The universe was a grand, cosmic equation, and Dante Silvergrin was a rounding error it was trying to correct.
He stood on the precipice of a dripping gargoyle, overlooking the rusted sprawl of Sector 4, the "Iron Lung" of New Babel. The air up here didn't taste like air. It tasted like wet ash, ozone, and the copper tang of industrialized alchemy. Beneath him, the city breathed—a rhythmic, thumping cadence of piston-driven factories and steam vents that hissed like dying beasts.
Dante checked his pocket watch. The glass face was cracked, but the hands ticked with merciless precision.
3:00 AM.
He held up his left hand against the backdrop of the gaslights below. For a fleeting second, the hand wasn't there. It flickered. The edges of his glove blurred into static, the leather and the flesh beneath momentarily losing their grip on reality. It didn't hurt. Erasure never hurts. It felt like a sudden drop in air pressure, a vacuum opening inside his marrow.
"Seventy-one kilograms," Dante whispered, his voice vibrating strangely against the prosthetic silver encasing his lower jaw. "Current rate of decay: zero point four kilograms per hour. Accelerated by the dampness. Inefficient."
The universe was trying to delete him. He was a glitch, a stain on the tablecloth of existence that the laws of physics were frantically scrubbing at. To stay distinct—to remain Dante and not just scattered atoms returning to the Origin—he needed mass. He needed high-grade matter. He needed a drink.
He reached into his bandolier and produced a vial of heavy water mixed with suspended mercury. It was a cocktail that would kill a normal man in seconds, dissolving his stomach lining into sludge. Dante uncorked it and poured it into the complex mechanism of his jaw.
The Living Quicksilver of his mask rippled. It didn't have lips, but it mimicked the motion of swallowing, parting liquidly to accept the toxic slurry. The metal shimmered, flowing like oil over water, forming a temporary, mocking smile that didn't reach his tired, human eyes.
Integration complete. Existence stabilized for three hours.
Dante sighed, the mist from his breath condensing on the cold metal of his chin. "Facts over feelings," he reminded himself, tucking the empty vial away. "Now, let's find something to pay the rent."
He wasn't here to sightsee. The Law of Convergence—that irritating magnetic pull that drew fate together—had been itching at the back of his skull all night. In the chaotic sprawling mess of the Iron Lung, where scavengers picked through the refuse of the Alchemist Guilds, something was calling out.
Dante stepped off the gargoyle. He didn't fall; he slid down a drainpipe with the practiced ease of a nocturnal predator, his boots hitting the cobblestones with a wet slap.
The alleyway smelled of urine and burnt sulfur. Fog coiled around his ankles, thick and yellow, obscuring the ground. This was the hunting ground of the Scrappers—desperate men with crude augmentations who would kill for a copper gear. Dante adjusted his high collar, ensuring the alchemical weave covered his neck. He walked with a casual, terrifying confidence. He wasn't the biggest thing in the alley, but he was certainly the most unstable.
He stopped before a pile of refuse behind a decommissioned Transmutation Plant. To the untrained eye, it was junk—twisted pipes, slag, broken glass. To Dante, who saw the atomic lattice of the world, it was a crime scene of physics.
He knelt, his gloved fingers hovering over a rusted iron box half-buried in the mud.
Standard containment unit. Lead-lined. Late Third Era design.
"You're far too heavy to be empty," Dante murmured.
He touched the lock. He didn't pick it. He didn't force it. He simply applied the Law of Entropy.
The iron lock turned grey, then brown. Flakes of rust bloomed across its surface like a fast-forwarded infection. In three seconds, the sturdy mechanism crumbled into orange dust, drifting into the mud.
Dante flipped the lid. Inside, nestled in rotting velvet, sat a sphere the size of an apple. It pulsed with a faint, sickly violet light.
A Resonance Core.
