The scavenger camp rose from the Wastelands like scar tissue over an old, festering wound—misshapen, brittle, and stubbornly alive. It was an offense to the land and yet one of the few places where people still dared to gather. As Eris crested the ridge overlooking it, the wind shifted, carrying with it the familiar cocktail of smoke, rot, and something sharper—ozone and iron, the lingering breath of corrupted Spire energy.
He paused, instinctively counting the watchtowers.
Three on the outer rim. One collapsed. One manned by silhouettes that barely moved.
Not strong. Not safe. But survivable.
That was all the Wastelands ever offered.
The camp sprawled across a jagged basin carved long ago by something violent—perhaps during the Awakening itself, when the earth had split and screamed beneath the descent of the Spire. Barricades ringed the settlement in a rough circle: rusted hull plating torn from ancient machines, warped beams from ruined structures, and—most unsettling of all—shards of crystallized Spire matter hammered directly into the ground. They glowed faintly even now, veins of pale light pulsing within like trapped lightning.
No one liked standing too close to them. Everyone used them anyway.
Watchtowers rose above the camp, skeletal frames made from scavenged metal and the rib-like remains of pre-Awakening constructs. Figures perched within them, wrapped in layered rags and leather, weapons cradled loosely in their hands. Their eyes were the same as everyone else's in the Wastelands—sunken, sharp, and permanently tired.
Eris adjusted the strap of his satchel and descended the slope.
The guards at the gate barely acknowledged him. One glanced at his face, then at his hands—empty, bloodless for now—and turned away. He wasn't worth killing today. That could change in a heartbeat if someone decided his bag looked too heavy or his steps too confident.
Inside, the camp breathed like a dying animal.
It was a maze of crooked alleys and half-standing shelters, tarps stitched together with wire and sinew flapping against skeletal frames. Fires burned in shallow pits, their smoke staining everything it touched. The ground was packed dirt layered with ash, old blood, and waste that never truly went away. Somewhere nearby, something sizzled over open flame—meat, maybe. Eris didn't look too closely.
People moved with purpose but never ease. No one lingered. No one stood with their back unguarded. Most wore masks or scarves, not just for the air but to hide expressions that could be mistaken for weakness. Children slipped through gaps like rats, barefoot and sharp-eyed, already learning the rules of survival long before they understood mercy.
Eris kept walking.
He wasn't new here. He didn't belong, either.
The market sat at the camp's center, a cruel imitation of civilization. Stalls leaned into one another like drunks, their counters made from overturned doors, cracked stone slabs, and machine casings whose original purpose had long been forgotten. Voices clashed in constant argument—buyers accusing sellers of cheating, sellers accusing buyers of stupidity, both knowing the truth didn't matter.
Eris stopped at a familiar stall.
The old woman sat hunched behind it like a gargoyle carved from bone and scars. One eye was clouded white, the other sharp enough to cut. Her hands were gnarled, fingers bent at wrong angles, but they never trembled.
She looked up before he spoke.
"Back already, Vayne?" she rasped, using the name everyone here knew him by. Names were armor in the Wastelands. You didn't wear your real one unless you were ready to lose it.
"Scavenging doesn't care about comfort," Eris replied. He set his satchel down and loosened the drawstring. "Or daylight."
She snorted and reached in without asking.
Her hands moved with practiced efficiency, sorting through his finds like a butcher assessing meat. Rusted components. Cracked casing plates. A bent blade that might once have been ceremonial. She held it up, squinting.
"Scrap," she said. "Barely worth the effort."
"Everything's barely worth the effort," Eris said flatly.
That earned him a thin smile.
She dug deeper, pausing when her fingers brushed the Spire shard. It was small—no bigger than his thumb—but it glimmered with soft, dangerous light. For a moment, even the noise of the market seemed to fade.
Her expression hardened.
"You should be more careful carrying this," she muttered. "These things remember what they touch."
Eris didn't respond. He already knew.
