Dion continued to stare at his hand as if it were an artifact of impossible power.

  The hand that had just erased a piece of the world.

  His mind, trained for tactics, began its cold analysis.

  No unusual marking on his skin. No residual heat, no unnatural cold, not even a tremor.

  It was just a hand.

  But it was now a hand that could invoke a principle he did not truly understand.

  To wither.

  He continued to stare.

  The skin was unmarked. No heat, no cold, no tremor.

  It was just a hand. But it was now a hand that could command something he didn't truly understand.

  Alongside the dark thrill of that knowledge, a more practical fear took root.

  Could he invoke it by accident? He had done so moments ago, driven by nothing but frustration.

  What was to stop it from happening again, with a careless thought, a flash of anger? To touch someone and see them… unravel?

  His gaze unconsciously moved down, along with it a terrifying chill ran through him.

  Could he mistakenly unmake a part of himself. The careless thought caused his excitement to dim, it lasted merely a second.

  He shook his head, clearing away such thoughts. Yet he knew, power without control was a curse.

  And to control one needed knowledge.

  Yet something else was brewing underneath, something different from the excitement and fear.

  Purpose.

  True purpose.

  Not the desperate, starved purpose of the cage, nor survival but a deliberate, calculating one.

  Discipline and purpose.

  His father's words rang once more.

  They wanted to sell him for solvents, he thought, the idea clicking into place with brutal clarity.

  Let them try.

  He began to swim again, his strokes stronger now, more sure. The water continued to yield for him.

  His mind, once a storm of fear, memory, and phantom voice, had gone quiet. Even the lingering whispers of the Brine had faded, another change he’d failed to notice until now.

  A single, clear thought remained, anchoring him.

  Get to the shore.

  It loomed larger now, its details resolving from the grey haze. This was no beach of sand or shingle. It was a coastline of jagged, glistening teeth, dark basaltic rock sheared into brutal angles, punctuated by outcroppings of raw, milky crystal that caught the weak dawn light and fractured it into cold, sharp splinters.

  “What in the name of the gods…?”

  There was no green. No sigh of wind through grass, no rustle of life in the crevices. The air carried only the smell of wet rock and a faint, metallic tang.

  It was a land that looked not just hostile, but alien, like a place forgotten by every god.

  FLWUMP!

  He hauled himself out of the water, his body feeling strangely light, as if the sea had taken more than just his past, brine water streaming from his simple, filthy tunic, the last relic of his old life.

  Dion’s foot, for the first time in what felt like an eternity, touched solid ground. Not earth, not in the normal sense, it felt more dense, like a thin sheen coating the very earth.

  Before him, the land rose in sharp, unnatural formations. Dion took a step forward. The ground did not crunch, or give.

  The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

  In the next heartbeat, he froze.

  A rustle of coarse fabric, accompanied by voices.

  “I told you, check left… there’s more. I can feel it.”

  “Tch. We’ve scavenged everything this wreck has to give. It was fun while it lasted, but now we need to get back to Residuum.”

  Unfamiliar voices, rough and utilitarian. Dion dropped into a low crouch behind a jagged outcrop, his survivor’s instincts silencing everything else.

  CLINK.

  CLACK.

  The sharp, rhythmic sound of metal on stone echoed from a gully to his left the deliberate, loaded noise of a cart being pulled over difficult ground.

  He was not alone.

  Through a fracture in the crystalline rock, Dion observed.

  Two figures moved with a grim, practiced efficiency, swaddled in thick robes of oil-stained leather that shed the perpetual damp.

  Their faces were completely obscured by grilled masks of tarnished brass, giving them the look of oversized, faceless insects toiling in the gloom.

  Scattered around them, half-buried in the coarse, dark gravel, were pieces of the wreck. A splintered section of hull planking.

  A tangle of sodden rope. And, farther down the shore, the pale, waterlogged shape of a body still wrapped in slave’s rags.

  Dion’s breath hitched, but he made no sound.

  One of the figures leaned down, driving a metal spike into a crevice with several heavy, practiced blows from a hammer.

  They then attached a thick cable from a strange, boxy apparatus they wheeled between them.

  It was a carriage of sorts, but one bearing drums of coiled cable and a heavy, hand-cranked winch, its purpose unclear and ominous.

  As the first figure worked, they slung a long, iron-shod prodding rod across their back. The other rolled the carriage forward, its iron-rimmed wheels grinding against the glassy stone.

  They weren’t just scavenging wood.

  They were harvesting what was trapped beneath it. And some of the limp, waterlogged forms being dragged from the debris, Dion recognized.

  A torn tunic.

  A familiar, coarse weave.

  A slave garment.

  His fingers curled against the cold stone. His guess had been right. Some had made it to shore.

  Survivors.

  “Here,” the first figure grunted, voice muffled and flat behind their mask.

  The other straightened and moved toward a jumble of splintered decking. With a wet, peeling sound, they hauled a limp form from beneath it. The body slumped, barefoot, pale, and utterly still.

  Scavengers.

  Dion easily concluded from their conversation. He shifted his weight to get a better view. His foot, still numb from the cold sea, slipped on the wet, glassy stone.

  CRUNCH.

  His heel came down on a brittle cluster of the milky crystal. The sound was a gunshot in the silence.

  Both scavengers froze. Their blank, brass masks snapped toward the noise.

  Fuck me.

  Dion didn't move. It was too late.

  "Come out," the lead scavenger called, hefting his iron-shod rod. His voice was flat, devoid of curiosity, full of practical threat.

