. Selene's ice-javelin flew…
Ethan swung the crowbar.
Not to block. Instinct. A desperate, one-armed arc fueled by agony and 0.10% Entropy.
The javelin shattered against unbreakable steel. Shards of supercooled ice sprayed, slicing Ethan's cheek. Selene staggered back, shock overriding fury.
"Impossible… That's mundane steel!"
Ethan didn't hesitate. He dragged himself backward, crowbar scraping furrows in the dirt.
Every movement screamed.
[HP: 3/60] [BLEEDING: 1 HP/MIN].
The crowbar hummed in his grip…a deep, resonant vibration syncing with the frantic pulse of his Entropy-deprived blood.
[ITEM: MAMA'S LAST STAND - SYNERGY ACTIVATED]
[ENTROPY CHANNELING EFFICIENCY +300%]
Efficiency? With what? His reserves were dust.
"Enough games, anomaly!" Selene hissed. Twin ice-blades formed in her hands. "I'll carve the answers from your corpse!"
She lunged…
CRACK-THOOM!
A plasma bolt struck the ground between them. Lena limped from the smoke, rifle braced on Kai's shoulder. Kai himself was pale, one hand clamped over his bleeding shoulder wound, the other steadying Lena.
"Back… off… ice queen…" Lena gasped, her own leg wound seeping red.
Selene snarled, deflecting the next bolt with an ice-shield. "Persistent vermin." She raised a hand, gathering cold…
"SELENE! RETREAT!"Rex's gurgling shout cut through the haze. The Golemancer clutched his plasma-seared throat, stumbling toward a shimmering Legion extraction beacon forming nearby. "Thorne's signal… lost… Command demands… report!"
Selene hesitated, blades of ice trembling. Her eyes, glacial and hate-filled, locked onto Ethan.
"This isn't over, trash." She vanished in a swirl of frost, reappearing beside Rex as the beacon swallowed them.
Silence, thick and choking, settled over the ruins. The only sounds, the crackle of dying fires, Kai's pained breathing, and Ethan's ragged gasps.
"Well," Kai wheezed, slumping against a melted truck frame. "That sucked."
Lena's workshop was now a triage center in a half-collapsed garage. Ethan lay on a grease-stained tarp, Lena sewing his mangled leg stump with grim efficiency using sterilized piano wire. No anesthetic. Every pull of wire drew a muffled scream.
The crowbar lay across his chest, its cold weight the only thing grounding him.
"Bleeding's stopped," Lena muttered, tying off the wire. Her hands shook."Muscle's shredded. Bone's… broken. You're not walking on that, Entropy Man."
Ethan stared at the ceiling, sweat dripping into his eyes.
[HP: 10/60] [STATUS: LEG AMPUTATED]. "Mama?"
"Gone,"Lena said flatly. "Vortex ate her. Same as Golden Boy." But her eyes flickered to a cracked monitor showing the blast crater. Faint, fluctuating energy readings spiked gold and green intertwined.
"Signal's still there," Kai piped up, wincing as he bandaged his own shoulder. "Faint. Like a heartbeat under the dirt. Maybe…"
"Maybe nothing,"Lena snapped, but hope warred with grief in her voice. "We need to move. Legion will send scouts. Razor's Ghost Faction remnants are still out there. And the Pile…" She gestured outside.
Survivors gathered twenty ragged souls out of hundreds. F-Tiers, mostly. Miners with broken tools. Children tired-eyed with shock.
They looked to Lena. To Kai. Finally, to Ethan and the crowbar on his chest.
"Mama's… bar," whispered a girl missing two fingers. "It chose him?"
"Doesn't matter," Grudge's voice rasped. The giant emerged from the smoke, face bloody, one arm hanging useless. "Pile's dead. We scatter. Or die."
"Scatter where?" Lena challenged. "Wastes are crawling with Ghost scavengers and Legion patrols! We stay. We rebuild."
"With what?" Grudge gestured at the ruins. "Cannon's slag. Defenses? Dust. We got no Knox. No Geargrinder." His eyes settled on Ethan. "Just burnt stuffs."
Ethan gripped the crowbar.
[ABSORBING AMBIENT ENTROPY…] [RATE: 0.01%/MIN]. Pathetic. But constant.
"We have Sector Zero," Ethan said, voice raw but clear. "The Geargrinder's corpse. Its hoard."
Grudge stiffened. "Sacrilege! Mama forbade—"
"Mama's gone!" Ethan snapped. "And her forbade kept us weak! That hoard's got S-Rank salvage! Pre-System relics! Enough to build walls. Weapons. Legs."
He met Grudge's gaze. "You want to run? Run. But the Geargrinder died protecting this place. Its bones belong to the Pile now."
Silence. The survivors stared. Grudge's fist clenched, then slowly uncurled."…Fine. But you touch its core, Waste Disposer… I break your other leg."
LATER IN THE EVENING
The Geargrinder lay where it fell, a mountain of dead metal. Its chest cavity gaped, the once-violet core dark and fractured.
