Chapter 2: The Dying Beast

POV: Neoma

The Cardinal Rule of the Dregs was simple: Never touch the wounded.

A wounded thing was either a trap, or it was dead weight. In the Scrap Fields, altruism was a fatal genetic defect that had been bred out of the population decades ago. If something was bleeding, you didn't help it. You waited for it to stop moving. Then you took its boots.

I knew this. The knowledge lived in the scar tissue on my back. In the gnawing emptiness of my stomach. I had lived by this for twenty-two years.

Yet, here I was.

My boots scraped against the concrete of a collapsed subway entrance. I followed a trail of liquid gold that shouldn't exist.

The air in the tunnel changed. Heavier. Wetter. It coated my tongue. The chemical burn of the surface was replaced by the cloying scent of mildew and stagnant water. And underneath it all—that sharp, coppery tang of Highblood life spilling out. It tasted like ozone. Like a storm breaking inside a slaughterhouse.

I unclipped the flashlight from my belt. My hand shook. Just once. I forced it still. The beam cut through the gloom, dancing over rusted turnstiles and advertising posters for products that hadn't been manufactured in three centuries.

The blood trail ended at the base of a ticket booth.

I stopped. My breath locked in my throat. Air trapped.

He was massive.

The sight of him hit me like a physical blow. Not who he was, or what he was, but simply the sheer scale of the creature slumped against the shattered glass.

Even seated, he looked like a fallen titan. His shoulders were broad enough to span the width of the booth. His legs, clad in torn leather pants, stretched out into the darkness.

He wasn't wearing armor. His chest was bare—a landscape of tanned skin and white scars. Slick with sweat. Grime.

And blood. So much gold.

It pooled beneath him, illuminating the grime with a soft, eerie bioluminescence. The source was a jagged tear across his abdomen.

It looked like a claw mark, deep and ragged. But the edges of the wound weren't knitting together. They were blackened. Bubbling faintly.

Silver poisoning.

The smell of it made bile rise—acrid, burning sulfur. Someone had coated their weapon in nitrate-silver. It halted the Lycan regeneration.

I watched the flesh try to move. Twitching. Pulling. Failing. The silver burned it back, turning biology against itself.

I crept closer. Boots silent on the damp concrete. My grip on the shiv tightened until the bones in my hand felt like they might snap.

He's a Vanguard target. My survival instinct screamed it. Adrenaline flooded my veins—cold, sharp. Take his gear and run.

I looked at his boots. Heavy combat tread. Reinforced toes. Real leather. My mouth watered. Actual saliva flooding my tongue.

They were worth a year's wages in the Warrens. The belt around his waist held pouches. Military-grade rations. Tech.

I could live like a queen for a month if I stripped him right now.

He didn't move. His chest wasn't rising.

"Just checking for loot," I whispered. The lie tasted like ash on my tongue. "Just scavenging."

I stepped into the circle of light cast by his blood. Up close, the smell was overwhelming. Not just blood. Something wilder. Woodsmoke. Rain. It hit the back of my nose—intoxicating and terrifying. A predator's scent.

My hand hovered over the pouch on his belt. Fingers itching. Greed twisting my gut.

But then I hesitated.

A memory—sharp, jagged—clawed its way up from the dark. I was six years old. Shivering in a frozen drainpipe. The cold was a physical weight, crushing my small chest. Convinced the frost would take me before morning. Then, hands. Rough, callused hands.

They had tucked a moth-eaten blanket around my shoulders. Old Man Corvus. He hadn't known me. He barely had enough food for himself. But he had shared his warmth. He had pressed half a nutrient bar into my palm.

“We die alone, little rat,” he had rasped. “But we don’t have to live alone.” Corvus had died a week later. Starving. Frozen. His kindness hadn't saved him. It had probably killed him faster.

Survival is for the selfish. I reminded myself. The thought was a mantra. Compassion is a grave.

And yet. Looking at this broken titan, I felt the ghost of Corvus watching me. A phantom weight on my shoulders.

If I took this man's gear and left him to rot, was I any better than the Lugal? Was I just another scavenger picking the bones of the world clean?

The man shifted slightly. A pained sound escaped his lips.

It was a sound of pure, raw suffering. Wet. Broken.

My hand drifted away from the pouch.

"Stupid," I hissed. My eyes burned. Not tears—frustration. Hot and stinging. "You are going to get us killed, Neoma."

I didn't reach for the loot.

My hand drifted toward the wound.

I didn't know what I was doing. I wasn't a healer. I was a Null with a knife. But the pulsing energy of the Barzil in my veins—the secret I kept from everyone—woke up.

It pulled toward him.

Not me. It.

The thing under my skin. It wanted the sickness. It wanted the poison. It was hungry. A parasite sensing a meal. My arm moved without my permission. Puppet strings pulled tight.

Just touch him. See if he's cold.

I lowered my hand. My fingertips brushed the fever-hot skin of his abdomen, just inches from the blackened gash.

The reaction was instantaneous.

A shockwave of heat slammed into my palm. Not physical—kinetic. It traveled up my arm, vibrating in my marrow.

His eyes snapped open.

They weren't human. They weren't even the rational gold of a shifting Lycan. They were molten. Burning red at the edges. Devoid of pupil or iris. The eyes of a beast cornered.

A growl vibrated through the tunnel.

It wasn't a sound. It was a pressure wave. Deep. Subsonic. It rattled my ribs before it hit my ears.

Before I could scream, a hand the size of a shovel clamped around my throat.

The world tilted. Gravity vanished. Then—impact.

He slammed me into the concrete floor. Air left my lungs in a violent burst. His massive weight pinned me instantly. Crushing. Absolute.

My shiv clattered away into the dark.

He loomed over me. Teeth bared. Saliva dripped onto my mask. There was no recognition in those burning eyes. Only hunger. Only rage.

I stared up into the face of death. The knowledge hit like a fist to the gut—this was why the Cardinal Rule existed.