The Rift Scar tore through the earth like a blade wound that never healed. It plunged hundreds of feet deep, its walls alive with crawling veins of violet lightning that hissed and spat raw magic into the air. The scent was sharp — ozone, blood, burnt copper, and something older, like the breath of the world before the Rift. Farren tasted it on his tongue as he lowered himself and Cherina down the cliff face on ropes of shadow spun from Sable's will.
The lynx moved ahead, claws digging into stone that bled light. Its cyber-spines flared amber, casting long shadows that danced like ghosts. Cherina clung to Farren's back, arms locked around his neck, the jackal tooth pendant pressed between them. It glowed faintly, pulsing in time with her heartbeat — and with the song building inside her chest. Each breath she took carried a note. Each note carried power.
At the bottom, the Scar opened into a cavern of ruin. A pre-Rift laboratory lay half-swallowed by the canyon, its steel walls warped and rusted into bone-like growths. Flickering emergency lights strobed red across the floor. Scientists — or what had once been scientists — scurried on all fours. Their bodies were fused with lab rats: fur matted with oil, eyes glowing red with corrupted code, tails trailing fiber-optic cables. One skittered forward, voice crackling through a speaker embedded in its throat:
"Subject Vale. Your genome is… compatible."
Farren didn't hesitate. The revolver came up smooth. One shot. The rune-bullet — etched FAMILY — detonated mid-air into a sigil of violet fire. The rat-man's head exploded into lines of green text that rained upward like digital ash, vanishing into the lightning above.
They moved deeper. The air grew thick with static, pressing against their skin. Cherina's song vibrated in Farren's bones. Sable's ears flattened. Then they found it: a cryo-pod, glass fogged with frost, labeled in faded stencil — VALE, F.
Inside floated a clone.
Same face. Same lynx-gold eyes. Same weathered duster, same revolver holstered at the hip. The scar across the throat glowed faintly, as if lit from within. The clone's eyes snapped open. He smiled.
Cherina's fingers brushed the glass. "That's… the murderer."
The clone's voice came through the pod's speaker — calm, cold, familiar:
"Hello, little sister."
Alarms screamed. Red lights strobed. The lab sealed with a hydraulic hiss. Vents opened. Gas poured in — soul-dissolver, thick and sweet like rotting fruit, eating at the edges of Farren's vision.
He overloaded the plasma sword. Its runes flared white-hot: ESCAPE. The blade screamed as he carved a molten circle through the wall. Metal dripped like wax. Sable leapt through first, claws sparking. Farren followed, Cherina on his back. They climbed the shadow-rope as the lab imploded behind them — a roar of fire and code, the clone's laughter echoing in the dark like a promise kept.
They burst onto the Scar's rim at dusk. The sky bled copper and violet. And there, waiting like a god of steel and scale, was the Serpent-Coil.
A city-sized tank. Treads of fused serpents and iron, grinding bone into dust. Its shadow stretched for miles across the dunes. Smoke rose from its chimneys — black, thick, alive.
Farren's revolver clicked empty. Only one rune-bullet left. The one etched FAMILY.
Cherina's song rose again — soft, inevitable, climbing from her throat like smoke. The jackal tooth pendant cracked in her hand, light spilling between her fingers.
Sable roared. The lynx's wound had become a Rift-mark — glowing violet and gold, spreading across its flank like veins of living light. It burned. It sang.
Farren reloaded with the final bullet. He kissed Cherina's burning forehead.
"We end this," he said.
They walked toward the Coil. The Wastes held their breath. The sky cracked with lightning. And somewhere inside the beast of steel and scale, a bell began to ring.