The slag pit was a wound in the earth that had never healed.
Xieren stood at its rim as dawn bled gray through the perpetual haze, staring down into what the old-timers called the Glass Garden. Forty years ago, an Embered war-party had tested their new siege weapons here. Molten slag cannons that could turn stone to liquid in seconds. They'd carved this crater just to see if they could, then moved on to burn actual cities.
What remained was a hellscape of twisted metal and volcanic glass, sharp as razors and twice as hungry for blood. The air shimmered with heat even at dawn, the ground below still radiating the fury of weapons that had cooled decades before he was born.
Darek had sent him here alone. Special assignment.
"Someone spotted intact weapon fragments down in the deep sections," the Quartermaster had said, scarred lips pulling into that familiar predator's grin. "Embered tech. Worth more than your miserable hide, ashborn."
Xieren had taken the crude harness without argument. The coiled rope that looked older than sin. The collection tools—really just sharpened scrap with cloth-wrapped handles. Questions invited pain, and he'd learned that lesson with his ribs.
Now, six hours into what felt like a death sentence, he understood the real purpose of this assignment.
This wasn't about scrap recovery. This was about disposal.
The Embered weapon fragments were real enough—twisted pieces of metal that hummed with residual energy, warm to the touch even after all these years. But they were scattered in the most treacherous parts of the crater, places where the ground could give way without warning and drop you thirty feet onto glass knives.
Xieren wiped sweat from his brow, leaving a streak of ash and grime. His shoulders screamed from hauling the collection sack up and down the unstable slopes. The rope had already frayed in three places where it had scraped against the razor-sharp edges. Each time he rappelled into another crevice, he wondered if this would be the descent that became permanent.
The sun climbed higher, a pale disk filtered through the permanent smog that clung to the Burn Field like a burial shroud. Down here in the crater, the heat was magnified, reflected and concentrated by the glass formations until the air itself seemed to burn. His water ration was already half gone, and Darek hadn't given him enough to last until evening.
Of course he hadn't.
Another test. Another petty cruelty designed to break him down, piece by piece. The Quartermaster was an artist when it came to suffering, always careful never to kill outright—that would mean losing a worker—but perfectly willing to push ashborn to the very edge of death and leave them hanging there.
Xieren secured his rope around a twisted beam that jutted from the crater wall like a broken bone. The metal was still warm, heated by whatever hellish process had forged it. He tested his weight against it, then began his descent into the next crevice.
The walls here were smooth as mirrors, polished by years of acid rain that fell from the poisoned sky. Strange patterns ran through the glass—not random, but deliberate. Geometric designs that hurt to look at directly, as if they were meant for eyes that saw in different spectrums.
Faction tech. Had to be. The ashborn whispered stories about the weapons the Five Factions had wielded during their wars, machines that could reshape matter itself, bend reality to their will. Most of the stories were probably nonsense—fever dreams born from too much radiation and not enough food.
But down here, surrounded by the impossible geometries carved into living glass, Xieren found himself believing.
He reached the bottom of the crevice and immediately spotted his prize. A section of what looked like armor plating, its surface covered in those same hypnotic patterns. But this piece was different—larger, more intact. And it was singing.
Not audibly. He couldn't hear it with his ears. But something in his bones vibrated in harmony with the artifact, a subsonic thrumming that made his teeth ache and his vision blur at the edges.
He approached carefully. The smart play was to leave it alone, collect the smaller fragments scattered around the crevice floor, and get out before the unstable walls decided to crush him. But something about the artifact called to him. Whispered promises he couldn't quite understand.
Touch me. Learn what you are.
Xieren shook his head, trying to clear the strange voice that seemed to echo from inside his skull. Radiation poisoning. Had to be. The older ashborn sometimes talked to themselves, carried on conversations with people who weren't there. Too much exposure to the Field's toxins, they said. Rotted the brain from the inside out.
He knelt beside the artifact, pulling his collection tools from his belt. The smart play was to use the tongs, keep his skin away from whatever energies the thing was radiating. But when he reached for them, his bare hand brushed against the smooth surface.
The world exploded into color and sound.
Visions. Memories. Not his own.
A city of towers that scraped the sky, their surfaces alive with moving light. People walking through the air as if it were solid ground, their bodies wreathed in energy that made them look like living stars. Ships the size of mountains hovering overhead, their hulls inscribed with patterns that shifted and writhed like living things.
