"What are you doing?!" Edrick's roar startled the crows perched on the roof's edge. The tattoo of a deity on his chest burned hot with surging emotion. griff's crowbar froze mid-air, and when he turned, surprise flickered in his eyes—he'd thought Edrick, seized by the Covenant Patroler, was now picking up a discarded steel pipe from the ground.
"Croft family bastard…" The thug's copper-buckled belt grew slick with sweat in his palm, the crowbar's shadow jagged as a sawtooth on the wall.
Edrick then noticed Hannah's washboard wedged in the wooden door's crack. She braced the door with her entire weight, blocking griff's entry.
griff swallowed, his gaze skimming the iron pipe in Edrick's hand.
As a low-level member of the Soot Street Scamps, he knew what home invasion meant: the Covenant Patroler would hang him like crushed scrap metal. And the killing intent in Edrick's eyes was deadlier than any billy club.
He had no wish to clash head-on with Edrick. Preying on families without male heirs, was one thing; outright murder in broad daylight was another. Edrick was no stranger to fights—griff had been beaten by him more than once.
"Misunderstand me, mate. Just here for a cuppa." The thug slid his crowbar into his sleeve, plastering on a greasy smile. "Heard your steam sprite sings ballads. Boss'd love a laugh—"
His words cut off as Edrick closed the distance between them.
Edrick, though never a brawler, felt confident as a Transmigrator facing a lowlife. With the Third Set of Low-Level Civil Servant Broadcast Exercises from the Celestial Theodome in my arsenal, what's to fear?
"Get lost." Edrick's fingers clamped around griff's wrist, the gear-shaped calluses digging into the thug's skin—a grip as ironclad as the day he'd bent a dockside steel cable three days prior.
"Consider yourself lucky." griff wrenched free, knocking over a coal bucket as he stepped back. He raised his voice for Hannah's benefit: "Tomorrow, the Soot Street Scamps burn this dump! Your sister's hand goes in the gear furnace next!"
Edrick watched the thug flee. From behind the door came Hannah's sobs, her hand slipping through the crack to tug at his coat hem, fingertips stinging of laundry lye.
"Fear not. He won't return." Edrick stroked his sister's hair, eyeing the door's pry marks. griff hadn't retreated from fear—he'd calculated. Kidnapping vs. street robbery: different crimes. His retreat was a ploy to avoid a direct fight.
He patted Hannah's trembling shoulder, feeling the patch beneath her apron—stitched by Miryam in the deity's pattern. "Sleep. Laundry awaits at dawn." He forced a half-smile, pressing a palm to his temple, letting shadow mask the coldness in his eyes as he turned.
The attic's iron bed creaked under him. Miryam's breathing evened, but Hannah's washboard still swayed in the basin.
Edrick counted the drip of steam pipes. On the seventh drop, he threw off the ragged blanket—something stirred within, a white mist winding through his veins, the deity's icy legacy fused into his very being.
Noonday sun fractured through giant tower , spilling over Edrick's coal-streaked work uniform. He knelt, brushing tears from Miryam's face; her lashes fluttered like a terrified fledgling.
"Shh. Follow sister home." His voice softened a hundredfold from the dockside brawl, palm resting on Hannah's icy hand—she still clutched a torn apron fragment, proof of griff's attempt to drag her away.
Hannah's gaze fell to the bandage on his chest, damp with seepage: "But Father—"
"I'll check on him at the dock." Edrick cut her off. "Covenant Patroler change shifts at noon. No questioning en route."
He stood, tucking Miryam into Hannah's arms, thumb grazing alkali crystals in the girl's hair—suddenly recalling the half-burnt Faith Essence candle in the abandoned shrine. What other miracles does it hold?
Cinder-crunching underfoot, Edrick crushs a half-frozen gear shard with his heel. The noon dock swam in steam, crane steel frames casting shadows like rusted dinosaur bones.
He dodged coal convoys, hugging scalding steam pipes. His work pants clung, damp with condensate, but nothing matched the chill in his chest—griff's midday raid meant Father was likely ambushed.
He'd walked less than two kilometers when the sickly sweet stench of rust and blood hit him. Common in Rust District, but unbearable to Edrick's newly sharpened senses—gift of the deity. He trailed the scent to an abandoned boiler yard.
Father's work pant cuffs dipped in stagnant water, knee fabric torn to reveal skin with an unhealthy bluish-black tint —steam sprite core burns, identical to the lead factory worker 's fate he'd seen on surveillance three months prior.
