The end of the world didn't smell like sulfur or fire. It smelled like ozone and wet rust.
Sector 44 was the scab on the knee of Bastion. It was a sprawling, vertical mess of corrugated iron, neon signs that flickered with dying gas, and steam pipes that hissed like angry vipers. It was the lowest point of the drifting continent, the place where gravity felt a little lighter, a little less certain, and where the "Static"—the invisible radiation of the Void—tasted like copper on the back of your tongue.
Here, the sky wasn't blue. It was a bruised purple, veiled by the massive, semi-translucent dome of the Stabilizer Field that kept the atmosphere from leaking out into nothingness.
But even the field had holes.
At the very periphery of the sector lay the "Dredge Yards." It was a strip of reinforced concrete that jutted out over the Abyss like a diving board. Below it, there was no ocean, no ground, no bottom. There was only the endless, blinding white expanse of the Void.
To look into it was to invite madness. It was a silence so loud it made your teeth ache. And yet, lined up along the rusted safety railing, a dozen figures were staring right into it.
They were the Corpse Fishers.
The bottom-feeders of society.
"Heave!" a foreman bellowed, his voice barely audible over the howling wind rising from the deep. "Put your backs into it, you rats! If you lose that catch, I'm docking your pay for a month!"
The work was brutal, dangerous, and paid less than a janitor's wage in the inner city. But for those with trash-tier abilities, it was the only way to eat. Monsters—"Hollows" or "Glitched Beasts"—often fell off the edge of the world during skirmishes higher up in the city. Their bodies, infused with valuable nightmare biology, would drift in the low-gravity currents just off the cliff face.
The job was simple: Hook them before they drifted too far and dissolved into the white static.
Somewhere in the group of old experienced fishers Abaddon gritted his teeth, the muscles in his lean arms screaming in protest. He was sixteen, but he looked older—gaunt, with messy black hair that hadn't seen a comb in weeks and eyes that were too sharp for a boy his age. He wore a heavy leather apron over a stained tunic, the uniform of the disposable.
Currently, he was fighting a war of attrition against dead weight.
"Come... on..." he hissed, sweat stinging his eyes.
From his fingertips, five thin, translucent threads of kinetic energy extended out over the void. They looked like spider silk catching the dim light of the halo lamps. The threads stretched taut, vibrating with tension as they wrapped around the ankle of a massive, drifting carcass about twenty meters out.
Abaddon's ability, Spinner, was a Rank 1 utility skill. In the hands of a master, maybe it could be versatile. In Abaddon's hands, with his abysmal energy reserves, it was barely strong enough to lift a sack of potatoes. Hauling a three-hundred-pound monster against the updraft of the Void was torture.
The other workers used mechanical winches or strength-enhancement abilities. Abaddon only had friction and stubbornness. He dug his boots into the grate, leaning back until he was nearly horizontal, letting his body weight do the work.
Slowly, agonizingly, the prize rose over the lip of the concrete.
With a final, gasping yank, Abaddon retracted his threads. The corpse slammed onto the metal deck with a wet thud that sounded like a bag of wet meat hitting the pavement.
Abaddon slumped against the railing, chest heaving, wiping grease and rain from his forehead. He looked down at his catch.
"Ugh."
He grimaced. It was a Hollow—or what was left of one. It looked like a wolf that had been turned inside out and then put back together by someone who had never seen a wolf before. Its skin was translucent and gelatinous, shifting colors like spilled oil.
But the face...
The face was a frozen mask of agony, with three mismatched eyes and a jaw that hung open at an impossible angle, revealing rows of needle-like teeth that vibrated even in death.
"Congratulations," Abaddon muttered to the corpse, kicking its flank with his boot. "You win the 'Ugliest Bastard I've Seen All Week' contest. And that's stiff competition considering I live next to Old Man Nig."
He didn't admire it for long. In the Dredge Yards, time was money. He quickly unspooled a physical rope from his belt, lashed the corpse's legs together, and dragged it toward the processing chute. A scanner mounted on the wall beeped as he shoved the body in.
"Grade F carcass accepted," a robotic voice droned. "Value: 15 Credits. Credited to Worker ID: 899-Abaddon."
Fifteen credits. That was enough for two nutrient bars and maybe a bottle of filtered water. If he skipped dinner, he could save ten.
"Pathetic," he whispered, wiping his hands on his apron. He turned back to the rail.
The weather was turning.
When the shift had started, the sky was a dull gray. Now, swirling vortexes of black clouds were gathering above the Stabilizer Field. The wind coming off the Void wasn't just air anymore; it was heavy with static charge. Sparks of electricity danced along the metal railing, making the hair on Abaddon's arms stand up.
"Storm's coming!" one of the older workers shouted, retracting his mechanical grapple. "A big one! That's a Class 3 Static Front!"
Panic rippled through the line. A Static Storm wasn't just rain. It was a reality distortion event. If you got caught in it, you could catch "The Drift"—a sickness that made your organs slowly turn invisible and fail.
"Pack it up!" another fisher yelled, abandoning a half-reeled catch. "It's not worth it!"