Dante's eyes widened. This wasn't scrap. This was the heart of a War-Homunculus, the kind used in the Border Wars three decades ago. It was packed with condensed mana and unstable isotopes. It was worth enough to buy a small house in the Upper Spire. Or, more importantly, enough to keep Dante's existence stable for a month without needing to scavenge.
"Jackpot," he whispered.
"That's a pretty rock, Silver-face."
The voice came from the mouth of the alley, thick with phlegm and false bravado.
Dante didn't turn immediately. He closed the box, tucked it into his deep coat pocket, and stood up slowly. He brushed the rust dust from his gloves.
"It's radioactive," Dante said, his voice muffled and metallic. "If you hold it without lead gloves, your fingernails will fall out by sunrise."
He turned. Blocking the exit were three men. They were typical gutter-muscles for the Boiler-Born gang. Leather aprons, soot-stained skin, and crude, steam-powered piston-gauntlets clamped over their arms. The leader, a man whose nose had been broken so many times it resembled a crushed plum, stepped forward. Steam hissed from the vents on his shoulders.
"We got thick skin," the leader sneered. "Hand it over. And the coat. Looks expensive."
Dante analyzed the situation.
Three combatants.
Leader: Heavy augments, slow attack speed, likely high durability.
Left Flank: Knife wielder, twitchy, signs of stimulant addiction.
Right Flank: Holding a chain, shifting weight nervously.
Dante's Status:
Mass: 71.05 kg.
Structural Integrity: 92%.
Combat Options: Lethal force.
Self-Preservation Protocol: Active.
"Gentlemen," Dante said, raising his hands in a gesture of surrender. The silver jaw shifted, forming a grimace that looked like a tragic mask. "I am currently very unstable. Violence creates variables I prefer to avoid. Take the coins in my left pocket. Leave the box. Go home to your families."
The leader laughed. It was a wet, hacking sound. "Did you hear that? The freak is unstable. Let's stabilize him, boys."
The leader charged.
He moved faster than a man his size should, the steam pistons on his back firing with a shriek. The hydraulic fist, a hunk of iron capable of punching through brick, aimed straight for Dante's head.
Dante didn't block. Blocking required mass he didn't have.
He stepped into the strike, dipping his shoulder. The iron fist grazed his ear, the wind of it ruffling his hair. Dante was inside the guard.
He placed his palm gently on the leader's chest plate.
Deconstruct.
Dante poured his will into the steel. He didn't destroy it; he simply convinced the carbon atoms in the alloy to segregate from the iron.
Snap.
The chest plate didn't rust; it shattered. The steel turned into brittle, crystalline graphite. The leader's momentum carried him forward, but his armor disintegrated into black powder upon impact with Dante's chest. The man stumbled, confused by the sudden loss of structural integrity.
Dante spun, his coat flaring. He swept his leg, not to trip the man, but to kick the cloud of graphite dust into the eyes of the knife-wielder on the left.
"My eyes! It burns!"
Dante didn't stop. He was a conductor of ruin. He dodged a swinging chain from the Right Flank, the heavy links smashing into the brick wall where his head had been a second ago.
Dante grabbed the chain.
"Rust," he commanded.
The oxidation traveled up the metal links like a burning fuse. The chain turned orange, then disintegrated into dust in the attacker's grip. The thug stared at his empty hand, dumbfounded.
"Magic?" the thug gasped.
"Chemistry," Dante corrected.
He lunged, driving his palm into the thug's solar plexus. He didn't use entropy this time—just kinetic force. The man folded, wheezing, dropping to the wet cobblestones.
Suddenly, a roar of steam erupted behind him.
The leader had recovered. The man was furious, his chest exposed where the armor had shattered. He swung his other arm—a wide, haymaker aimed not at Dante, but at the support pillar of the fire escape above them.
Crunch.
The iron gave way. The entire metal staircase groaned and detached from the wall, collapsing directly onto Dante.
"Dodge," Dante's mind screamed.
He threw himself sideways, but he was a fraction of a second too slow. A jagged strut of rusted iron clipped his shoulder, tearing through the alchemical weave of his coat and gouging deep into his flesh.
