They emerged from between obsidian buildings, their faces scarred, like anyone else in this place. They had cloaks made from jagged pieces of obsidian stitched together with a type of resin, it shone in the gloom. Their eyes were sunken, etched with too long spent in this city of glass and lies.
A man approached first, moving carefully, his hand near a knife at his belt but not threatening. Yet.
"Name's Blade," he said, his voice low and cautious. His eyes were wary but not unkind, a combination Bullet had learned to recognize as genuine rather than predatory. "On account of this." He gestured to the knife, its edge sharpened to a razor's gleam.
Blade's eyes took in the state of Bullet...the blood, the obvious breaks and tears, the fact that he could barely stand. Wordlessly, he pulled out a strip of fabric that had been treated with something, its edges glinting with obsidian dust.
"Here," Blade said, kneeling to wrap Bullet's feet. "This city cuts deep. You need something between your skin and the glass, or you won't make it another block."
The fabric stung against his frostbitten skin, and Bullet hissed through his teeth. His leg wound burned while Blade worked, his thigh continuing to seep blood through the makeshift bandage.
"Thanks." Bullet rasped, his throat raw from the sulfurous air.
Blade nodded toward a scrying wall nearby. The surface depicted the image of a war, soldiers clashing, blood flying, but there were no glyphs or text around to explain what it meant or when it had happened.
"City shows you things." Blade said quietly. "Sometimes truth. Sometimes lies. Hard to tell which is which after a while." He helped Bullet to his feet, careful of the obviously broken arm. "There's a camp not far. You look like you could use food and shelter."
"Why help me?" Bullet asked, suspicion coming automatically after so many betrayals.
Blade met his gaze steadily. "Because we've all been where you are. Broken. Bleeding." He gestured toward the camp. "Come on. You can decide what to do next after you get shelter."
The camp was close by, a cluster of hovels made from obsidian scraps and tied together with the same sap the denizens used for everything. The structures glinted in the smog-light, catching what little illumination filtered through.
A woman stepped forward as they approached. Her skin took on a grayish tint from the ash that appeared to coat everything here. Her scars were deep, carved by glass and time. Her eyes were steady, but tired, the look of someone who'd been leading for too long without rest.
"I'm Ash." she said, the firmness in her voice belying the exhaustion around her eyes. "I keep this group alive. Barely." With a calculating gaze, she studied Bullet. "You've got the look of someone with a story."
She pointed at the circular mark over his heart, which was visible through the torn and bloodied clothes.
"Got a past in there?" Blade asked, following her gesture.
Bullet shook his head, his scar throbbing as if in response. His fractured arm hung limp at his side. His ribs creaked with the movement. "Nothing. No past, no memories. Just this." He touched the scar.
Ash nodded, much like she'd heard similar stories many times before. "That's how it is with most of us. Welcome to the club."
Another woman came forward, her hair permanently dark-stained from the ash. Her voice was soft, almost motherly despite the hard lines of her face.
"I'm Soot." she said, proffering a bowl of something steaming in the heat. "Broth made from sap and whatever we can scavenge. It's not much, but it's warm."
Her hands shook a bit as she handed it over. Bullet noticed scars on her wrists...old ones, but never quite gone.
"The walls..." Soot said quietly, gesturing to a nearby scrying surface. "Do they show truth? Or just lies to break us?" Her voice was laced with honest confusion, like she'd been asking that question for years without finding an answer.
A third sat not far from them, her eyes oddly reflective in the dim light, like they'd absorbed some quality of the obsidian itself.
"Gleam." she said by way of introduction. She was carving something from a piece of black glass, her hands moving with practiced precision. She offered the carved piece to Bullet. It was shaped like a fish, smooth and perfect. "I carve glass. Don't know why. Don't remember learning how. But my hands know."
She pulled out a knife and showed it to him. The blade was etched with swirls and patterns that appeared to shift in the light. None of the patterns were marked or labeled. They just were, beautiful and inexplicable.
"That's the way of it here." Gleam said matter-of-factly. "We know things without knowing how we know them."
From the edges of camp, two more figures stood and watched, a man with a spear in his hand, a woman whose hands continually brushed against something concealed in her cloak.
"Flint." the man growled, his voice suspicious and sharp. He looked at Bullet with hard eyes. "He's trouble. The walls say so." His spear was casually positioned, ready to strike.
The gaze of the woman burnt with intensity as she studied Bullet. Her fingers played over what seemed to be a shard concealed within her cloak, the small glow noticeable through the fabric itself.
"Cinder." she said, her tone sharpened by ambition in a way that quickened Bullet's instinctive warning bells. "Interesting you should turn up when you do. The walls have been showing visions of a stranger for days."
Ash stepped between them and Bullet, taking on a commanding tone. "I keep us alive," she repeated, her eyes going to Flint and Cinder. "But the visions divide us. The scrying slab shows different futures to different people, and we can't agree on what's true."
She nodded towards the center of the camp, where a large slab of obsidian sat. Its surface pulsed with faint light, unmarked by any glyphs or symbols, but clearly significant.
"It splits us." Ash said. There was a tiredness in her voice. "Every day, we try to read it together. Every day, we see different things and we argue about what it means."
That night, Ash led a ritual around the scrying slab. Its dwellers stood in a circle around it, their faces lit by the pulsing glow of the obsidian.
"We seek answers." Ash said, her voice carrying the weight of desperate hope. "Show us truth. Show us the path forward."
Her leadership felt fragile, as if it could shatter like glass under pressure.
The surface of the slab began to ripple, images forming and dissolving in its depths. But what each person saw was different:
Flint jerked upright suddenly, his face twisted in rage and fear. He pointed a shaking hand at Bullet. "He leads the Shades! Clear as day, I see it: he's bringing them down on us, leading them straight onto the camp!"