"Edrick..." The groan emerged from a pile of gears, Father's calloused hand scraping metal as it slid down a low steel beam.
Kneeling on the scorching plate, Edrick saw the old man's pupils roll unseeing, reflecting the crane's gears above—a Soot Street Scamps warning: using steam sprite cores to create "accidents" that ruined low-level workers ' livelihoods.
"Scamps..." Father coughed, coal dust mingling with words. "They...preparing to traffic ... people...through the dock..." A steam locomotive's roar drowned the rest.
As Edrick's fingers brushed Father's eyelid, the white mist in his veins surged—the deity answering his rage. Within this body, the deity hadn't vanished; it had become a colder instinct for survival.
Noon steam turned icy. Edrick clenched Father's hand, noticing his fingertips glimmering like the shrine's misty candle. Griff's sneer echoed in his mind, mingling with Hannah's sobs and Miryam's gasps, until resolve hardened into a blade.
In that moment, the dead Edrick's soul seemed to cry out from the depths, and the Transmigrator's memories fused with Edrick's fragments: a child's suffering 's memories, a challenger's courage, and a Ripper 's ruthlessness.
The murderer hadn't gone far. He sat on a giant gear, smoking a cheap mix of nettle, dandelion stem, and willow bark—harsh but affordable for dockworkers and chimney sweeps.
That was Father's cigarette.
Edrick had no memory of this man, but his affiliation was clear: Soot Street Scamps.
"Have you decided how you want to die?" Edrick looked up at the man, as if looking at a corpse.
Noonday sunlight was torn into pieces by the boiler area's tin roof, and Edrick's cloth shoes stepped on scalding rivets, the soles giving off a burnt smell. The figure on the gear was wiping a wrench with his sleeve, and the coal dust on his work pants had formed hard crusts in the sweat stains. The other man struck first—the rusty wrench whistled through the air toward Edrick's temple, close enough for him to see the coal dust in the attacker's fingernails.
As he rolled sideways, his shoulder hit a scalding coal pipeline, and the fabric "sizzled" as it smoked. Edrick rolled between two condensation towers, the damp rust and hot steam filling his nose and mouth. The wrench hit the gear, sparking—revealing that he was right-handed.
Edrick felt the steel wire coiled around his waist—torn from a crane during maintenance that morning, now digging into the calluses on his palm.
When the wrench swung again, he suddenly pulled the other end of the wire. A rusty hook fell from the top of the tower, and the edge of the iron sheet cut the attacker's cheek—blood mixed with coal dust fell.
The attacker roared and pulled out a shard of glass from his belt—experienced!
But Edrick had anticipated it. He ducked, but his knee hit a hot valve. The pain was almost enough to make him faint. If he were just a Transmigrator, this unprecedented pain would have curled him up, but he was also Edrick, the Ripper of Rust District.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, he felt for a loose firebrick at the base of the tower and smashed it into the attacker's wrist. The glass "clanged" to the ground.
The two wrestled on the slippery grate, coal cinders falling into the boiler below. The attacker's knee drove into Edrick's abdomen, and he leaned back, his back hitting a safety valve that was releasing steam.
The steam burst through his shirt, burning holes in his skin, but the moment the attacker squinted, Edrick kicked the inside of his knee—a weak spot from years of climbing chimneys.
The attacker staggered into a pipe support, and Edrick took the opportunity to wrap the steel wire around his wrist.
The crisp sound of a dislocated joint mixed with the hissing steam, and just as the attacker reached for the nail in his boot, Edrick's knee pressed against the back of his neck, pinning him to the still-warm boiler shell.
After the soft sound of fabric touching metal, there was a suppressed moan, and the struggle gradually weakened.
When Edrick tore the attacker's belt to tie his wrists, he noticed that the burn on his back was bleeding, and his abdomen was bruised from the impact. But none of this mattered—the distant dock whistle sounded faintly.
He picked up the wire from the ground and wrapped it around his waist again, taking one last look at the burn on the attacker's calf.
In the hazy steam, the figure tied to the pipeline gradually blurred, just like the countless low-level killers he had seen in the Rust District, who would eventually be crushed by the roar of the boiler and the gears of time.
"In this world where even the sunlight tastes of rust, some debts must be settled in the shadows of high noon."
"Shut up! You're annoying!"
On the TV screen, two pixelated figures—one red, one blue—jumped, with two dialogue boxes flickering.