The heat from the Archivist's fire had been a lie, or perhaps a borrowed memory, for it vanished the moment they crossed the perimeter of the cooling tower. The cold that reclaimed them was not merely a temperature; it was an architectural feature of Sector 7.
They moved deeper into the industrial labyrinth, entering a region Kaelen's map—the useless, burned thing in his pocket—had once labeled the "Distribution Grid." Now, it was a forest of pipes. Vertical conduits of rusted steel rose hundreds of feet into the gloom, clustered so thickly they blocked out the bruised sky. Condensation froze on their surfaces, creating intricate, jagged crystals that looked like white thorns.
The silence here was brittle. The red dust on the ground was frozen hard, so the wagon wheels no longer crunched; they skated, hissing over the permafrost with a sound like a blade being drawn from a sheath.
Kaelen walked with his shoulders hunched. The encounter with the Archivist had rattled him more than he showed. He kept checking the Ledger, not reading it, just touching the leather cover as if to confirm it was still there. Assets. Debts. Balance.
"The air is thickening," Vanya whispered. She was huddled in the back of the wagon, her knees drawn to her chest. Her breath plumed in grey clouds. "It feels... woven."
"Keep your eyes down," Kaelen rasp-commanded, though he didn't look back. "The fog plays tricks in the pipe-fields. Echoes get trapped."
"It is not an echo," Korgath rumbled. The Orc stopped, his massive boots sliding on the ice. He tilted his helmeted head, the brass ear-trumpets on his cowl rotating. "It is a melody."
Kaelen signaled a halt. The Strider-beasts whined, shaking their heads as if trying to dislodge an insect from their ears.
At first, Kaelen heard only the wind whistling through the vertical pipes. But then, the wind organized itself. It found a rhythm. It found a pitch.
It started as a high, thrumming vibration that rattled the fillings in their teeth. A singular, piercing note that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Then, the voice joined it.
It was not a human voice. It sounded like a bow drawn across a string made of frozen gut—screeching, beautiful, and utterly wrong.
"Sleep, little iron, the rust is your mother..." "Sleep, little meat, the cold is your brother..."
The song drifted down from the canopy of pipes.
"Rime-Weaver," Kaelen hissed. He spun around, his crossbow leveled at the shadows above. "Formation! Back to back! Don't listen to the lyrics!"
But it was too late to close their ears. The sound didn't travel through the air; it traveled through the bone.
From the darkness between two massive conduits, a shape descended. It moved with a jerky, marionette grace. It was the size of a carriage, a nightmare constructed of scavenged wire, shards of glass, and pale, frost-bitten flesh. It had too many limbs, spindly and translucent, tipped with tuning forks instead of claws.
It didn't attack. It didn't strike. It hung suspended by invisible threads of frozen mana, swaying gently.
Its face—if it could be called that—was a hollow cavity of resonance, a mouth that stretched too wide.
"The path is a circle, the circle is closing..." "The leader is counting, but the numbers are freezing..."
The Weaver strummed the air with its legs, and the temperature dropped another ten degrees. Frost raced across the ground, sealing the wagon wheels to the earth.
"Fire!" Kaelen shouted. "Vanya, burn it!"
Vanya raised her hand. She called upon the septic mana, trying to conjure a bolt of necrotic flame. But the magic sputtered. It fizzled in her palm, turning into a handful of grey ash.
"I... I can't," Vanya stammered, looking at her hands in horror. "The mana. It's too heavy. It won't ignite."
The Weaver's head snapped toward her.
" The witch is a hollow, a husk in the dark..." " She steals from the corpse, but she carries no spark..."
The song dug into Vanya's chest. She gasped, doubling over as if punched. The words weren't just sound; they were truth, weaponized.
"Stop it," Elara cried, covering her ears. "Kaelen, shoot it!"
Kaelen pulled the trigger. The crossbow string twanged. The bolt flew true, aiming for the creature's center mass.
But mid-flight, the bolt slowed. Frost crystallized on the fletching. The wood groaned, then shattered into splinters before it could touch the Weaver. The song had thickened the air into a shield.
The Weaver turned its hollow face toward Kaelen.
" The counter of beans, the hoarder of dust..." " He trades in the lives that he claims are a trust..." " He looks at the ledger, he looks at the cost..." " And decides which of you is the one to be lost."
Kaelen froze. The Audit in his mind screamed, glitching violently. The numbers turned into accusations. Expendable assets. Acceptable losses.
The Weaver wasn't fighting them physically. It was unspooling them.
"It's an illusion," Kaelen yelled, though his voice sounded thin, stripped of authority. "It's amplifying your doubts. Ignore it!"