"You're lying!" Soot cried out, her voice breaking. But her eyes were seeing something different. "He's not leading them...he's one of us! He's showing us the way out, the way to escape this glass prison!"
The knife was in her hand, steady as her voice shook and wavered.
Cinder laughed, the sound harsh and ambitious. "Escape? Freedom?" She pulled out the hidden shard, its glow intensifying. "I see something better. I see me ruling this glass city, with him as my weapon! Power, not escape!
"You bring ruin!" Flint roared at Bullet, his spear coming up. "The walls don't lie. You'll destroy us all!"
The spear grazed Bullet's arm as he lunged, before he could even react. Fresh blood welled from the cut, adding to the collection of injuries. Pain flared through his already damaged body.
Soot moved faster, her knife clashing against Flint's spear with a sharp ring of metal. "Stop!" she shouted. "Can't you see? The slab shows each of us what we fear or desire most! It's not truth...it's us!"
"Enough!" Ash's voice cracked like a whip in the chaos. "We don't kill our own based on visions! We're better than that!"
The damage was done. The camp exploded into arguments and shoving. Gleam shifted to block Ash from the worst of it, her carved knife appearing in her hand. Blade seized Cinder's arm, holding her back before she could do anything irreparable.
Bullet dodged another strike from Flint, instinct making his body move despite the pain. He brought his pipe up to parry, and in one stroke, he shattered Flint's spear into pieces.
But he had not pursued it. Had not struck Flint himself. Only destroyed the weapon and stepped back, breathing hard.
"I'm not your enemy..." Bullet wheezed, his broken ribs ground with every word. "And I'm not your savior either. I'm just trying to survive, same as you."
It was then that the Obsidian Shades stormed into the camp, attracted by the fighting and the feelings that came with it.
The dwellers immediately forgot about their argument and faced the real threat. Survival instinct overrode everything else.
Bullet fought along with Blade and Soot, the three of them forming an impromptu defensive line. The pipe and knives shattered Shade cores, sending splinters flying that cut their faces and arms. Blood dripped from dozens of small cuts, mixing with the larger wounds Bullet already carried.
Flint and Cinder were hesitant at first, torn between their visions and reality. But the more Shades that came pouring in, even they joined the fight.
Cinder's shard, hidden in her hand, pulsed once with each swing, until, in one brief lull in the fighting, Bullet caught her staring at him. Calculating. Planning something.
One after the other, the Shades fell, their forms of liquid glass splashing on the obsidian ground as their cores shattered. The air in the camp was filled with burnt glass and blood.
When it was done, Ash stood amidst the carnage, her voice exhausted. "We survive together," she told them, eyes scanning each face in turn. "Or we die apart. Those are the only two options in this city."
Gleam approached Bullet with more of the medicinal sap, carefully applying it to his burns and cuts. The cooling sensation brought momentary relief, but it could not fix the broken bones or deep wounds.
Flint's glare remained fixed on Bullet from across the camp, suspicion undiminished by fighting together. And Cinder's shard continued to pulse in her hand, her eyes calculating, planning, waiting.
The camp was divided. Bullet could feel it in the air, the fragile alliance held together only by immediate necessity. When the next crisis came, these fractures would widen.
His wounds pulsed in a symphony of pain: shoulder, arm, thigh, ribs, leg, back, chest, face. Every part of him begged for rest he knew wasn't going to come.
Bullet slumped against one of the shelters, his chest heaving with the effort of breathing. The Shades' clicking had faded into the distance, but the city's hum remained constant. His scar pulsed over his heart, that familiar rhythm that had carried him through six provinces already.
Faces became a blur in his mind. Blade's deep kindness, Soot's desperate hope, Gleam's quiet purpose, Ash's heavy burden of leadership, Flint's burning grudge, Cinder's naked ambition.
More faces, more connections, more guilt to carry.
Patch. Quarry. Glow. Thorn. Frosthawk. Twig. And now Blade, Soot, Ash. The list kept growing, a catalog of people he'd met and would inevitably leave behind.
The pull urged him deeper into the city, pointing toward something beyond the obsidian maze. But the camp's bond held him, at least briefly. The warmth of the shelters, the taste of Soot's broth, the feeling of people around him who weren't actively trying to kill him.
He traced the etched shard through his pocket, feeling its warmth against his thigh. Spark's shard was cool beside it, a constant reminder. The scrying slab's visions still echoed Province 512's false vortex-another lie, another broken promise.
His wounds were a map of everything he'd survived. Every cut, every break, every burn told the story of provinces crossed and trials endured.
But he couldn't stay. He never could.
Time to go. Again. Always again.
The scrying walls throughout the city pulsed with renewed intensity as Bullet prepared to leave the camp. More visions rippled across their surfaces:
Bullet as a traitor, leading armies to their doom.
Bullet as a hero, sacrificing everything to save others.
Bullet-void-bound, consumed by the darkness he had been fighting.
A shadowed figure, crafting shards, deliberately embedding light into each one. The figure's face was always just out of focus, features blurred, yet the hands moved with practiced precision.
Each of the visions was interrupted by the burn of his scar pulling him back from the brink of becoming trapped in the glass.
The shard in his pocket pulsed with each vision, and Bullet noticed something more. His frostbite wasn't hurting. The numbness was receding a little. His fractured arm felt marginally more stable, as though the bones were starting to knit-impossible in less than weeks of healing, but happening anyway.
His thigh wound was still seeping blood, but it wasn't flowing as freely as before. The blood clotted quicker than it should.
The shard was doing something. Healing him, maybe. Or at least keeping him alive long enough to reach whatever destination the pull was dragging him toward.
This is new.