Ethan ran a hand along its cold flank. The crowbar hummed, resonating with the residual Entropy weeping from the corpse. [ABSORPTION RATE: 0.05%/MIN].
"Focus, Entropy Man," Lena ordered, setting up scanners. "Where's the good stuff?"
"Priorities, Lena! Show respect!" Kai protested, placing a dented hubcap like a funeral offering on the Geargrinder's brow. "Sorry, big guy. We're just borrowing…"
As Lena directed survivors in harvesting armor plating and intact hydraulic systems, Ethan limped deeper into the mist using the crowbar as a crutch.
Every step was agony, but the crowbar fed him trickles of power, easing the withdrawal's edge.
Purple mist thickened. His crowbar pulsed a single, strong vibration.
He pushed through a curtain of hanging cables into a hidden alcove. A vault.
Walls lined with pre-System server racks, miraculously intact. Dusty screens flickered with data. And at its center, on a pedestal of fused circuit boards: a perfect, fist-sized gear made of blackened brass.
[ITEM: PERPETUAL CORE - ???]
[ENTROPIC SIGNATURE: NULL]`
[ANALOG: COSMIC CLOCKWORK]
Ethan reached for it….
"Don't touch that, pretty."
A figure melted from the shadows behind him sinewy, clad in Ghost faction handprint graffiti, a vibro-knife humming at his throat. [GHOST TECH-SCAV - LVL 7].
"Boss Razor wanted that shiny real bad,"the scav hissed. "Said it's the key to the Geargrinder's heart. Or was."
He eyed Ethan's crowbar. "Mama's toy. He'll want that too."
"Razor's dead," Ethan stated, crowbar humming warningly.
"Razor was stupid," the scav chuckled. "Real boss? She's smarter. Been watching you. Watching it."He nodded at the Perpetual Core. "You give me that core and the crowbar… maybe she lets your crippled ass live."
"Or?"
"Or she takes your friends. Starting with the little girl with the missing fingers. Likes collecting… parts."
Rage, cold and sharp, cut through Ethan's pain. He gripped the crowbar tighter. [ENTROPY: 0.25%]. "Tell your boss…"
He slammed the crowbar down onto the server rack.
Not to attack. To resonate.
[ENTROPIC PULSE: FREQUENCY MATCH - GEARGRINDER'S DEATH ECHO]
The entire vault shuddered. Dust rained down. Screens flared with static. The Perpetual Core glowed faintly on its pedestal.
The Ghost scav stumbled, clutching his head. "What—?!"
"...The Pile isn't for sale," Ethan finished.
He lunged, not with the crowbar, but with his body….diving past the disoriented scav, snatching the Perpetual Core. It felt… warm. Alive.
The scav roared, vibro-knife lashing out—
Kai phased through the vault wall, phase-dagger plunging into the scav's kidney. "Delivery for Boss Ghost! One pissed-off rat!"
The scav collapsed, gurgling. Kai yanked his dagger free, grinning. "Heard the noise. You okay, Crips?" He eyed the Perpetual Core. "Oooh. Shiny."
"A Ghost boss," Ethan panted, leaning on the crowbar. "Collecting parts. Using Razor as a front."
"Yeah," Kai's grin vanished. "Name's Vultura. Runs the Bone Market west of here. Took my sister, Zara. Razor sold her." His knuckles whitened on his dagger. "Vultura's parts… they ain't machine."
Good now the enemies just got multiplied
The extraction beacon deposited Selene and Rex onto the sterile deck of a Solar Legion Sky-Carrier. Medics rushed to Rex's seared throat.
Selene brushed them off, storming toward the command spire.
"Status of Knight Thorne?" her voice cut through the hushed bridge.
The tech officer paled. "Signal… lost, Ma'am. Last tracked to a localized reality tear. Probability of survival… 12%."
Selene's fist clenched. Ice crackled on the deck plates. "The anomaly?"
"Alive. Bio-signature weak but stable. Entropic signature… evolving."
"Evolving?" Selene's glacial eyes narrowed. "Show me."
A hologram flared…satellite imagery of the Scrap Pile ruins. Overlaid was a pulsing, green-gold energy signature centered on Sector Zero.
It pulsed weakly… but rhythmically. Like a heartbeat.
And faint tendrils of that same energy snaked toward the blast crater where Aris vanished.
"He's… feeding the tear?" Selene whispered, a horrifying realization dawning. "The anomaly isn't just surviving Entropy. He's weaving it with Thorne's Scorch energy!"
She slammed a fist onto the console. "Open a channel to High Command! Priority Alpha! The F-Tier anomaly has achieved Entropy Synthesis! He must be terminated before he bridges dimensions!"
"High Command demands proof, Ma'am! And… resources are committed to the Crimson Front—"
"I'LL GET PROOF!" Selene snarled. She strode toward the armory. "Prep a Stealth Skiff. And a Reality Anchor. I'm going back. To bring back Thorne's killer… or the anomaly's head."