The end of the world did not sound like a bang. It sounded like a moan.
It was a low, resonant frequency that vibrated in the marrow of their bones, deeper than the rumble of the Strider-beasts, deeper than Korgath's chest. It was the sound of a million rivets groaning in unison, of steel girders twisting beyond their tolerance, of stone foundations realizing they were no longer supported by magic, but only by the terrifying indifference of physics.
Kaelen drove the wagon not with skill, but with desperation. The hexagonal tiles of the road leading away from the Sink were buckling. Cracks, thick as a man's waist, raced alongside them, spewing geysers of pressurized steam.
"The horizon!" Vanya screamed, pointing a trembling hand outward.
They looked.
The horizon was wrong.
In Sector 7, the horizon had always been a flat, purple haze of smog and void-mist. But now, the horizon was tilting. The entire world was banking to the left. The distant spires of the refinery district were leaning at a forty-five-degree angle.
"We aren't just falling," Kaelen realized, his knuckles white on the reins. "We are capsizing."
"Gravity is reclaiming the debt," Korgath rumbled. He was gripping the side of the wagon with his good hand, the other clutching the massive, dead Paladin sword. His armor sparked intermittently, his internal gyroscopes failing to comprehend the shifting axis of the world.
The Strider-beasts were foaming at the mouth, their eyes rolling back. They were creatures of the floating island; they didn't understand the concept of a terminal velocity. They only knew that the ground was trying to throw them off.
"Hold on!" Kaelen roared as the wagon hit a ridge of uplifted pavement.
They went airborne—not for a second, but for three. The gravity was fluctuating. For a moment, they were weightless, suspended in a cloud of red dust and debris. Then, the island remembered it was heavy, and they slammed back down with a violence that splintered the rear axle.
The wagon slewed sideways, grinding against the basalt.
"We have to ditch!" Kaelen yelled. "Cut the traces!"
He didn't wait for an answer. He drew his knife and slashed the leather straps holding the beasts. The Striders, freed from the dead weight, bolted into the smog, vanishing instantly into the chaotic twilight.
"Out!" Kaelen commanded. "Everyone, ground!"
They tumbled out of the ruined wagon. The world was shaking so violently that standing was impossible. They had to crawl, clawing at the hexagonal tiles, dragging themselves toward the anchor-point of a collapsed ventilation tower.
They huddled there, four specks of dust on the back of a dying leviathan.
"Look down," Elara whispered. She was lying on her stomach, peering over the edge of the fractured road.
Below them, the Void was gone.
The clouds of the severance layer were parting, torn open by the displacement of air from the falling island.
And through the tears, they saw it.
Aethelgard. The Main Continent. The True Rustlands.
It rushed up to meet them—a vast, brown ocean of dead forests, petrified cities, and ash-deserts. It looked ancient. It looked hungry.
"We're going to hit," Vanya sobbed, curling into a ball. "We're going to turn to paste."
"No," Kaelen said. His voice was oddly calm. He was watching the landmass below. "The island is breaking up. Look."
He pointed.
Sector 7 was disintegrating in the descent. The stress of entering the lower atmosphere was shearing the rusty connections. The Sink—the heavy iron heart—was plummeting faster than the outer rings. The Refinery District had already snapped off, drifting away like a leaf in a gale.
The ground beneath them groaned. A fissure opened up, running straight through the center of their huddled group.
"Move!" Korgath bellowed.
He lunged, shoving Vanya across the widening gap. She landed hard on the other side.
"Korgath!" Elara cried.
The Orc tried to jump, but his damaged servos seized. He stumbled. The crack widened into a chasm. The section of the road he was standing on—a slab of concrete the size of a plaza—detached from the main body of the island.
"Korgath!"
"Hold the line!" the Orc roared, raising the Paladin sword in a final salute.
Then he was gone. Swallowed by the dust, riding a landslide of debris down toward the approaching earth.
"No!" Elara screamed. She tried to scramble after him, but Kaelen grabbed her collar, hauling her back.
"He's gone, kid! Look out!"
The ventilation tower they were sheltering behind groaned. The rivets popped—ping, ping, ping—like gunfire. The tower toppled, crashing between Kaelen and Vanya.
The impact shattered the pavement.
Vanya looked at Kaelen across the ruins of the tower. Her eyes were wide, filled with the terrifying realization of solitude.
"Kaelen!" she shrieked.
Then the plate she was standing on tilted. It slid away, caught in the updraft of the fall, spiraling away into the smog.
Now it was just Kaelen and Elara.
They were clinging to a fragment of the road, a raft of stone perhaps fifty feet wide, free-falling through the clouds.