"Is it?" Korgath's voice was a low growl. The Orc turned, not toward the monster, but toward Kaelen.
The red lenses of Korgath's helmet glowed in the gloom. The steam venting from his suit was erratic.
"The song speaks the math, Ranger," Korgath rumbled. "You counted the water yesterday. You looked at me. You looked at the girl. You did the math."
"Korgath, stand down," Kaelen warned, stepping back. "That's the frost talking."
"No," Korgath said, taking a heavy step forward. "The frost brings clarity. You keep me because I am a wall. But a wall can be deconstructed. If the wagon gets too heavy... who walks off the bridge first, Kaelen? The girl? The elf? or the big, dumb animal?"
" The animal knows, the animal sees..." " He is meat for the grinder, he is rust on the knees..." The Weaver crooned, descending lower, its glass limbs clicking.
"I do what keeps us alive!" Kaelen snapped, his control fracturing. "Yes, I count! Because if I don't, we starve! You think you're a victim? You're a weapon, Korgath. That's what you were built for. Don't act surprised that I use you like one."
The words hung in the freezing air, sharp as jagged ice.
Elara stared at Kaelen. "You... you admit it?"
"We are in the Rustlands, Elara!" Kaelen spun on her, his face twisted with a sudden, vicious exhaustion. "There is no nobility here! There is only efficiency! Korgath is strong, so he carries the load. Vanya is magic, so she takes the psychic damage. I am the brain, so I make the hard calls. And you..."
He stopped. But the Rime-Weaver finished the sentence for him.
" And the girl is the glitch, the error, the break..." " A useless variable, a dangerous mistake..."
Vanya laughed. It was a brittle, hysterical sound. She slid down the side of the wagon to sit in the snow, looking up at Kaelen with eyes that were black pools of bitterness.
"A mistake," Vanya echoed. "Like believing in Paladins. Like believing that a scavenger with a notebook is a leader."
She pointed a trembling finger at Kaelen.
"You hate me," she whispered. "Every time I cast a spell, you look at me like I'm unclean. Like I'm the rot itself. You don't bring me along because I'm useful. You bring me along because you need a canary in the mine. When I die from the corruption, you'll know it's time to turn back."
"You are rotting!" Kaelen yelled, the venom spilling out of him, fueled by the Weaver's song. "Look at your veins, Vanya! You're turning into a monster! I keep you close so I can put a bolt in your skull before you turn into one of them!"
Vanya flinched, tears freezing on her cheeks. "At least I feel it! At least I mourn! You? You're just a calculator wrapped in skin. You died years ago, Kaelen. You're just too stubborn to lie down."
The Rime-Weaver descended further, settling its spindly legs around the party like the bars of a cage. The frost thickened, building a dome of ice over them. The air grew so cold that breathing became a conscious effort.
" The web is woven, the threads are tight..." " They tear each other in the failing light..."
Elara stood in the center of the crossfire. She looked at Korgath, whose hammer was raised, trembling. She looked at Vanya, who was weeping black tears. She looked at Kaelen, whose hand was shaking on his crossbow grip, aimed not at the monster, but vaguely toward his companions.
The Weaver was feeding on the dissonance. The more they hated each other, the stronger the ice became. The frost was reacting to the frequency of their anger.
"Stop it!" Elara screamed. "Please!"
"Stay out of this, kid," Kaelen snarled. "This is adult business. This is the Ledger balancing itself."
"It's not the Ledger!" Elara cried. She looked up at the Weaver, then back at them. "Don't you see? It wants you to fight! It wants you to be right!"
"I am right!" Korgath roared, slamming his hammer into the frozen ground. The impact didn't crack the ice; it just made the Weaver hum with pleasure. "I am just a tool to him! I am a shield that breathes! Why should I die for a man who sees me as a depreciating asset?"
"Because without me you'd be dead in a ditch!" Kaelen shouted back. "I found you! I patched you! I own your debt, Orc!"
"And I?" Vanya shrieked, her voice cracking. "I am just a liability? A ticking bomb?"
"Yes!" Kaelen screamed. "Yes, you are!"
The dome of ice sealed shut at the top. The darkness was absolute now, save for the faint, bioluminescent glow of the Weaver's belly. The air was running out. The cold was moving into their blood.
Elara fell to her knees. She was sobbing, but she was also listening.
The song. The Weaver's song. It wasn't just lyrics. It was a harmonic frequency. It found the vibration of their hidden fears—Kaelen's fear of failure, Korgath's fear of worthlessness, Vanya's fear of corruption—and it amplified them until they deafened everything else.
To fight the song, they were shouting louder. They were doubling down on their arguments. They were trying to win.
But you can't shout down an echo. You can't fight a vibration with more vibration.
