Time/Date: Early Afternoon, TC1853.01.01
Location: The Forgotten Fringe → Abandoned Hovel
Past The Threshold's organized chaos lay the Forgotten Fringe—a maze of rust and ruin where the empire's plans had just... given up. Shacks leaned on each other like drunks, their iron walls buckled and torn. Roofs sagged under years of rainwater nobody bothered to fix. The air reeked of machine oil, black mold, and that sharp chemical stench that meant bad things seeped into the water supply.
Raven picked her way through what used to be streets. Kids with hollow eyes watched from crooked doorways. Their parents were already at work—some doing legitimate salvage, others doing things that didn't bear thinking about.
She found what she needed wedged between two scrap heaps like a guilty secret. Half-collapsed walls, corrugated metal patched with rotted planks. The door hung from one hinge, screaming every time the wind touched it. One wall had caved in completely, letting weak afternoon light spill across debris-covered dirt.
Perfect. Forgotten. Invisible.
The kind of place where desperate people went to die quietly. Nobody would look for anything valuable here. Which made it exactly right for work that couldn't have witnesses.
Five days until Amara's scheme at the banquet. Five days to build the tools that might mean the difference between triumph and disaster.
***
Raven climbed through the broken doorframe, boots sinking into damp soil mixed with trash that'd blown in over months—maybe years. Dust hung heavy in stale air that tasted of mildew and whoever used to live here. Broken chair in one corner. Scraps of what might've been bedding. Rusted cooking pots.
She cleared a dry spot with her foot and sat cross-legged, pulling out the legitimate scrap. Anyone peeking through the gaps would see exactly what they expected: another desperate scavenger trying to squeeze value from the empire's garbage.
First came the obvious stuff. Copper wire that still gleamed dully. Metal plating scratched but serviceable. Half-broken battery core humming with leftover charge. She arranged it all carefully, like she planned to fix things with normal tools.
Then she waited. Listened to water dripping through holes in the roof until it settled into a rhythm that'd mask any weird sounds. When she was sure no curious eyes lingered outside, she reached inward.
Soul power stirred—faint warmth in her chest that had nothing to do with body heat. Reality's seam opened at her will, a silver slit existing in dimensions normal eyes couldn't see.
From her soul space—vast as worlds but compressed to what this fragile body could handle—she pulled out the real prizes. Three battered communicators and a spare interface screen from the legitimate piles.
The devices looked pathetic in proper light. One cracked across its face, spider-web damage making the screen nearly useless. Second had half its casing missing, circuits clogged with corrosion, and components loose in their housings. The third looked like someone'd used it as a hammer—dented, scarred, dead black.
But when Raven's fingers traced the damaged components, Merit World 6 flooded back with crystal clarity. The generation ship Aspiration, carrying fifty thousand souls across the void to distant Kepler-442b. She'd been the ship's AI consciousness then—more than that, she'd architected the whole vessel. Designed every system, oversaw construction of the entire fleet, and orbital stations supporting them.
***
Thirty-seven years of ship-time, she'd interfaced directly with quantum processors and nano-scale circuits. Monitored everything from massive fusion drives down to individual sensor arrays. Every technical spec, engineering principle, failure mode, and repair protocol—all burned into memory.
These primitive communicators were toys compared to tech she'd once commanded. But toys are built on identical principles. Circuit pathways, data transmission, and power regulation—concepts scaled down perfectly.
She closed her eyes, letting essence thread into the first communicator like a diagnostic probe exploring damaged systems. The communicator device unfolded before inner vision: a lattice of fractured connections, severed pathways that once carried data streams. She could see damage as clear as holding technical schematics—circuit burned out by power surge there, connection severed by impact trauma here.
Slowly, with patience learned, maintaining life support across light-years of void, she began delicate restoration work. Scraped green corrosion with a scavenged blade, fingers guided by muscle memory of zero-g repairs. Then carefully—so very carefully—guided soul power thread into damaged pathways.
Work was more exhausting than expected. Each energy pulse sent tremors through her undernourished frame. Within minutes, sweat beaded her forehead despite the cool air. But gradually, connections reformed. Circuits dark for months began glowing with renewed purpose.
Broken screen came away like shed skin. Replacement interface panel needed careful alignment—dimensions slightly different from original. Soul power acted as a tool and a catalyst, softening edges here, expanding connection points there, until a new component slid home.
For a heart-stopping moment, the screen stayed dark. Then light bloomed across the surface—dim but steady, displaying startup sequence in crisp characters.
One down. Two to go.
But reaching for the second communicator, pain lanced through her skull like a red-hot nail. Vision blurred. Had to grip the ground to keep from toppling. Blood—copper taste on her tongue, wetness trickling from her nose.
Cost of pushing too hard, too fast. This body wasn't ready for this level of soul manipulation. But she didn't have the luxury of taking time. In five days, Amara's trap would spring. Five days to be ready with evidence that could expose the truth.
She wiped blood with the back of her hand and picked up the second communicator.
This one presented different challenges. The casing was shattered beyond repair, half its internals exposed to the elements. Corrosion had eaten deep into circuit boards. Several key components were just... missing.
Repair would need more than restoration—she'd have to rebuild, create new pathways where old ones were destroyed beyond recovery.