War. Weapons that tore holes in space itself. Armies of the dead marching alongside the living. A woman with silver eyes standing atop a pile of corpses, her hands dripping with liquid light.
The sky splitting open like a wound. Something vast and hungry pouring through the gap, devouring everything it touched. The woman with silver eyes screaming as she raised her hands, weaving patterns in the air that—
Xieren jerked his hand back, gasping. The visions shattered, leaving him alone in the crevice with his racing heart and the taste of copper in his mouth. The artifact sat there innocently, its surface now dull and lifeless.
What the hell was that?
He stared at his hand. The palm was tingling, the skin slightly red where it had touched the artifact. But otherwise he seemed unharmed. No burns. No obvious signs of radiation exposure.
A memory surfaced—something one of the old-timers had said during a rare moment of drunken honesty. The Field remembers everything that happened here. The weapons, the wars, the dying. Sometimes it shares those memories with the living. Usually drives them mad.
Xieren had dismissed it as the rambling of a poisoned mind. Now he wasn't so sure.
He used the tongs to collect the artifact, wrapping it carefully in cloth before adding it to his collection sack. Whatever it was, whatever it had shown him, Darek would want to see it. The Quartermaster had sources among the Faction traders—people who paid good money for pre-war tech, no questions asked.
The ascent was harder than the descent. The rope had frayed further during his time in the crevice, individual strands popping under his weight. Twice he had to stop and retie knots, his hands shaking from more than just exhaustion.
The visions kept replaying in his mind. The city of light. The woman with silver eyes. That moment when the sky had torn open like rotted cloth.
The Field remembers.
By the time he hauled himself over the rim of the crevice, the sun was past its zenith. The collection sack weighed at least thirty pounds—good salvage, enough to satisfy even Darek's greed. But Xieren's water was gone, and the heat was becoming unbearable.
Three more crevices to check. Three more descents into the glass maze below. He could feel the radiation working on him now, a sick heaviness in his bones, a metallic taste that no amount of saliva could wash away.
Should quit. Head back to camp.
But Darek's orders had been clear. Work until evening. Return with a full collection or don't return at all. The Quartermaster never made idle threats.
Xieren moved to the next crevice, this one deeper and narrower than the others. The rope groaned as he tested it against another twisted beam. More frayed strands. He had maybe two more descents left before the thing snapped entirely.
Make them count.
The walls of this crevice were different. Instead of smooth glass, they were covered in what looked like writing. Symbols that shifted and moved when he wasn't looking directly at them, rearranging themselves into new configurations. Some of them looked almost familiar, like half-remembered words in a language he'd never learned.
At the bottom, partially buried under decades of accumulated debris, he found something that made his blood freeze.
Bones. Human bones. But wrong. Too long. Too many joints. And etched into the surface of the skull, those same shifting symbols that covered the walls.
What were they doing here? What were they trying to become?
He backed away from the skeleton, his heart hammering against his ribs. This place wasn't just a weapons testing ground. It was something else. Something that had gone wrong in ways he couldn't begin to understand.
The bone fragments went into his collection sack anyway. Whatever they were, they were clearly pre-war tech. Darek would know what to do with them.
Or who to sell them to.
The ascent from the bone crevice nearly killed him. Halfway up, the rope snapped.
Xieren fell ten feet before his reflexes kicked in, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the glass-smooth walls. His fingernails tore. His palms left bloody smears on the polished surface. But somehow, impossibly, he found a handhold—a tiny crack in the otherwise perfect surface.
He hung there for a moment, gasping, his feet dangling over the bone pile below. The crack was barely wide enough for his fingertips, but it held his weight. Above him, the severed rope swayed mockingly in the poisoned breeze.
Climb or die.
The choice was that simple. He began to ascend, inch by agonizing inch, his fingers finding cracks and imperfections that shouldn't have existed in glass so perfectly smooth. His shoulders screamed. His hands bled. But he climbed.
When he finally hauled himself over the rim, he lay on his back for a long moment, staring up at the sick yellow sky. His hands were ruined—torn and bleeding, embedded with glass fragments that caught the light like tiny stars. But he was alive.
For now.
The sun was sinking toward the horizon, painting the crater in shades of rust and blood. Darek would be expecting him soon. Time to head back to camp, deliver his collection, and pretend that today had been just another routine salvage operation.
