The wasteland greeted him with silence.
Riven stood just beyond the rusted hatch, his boots sinking slightly into the cracked asphalt. The sky above was smeared with stormlight, thick coils of ash and cloud turning in slow, predatory spirals. Patches of dark red bled across the horizon like cauterized wounds.
Everything felt too still.
The city ruin stretched around him in broken towers and sunken bones. Where once there had been a thriving arcology, now only wreckage remained — flattened domes, scorched walkways, blackened steel that jutted upward like ribcages of a buried colossus.
A wind passed over the shattered plain. Cold, sharp, and dry.
Riven exhaled and kept walking.
… Sensory Thread Detected
The text flickered in his vision again. Not from his helmet — he wasn't wearing it. This came from within. Like his eyes were catching data the world hadn't intended for them to see.
He blinked.
The message was gone.
He touched his temple out of instinct, but there was nothing there. No band, no implant. Just the faint pulse beneath his skin. That same quiet vibration that had started the moment he touched the fragment underground.
No. The Traceform.
He didn't understand it, but he felt it. A low hum beneath thought, a breath that wasn't his, exhaling behind his ribs. It wasn't speaking. Not yet.
But it was listening.
He glanced down at his hand.
The shallow cut across his palm had scabbed over, but the skin shimmered faintly in the light — not with blood, but something stranger. His veins had a slight sheen, faint like stardust.
Riven clenched his fist.
This wasn't normal.
And it wasn't over.
He continued forward, weaving through the wreckage. The route back to the scav outpost would take at least an hour if he didn't run into a patrol. That gave him time to think.
He hated thinking.
… [Scene Break]
The corpse of a skytrain lay in twisted pieces across a collapsed road, its segmented hull curled around the broken framework of a transit hub. Dozens of makeshift shelters clung to the skeleton of the structure — old scav hideouts, long abandoned.
Riven climbed over a rusted support beam, brushing aside a curtain of melted plastic tarp, and ducked into one of the cleaner nooks. He dropped his bag beside him and sat.
The strain caught up to him all at once.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall, his breath slow and measured. He didn't sleep — hadn't in days — but he let himself drift.
A voice stirred behind his thoughts.
Not language. More like pressure. A memory being injected into a wound.
Then a pulse.
Like a second heartbeat.
He gritted his teeth and forced it down.
He wouldn't break. He couldn't afford to.
Riven opened his eyes.
The sky outside had dimmed further. A faint glow shimmered along the far horizon — aurora-like pulses that whispered of a Corestorm approaching. He had to move before it reached the outer sectors.
He pulled himself to his feet, slung the bag over his shoulder, and stepped out.
The air tasted like static.
… Traceform Drift Level: Low
… System Stability: Holding
… Thread Synchronization: 3%
Riven exhaled and began walking again.
The numbers meant nothing. Not yet. But they were growing. And he could feel something shifting inside him.
Whatever the Traceform had done — it wasn't finished.
… [Scene Break]
It took another hour to reach the outer gate of the excavation zone.
A crumbling barricade of metal spikes and electrified fencing encircled the last operational dig site near Arc-4's ruin belt. Above the checkpoint, a scav drone tracked him with dead-blue optics. A second hovered behind it, scanning his vitals.
He raised his hand and paused at the perimeter. A flicker passed over his body — the shield veil verifying biometric markers.
The gate didn't open.
That was wrong.
Riven stepped forward again, slower this time.
The drone made a low warning noise, and a targeting laser brushed across his chest.
He didn't flinch.
A moment later, the static veil passed again — slower this time, deeper. As though trying to peel back layers it didn't recognize.
Then, with a heavy groan, the gate slid open.
The voice that greeted him was sharp and irritated.
"Thought you were dead."
Riven turned.
A woman stood a few meters away, arms crossed, visor down. Her scav coat was streaked with black ash and faded military decals. Her name was Irel — logistics lead and part-time enforcer for the Grayshift Scav Corp. She'd been on his case since his first contract.
He didn't answer.
"You went into the ruins alone again." She walked up beside him, scanning him up and down. "You have a death wish, or are you just trying to get blacklisted?"
"I brought something back," he muttered.
"Let me guess. Not on the manifest."
He nodded.
She held out her hand. "Give it."
Riven shrugged the bag off his shoulder and let it fall between them. She crouched, unzipped it — then paused.
The contents were minimal: a cracked dataplate, a few scrap coils, a sealed shard of alloyed fiber — and something else.
Her hand hovered over the Traceform residue. She didn't touch it.
"Where did you get this?"
"Sector 12. Undermantle level. Below the elevator shaft."
She looked up slowly. "That level's sealed."
"Not anymore."
She stood, zippered the bag halfway, and narrowed her eyes at him. "You're not the same."
He didn't answer.
"You came back different," she said. "I can feel it."
Her visor retracted slightly, revealing tired gray eyes.
"Keep your head down. Someone else sees what I just saw, you won't be walking away with a bag full of whispers next time."
He walked past her, heading toward the far wall of the staging zone. Behind him, she didn't move.
The wind picked up again.
But this time, it felt like it was moving with him.