CHAPTER TWO: THE SMASHER

The problem with surviving a fall from a skyscraper wasn't the landing. It was what waited for you at the bottom.

Ren stumbled through the lower districts of Veridia, clutching his side. His tunic was a stiff, bloody ruin, but the skin beneath it was perfectly smooth. The ghost of the pain was still there—a phantom ache in his ribs where the bone had snapped and re-knitted—but physically, he was pristine.

The city was a labyrinth of smoke. The grand white limestone buildings of the capital were smeared with soot. The air tasted like copper and charred meat.

Ren kept his head down, moving through the alleyways of the Cobbler’s Ward. He knew these streets. He had bought parchment here. He had eaten meat pies from a stall on that corner. Now, the stall was kindling, and the cobbler’s shop had a massive claw mark raked through the stone facade, as if a dragon had tried to pry the building open like an oyster.

“Hide,” his mind whispered. “Find a hole. Wait for the Guard.”

But there was no Guard. He had seen their helmets scattered in the gutters like discarded coins.

He turned a corner onto Tanner’s Lane, looking for the back entrance to the sewers. If he could get underground, maybe he could wait this out.

“There! One of them!”

The shout cracked the air like a whip.

Ren froze. He turned to see five men blocking the alley exit. They weren't beasts. They were Hollows—Norms who hadn't turned. They were millers, dockhands, regular men. But their eyes were wide, rimmed with the madness of absolute terror.

They held makeshift weapons: a rusted cleaver, a pitchfork, a heavy iron length of chain.

“No,” Ren said, raising his hands. “I’m not… I’m not one of the beasts. I’m Ren. I’m a scribe.”

The man in the center, a burly dockworker with soot smeared across his face, pointed a trembling finger at Ren.

“Liar!” the man screamed. “Look at his eyes! Look at the gold!”

Ren blinked. He had forgotten. The Aether had marked him. To these men, he wasn't a victim; he was the enemy. He was the thing that had eaten their families.

“Please,” Ren stammered, stepping back. “I haven't hurt anyone. I just want to go home.”

“Kill it before it changes!” the man with the cleaver yelled.

They charged.

It wasn't a fight. It was a panic-fueled execution. Ren raised his arms to protect his face, but he was a boy who spent his days holding quills, not swords.

The first blow hit him in the stomach—the handle of the pitchfork driving the wind out of him. Ren doubled over, retching. The iron chain whipped around, catching him across the shoulder, spinning him into the brick wall.

Pain exploded in his shoulder, hot and sharp. He slid down the wall, hitting the cobblestones hard.

“Hold him down!”

Two men grabbed his arms, pinning him to the dirty street. The dockworker stood over him, raising the rusted cleaver high above his head. His eyes were wet with tears.

“For my daughter,” the man sobbed.

Ren looked up at the blade. He didn't struggle. He couldn't. The Aether inside him was humming, a low vibration in his blood, but it didn't give him super strength. It didn't give him claws. It just waited.

The cleaver came down.

It buried itself deep into Ren’s right shoulder, biting through the trapezius muscle and crunching into the collarbone.

Ren screamed. It was a raw, animal sound. The pain was absolute.

But then, the Wild Soul took over.

The dockworker tried to pull the cleaver free for a second strike, but he couldn't. The blade was stuck.

“What the…” the man gasped.

Ren watched through tear-filled eyes as his own flesh moved. The muscle fibers around the wound were writhing like living snakes, wrapping around the rusty steel, gripping it, holding it in place. The wound wasn't bleeding out; it was eating the blade.

Blue Aether light pulsed from the injury, blindingly bright in the shadowy alley.

The men stepped back, horrified.

“It’s a demon!” the chain-wielder shrieked. “Burn it!”

Ren gasped, the pain fading as his body flooded with endorphins. He ripped his arm free from the men holding him, the movement tearing the cleaver loose from his own shoulder. It clattered to the ground, the metal smoking as if dipped in acid.

The wound knitted shut in seconds.

Ren scrambled backward, crab-walking away from them. He was terrified. Not just of them, but of himself. What am I?

“Don’t let it up!”

The mob surged forward again, desperation overcoming their fear. They were going to tear him apart piece by piece until there was nothing left to regenerate.

Ren squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the end.

BOOM.

The sound wasn't thunder. It was sharper—a concussive crack that hit the chest like a physical blow.

The air in the alley suddenly rushed backward, a vacuum created by immense pressure.

Ren opened his eyes.

The mob was gone. Or rather, they had been blown backward. The dockworker and his friends were tumbled in a heap ten feet away, groaning, their weapons scattered.

Standing between Ren and the mob was a girl.

She couldn't have been older than Ren—maybe nineteen. She was short, barely five foot three, with choppy, violent-red hair that looked like it had been cut with a knife. She wore a mishmash of stolen leather armor and a torn skirt.

