's crowbar came down. Not on Razor. On the Solar Legion transmitter at his feet. Plastic and circuitry exploded.
"Proof's in the pieces, maggot," Grudge snarled from the crowd.
"I did it for us!" Razor shrieked. "Thorne offered protection! Food! Medicine! This dump is dying! I was saving us!"
Mama Knox crouched, eye-level with her prisoner. Her voice dropped, cold and intimate. "You sold children, Razor. Fed F-Tiers to the Geargrinder to test its patrols. Stole Lena's designs for Legion bounty." She tapped his chest with the crowbar's tip. "You didn't save shit. You sold it."
She straightened. The crowbar rose, gleaming in the firelight.
"Any last words worth the air they waste?"
Razor's eyes darted wildly….then locked on Ethan, standing at the crowd's edge, Lena and Kai supporting his trembling frame. [ENTROPY: 0.10%] felt like lead in his veins.
"HIM!" Razor screamed, spittle flying. *"That trash! He's the cause of all those! Aris wants him! Take him and the Geargrinder and Thorne leaves us alone! I heardhim!"
A ripple went through the crowd. Hungry eyes turned to Ethan. Hope was a venomous thing in the apocalypse.
Mama Knox didn't look at Ethan. Her gaze never left Razor.
"Offered my people like cattle to the butcher,"* she murmured. "Final mistake."
The crowbar fell.
Not a swing. A precision strike. The hardened steel tip punched through Razor's temple with a sickening crunch. His body jerked once. Silence.
Mama Knox yanked her crowbar free. Wiped the blood and grey matter on Razor's coat.
"Dump him in Sector Zero," she ordered Grudge. "Let the Geargrinder play with the scraps."
As Grudge dragged the corpse away, Mama turned to the silent, staring survivors.
"Dawn comes. Aris Thorne brings fire. You got two choices: Run into the wastes and pray monsters eat you quick…" She slammed her crowbar down, sparks flying off the bus roof. "...Or stand with me. With the Pile. And make that golden fucker choke on his sunrise."
A roar erupted…fear and fury twisted into defiance. Fists raised. Weapons clanged.
Ethan closed his eyes. The noise grated. His Entropy-starved nerves screamed. [WARNING: ENTROPIC WITHDRAWAL - PHASE 1]. Tremors wracked his hands.
"Ethan?" Lena's voice sounded distant.
"Need… trash…" he gasped. "Anything decaying…"
Kai shoved a rusted shock absorber into his hands. "Breakfast is served, Entropy Man!"
Ethan clutched it. [ABSORBING RESIDUAL ENTROPY... +0.02%]` `[TOTAL: 0.12%]. The tremors eased, but a hollow ache remained deep in his bones. Like his cells were starving.
Not enough. Never enough now.
MEANWHILE..,.
Sector Zero's mist felt… different. Less hostile. More watchful.
The Geargrinder waited where Ethan had left it, crouched over a mound of scrap, Razor's mangled body already half-absorbed into its shifting mass. Its core pulsed a neutral violet.
"Thanks," Ethan rasped. "For the assist."
The entity tilted its head. A pincer limb extended, offering not Razor's remains, but a small, scorched object: a shard of Aris's melted armor, still faintly glowing gold.
[ITEM: SOLAR PLATE FRAGMENT - S-RANK]
[RESIDUAL DIVINE SCORCH ENERGY DETECTED]
Ethan took it. Heat seared his palm…not just temperature, but purifying light that fought his Entropy. [HP -1/SEC].
Why give me this?
He poured his meager power into the shard. [ENTROPY: 0.10%]. The light flared, battling his decay. But deep within the golden fragment, Ethan sensed something else a flaw. A microscopic fracture where Aris's perfect armor had stressed under the Geargrinder's avalanche.
[ABSORBING DIVINE SCORCH... ERROR]
[ENTROPIC CONVERSION IMPOSSIBLE - PURITY THRESHOLD EXCEEDED]
The shard wasn't fuel. It was a battery too potent to crack. Yet…
"You felt it too?" Ethan murmured. "His power isn't endless. It can break."
The Geargrinder's core cycled to deep blue, affirmation. It retracted the pincer, turning back to its scrap hoard. Conversation over.
Ethan pocketed the burning shard. Pain lanced up his arm, but he smiled.
Aris bleeds sunlight. And sunlight… casts shadows.
Lena's workshop hummed with frantic energy. The Dungeon Core Stabilizer's crystal…now cracked and sparking erratically…floated in a containment field woven from salvaged mana batteries.
"It's not broken," Lena muttered, welding leads to its facets. "It's… angry."
