The night in Rust-Spire did not bring sleep. It brought a different kind of tension.
Kaelen sat with his back against the cold metal of a shipping container, watching the shadows lengthen. The camp was silent, but it wasn't peaceful. It was the silence of a held breath.
Around him, hundreds of people lay huddled under tarps and scraps of aluminum. He heard the wet, rattling cough of the sick, muffled instantly by pillows or hands. He saw mothers rocking children who were too terrified to cry.
They weren't resting. They were hiding from the dark.
Beside him, Renna was finally asleep, the fever having burned itself down to a low simmer. Her hand still clutched the heavy metal firing pin of the railgun, hiding it beneath her coat even in her dreams.
Kaelen closed his eyes, extending his senses.
[ AUTHORITY: OBSERVER (PASSIVE) ]
He felt the camp as a grid of data.
Structural Integrity: 34% (Failing)
Resource Level: Critical.
Hope: 0%.
It was a dying organism. Valerius was right about one thing: prolonged suffering was efficient only at generating despair.
CRUNCH.
The sound was loud. Too loud.
It came from the eastern sector of the camp, near the scaffolding that held up the main water reclamation tanks. Metal groaned, rivets popped like gunshots, and then came the crash.
Then came the scream.
It wasn't deep or guttural. It was high, shrill, and terrified.
It was a child.
"Mama! It hurts! Mama!"
Kaelen's eyes snapped open.
Renna jolted awake, reaching for a weapon she didn't have. "What? What happened?"
"Collapse," Kaelen said, already moving. "Structural failure."
He stood up, ignoring the stiffness in his own joints. "Stay here."
"Kaelen, wait!" Renna hissed, grabbing the hem of his coat. Her eyes were wide with panic. "The rules. You know the rules. If you get involved..."
"It's a kid, Renna," Kaelen said, his voice flat.
He pulled free of her grip and sprinted toward the sound.
The scene was a nightmare of rust and blood.
A support beam—a massive girder of corroded steel—had snapped, bringing down a section of the walkway. Beneath it, a small figure lay pinned.
It was a boy, no older than seven. He was buried up to his waist in debris. The heavy girder had crushed his legs. Blood was pumping out in bright, arterial spurts, soaking his tattered shirt and pooling in the gray dust.
He was screaming, thrashing in the dirt, his face white with shock. A woman—his mother—was clawing uselessly at the heavy beam, sobbing, her hands bleeding as she tried to lift a ton of steel.
"Help him!" she shrieked at the gathering crowd. "Someone help me!"
A crowd had gathered. But they weren't helping.
They were staring.
"Shut him up!" someone hissed from the shadows. "He's too loud!"
"He'll call the Silence!"
Three guards pushed through the crowd. It was the leader—the man with the scarred throat—and two of his thugs. They held rusted spears.
The leader looked at the bleeding boy. He didn't look at the wound. He didn't look at the mother. He looked at the noise.
"Quiet!" the leader roared, kicking the mother away from the beam.
She sprawled in the dirt, wailing. "Please! Just lift it!"
"You're drawing them," the leader snarled. He looked at the boy, who was still screaming, his eyes rolled back in pain.
"He's done," the leader announced to the crowd. "Legs are crushed. He's bleeding out. He's just a beacon now."
He raised his spear.
He wasn't aiming for the beam. He was aiming for the boy's chest.
"Finish it," the leader commanded. "Silence him before the Rot smells the blood."
The crowd flinched. A few turned away. But no one moved to stop it. This was the logic of the Rust-Spire. One life to save the many. A child's death was a tragedy; the camp's death was a statistic.
The guard raised the spear higher, preparing to thrust.
Kaelen didn't think. He didn't calculate.
He moved.
He slammed into the guard, shoulder-checking him with enough force to send the massive man sprawling into the dirt. The spear clattered away.
The crowd gasped—a collective intake of breath that sounded like the wind changing direction.
Kaelen stood over the bleeding child. He faced the leader.
"Don't," Kaelen warned. His voice was low, vibrating with a rage he hadn't felt in years.
The leader scrambled up, staring at him, eyes bulging. "You? The stray? You dare interfere?"
"He's seven years old," Kaelen said.
"He is noise!" the leader screamed, pointing at the sobbing boy. "Look at him! He's dead already. Even if you lift the beam, he bleeds out in seconds. Move aside, stray, or I'll gut you both."