She set the shard aside, along with a bundle of dried herbs and a strip of cloth that still held together if you didn't pull too hard.
"Two jerky strips. One bottle of water," she said.
Eris frowned. "That shard alone—"
"—is a death sentence if you're stupid," she snapped. "No one here wants it. Not since Karel."
The name settled like a bad smell.
Eris remembered. Everyone did. An Awakened wannabe who thought raw Spire matter would answer him if he bled enough for it. He'd screamed for three days before they buried what was left.
Eris exhaled through his nose and nodded once. "Fine."
She slid the food toward him. "Still breathing tomorrow is payment enough."
As he turned away, the camp pressed in on him again.
Near one of the fires, children huddled together, their faces smudged with ash, their hands clutching weapons too big for them—bone knives, sharpened rods, fragments of old blades. One of them watched Eris openly, eyes calculating, already learning to measure strangers by threat and worth.
Nearby, voices rose in argument.
A man and a woman faced each other, tension tight as wire. The man's hand hovered near a knife, fingers twitching. The woman clutched a bundle of rags to her chest. A child. Too still.
The crowd pretended not to see. They always did.
Violence in the camp wasn't an aberration—it was currency. You spent it or you became it.
Eris moved on.
At a weapons stall, he slowed despite himself. A blade rested there, its edge etched with faint runes that pulsed softly. Spelltech—real, not the junk most scavengers sold. It hummed with restrained power.
He imagined it in his hand. Imagined surviving things he shouldn't.
Then he turned away.
Dreams were expensive. He couldn't afford them yet.
He left the market and made for the outskirts, where the noise thinned and shadows stretched longer. Beneath a crumbling wall, he sat and tore into one of the jerky strips. It tasted like smoke and salt and regret.
As dusk bled into the Wastelands, the crimson sun sank low, staining the horizon like an open wound.
Tomorrow, he would go back out.
He always did.
The ruins lay silent beneath the dying light.
What had once been a village was now a grave of stone and memory. Walls jutted from the earth at broken angles, roofs long collapsed, doorways leading nowhere. The air felt heavy here—not with movement, but with absence. Even the wind seemed reluctant to pass through.
Eris moved carefully, eyes sharp, breath measured.
Scavenging was ritual as much as survival. Scan the ground. Check the shadows. Listen. The Wastelands punished carelessness without mercy.
He knelt near a collapsed wall, brushing aside ash and dirt until glass glimmered beneath his fingers. Spire-touched. Weak, but usable.
A prize.
He slipped it toward his pocket—
—and froze.
A laugh crawled through the ruins, low and wet.
Eris's hand found his blade instantly.
"You hear well," a voice rasped. "That's good. Makes the hunt better."
Figures emerged from the shadows. Thin. Too thin. Skin stretched tight, eyes burning with something that wasn't human hunger.
Cannibals.
They'd been people once. Awakened, maybe. Or failed Evolved. The Wastelands didn't care.
"Not here for trouble," Eris said, rising slowly.
The leader stepped forward, barbed club resting on his shoulder, grin carved deep into his ruined face. "Trouble doesn't ask permission."
They lunged.
Steel rang. Flesh tore. Eris moved on instinct, ducking, slashing, retreating. Pain blossomed along his ribs as something grazed him, but he didn't slow. Couldn't.
He ran.
Through broken walls. Over debris. Into narrow passages he'd memorized through repetition and fear.
Blood sprayed when his blade found a throat. The sound followed him.
The leader pressed close, relentless, his strength unnatural.
"Cornered," he hissed.
Eris felt the Spire shard in his pocket pulse—warm, eager.
Desperation made the choice for him.
When the crystal pierced flesh, the scream wasn't human.
Light flared. The leader convulsed, veins lighting up like cracks in glass, before collapsing in a heap that still twitched.
Silence followed.
The others backed away, fear finally outweighing hunger.
Eris didn't taunt them. He fled.
Behind him, the ruins swallowed the dead.
The Wastelands had taken their due.
Not him.
Not yet.