  Dion's mind raced, but his muscles coiled. For a long moment, they simply stared at one another through the fracture in the rock.

  The lead scavenger nudged his companion, a silent signal. The intent was clear.

  In the next moment, Dion rose to his full height, there was no use in hiding anyway, yet unexpectedly he didn't brace for a fight like one would expect.

  He simply stood, hands loose at his sides, water still dripping from his tunic. His eyes remained calm, assessing.

  When in a foreign land with foreign people, the first interaction mattered.

  Both scavengers shared a glance. The expression behind their faceless masks was unreadable.

  He didn't need to read their faces. In the next moment, it became perfectly clear. The one with the rod took a deliberate step forward.

  The other began to move to the side, spreading out, cutting off any path to the water.

  “What did I tell you?” the leader gloated, his voice a smug rasp behind the brass grille.

  His companion would have made a snarky remark, but he, too, was utterly focused on Dion.

  Dion remained silent, his expression unreadable.

  The scavengers didn’t seem to care. While their masks hid their faces, their bodies betrayed their excitement.

  Dion opened his mouth. “I am not your enemy. I have informa—”

  “Quiet.”

  The command was flat, devoid of anger or interest. The scavenger didn’t even look at Dion’s face, his masked gaze was already assessing his limbs, his build, his potential value.

  “You talk when you’re collared and asked. Until then, you’re cargo that can walk. Now move.”

  They're were on a time crunch.

  It was only a matter of hours before other crews scented the wreck, and then they’d have to fight for every splinter.

  “Think of the tally marks he’d be worth,” the second scavenger hissed, unable to contain his glee any longer.

  He kept his rod, a sinister, tool-like thing trained on Dion’s center mass. A subtle, visible current crackled at its tip with a low, ozone hum.

  Dion didn’t recognize the technology, but his body understood the language it spoke.

  Dangerous.

  Perfect. More unknown weapons.

  Dion absorbed it all. Their greed, their rushed movements, the threatening arc of the rod.

  His mind, honed in Lavosian strategy rooms and tempered in the slave hold, clicked into a new, cold alignment.

  His initial approach had been to parley, to trade information for passage. A prince’s gambit.

  But these men weren’t lords or merchants. They were predators on a clock.

  A fundamental truth settled over him, cold and clean as the shore’s glassy stone. People in power did not cater to requests from those beneath them.

  They only understood stronger power, or cleverer force.

  The time for talking was over.

  He looked at the scavengers, still sizing him up as prey. Perhaps once, he might have been.

  But now, he was reborn.

  An ethereal pulse echoed within him, a second heart, seamless and perfect. It held a subtle, terrifying beauty that made the rest of the world feel clumsy in comparison.

  His gaze drifted again to the second scavenger’s rod. It was a well-made tool, its iron polished smooth as poured glass, its surface breathing faintly in the damp air.

  The energy crackling at its tip was a contained lightning arc. Dangerous, certainly. A spark of controlled fury.

  Attaching lightning to a weapon.

  What manner of craft was this?

  Dion thought inwardly. Yet, compared to the Hollowness that warped flesh and the Titan that wore the sea like skin, this new revelation felt… modest.

  Almost quaint.

  Still, it was a threat.

  And threats, no matter how small, needed to be removed.

  He continued to stare at the rod, but no longer with the eyes of a boy facing a weapon. He saw it now, truly saw it.

  Not as a solid object, but as a temporary arrangement. He perceived the lattice of its iron, the microscopic seams where impurities weakened the structure, the faint, clinging moisture on its surface that yearned to return to the sea.

  Dion exhaled, a soft, deliberate sound.

  To the scavenger’s shock, Dion’s hands rose, not in a block, not in a grab, but with a slow, almost ceremonial grace.

  His palms came to rest against the cool, damp iron of the rod’s shaft, well below the crackling tip.

  In a shocking turn of events, a miracle happened.

  Where his skin met the metal, a soft, wet crunch whispered into the air, like compacted salt giving way.

  The polished iron did not bend or shatter. It… blurred.

  A palm-sized patch of the shaft darkened, its solidity dissolving into a slurry of blackened rust and weeping brine.

  The rod grew suddenly, sickeningly thin at its midpoint.

  The scavenger stared, his triumphant grip now holding a weapon that was corroding from the inside out, disintegrating at the touch of a boy who hadn't even flinched.

  The faint lightning at the tip sputtered and died with a pathetic fizzle.

  "Wha—?" was all the masked man managed before the rod sagged in his hands, its structural integrity gone, collapsing into a damp, metallic sludge that dripped between his fingers.

  The scavengers stared, dumbstruck.

  Both their minds short-circuited, each sparking through a futile loop.

  Confusion.

  Fear.

  Panic.

  “An alchemmmmm—” The lead figure voiced, the honorific dead in his throat.

  An Alchemist.

  It was the only logical conclusion. What else could explain this?

  But it raised the question. What was one doing here, dressed in such rags?

  Wait, why was he thinking about these useless things? His eyes widened.

  They had practically offended a god.

  A scavenger offending an Alchemist.

  Dion took a single step forward, unaware of the storm in their minds.

  The two masked men stumbled back, tripping over the crystalline rock in their sudden panic.

  They didn't understand what they had seen, only the profoundness of it. Still a thought echoed in their minds simultaneously.

  A Great Work.

  It was a great work in action.

  They turned and fled, abandoning everything as they scrambled back into the gully, disappearing.

  All the while, Dion stood alone again on the silent shore. The wind tugged at his wet clothes.

  He looked down at the metal sludge at his feet with a blank stare.