The East was not empty. It was merely hiding.
Three days after the broadcast at the relay tower, the gray wasteland began to change. The endless dunes of ash gave way to a labyrinth of rusted canyons—the skeletal remains of an industrial sector that had been chewed up and spit out by the Void decades ago.
Kaelen walked in front, the Railgun shifting heavily on his bruised shoulder.
Behind him, Renna limped.
She didn't complain. She didn't ask for breaks. She simply dragged her splinted leg through the dust, her breath coming in short, rhythmic hisses of pain. She was a professional, and professionals didn't whine about the job.
But Kaelen could hear her heart rate. It was too fast. The fever from the infection was creeping back, flushed and hot against her pale skin.
"We stop soon," Kaelen said, his voice raspy. The water was gone. The canteen had been dry since yesterday noon.
"Don't stop for me," Renna muttered, staring at his back. "If I fall, leave me. That was the deal."
"The deal changed," Kaelen said. "I need a guide. Corpses are terrible at giving directions."
He crested a ridge of twisted rebar and stopped.
"There," he said.
Renna hobbled up beside him and squinted through her cracked goggles.
nestled in the valley below was an ugliness that looked beautiful.
It was a fortress made of garbage.
Huge sheets of corrugated metal, salvaged from the crash sites, had been welded together to form a perimeter wall. It was reinforced with rusted shipping containers, stacked three high and filled with dirt. Barbed wire—new and gleaming—coiled along the top.
Smoke rose from within the walls. Real smoke. Wood smoke.
"The Rust-Spire," Renna whispered, leaning heavily on her makeshift crutch. "I thought it was a myth. A scavenger outpost that survived the last Purge."
"It survived because it's quiet," Kaelen noted.
He pointed to the walls. There were no guards patrolling the top. No lights. No flags. The place was designed to look like a ruin from a distance. It was camouflage.
"They won't let us in," Renna warned. "Places like this... they're terrified of strangers. Strangers bring noise."
Kaelen checked the Railgun. He checked his own internal reserves. [ MANA: CRITICAL ] [ AUTHORITY: DORMANT ]
"We have a sniper rifle and a sniper," Kaelen said. "We have trade goods. And we have no choice."
He started down the slope.
The approach was tense. Kaelen walked with his hands visible, the Railgun slung non-threateningly (though accessible) on his back. Renna limped beside him, looking more like a victim of the wastes than a threat.
They reached the main gate—a massive slab of hull plating on hydraulic hinges.
Nothing happened.
"We know you're watching," Kaelen called out. He didn't shout. He projected his voice just enough to carry.
A slot in the metal slid open. Eyes, dark and fearful, stared out.
"Turn around," a voice hissed. "No entry. Quarantine protocol."
"We aren't sick," Kaelen said. "We're thirsty."
"Everyone is thirsty. Leave before we open fire."
The slot started to close.
"I have a kinetic railgun," Kaelen said calmly.
The slot stopped.
"It's a Mark-IV," Kaelen continued, lying smoothly. "Fully charged. If I wanted to breach your wall, I wouldn't be knocking. I'm offering a trade. The weapon for water and shelter. Three days."
Renna stiffened beside him. "Kaelen," she hissed. "That's my gun."
"Trust me," he murmured back.
The eyes behind the gate shifted. Greed warred with fear. A railgun was a king-maker in the wasteland. It could kill a Silencer from a mile away.
"Show me," the voice demanded.
Kaelen unslung the weapon and held it up. The sunlight caught the dull gleam of the barrel.
The gate groaned. Ancient gears ground together, screaming in protest as the heavy slab slid open just enough for two people to squeeze through.
"Hands up," the voice commanded. "If you make a sound, you die."
They stepped inside.
The interior of Rust-Spire was a assault on the senses. It smelled of unwashed bodies, recycled air, and desperation.
Dozens of tents and shacks were crammed into the small space. People—gaunt, gray-skinned, eyes hollow—sat in the shadows, watching the newcomers with a mix of hunger and terror. No one spoke. Children didn't play; they sat silently, miming games with stones.