But it was her arms that drew the eye.

From the elbows down, her arms were encased in a chitinous, iridescent shell. The armor shifted colors like oil on water—green, purple, orange. Her fists were bulbous, heavy, and calcified, looking like oversized hammers made of bone and gem.

Steam was rising from her knuckles.

She didn't look at Ren. She looked at the mob.

“Oi,” she said. Her voice was scratchy, bored, and dangerous. “You lot are loud. I’m trying to loot this jewelry shop, and you’re ruining my concentration.”

The dockworker scrambled to his feet, clutching his bruised ribs. “Move, girl! That thing… that thing is a monster!”

The girl glanced back at Ren. She looked at his torn tunic, the fresh blood, and the patch of pale, glowing skin where the cleaver had been.

She raised an eyebrow. Then she looked back at the mob.

“He’s a monster?” She cracked her neck. “Buddy, look around. The whole world is monsters now. You’re just the meat.”

The man with the pitchfork snarled and lunged at her. “Die, witch!”

The girl didn't dodge. She didn't block. She just cocked her right arm back.

The air around her fist seemed to distort, rippling with heat. A high-pitched whine, like a tea kettle about to scream, emanated from her elbow.

“Impact Dial: One Percent.”

She punched the air.

She didn't hit the man. She hit the empty space three feet in front of him.

CRACK.

The shockwave was visible. A cone of compressed air blasted from her fist, hitting the man in the chest. It lifted him off his feet and threw him backward through the wooden door of the abandoned bakery behind him. Splinters exploded outward.

The remaining four men froze. They looked at the girl, then at the hole in the bakery, then at their makeshift weapons. They dropped the chains and ran.

Silence returned to the alley, save for the hissing steam coming from the girl's arms.

Ren sat on the cobblestones, his mouth open. He had never seen magic like that. It wasn't a spell. It was pure kinetic violence.

The girl shook her hand out, the iridescent armor retracting slightly into her skin until her arms looked mostly human again. She turned to Ren.

She had eyes the color of sea glass—pale green and sharp. She stalked over to him, leaning down until they were nose-to-nose. She smelled like ozone and gunpowder.

“So,” she said, pointing a calloused finger at his shoulder. “I saw that. The cleaver. You took it deep, and now you’re fine.”

Ren nodded dumbly. “I… yes.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Only for a second.”

She grinned. It wasn't a nice grin. It was the grin of a wolf finding a particularly sturdy bone.

“Stand up, Scribe.”

Ren scrambled to his feet, dusting off his ruined clothes. “Thank you. You saved me. I’m Ren.”

“I didn't save you,” she corrected, walking around him, inspecting him like he was a prize horse. “I was investing. My name is Kaira. But you can call me 'Boss'.”

“Boss?” Ren blinked. “I don't work for you.”

Kaira stopped in front of him. She held up her fist. The chitinous armor rippled back into existence, glowing with a faint, menacing orange light.

“Listen, Scribe. Here’s the situation. I hit things. I hit things very hard. I’m the Mantis Shrimp. Best punch in the animal kingdom. I can punch through steel, stone, and bad attitudes.”

She poked Ren hard in the chest.

“But… I’m a ‘glass cannon.’ If I get hit, I bleed. And out here? Everything bites.”

She gestured to the burning city around them.

“I need a shield,” she said, her eyes gleaming. “Someone who can walk in front of me and take the bites. Someone who can get stabbed, crushed, and chewed on, and keep walking. Someone stupidly unkillable.”

Ren took a step back. “You want me to be… bait?”

“I prefer the term ‘Tactical Sponge’,” Kaira said.

She held out her hand. It was dirty, scarred, and dangerous.

“We’re going to the Royal Sanctum,” she stated.

Ren froze. “The Sanctum? That’s the center of the city. That’s where the Wilding started. It’s suicide.”

“That’s where the gold is,” Kaira corrected. “And probably where we fix this mess. So, what do you say, Ren? You want to die in an alley because a baker got scared, or do you want to survive?”

Ren looked at her hand. Then he looked at his own—the hand that had just healed itself from shattered bone. He was a scribe. He wrote history. But looking at the fire in Kaira’s eyes, he realized the time for writing was over.

He took her hand.

“I’m not a sponge,” Ren said, his voice trembling but firm. “I’m a partner.”

Kaira squeezed his hand hard enough to make his knuckles pop.

“Sure, kid. Whatever helps you sleep.” She let go and turned toward the center of the city, toward the massive column of blue light erupting from the palace. “Try to keep up. And try not to lose any limbs I can’t carry.”

She started walking.

Ren sighed, checking his shoulder one last time. It was fully healed. He took a breath of the smoky air and followed the Smasher into the fire.