The wind was a physical weight now. It stripped the breath from their lungs. It tore at their clothes.
Kaelen pulled Elara close, wrapping his coat around her head to shield her from the debris. He didn't look at the ground rushing up. He didn't look at the pieces of the city burning in the atmosphere around them.
He closed his eyes.
He opened his internal Ledger.
Current Altitude: 2000 feet. Velocity: Terminal. Probability of Survival: Statistical Error.
"I'm sorry," he whispered into the roar of the wind. "I calculated wrong."
Elara didn't hear him. She was holding the obsidian dagger against her chest. She wasn't looking at Kaelen. She was looking at the ground.
"It's not the end," she said, her voice lost in the scream of the air. "It's just the bottom."
The roar became a solid wall of noise.
Then, the lights went out.
Kaelen
Consciousness returned not as a light, but as a throbbing ache in the left side of his ribs.
Kaelen gasped, sucking in air that tasted of sulfur and wet ash. He coughed, a violent spasm that racked his body, expelling dust from his lungs.
He lay still for a long time, listening.
He expected the roar of the wind. He expected the grinding of gears.
He heard... rain.
Heavy, fat drops of water hitting metal. Plink. Plink. Plink.
He opened his eyes.
The sky was a bruised, swirling grey. It was lower than the sky of Sector 7. Heavier. The clouds looked like bruised flesh.
He tried to sit up. Pain lanced through his side—sharp, hot, undeniable. Broken ribs. At least two.
"Status," he rasped.
No one answered.
He forced himself up. He was lying in a crater of mud and twisted rebar. Around him, the landscape was a nightmare of twisted metal. It was a junkyard of titanic proportions.
Massive shards of Sector 7 lay embedded in the earth like the bones of fallen gods. A cooling tower, half-buried in a hillside of ash. A section of the pipe forest, shattered like glass straws.
He was on the surface. Aethelgard.
He checked his person. His coat was shredded. His crossbow was gone. His pack was torn open, half the supplies missing.
He reached for his belt. The Ledger.
It was still there. The leather was gouged, but the binding held.
He opened it. The charcoal stick was broken, but he found a stub in the spine.
Day 16. Location: Ground Zero. Assets: 1 Knife. 1 Ledger. 3 Nutrient Bricks. Status: Alone.
He looked around the crash site.
"Elara!" he shouted.
The name died in the rain.
"Korgath! Vanya!"
Nothing but the hiss of acidic rain on hot metal.
He stood up, swaying. He looked at the wreckage. They had fallen from the sky. The physics dictated that they should be paste. But the island hadn't hit as a solid mass; it had crumbled, creating a cushion of debris and updrafts. They had survived the fall, perhaps.
But surviving the landing was different.
Kaelen began to walk. He had to find shelter. The rain was beginning to sting his skin.
He crested a ridge of scrap metal.
Below him stretched the Rustlands. It was vast. Endless. A forest of dead, petrified trees stretched to the east. To the west, a swamp of oily sludge.
And in the distance, moving through the mist, he saw shapes. Not machines.
wolves. Massive, mangy things with exposed ribcages and eyes that glowed with a pale, green hunger.
Kaelen drew his knife. It was a small, pathetic piece of steel against this world.
"Variable added," he muttered, his voice cracking. "Predators."
He turned and limped into the shadows of a fallen girder. He was a calculator in a world of brute force. He was separated from his shield, his magic, and his anomaly.
He was back to zero.
Vanya
The water was warm.
That was the first thing Vanya noticed. It wasn't the freezing bite of the condensation in the pipe forest. It was a thick, lukewarm soup.
She broke the surface, gasping.
She was drifting in a lake. But it wasn't water. It was a mixture of coolant, oil, and swamp muck. It was iridescent, shimmering with rainbow colors that promised poison.
She paddled frantically, her heavy robes weighing her down. She dragged herself onto a bank of grey mud.
She vomited. Black bile mixed with the water she had swallowed.
She lay on the mud, shivering. Her staff was gone. Her blindfold was gone.
She opened her eyes.
Without the cloth, the world was a kaleidoscope of pain. The mana here was thick, heavy, and radiated from the earth itself. It wasn't the structured, industrial magic of Sector 7. It was wild. Feral.
She saw the spirits of the land—twisted, agonizing shapes drifting in the mist. They were screaming.
"Quiet," she whimpered, pressing her hands to her ears. "Please, be quiet."
She looked at her hands. The rot in her veins was pulsing. It liked this place. The corruption in the mud called to the corruption in her blood. Sister, it seemed to whisper. You are home.
She scrambled back from the water's edge.
She was in a swamp. Twisted trees with iron bark loomed over her. Vines made of rusted wire hung from the branches.
