The Feast of Claws
The turning point, when it came, was not marked by a grand speech or a victorious battle. It was heralded by the smell of roasting meat—real, unmistakable, and in bulk.
The hunting parties, adapting to the Razorjack threat, had turned the predators into prey. Liana had mapped their pack territories and ambush points. Jax had designed simple but brutal pit traps lined with sharpened stakes. The hunters, no longer just chasing game, became trappers and tacticians. They returned one evening not with one or two scrawny carcasses, but dragging six of the sleek, deadly Corrupted.
It was a windfall. A surplus on a scale they hadn't dreamed possible.
For a moment, the old, hungry instinct reared its head. Gregor's faction eyed the haul with a possessive glint. Hoarding whispers slithered through the plaza. This much meat could mean power.
Ryley saw the danger immediately. A surplus could divide them as surely as starvation. He called a gathering at the central fountain as the carcasses were butchered in the newly-established yard, the air thick with the metallic scent of Corrupted blood and the promising sizzle of fat hitting hot stone.
"Today, we feast," he announced, his voice cutting through the murmurs. The words were so foreign, so utterly disconnected from their reality, that a stunned silence fell.
"A feast?" someone echoed, disbelieving.
Ryley gestured to the butchery. "The Razorjacks hunted us. Now, we've hunted them. This isn't just food. It's a victory. And victories are meant to be shared." He laid out the plan, simple and irrevocable. One-third of the meat would be smoked and dried, added to the central cache for the inevitable lean days. One-third would be distributed immediately as rations, a larger share than anyone had seen in weeks.
"And the final third," he said, a note of something that wasn't quite warmth, but was fiercer than mere pragmatism, entering his voice, "is for tonight. For everyone. Cooked. Hot. No tithes, no trades, no ranks. Builders, menders, hunters, foragers, children, Wall-Wardens… everyone. We eat it together."
The plaza erupted. Not in cheers—they had forgotten how—but in a frantic, disbelieving buzz of activity. Makeshift spits were erected over a dozen small, carefully controlled fires. The salvaged cooking pots were filled with chunks of tough meat and the last of the hardy tubers. Maya's gardener contributed precious handfuls of his cultivated moss, which when boiled, lent a bitter, cleansing note to the stew. Someone produced a cache of salt, hoarded since the first day, and passed it around like sacred incense.
As dusk fell, the Kingdom of Rust held its first feast.
It was a ragged, surreal, beautiful thing. People sat in circles on the cold stone, bowls clutched in hands that trembled not from fear, but from the novelty of anticipation. The meat was gamey and faintly metallic, but it was hot, and there was enough. They ate slowly, savoring not just the food, but the act. They talked. Not about monsters or the Spire, but about the taste, about memories of other meals in a world gone forever. A former baker tearfully described the crust of his sourdough. A woman laughed, a raw, unused sound, as she recounted her daughter's disastrous first attempt at pancakes.
Jax sat with his Wall-Wardens, accepting their rough toasts with a grunt, but his eyes were softer. Maya moved from circle to circle, not to heal, but to listen, to smile, her healer's hands resting lightly on a shoulder here, accepting a offered morsel there. Liam, emboldened by the full belly and the strange atmosphere, recited a passage from his chronicle—the account of their first, meager hunt. People listened, their faces intent. He was giving their struggle a story.
Liana did not join a circle. She patrolled the perimeter of the feast, a silent sentinel. But even her watchfulness was different. She wasn't just looking for external threats or the cult's fingerprints. She was watching this. The flicker of firelight on faces that were not twisted in fear. The unguarded laughter of a child who had found a particularly crispy piece of skin. She saw the man who usually sat whittling in peace, the suspected convert, hesitantly accept a bowl. He ate slowly, and for a moment, his serene emptiness cracked, replaced by a flicker of confused… pleasure. The cult's peace was a cold, silent thing. This warmth, this communal noise, was its antithesis. For tonight, at least, the tide of apathy had been pushed back by a wave of shared, greasy satisfaction.
Ryley stood apart, leaning against the fountain. He watched his kingdom feast. He saw the bonds forming in the firelight—the hunter sharing a joke with the mason, the forager teaching a child how to find the best morsels. This was the "why" Liana had spoken of, made flesh and blood and sizzling fat. It was messy, loud, and vulnerable. It was the exact opposite of the Spire's sterile, murderous efficiency.
He caught Liana's eye across the plaza. She gave him a single, slow nod. It wasn't approval. It was recognition. This is the weapon, her look said. This feeling. Protect this.
Later, as the fires died to embers and people drifted off to their niches, full and quieter than they had been in weeks, Ryley felt it. The Kingdom of Rust was no longer just a survival pact or a strategic stronghold. It had developed a culture. A culture of shared struggle, of hard-won feasts, of stories told in the dark. It was fragile, a soap bubble glistening on a rusted spike, but it was real.
The fourth floor loomed tomorrow. Its horrors were unknowable. But as he looked at the sleeping forms, at the contented exhaustion on faces that had known only terror, he understood his role completely. He was no longer just climbing for them. He was climbing to bring back more. More meat for feasts. More resources for walls. More reasons to keep the fires burning and the stories being told. The Spire was a machine of extraction, designed to take everything. He would turn it into a reluctant provider for the ragged, beautiful, defiant thing they were building in its shadow. The feast of claws was over, but its purpose would fuel their climb. They had remembered, for one night, what it was to be more than just surviving. And that memory was a shield stronger than any wall.