The workers scrambled, disconnecting their gear and fleeing toward the safety of the bunkers closer to the city walls. Within minutes, the bustling deck was nearly empty.
Abaddon stood alone, the wind whipping his tunic violently around his frame. The rain began to fall—heavy, oily droplets that sizzled when they hit the hot metal of the deck.
"Hey! Kid!" The foreman shouted from the doorway of the safety shelter, fifty meters away. "You have a death wish? Get inside!"
Abaddon looked at the shelter, then at the vast, empty white void. He shivered, the cold biting into his bones. Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run. To hide. To preserve his miserable life.
But then he thought about the message that had received this morning.
Debt Payment Due: 48 Hours. Amount: 5,000 Credits.
If he didn't pay, they wouldn't just kill him. They would harvest his organs. They would hook him up to a siphon machine and drain his life force until he was a vegetable, then sell his empty husk to the Synod for parts.
Being dead was scary.
Being harvested was worse.
He shook his head and turned his back on the foreman. He couldn't leave. He needed one big catch. Just one Lucky Drop—a high-ranking beast, or maybe a piece of salvage tech—that could net him a few hundred credits.
He squinted into the blinding white abyss. The storm was making visibility terrible. The static was like snow on an old television screen, blurring the line between reality and nothingness.
He spotted a couple of corpses floating around, but he wasn't interested in any.
They where all trash.
He needed something big.
He stood admits the ranging storm struggling to keep a footing while looking around.
After about fifteen more minutes, he finally spotted something.
'There.'
His eyes widened. About thirty meters out, bobbing in a chaotic updraft, was a shape. It wasn't a gelatinous Hollow. It looked solid. Carapace. Dark, metallic scales.
A "Void-Shell Crab."
Those things had shells that could block bullets. The Synod paid premium rates for the chitin. A carcass that size... it could be worth three hundred credits.
Maybe four.
"Jackpot," Abaddon whispered.
He braced himself against the railing. The wind was pushing against him now, a physical hand trying to shove him back, but he planted his feet.
He raised his hands, focusing every ounce of his meager willpower.
Channel.
Spin.
Fire.
He shot his threads.
They zipped through the air, faint lines of distortion.
Whoosh.
But they missed.
The wind blew them off course, causing them to dissipate harmlessly into the white mist.
"Damn it," he cursed.
He was too far away. The threads lost coherence after twenty meters in this weather. He needed to be closer.
Abaddon looked down at the railing. It was slick with oily rain. Beyond it, there was a narrow maintenance ledge—a strip of rusted grating only a few inches wide, meant for repair drones, not humans.
It was suicide.
'5,000 Credits,' his mind reminded him.
'Whatever, I would die either way.'
Abaddon climbed over the railing.
His boots clanged on the narrow grating. The wind screamed in his ears, tearing at his clothes. He was now standing on the wrong side of the safety barrier, with absolutely nothing between him and infinite non-existence.
He gripped the railing behind him with one hand, leaning his body out over the precipice. The Void-Shell Crab drifted closer, tumbling in the 'wind'.
"Come to papa," he grit out.
He extended his free hand.
He waited.
He timed the rhythm of the wind.
Now.
He fired his threads again.
The five lines shot out, glowing faintly blue in the gloom.
They cut through the wind.
Snap.
He missed again.
Just by an inch.
The thread grazed the shell and slid off.
"Are you kidding me?" Abaddon shouted, frustration boiling over. "Stay still, you stupid rock!"
The crab was drifting away now. The updraft was carrying it further out. If he didn't catch it in the next ten seconds, it was gone. And with it, his chance at eating this week.
He didn't think. He didn't calculate. Desperation took the wheel.
Abaddon let go of the railing with his safety hand.
He lunged forward, balancing precariously on the balls of his feet on the wet grating, extending his entire body out into the void to gain that extra meter of reach.
He fired a third time.
Thwip.
Solid connection.
His threads wrapped tight around the jagged spike on the crab's shell. He felt the weight of it instantly—heavy, solid, valuable.
"Gotcha!" he yelled, a grin splitting his face. "I got it!"
For a split second, triumph washed away the cold. He had done it. He just had to pull back, grab the railing, and haul it in.
But the storm didn't care about his victory.
As he prepared to pull back, the pressure in the air suddenly dropped. The wind, which had been blowing up from the Void, suddenly reversed.
A massive downdraft, a "Static Shear," slammed into the dock like the fist of a giant.
It hit Abaddon square in the back.
There was no time to scream. No time to grab the railing. One moment, he was standing on the ledge, tethered to his prize. The next, the world tilted violently.
His boots slipped on the oily grate.
"No—"
The word was ripped from his throat by the wind.
Abaddon pitched forward. He saw the rusty edge of the dock rush away from him. He saw the flickering lights of the sector shrinking upwards. He saw the gray sky replaced by blinding, suffocating white.
He was falling.
He was falling into the place where things stopped existing.
As the wind roared in his ears, deafening and cold, Abaddon reached out desperately for something solid, for a hand, for anything.
But there was nothing. Only the Void, opening its maw to swallow him whole.