Dante hit the ground, rolling to a stop in the mud.
Pain.
Cold, white-hot pain flared in his shoulder. He looked down. A chunk of his deltoid was missing. Blood—dark and sluggish—oozed out.
But the real horror wasn't the blood. It was the smoke.
The wound wasn't healing. It was fading. The trauma had disrupted his anchoring. The edges of the wound were turning into grey mist. He was leaking existence.
Critical Mass Loss detected.
Immediate repairs required.
Material needed: Organic.
Dante looked up. The leader was stomping toward him, raising a heavy boot to crush his skull.
"Broken now, ain't ya?" the leader grinned, revealing yellow teeth.
Dante's eyes changed. The intelligence vanished, replaced by the starving, hollow gaze of a black hole.
"I apologized," Dante whispered, his voice sounding like grinding stones. "I gave you a chance."
The boot came down.
Dante caught it.
He didn't rust the boot. His fingers dug into the leather, piercing through to the ankle.
Harvest.
The Law of Conservation is absolute: Nothing is created, nothing is lost; everything transforms.
The leader screamed. It was a sound that didn't belong in a human throat.
Dante pulled. He didn't pull the man down; he pulled the essence out.
Visibly, the leader's leg began to wither. Muscle, fat, and bone liquefied, flowing under the skin like water through a hose, drawn irresistibly into Dante's grip. The man shriveled, his mass rushing into Dante's hand, up his arm, and knitting itself into the wound on his shoulder.
It was a violation of nature. It was cannibalism via osmosis.
"Stop! STOP!" the leader shrieked, flailing, but he was anchored by his own dissolving anatomy.
Dante's shoulder reformed. The grey mist solidified into pink, healthy flesh, then scarred over instantly. The color returned to Dante's cheeks. The hollowness in his chest filled.
He released the leg.
The leader collapsed, sobbing. His left leg was now a withered husk, nothing but skin draped over a stick-thin bone. He looked at it in horror, his mind unable to comprehend the violation.
The other two thugs stood frozen, their faces pale in the gaslight. They looked at Dante not as a man, but as a monster wearing a man's skin.
Dante stood up. He adjusted his coat, covering the torn fabric. He felt sick. The taste of the man's life force was heavy and greasy on his metaphysical tongue. He hated it. He hated the rush of power it gave him.
He looked at the two standing thugs. The silver jaw glinted, shifting into a flat, expressionless line.
"Take him," Dante said softly. "The hospital in Sector 5 has a biomancer. If you run, you might save the leg."
They didn't wait. They scrambled, dragging their weeping leader through the mud, slipping and sliding in their haste to get away from the Pale King.
Dante was alone again.
The silence of the alley returned, heavy and judging.
He leaned against the brick wall, trembling. The adrenaline was fading, leaving the cold reality of what he was. He wasn't a hero. He was a hole in the world that ate people to stay full.
He reached into his pocket and touched the Resonance Core. It was warm.
"Worth it," he lied to himself.
Suddenly, the Core pulsed. Not a rhythmic pulse, but a vibration.
Dante froze. He pulled the sphere out. The violet light was intensifying, pointing like a compass needle toward the north—toward the Spire of the Aristocracy.
And then, a sensation washed over him. It wasn't sound, and it wasn't sight. It was a pressure on his soul. A distinct, amused recognition.
Somewhere in the city, another Aspirant had just woken up.
Dante's grip on the core tightened. The Law of Convergence was working overtime. He hadn't just found a battery; he had found a beacon. And by touching it, he had just announced his location to every other monster playing this god-forsaken game.
He shoved the Core deep into his pocket and started to run. He needed to get back to his sanctuary. He needed to melt this thing down before it got him killed.
But as he merged into the shadows, the silver jaw twisted on its own accord, forming a sharp, jagged grin that mirrored the terror in his heart.
The hunt had begun.