She stripped the device to its essential components, laying out each piece like a surgeon prepping for a complex operation. Spare parts from legitimate salvage would help, but wouldn't be enough. She'd need to push power further, reshape matter at the molecular level.
Another wave of dizziness struck as she began. Hands shook with exhaustion. Had to stop twice, rest her head against her knees until nausea passed. But piece by piece, circuit by circuit, the communicator came back to life. New pathways formed where old ones failed. Damaged components found strength they'd never originally possessed.
When she finally activated the power cell, blood ran freely from her nose, and her vision kept swimming. But the device hummed to life with eagerness that made pain worthwhile.
The third communicator was easier—mostly cosmetic damage that looked terrible but hadn't affected core function. A few minutes of careful work restored the screen, straightened the housing, and cleaned the connection ports. By then, her head pounded so severely she could barely see straight.
***
Three communicators. Battered but working. No longer broken refuse of the salvage yard, but functional tech that could record conversations, store evidence, and communicate across city districts without leaving traces in official networks.
Now came the delicate work of optimization. From her soul space, she retrieved additional components she'd spotted among the legitimate salvage—interface cables, memory enhancement modules, signal boosters that could extend range and improve reception quality.
The enhancement work required lighter touches of soul power, but her pathways were already strained. Each manipulation sent fresh waves of nausea through her skull, and blood kept trickling from her nose in thin streams. But this was too important to leave half-finished.
She upgraded each communicator methodically. Enhanced storage capacity so they could hold hours of recorded conversations. Improved signal processing to capture clear audio even in noisy environments. Added encryption protocols that would make any intercepted data useless to casual eavesdroppers.
Two of these devices would command good prices in the secondary electronics markets—refurbished communicators with professional-grade enhancements were valuable commodities. More importantly, the money would fund the next phase of her plan.
The third communicator she'd keep. Not just for recording evidence, though that was crucial. She needed reliable communication for what came next, something that couldn't be traced back to official networks or monitored by family connections.
As she worked, memories of other workshops flickered through her consciousness. The sterile perfection of the Aspiration's maintenance bays. The cramped tool sheds where she'd hidden from demon lords in Merit World 3. The underground laboratories where she'd built weapons to fight cosmic parasites in World 57.
Always building. Always preparing. Always one step ahead of destruction.
The irony wasn't lost on her. In past lives, she'd commanded resources that could reshape reality itself. Now she was grateful for garbage nobody else wanted. But that's what made it perfect—invisibility was its own kind of power.
By the time she finished the enhancement work, weak afternoon light was fading to gray. Her hands shook with exhaustion, blood had dried in crusty streaks under her nose, and her skull felt like someone was hammering nails into it.
But she had tools now. Real tools that could gather evidence, record confessions, capture proof of every lie and manipulation the Brenners had woven around her false identity.
She packed everything carefully into her salvage bag, layering ordinary scrap metal over the precious devices. To any casual observer, she was just another failed scavenger carrying worthless junk.
Rising to her feet took three attempts. The world tilted dangerously, and she had to grip the broken wall until her vision steadied. Her body was paying the price for pushing soul power beyond current limits.
But that would change. With each use, spiritual pathways would strengthen. Cosmic bindings constraining her true power would gradually loosen as this mortal frame grew capable of handling more energy.
Drawing on dregs of strength, she sent a thin pulse of awareness—not an extensive scan she might've attempted in her prime, but a basic sweep of immediate area. Twenty meters. Thirty. Effort sent fresh pain through her skull, but she gritted her teeth and pushed to fifty.
Clear. No predators lurking in shadows, no greedy hands waiting to strike. Just ordinary misery of the Forgotten Fringe.
With a soft gasp of relief, she released the scanning pulse and slumped against the broken wall. Darkness pressed at vision edges. Had to fight to stay conscious.
Time to go. She still had work to do—selling the two devices for funding, then using the third to gather evidence of Amara's schemes.
Standing in the doorway of the ruined hovel, Raven looked back at the spot where she'd worked. No trace remained of her presence except for a few drops of blood on the dirt floor. Even those would be gone by morning, washed away by rain leaking through the broken roof.
Perfect. Let the Brenners think they'd beaten her completely. Let Amara plan her elaborate trap for the banquet. Let them all believe they'd won.
They'd learn their mistake soon enough.
Seven days ago, she'd been a broken girl with nothing but pain and rage. Today, she was building the foundation of her revenge.
The Forgotten Fringe's twisted streets stretched before her, shadows deepening as the sun set. Somewhere in those shadows, other desperate souls were planning their own schemes for survival. Some would succeed. Most would fail.
But Raven had advantages they couldn't imagine. She'd survived ninety-nine deaths across dimensions and timelines. A few more days of careful preparation wouldn't break her.
Raven tugged her hood low and whispered words that'd become her survival mantra:
"Stay low. Always stay low. Four more days."
Five days until the banquet. Five days to gather evidence and prepare her counterattack. Five days to ensure that when Amara's scheme unfolded, she'd be ready to turn the trap back on its creator.
The broken hovel released her without ceremony, shadows swallowing unsteady footprints like she'd never been there. In her pouch, three enhanced communicators waited to become instruments of justice—proof she could build weapons from the empire's discards.
First step on a road leading to vindication or destruction. No middle ground between them.