Elara looked at the obsidian dagger in her hand. It was black glass. It didn't vibrate. It absorbed.
How do you stop a vibration? she thought desperately. You dampen it.
She looked at Kaelen. He looked hateful. He looked ugly in his rage. He looked like the monster the Weaver said he was.
But... was the Weaver lying?
He trades in lives...
Kaelen did trade in lives. He did count them as assets.
And Vanya... She steals from the corpse...
Vanya did use necrotic magic. She was rotting.
And Korgath... Meat for the grinder...
He was a weapon.
The Weaver wasn't lying. It was telling the truth. The cruel, unvarnished truth. And they were fighting it because they didn't want it to be true. They were fighting because they wanted to be better than they were.
"Kaelen," Elara whispered.
She stood up. The cold was making her limbs sluggish. She walked toward the Ranger.
"Get back, Elara," Kaelen warned, his eyes wild. "I'm losing the variables. I can't track the variables."
"You're right," Elara said.
The words dropped into the freezing air like stones.
Kaelen blinked. "What?"
Elara turned to Korgath. "You're right, Korgath. You are a tool. Kaelen uses you. You are a shield of meat. You take the hits so he doesn't have to."
Korgath's hammer lowered slightly. He looked confused. He had expected denial. He had expected comfort. He didn't know how to parry agreement.
Elara turned to Vanya. "And you're right, Vanya. You are dangerous. You are rotting. Every time you save us, you become a little more like the monsters. You are a liability."
The Weaver's song faltered. A note hung in the air, unresolved. The dissonance wavered.
Elara turned back to Kaelen. She stepped right up to the tip of his crossbow bolt.
"And you're right, Kaelen," she said softly. "You are cold. You are a calculator. You would sacrifice any of us to keep the mission going. You don't love us. You audit us."
Kaelen stared at her. His mouth opened, but no defense came out. Because she wasn't attacking him. She was accepting him.
"But that's okay," Elara said, her voice trembling but gaining strength.
She looked at Korgath.
"It's okay that you're a shield, Korgath. Because we are soft. We need a wall. If you weren't a weapon, we would have died ten times over. Being a tool isn't an insult. It means you have a purpose."
Korgath's shoulders slumped. The steam from his vents slowed.
She looked at Vanya.
"It's okay that you're dangerous, Vanya. Because the world is poison. We need someone who can touch the poison without dying immediately. We need you to rot for us."
Vanya's hand went to her mouth. She stopped crying.
She looked at Kaelen.
"And it's okay that you're a calculator, Kaelen. Because we are emotional. We are scared. We need someone who can do the math when we can't. We need you to be cold, because if you felt everything, you'd freeze like us."
The Rime-Weaver shrieked. It was a sound of frustration. The web of frost above them developed a hairline crack.
" No..." the Weaver hissed, its voice sounding like grinding glass. " Denial... reject the flaw... fight the truth..."
"We don't reject it," Elara said, looking up at the monster. "We are broken. We are rusted. We are counting down."
She took Kaelen's gloved hand. It was stiff, frozen around the crossbow grip.
"You're a monster, Kaelen," she whispered. "Thank you."
Kaelen looked at her. He looked at the girl who had admitted his darkest sin—that he viewed them as numbers—and had thanked him for it.
The tension in his arm broke. The Audit in his mind stopped screaming Error and settled on a new status: Accepted.
"I..." Kaelen rasped. He looked at Korgath. "I am a bastard. I will spend you like a coin if I have to."
Korgath let out a long, rattling breath. "I know, little man. I am a good coin. Spend me well."
"I am a hazard," Vanya whispered, wiping her face. "I am a ticking clock."
"Tick loudly," Kaelen muttered, lowering his crossbow. "So we know how much time we have left."
The argument didn't end. It was simply acknowledged. The friction that the Weaver had been feeding on vanished, replaced by a grim, heavy acceptance of their own flaws.
The Weaver screamed. Its song turned dissonant, eating itself. It had built a cage for people who wanted to be heroes, but it had trapped people who admitted they were debris.
The ice dome shuddered.
"The resonance," Kaelen said, his eyes narrowing as his mind snapped back into focus. "It's feeding on the conflict. We stopped fighting. It's starving."
He looked at Vanya. He looked at Korgath.
"It wants a song," Kaelen said. "Let's give it one. Not a hymn. Not a lie."
"The dirge," Vanya realized, remembering the sound on the bridge. "The sound of the wheels."
"The sound of the grind," Korgath agreed, gripping his hammer.
"Together," Kaelen ordered. "Accept the rust."
They stood together in the freezing dark, surrounded by a monster that fed on discord. And for the first time, they didn't try to be better. They just stood in their own wreckage, and prepared to scream.