The other two guards stepped forward, leveling their weapons.
Kaelen looked down. The boy's hand reached out and clutched Kaelen's boot. The grip was weak. Dying.
"Please..." the boy whispered. "I'll be quiet. I promise."
Kaelen looked at the crowd. He saw their fear. But beneath the fear, he saw the rot of their souls. They hated this. They hated that they had become monsters to survive. They were praying for someone else to be the hero so they didn't have to be.
Valerius calls this mercy, Kaelen thought. I call it cowardice.
He made his choice.
He dropped to his knees beside the boy.
"Hold him down," Kaelen ordered the mother.
She stared at him, paralyzed.
"I said hold him down!" Kaelen roared. It was the Voice of Command, layered with the crushing weight of Authority.
The mother scrambled forward, grabbing her son's shoulders. Two other men from the crowd, shamed into action, grabbed the boy's flailing arms.
"What are you doing?" the leader shouted. "Kill them! Kill the noise!"
Kaelen ignored him. He placed his hands on the boy's crushed legs.
He didn't have medical supplies. He didn't have a tourniquet.
But he had the Source Code.
He closed his eyes. The world fell away, replaced by the blue wireframe of the System.
[ TARGET: ORGANIC LIFEFORM (JUVENILE) ]
[ DAMAGE: CRITICAL ]
[ ARTERIAL RUPTURE DETECTED ]
Kaelen reached for the Authority. It was dangerous. He was exhausted. Using it now might kill him.
Do it, he told himself. Make some noise.
[ AUTHORITY: EDIT - BIOLOGICAL STATE ]
[ ACTION: RESTORE VASCULAR INTEGRITY ]
[ COST: HIGH ]
Blue lightning crackled around Kaelen's hands.
The crowd screamed and scrambled back. The leader froze, his spear halfway raised.
It wasn't magic as they knew it. It was a glitch.
The air around the wound distorted. Pixels of blue light swarmed over the crushed flesh like digital insects. The blood stopped flowing—not because it clotted, but because the reality of the rupture was being overwritten.
The skin knit together. The artery sealed. The crushed bone snapped back into alignment with a sickening pop.
The boy arched his back, his mouth opening in a silent scream as his body was forced back into wholeness.
ERROR.
ERROR.
REALITY STABILIZED.
Kaelen gasped and slumped forward, blood pouring from his nose. His vision grayed out. The world spun violently. He felt a sharp crack in his own ribs—the cost of the edit.
The blue light faded.
The boy lay still, panting. His legs were bruised and ugly, the pants torn to shreds, but they were straight. The bleeding had stopped.
Silence fell over the crowd.
It was absolute.
The mother touched her son's leg. She looked at her hands, covered in blood that was no longer flowing. She looked at Kaelen with terrifying awe.
"Sorcery," a woman whispered.
"No," an old man said, stepping closer. "Not sorcery. That was... that was the Old Light."
Kaelen wiped the blood from his face. He stood up, swaying. He felt hollowed out, scraped clean.
He looked at the leader.
"He's quiet now," Kaelen rasped. "Let him live."
The leader looked at his guards. They looked back, terrified. They weren't looking at Kaelen like a refugee anymore. They were looking at him like a bomb that had just gone off.
"You..." the leader stammered. "You can't be here. You can't do that here."
"I just saved a child," Kaelen said.
"You used the Light!" the leader shouted, finding his voice. He backed away, pointing a trembling finger. "The Silence will see it! You've doomed us all!"
As if on cue, a sound echoed from outside the walls.
It wasn't the wind.
It wasn't a beast.
It was a Ping.
A high-pitched, digital tone that resonated through the metal walls of the Rust-Spire. It sounded like a sonar pulse finding its target.
Ping.
The crowd froze. Every single person stopped breathing. The mother pulled her son into her chest.
Ping.
Closer.
Kaelen looked up at the night sky. The purple clouds were swirling directly above the outpost. A rift was opening.
The leader dropped his spear. He looked at Kaelen with pure, unadulterated hatred.
"You loud fool," he whispered. "They found us."
Kaelen grabbed the railgun from where the leader had dropped it. He checked the chamber. It was empty of the pin, useless.
He looked at Renna, who had limped to the edge of the crowd, her face grim. She was holding the firing pin.
"Get your gear," Kaelen said to her.
He turned to the wall.
The Silence hadn't just noticed the miracle.
It was coming to correct it.