"So it matches the mood!" Kai perched on a stack of tires, juggling three stolen Legion grenades. "Can it stabAris? That's the real question."
"It stabilizes chaotic dungeon cores," Lena snapped. "Aris is a walking core of solar fury. If I overload the crystal's polarity…" She connected the final wire. The crystal flared, projecting a chaotic hologram…Aris's energy signature, but fractured, pulsing with weak points. "...It might disrupt his aura. For a second. Maybe."
"A second's all Grudge needs to hit him with a bus!" Kai grinned.
"If we can get close," Ethan said, leaning against the doorframe, still pale. "His aura burns F-Tiers just by standing near him."* He held up the Solar Plate shard. It glowed fiercely in the dim workshop. "But this… this hurts him to touch."
Lena's eyes lit up. "Give it here!" She snatched the shard, yelping as it seared her fingers, and shoved it into the containment field beside the Stabilizer crystal.
ZZZ-KRAKOOM!
Golden light and violet chaos collided. The field shattered. Tools flew. Kai yelped, diving behind tires as grenades scattered.
When the smoke cleared, the Stabilizer crystal was embedded in the Solar Plate shard like a diamond in a hateful setting. Both pulsed with unstable, combined energy.
[ITEM: SOLAR ENTROPY SHARD (UNSTABLE)]
[EFFECTS: UNKNOWN - DO NOT DROP]
"Well," Lena breathed, prodding it with an insulated wrench. "It's definitely a bomb now."
"A shiny bomb!"* Kai corrected.
"Can it disrupt Aris?" Ethan asked.
"Disrupt?"* Lena snorted. "It might unravel reality in a five-foot radius! But yes… if you throw it at him, his pretty aura should… glitch."
Ethan picked up the fused shard. Agony seared up his arm, but Entropy thrummed within it… a dark counterpoint to the scorching light. [ENTROPY SYNCHRONIZATION DETECTED]. The pain… focused him.
"How long?"
"Till dawn?" Lena checked a cracked clock. "Three hours."
"Till this explodes?" Kai asked cheerfully. "Dice roll!"
Ethan climbed the highest scrap tower…a teetering monument of dead buses. Below, the Pile prepared.
Grudge directed teams welding armored plates onto bulldozers. Children filled Molotovs with oil and rage. Mama Knox oversaw the emplacement of her masterpiece…a Scrap Cannon forged from a battleship's main gun, humming with unstable dungeon cores.
But Ethan felt none of their defiant energy.
The Solar Entropy Shard in his pocket was a dying star against his thigh. [HP -1/HR]. His own Entropy reserves were skeletal (`0.10%`). Withdrawal symptoms bit deeper
Shakes had become convulsions.
Aches were now bone-deep fissures of cold.
Visions flickered…Aris's golden eyes judging him from the dark.
He touched the shard, drawing a trickle of its chaotic energy. [ABSORBING SOLAR ENTROPY... +0.05%] [TOTAL: 0.15%]. Warmth flooded him, soothing the fissures. The visions cleared.
Relief.
Then the shard flared in retaliation. Golden light lanced up his nerves like scalding wire. [HP -5].
He jerked his hand away, gasping. The warmth vanished. The fissures returned, deeper. The golden eyes laughed in his mind.
Addiction.
This shard wasn't power. It was poisoned bait. Using it fed him and burned him. Starving without it hurt worse.
"You look like shit warmed over,"Kai's voice chimed from behind him. The thief perched on a satellite dish, munching a stolen protein bar.
"Feel worse," Ethan admitted.
"Mama's got a plan," Kai said, tossing him the protein bar. Ethan's stomach churned. "Cannon distracts Aris. Grudge charges with the dozer brigade. We sneak close during the chaos… and you toss your fancy grenade."
"And if it doesn't work?"
"Then we become very expensive charcoal."Kai shrugged. "But hey! Front-row seats to the end of the world!"
Ethan stared east. The horizon was bleeding from black to bruised purple. Dawn approached.
"Why stay?" Ethan asked. "You could vanish. Survive."
Kai's grin faltered. For a second, the thief mask slipped, revealing something tired and young. "Pile's my home. Razor's ghosts took my little sister. Wanna make sure all the slavers burn." He dropped down, clapping Ethan's shoulder. "Besides, you're the only guy who makes trash exciting*."
He vanished into the gloom, leaving Ethan alone with the rising light and the burning shard.
The Geargrinder's grinding purr echoed from Sector Zero…a sound like stones grinding in a grave.
Ethan gripped the Solar Entropy Shard. Agony and power sang up his arm.
Three hours.
To live.
To die.
To become something more than trash.