The equation was simple. The variables were cruel.
Variable A: Soul Sparks: 8.7/11.4. Drained by 0.1 per minute by the humming ropes.
Variable B: Time to Stasis at current drain: Approximately 7 hours.
Variable C: Marek, on watch, was nodding off by the embers of the fire. Tessa slept deeply.
Solution: Execute escape during window C, before A reaches zero.
But the math had a flaw. The bindings required a 15-SS burst to overload their field. His maximum output was 11.4.
Cocytus, he thought, his internal voice tight. Is there a way to exceed my nominal output? A concentrated pulse?
The system processed. "Theoretical. No precedent in logs. Method: Concentrate total SS capacity into a single focal point and release in a pulsed, instantaneous wave. Could momentarily exceed containment threshold. Risks: Catastrophic feedback into host system: 40%. Detonation of binding sigils causing shrapnel damage: 15%."
Forty percent chance of a feedback loop frying his own consciousness. Fifteen percent chance of being shredded by holy rope fragments.
He ran the calculation. A 40% risk of catastrophic failure was preferable to a 100% certainty of being rendered into potion ingredients. The choice, again, was no choice.
He began. He focused inward on the blue-white flame in his chest. He didn't push it out. He compressed it. The flame writhed, resisting. It was like trying to fold a star into a pinhead. A deep, grinding agony, not of nerves but of existential wrongness, spread through him. His bones vibrated. A thin crack appeared on his left clavicle.
BONE INTEGRITY: 90%.
The flame was now a searing, tiny point of azure light, a contained supernova burning in his ribcage. He aimed his bound wrists, focusing on the rough knot where the sigils converged.
He released.
It was silent. There was no thunderclap. Only a blinding, silent flash of blue light that bleached the color from the night for a single heartbeat.
The ropes didn't burn. They unraveled, the fibers turning to ash mid-air. The glowing sigils flared a brilliant, angry gold and then shattered like glass.
SS: 0.3/11.4.
BONE INTEGRITY: 85%.
The feedback hit. It was a psychic shockwave, a bell rung inside his skull. He felt his consciousness rattle. New hairline fractures spiderwebbed across his ribs and right forearm. He was free. He was empty. He was broken.
The light and the sudden movement jolted Marek awake. The adventurer blinked, his eyes wide with confusion that quickly hardened into understanding. "What the—?" He scrambled for his mace. "Tessa! It's alive!"
Leo didn't fight. Fighting required energy, and he had none. He lurched to his feet, a marionette with half its strings cut, and stumbled into the darkness beyond the firelight.
"Come on, you pile of sticks!" Marek's roar followed him. "You're worth more broken!"
SS: 0.1/11.4. Stasis warnings flashed red at the edge of his vision. The world was narrowing to a tunnel. The sand dragged at his foot bones. Marek's pounding footsteps grew closer, fueled by anger and greed.
Ahead, a darker slit in the moonlit sand—a fissure, an old burrow. Without a second thought, Leo pitched himself forward into the blackness.
He fell, tumbling down a slope of loose sand and stone, coming to a jarring stop in a small cavern. The impact sent fresh jolts of system-alert pain through his frame. BONE INTEGRITY: 83%.
Above, Marek skidded to a halt at the rim. "Fine! Hide in your hole, you clever bonebag!" His voice echoed down. "I'll smoke you out!"
Leo heard the sound of scrub being gathered. Then, a new sound. From the deeper darkness of the cavern, a low, chittering click. Two pinpoints of bioluminescent green light ignited, hovering at his eye level.
"New threat identified," Cocytus intoned, unflappable. "Dune Scuttler. Classification: Burrowing predator. Primary armaments: Crushing mandibles, armor-piercing caudal stinger. Threat assessment to host in current state: Extreme."
The creature scuttled forward into the faint moonlight filtering from above. It was all segmented, sandy-colored chitin, six barbed legs, and a tail that ended in a wickedly curved spike. It was between him and the only exit. Above, the first tendrils of acrid smoke began to curl down into the cavern.
Trapped. Between a human with a mace and a monster with a stinger. SS: 0.1/11.4.