She was alone.
"Kaelen?" she whispered.
A bubble burst in the swamp. Bloop.
She curled up against the root of an iron-tree. She realized with a jolt of horror that she couldn't feel the others. The bond of the party—the shared stress, the proximity—was severed.
She was just a witch in the woods. And the woods were watching her.
A bird landed on a branch above her. It had no feathers, only scales of copper. It tilted its head, watching her with a single, glass lens eye.
" Glitch," the bird mimicked, repeating the word the Weaver had used. " Glitch."
Vanya began to weep. Not out of sadness, but out of the sheer, crushing weight of the silence.
Korgath
Darkness.
Pressure.
Korgath woke up screaming, but his mouth was full of dirt.
He thrashed. His armor servos whined, protesting the load. He was buried. The landslide had taken him down and covered him in tons of ash and soil.
Panic.
The biological part of his brain—the Orc part—wanted to hyperventilate. It wanted to claw blindly.
Protocol.
The mechanical part—the Soldier part—took over.
Oxygen levels: Critical. Structural Integrity: 40%. Action: Excavate.
He stopped thrashing. He assessed his limbs. His left arm was pinned. His legs were trapped. But his right arm... his right arm was free to move a few inches.
And in his right hand, he still gripped the hilt.
The Paladin Sword.
"Blade," Korgath grunted into the dirt. "Cut."
He activated the servo-assist in his shoulder. He shoved the sword upward.
The dead star-metal sliced through the compacted ash like it was water. It didn't need magic. It was just better metal than the world around it.
Korgath carved a pocket. He cleared a space. He pushed the dirt aside.
He began to dig. Upward. Always upward.
It took an hour. Or maybe a day. Time didn't exist in the grave.
Finally, his hand broke the surface.
Cool air rushed in.
Korgath hauled himself out. He erupted from the ground like a revenant, gasping, his helmet vents clogged with mud.
He fell onto his back, staring up at the grey sky.
He was on a hillside of scree. Above him, the smoke of the crash site rose in a black pillar.
He sat up. He looked at his armor. It was battered, dented, stripped of paint. He looked like a piece of scrap that had learned to walk.
He looked at the sword. It was dull, grey, unglamorous. But it was unbroken.
"Kaelen?" he rumbled.
His external speakers were damaged. His voice was just a biological growl now. No amplification.
He felt small.
He stood up. His knee joint sparked, locked, then broke free with a snap. He limped.
He looked down the hill.
He saw a road. An old road, paved with cracked asphalt. And walking along the road, heading toward the smoke, was a column of figures.
Scavengers.
They wore rags and gas masks. They carried spears made of rebar. They pulled carts filled with junk.
They were coming for the carcass of Sector 7.
Korgath gripped the sword. He was alone. He was broken. But he was a wall.
And a wall stands, even when there is no one behind it to protect.
Elara
Elara didn't wake up. She just opened her eyes.
She hadn't hit the ground.
She was hanging.
She was suspended fifty feet in the air, caught in the tangled branches of a massive, petrified tree. Her parachute—Kaelen's coat, which had snagged on the branches—held her.
She swung gently in the breeze.
Below her, the ground was a carpet of red ferns.
She wasn't hurt. She felt... light.
She looked around. To the north, she saw the smoke of the crash. It was miles away.
She looked to the south.
And she gasped.
In the distance, rising from the mist of the Rustlands, was a structure. It wasn't a ruin. It wasn't a machine.
It was a spire of white stone. Clean, unbroken stone. It pierced the grey sky like a needle.
And at the top of the spire, a light was burning. A real light. Not amber, not neon, not chemical blue.
A golden light.
"The Lighthouse," she whispered.
She looked at the obsidian dagger in her hand. It was vibrating. Not with fear, but with direction. It was pointing toward the spire.
She looked back at the smoke column where Kaelen and the others must be.
"I have to find them," she said to herself.
But the dagger pulled her hand toward the spire.
Elara unhooked herself from the coat. She climbed down the petrified branches, moving with the agility of a child who had grown up in the rafters of a floating city.
She hit the ground. The red ferns crunched under her boots.
She stood at a crossroads.
North, to her friends. To the crash. To the past. South, to the Spire. To the light. To the unknown.
She hesitated.
"A machine with no function breaks," Kaelen had said.
Elara looked at the spire.
"I have a function," she whispered.
She turned south.
She would find the light first. Then, she would come back for them. She would be the beacon they needed.
She began to walk, a small, grey figure moving through the red forest, walking away from the wreckage of the world and toward the only thing that looked like it hadn't rusted yet.
The party was broken. The Ledger was closed.
But the map had just expanded.