It was a sanctuary, yes. But it was also a tomb.
Three guards surrounded them. They wore armor made of tires and scrap metal, carrying jagged spears and rusted kinetic pistols.
The leader, a massive man with a scarred throat, stepped forward. He snatched the railgun from Kaelen's hands.
"Heavy," the man grunted, inspecting it. He looked at Renna's leg. "She's dead weight."
"She's with me," Kaelen said. "Three days. Water. Bandages. And a corner to sleep in."
The leader looked at Kaelen. He sniffed the air, as if smelling for magic.
"You have the look," the leader said, narrowing his eyes. "The look of someone who draws attention."
"I'm just a traveler," Kaelen said.
"We have rules here," the leader said, leaning close. His breath smelled of rot-gut alcohol. "Rule one: No loud noises. Rule two: No lights after dusk. Rule three: If the Silence comes..."
He pointed the barrel of the railgun at Kaelen's chest.
"...we throw you out. We don't fight for strangers. We survive. Do you understand?"
Kaelen looked at the weapon pointed at his heart. He looked at the people hiding in the shadows, terrified of their own existence.
This wasn't living. It was waiting to be erased.
"I understand," Kaelen said.
The leader lowered the gun. He spat on the ground near Kaelen's boot.
"Find a spot in the squalor district. Don't cause trouble. Or I'll feed you to the Rot."
They found a spot near the back wall, under a tarp stretched between two shipping containers. It was dirty, cold, and smelled of rust, but it was out of the wind.
Renna collapsed onto the ground, groaning as the tension left her body.
"You gave him my gun," she whispered, closing her eyes. "That was our only leverage."
Kaelen sat down beside her. He pulled a small, heavy object from his coat pocket and placed it in her hand.
It was the firing pin of the railgun.
Renna opened her eyes. She looked at the pin, then at him. A slow, pained smile touched her lips.
"You stripped it," she said.
"Without that pin, it's just a ten-pound club," Kaelen said. "Let him feel powerful. It keeps him distracted."
A ragged looking girl, no older than ten, crept up to them. She placed a dirty plastic bowl of water and a strip of dried meat on the ground, then scurried away without a word.
Kaelen handed the water to Renna. "Drink."
She didn't argue. She drained half the bowl in one breath.
Kaelen took the rest. The water was brackish, tasting of iodine, but it soothed the fire in his throat.
He leaned back against the rusted metal wall and watched the camp.
It was a microcosm of the world Valerius wanted. A world where people were so afraid of pain that they had stopped feeling anything at all. They moved like ghosts. They didn't speak above a whisper. They didn't look at the sky.
He saw a man with a broken arm setting it himself, biting on a leather strap to keep from screaming. He saw a woman weeping silently over a pile of rags that might have been a child.
[ AUTHORITY: OBSERVER ]
The world was full of glitches here. Small, painful errors in the code of reality. Sickness. Rot. Despair.
His fingers twitched. The urge to fix it—to [Edit] the wounds, to [Restore] the hope—was an itch under his skin.
"Don't," Renna whispered.
She was watching him. She saw the blue static sparking faintly at his fingertips.
"Don't do it, Kaelen," she warned softly. "You heard the rules. If you use magic, if you make noise... they'll kill us. Or worse, they'll throw us back out."
Kaelen clenched his fist, extinguishing the sparks.
"They're dying," he murmured. "Slowly."
"That's survival," Renna said, closing her eyes again. "It's ugly. It's quiet. But it's survival. Don't be a hero, Anomaly. Just be a refugee."
Kaelen looked at the camp. He looked at the high walls that blocked out the horizon.
"This isn't survival," he said to himself. "This is just a slower way of falling."
He closed his eyes, but sleep didn't come.
Because deep in his mind, the Silence was laughing. It didn't need to attack this place. It had already won.
And somewhere in the dark, the Railgun sat in the hands of a coward, useless and stripped, waiting for a war that was getting closer by the hour.