But as he gathered his gear and prepared for the long walk home, Xieren found himself looking back at the glass maze one more time. The visions the artifact had shown him played through his mind again. The city of light. The woman with silver eyes. The sky splitting open like a wound.
The Field remembers everything.
And now, whether he wanted to or not, so did he.
The walk back to camp was a fever dream of pain and exhaustion.
Xieren's hands had stopped bleeding, but they felt like they were on fire. Glass fragments worked deeper into his palms with every step, and his collection sack seemed to gain weight with each passing mile. The artifacts inside clinked together with each movement, creating a discordant melody that made his teeth ache.
Or maybe that was the radiation.
The Field at sunset was a study in desolation. Twisted metal sculptures cast long shadows across the barren ground, their surfaces still radiating heat from the day's accumulated radiation. In the distance, he could see the smoke plumes from other work sites—ashborn crews extracting salvage from the endless graveyard of forgotten wars.
How many weapons tests had there been? How many experiments?
The questions gnawed at him as he walked. The official story was simple enough—the Five Factions had fought a series of conflicts here before establishing the current system. The Burn Field was their chosen battleground, a place where they could settle disputes without threatening their actual territories.
But the artifacts he'd found today told a different story. The visions. The impossible architecture. The bones with too many joints.
They were trying to become something else. All of them.
A new sound reached his ears as he crested a low ridge—the rhythmic thump of machinery, accompanied by shouted orders and the crack of overseers' whips. He recognized the location: Excavation Site Seven, where crews had been digging into what intelligence reports claimed was a buried Faction archive.
Xieren changed course, curiosity overriding his exhaustion. He'd heard rumors about Site Seven. Ashborn who worked there came back changed—if they came back at all. The lucky ones just disappeared. The unlucky ones returned babbling about machines that sang to them in the dark.
The excavation was larger than he'd expected. A crater within a crater, carved out by industrial digging equipment that looked suspiciously advanced for standard ashborn operations. Flood lights on portable generators illuminated the work site, creating harsh pools of white light in the gathering darkness.
At the bottom of the excavation, maybe fifty feet down, he could see them. Ashborn workers moving like sleepwalkers, their movements unnaturally synchronized. They were excavating something—a structure of black metal that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.
A door. They're digging up a door.
But a door to what?
"You there! Ashborn!"
Xieren spun toward the voice, his heart jumping into his throat. One of the site overseers was climbing toward him, a tall man in the dark leathers favored by Faction military advisors. Not ashborn. Not even close.
"What's your business here?" the overseer demanded, his hand resting casually on the shock-prod at his belt.
"Salvage run for Quartermaster Darek," Xieren replied, hefting his collection sack as evidence. "Got turned around in the dark."
The overseer studied him with pale, calculating eyes. There was something wrong with those eyes—they reflected light like an animal's, and they never seemed to blink.
"Darek's boy, eh?" The man's smile was all teeth and no warmth. "Heard you've been making quite the impression. Consorting with aspirants. Making plans above your station."
How did he know about Elia?
Xieren kept his expression carefully neutral. "Just following orders, sir."
"Of course you are." The overseer circled him slowly, like a predator evaluating prey. "You know what we're digging up down there, ashborn?"
"No, sir."
"History. The real history, not the sanitized version they feed to the masses." He gestured toward the excavation site. "Did you know the Five Factions used to be six? Course you didn't. That's not the kind of information they share with the labor class."
Six Factions?
"The sixth one had different ideas about how to use the power that flows through this place. They thought they could transcend the limitations of flesh, become something greater. Immortal. All-knowing." The overseer's reflection-bright eyes fixed on Xieren. "They were wrong, of course. But their failures left behind some fascinating technology."
Down in the excavation, the synchronized workers had cleared more of the black door. Strange symbols were visible on its surface—the same shifting, hypnotic patterns Xieren had seen in the glass crevice.
"The ashborn who work this site," Xieren said carefully, "they seem... different."
"Enlightened," the overseer corrected. "They've been exposed to echoes of the sixth Faction's final experiment. It's given them a new perspective on their place in the natural order."
They've been turned into machines.
"I should get back," Xieren said, taking a step away from the excavation. "Quartermaster Darek will be expecting his salvage."