His gaze darted around the cavern, a desperate search for variables. Sand. Rock. And there, partly buried—bones. Old, bleached white. A previous victim. A shattered rib cage. A smooth skull. And a heavy, dense lower jawbone, thick at the hinge and tapering to a pointed chin.
An idea, cold and clear, assembled itself in his mind. Not a plan, but a blueprint. He had no strength. No energy. But he had leverage. He had a tool. He had the predator's own momentum.
The Scuttler charged, a skittering blur of chitin and deadly intent. It saw an intruder, weak and cornered. Prey.
Leo didn't try to dodge. He lunged toward it, his movements brittle and swift. His bone fingers closed around the jawbone as he moved. He dropped to his knees, jamming the pointed end deep into the sand at a sharp, backward angle, bracing the curved top against his own pelvis.
The Scuttler's momentum did the rest.
It couldn't stop. The pointed jawbone punched through the softer chitin between its head segment and thorax with a sickening crunch. Ichor, glowing a faint green, sprayed across the sand. The creature let out a piercing, agonized shriek, its legs thrashing wildly.
Leo was thrown backward by the impact, bones clattering against the cavern wall. BONE INTEGRITY: 80%.
The Scuttler wasn't dead. It was enraged, mortally wounded. It writhed, tearing itself free from the jawbone with a horrific, wet sound. Ichor poured from the hole. Its green eyes fixed on him with pure, mindless hate.
But the smoke was thickening, filling the cavern with a choking haze. The Scuttler, a creature of deep burrows, hated it. It hesitated, torn between eviscerating the intruder and fleeing the poisonous air.
Leo moved. He scrambled past the thrashing creature, deeper into the cavern, away from the smoky entrance. The Scuttler, disoriented and drowning in its own fluids, turned and scuttled up the slope, toward the source of the smoke—and the man waiting there.
A shout of surprise echoed down, followed by a curse, the sound of a mace striking chitin, and a pained yell that was distinctly human. Then, the sounds of a brief, brutal struggle faded into the night.
Silence descended, broken only by the drip of green ichor and the faint groan of settling sand.
Leo collapsed against the far wall of the cavern, in the deepest pool of darkness. He was safe. For now.
Time became a slow, painful crawl measured in the drip of fluid and the crawl of his energy.
SS: 1.5/11.4.
The passive regeneration was a torture of increments. He inspected the old bones. Not human. Some large, ruminant desert creature. He reclaimed his weapon. The jawbone was solid, the bone aged to stone-like hardness. It fit in the grip of his hand perfectly. His first tool. Not a sword. A lever. A pry bar made of tooth and bone.
"Damage report," Cocytus stated. "Structural integrity at 80%. Stress fractures distributed across axial and appendicular skeleton. Natural regeneration at current ambient energy levels: 0.8% per day. Active repair protocols available at SS concentrations above 50% capacity."
He would be fragile for days. Weeks, maybe.
He thought of the Scuttler's core. Cocytus provided a cold estimate. *"Dune Scuttler core estimated yield: 20-25 SS. Corruption Point accrual: 2-3. Resource lost."*
Gone. Either with the fleeing creature or on Marek's body. A fortune he couldn't claim.
He explored his new shelter. The cavern was small, maybe twenty feet across. The entrance slope was now quiet. And there, in the rear wall, was a second opening. A narrower, darker tunnel that sloped downward. A faint, cool draft whispered from it, carrying a familiar, faint metallic tang. The death-energy here was stronger. AMBIENT DE DETECTED. SS REGENERATION: +0.5/HOUR.
It was something. A trickle of power. A reason to stay.
He made the decision. This place was defensible—one observable entrance. It had a resource. It was hidden. It would be his shelter, his workshop, his first fragile stronghold against a world that wanted him erased.
He sat in the absolute dark, clutching the jawbone, his gaze fixed on the moonlit slit of the entrance. He ran the final calculation of the night's equation.
Energy expended: Nearly all.
Damage incurred: Significant.
Resources gained: One weapon. One hole in the ground.
Threats eliminated: One (Marek, status unknown).
Threats created: One (The Sandshifts, now aware).
The equation balanced. He had solved for survival.
But the solution left him with only negative terms.
He was an architect in a cave, his grand blueprint reduced to a single, bloody word scratched into the sand of his mind: RECOVER.