The silence that hung after Leo's words was thick and viscous, like smog. He stood up, brushed the dust off his coveralls, and in his eyes, where terror had once been, a cold resolve now solidified.
"I'm coming with you. My friends died because we panicked. I don't want to die cowering in a hole."
The decision was made. Now there were three of them.
Lloyd nodded, unsurprised. His inner compass, dormant all night, tightened like a bowstring again, pulling him into the heart of the mist. He felt not only the familiar pull but something new — a faint, barely perceptible resonance emanating from Leo. As if his decision to join them had made Lloyd's own gift slightly sharper.
"Then let's go." — he said over his shoulder and was the first to step over the shelter's threshold.
Their small party set off, delving deeper into the stone jungle. Lloyd walked ahead, led by the invisible thread. Arielle followed, her dark-honey eyes scanning every crack, every dark opening. Leo brought up the rear, gripping his pipe so tightly his knuckles were white.
The compass led them not through open spaces, but through a labyrinth of ruins from an old industrial district. Giant factory skeletons, like the bones of prehistoric monsters, rusty conveyor belts frozen in their final effort — it all created an eerie but perfect landscape.
About an hour into the journey, Leo, usually silent, broke the quiet. His voice was loud and clear, cutting through the crunch of gravel underfoot.
"We need real weapons. These scraps" — he jabbed a finger at his pipe — "are just splinters against the next overgrown spider. We're lucky to be alive."
"Suggestions?" — Arielle threw back without turning. — "Or are you carrying an arsenal in your backpack?"
"Worse. I'm carrying knowledge in my head." — Leo stopped, pointing at a pile of scrap metal — the remains of some ancient mechanized cart, frozen in the earth. — "Look.Leaf springs. Tempered steel, virtually indestructible. Spring steel. And sheet metal plating. Everything here to make something resembling blades. We're like blind kittens poking with sticks. It's time to become predators."
The idea, hanging in the air, finally found a voice and a formula. Lloyd stopped, feeling his compass quiet for a second, as if giving its approval.
"How long?" — he asked, surveying the rusty deposits.
"If we work together," — Leo was already approaching the pile, poking it evaluatively with his finger — "an hour, maybe an hour and a half. Faster than finding something ready-made and not rotten. And much safer than going further with this junk."
"There's cover here, decent visibility. We can risk it. But if your inner voice starts screaming, Lloyd, we drop everything and leave. Instantly." — Arielle assessed the area with a tactician's gaze.
"Agreed." — he said.
The next hour and a half were spent not on moving, but on forging. Or rather, on crude, primitive assembly. Work began under Leo's attentive guidance; he seemed to have forgotten his fear, completely immersed in a familiar task. He became a different person — focused, precise, his voice taking on the metallic tones of a commander.
Arielle, with her dexterity and precision, took on the finest work. Using a heavy rock and a piece of rebar as a chisel, she painstakingly chipped and leveled two long, narrow strips from a leaf spring, turning them into blade blanks. Then, under Leo's supervision, she ground one edge of each strip against a concrete ledge, creating a crude cutting edge.
Lloyd, as the strongest, handled the brute work — tearing metal sheets from the chassis, straightening brackets, carrying the heaviest pieces. At one point, he found a long, relatively straight strip of hardened steel — part of a frame rail. It was slightly shorter than he was and had a slight curve. Something clicked inside him, a vague memory of old films about samurai.
"Can we make something long from this? Like a sword?" — He showed the find to Leo.
"A blade? It'll be a cleaver. Heavy, unbalanced. But if we grind it... The chopping power will be devastating." — Leo, sweaty and smeared with rust, examined the find critically.
Leo was the brain and hands of the operation. He showed them how to wrap the hilts with strips of cloth torn from their old clothes and tight wire for a better grip. For Arielle, he fashioned a crossguard from two nuts to protect her hand. From sheet steel and a piece of pipe, he assembled a round shield for himself with a pointed boss in the center. And for Lloyd, he took that long piece of frame rail. He tightly wrapped one end, creating a crude hilt, and the other — with Lloyd's help and a heavy rock — he began to shape into a crude point by hammering the metal.
The work proceeded to the accompaniment of their rare, terse dialogues.
"Hey, energy guy." — Arielle called, not looking up from sharpening her blade. — "Are everyone in Kronos so... handy? Or were you specifically taught how to cobble together murder tools from junk?"
Leo grunted, tightening the wire on the hilt of Lloyd's cleaver.
"Taught other things. How to make a crystal grow in the right direction, how to channel energy flow... But the basics of material science and mechanics — that's foundational. The rest is... improvisation. When you see your partner die because a drill mount broke, you start to understand that strength isn't numbers in a textbook. It's your life."
"Profound." — Lloyd grumbled, pressing hard on a metal plate Leo was trying to bend. — "So now our lives are in your hands. Literally. Don't screw up."
"I'll try." — Leo shot back shortly, a steely thread breaking through the fatigue in his voice.
Finally, the work was done. It was ugly, crude, and dangerously unstable… primarily for the one wielding it. But when Arielle gripped the finished, roughly sharpened blades and made a few test swings, the air whistled as it was cut. Her movements were fast, precise, lethal.
Lloyd, taking his "cleaver" in hand, felt not just the weight of the metal, but a strange, almost mystical sense of rightness. The long hilt fit his palm far better than any pipe. He made a few test chopping motions, and the heavy blade obediently sliced through the air with a menacing hiss. It was a far cry from an elegant katana, but it was a step in the right direction.
"So?" — He glanced at Arielle, whose eyes burned with a cold, familiar excitement. — "Ready to test the new toys on something inanimate? Preferably, before meeting something animate."
"These aren't toys — they're arguments. And I don't mind voicing them." — she retorted, but deftly flipped the blades from hand to hand, getting used to the weight.
Their first opportunity came almost immediately. They had barely set off again and turned into a narrow alley between two collapsed workshops when something crawled out from under a pile of debris. Not a Drifter, but local fauna — a creature resembling a giant, dog-sized centipede with a chitinous shell the color of rust. It hissed, opening a mouthpiece studded with needles.
Leo instinctively raised his shield. Arielle took a step forward, her body coiling like a spring.
But Lloyd reacted first. His new cleaver swept through the air and came down on the creature's back with a short, chopping sound. The blow was imperfect, glancing, but the weight of the blade was enough to crack the chitin with a crunch. The creature howled and writhed. Arielle instantly seized the moment; her blades, like lightning, stabbed into its vulnerable belly and the base of its head. A second later, it was over.
Lloyd stood, breathing heavily, looking at his bloodied blade. His heart was pounding wildly, but not just from adrenaline. There was another feeling — power. Control.
"Not bad. For a first time." — Arielle stated, wiping her blades on a rag.
"Yeah... It worked." — Leo, still hiding behind his shield, slowly exhaled.
Lloyd nodded, feeling that strange resonance again, but now emanating from the weapon in his hands. He wasn't just surviving. He was creating. Even if it was simple things like weapons and victory, it was an act of will against the madness of this world. He walked ahead, and his long, crude blade seemed not just a piece of iron, but a gesture of defiance. And somewhere deep in his consciousness, above the pulling call of the compass, a thought flashed: 'This is only the beginning.'