"Of course. But before you go..." The overseer reached into his coat and withdrew something that made Xieren's blood freeze. Another artifact, similar to the one he'd found in the crevice, but larger and more complex. The patterns on its surface moved faster, creating optical illusions that hurt to look at directly.
"Take this to your Quartermaster. Tell him it's a gift from Site Seven. A token of our appreciation for his... cooperation."
Xieren took the artifact reluctantly, wrapping it in cloth before adding it to his collection sack. The thing felt warm against his back, and he could swear he heard it whispering in that same subsonic language that had invaded his mind earlier.
"What does it do?" he asked.
The overseer's smile widened. "It remembers. And soon, so will everyone else."
The camp's perimeter lights came into view just as full darkness claimed the sky. Xieren's legs felt like water, and his hands had gone numb from the constant pain. The collection sack seemed to weigh as much as he did, and with every step the artifacts inside sang their discordant songs.
The guards at the gate barely looked up as he approached. Blood-soaked, staggering, covered in radiation burns—just another ashborn who'd had a bad day in the Field. Nothing worth their attention.
"Darek wants to see you," one of them said without looking up from his dice game. "Soon as you're cleaned up."
Of course he does.
Xieren nodded and limped through the gate, his mind racing. The overseer's words echoed in his thoughts: Tell him it's a gift from Site Seven. A token of our appreciation for his cooperation.
Cooperation with what?
The camp was settling into its evening rhythm. Ashborn trudged back from the work sites, their faces gray with exhaustion and radiation exposure. The lucky ones had managed to secure extra rations through trade or favor. The unlucky ones would go to sleep hungry, as always.
But something felt different tonight. More guards than usual. More patrols. And the ashborn themselves seemed subdued, even by their usual standards. Conversations were hushed. Eyes were downcast.
Fear. They're all afraid.
Xieren made his way through the winding paths that separated the camp's districts, staying to the shadows out of habit. The mess hall was serving the evening meal, but the lines were shorter than usual. Quite a few ashborn were simply sitting by their shelters, staring at nothing.
What's happening here?
He passed the medical station—really just a converted supply tent with a Faction-trained medic who charged more than most ashborn could afford. There was a line outside, longer than he'd ever seen. People with strange injuries. Burns that formed geometric patterns. Cuts that bled light instead of blood.
The Field is changing them. All of them.
One of the patients caught his eye—a woman he recognized from the salvage crews. She was sitting on a wooden crate, her shirt torn open to reveal what looked like circuitry etched into her skin. The patterns pulsed with a faint blue light, and her eyes stared at nothing with the glassy emptiness of the workers at Site Seven.
It's spreading.
Xieren quickened his pace, eager to reach the relative safety of his own district. But as he walked, he became aware of a new sound cutting through the camp's usual nighttime noise. Singing. Dozens of voices raised in perfect harmony, but the melody was wrong. Discordant. It made his bones ache and his vision blur at the edges.
The same frequency as the artifacts.
He followed the sound to its source and found them—maybe fifty ashborn standing in perfect formation in one of the common areas. Their mouths moved in unison, producing that strange, subsonic melody. Their eyes reflected light like mirrors.
At the center of the formation stood someone he recognized: Gregor, an older ashborn who'd been working the Field for more than twenty years. But Gregor was wrong now. His skin had taken on a metallic sheen, and strange patterns moved beneath its surface like living tattoos.
When Gregor turned toward him, Xieren saw that his eyes had been replaced with faceted crystals that caught and refracted the camp's lights into rainbow fragments.
"The awakening comes," Gregor said, his voice a perfect harmony of multiple tones. "The sixth echo stirs. The door opens wide."
The door from Site Seven.
Xieren backed away from the singing crowd, his heart hammering against his ribs. Whatever was happening here, whatever the Factions were doing to the ashborn, it was accelerating. The artifacts in his collection sack seemed to respond to the singing, growing warmer and more active.
I have to find Elia. I have to warn her.
But first, he had to deliver his salvage to Darek. Had to play the role of the obedient worker for just a little longer. Because if the Quartermaster suspected that Xieren knew what was really happening here, if he realized that the visions had shown him too much...
Well. There were worse fates than dying in the Field. The singing ashborn with their crystal eyes were proof of that.
The collection sack felt heavier with each step as he made his way toward the administrative district. Behind him, the harmonic singing continued, a sound like reality itself learning to scream.