The fever would not release him.
It clawed at his veins like molten lead, turning his blood to liquid fire. His body trembled, muscles twitching with the effort of simply existing. Each breath scraped against his lungs, as if he'd inhaled sand and shards of glass. His skin burned, yet gooseflesh prickled along his arms, the contradiction so violent it made his vision swim. He pressed a hand to his forehead—damp with sweat, yet his fingers came away ice-cold.
The silence was worse than the pain.
The wasteland stretched around him, so still it felt carved from stone, as if the world itself had held its breath and forgotten to exhale. In that suffocating quiet, a single thought gnawed at him, bitter as bile:
This is my punishment.
Poisoned by the one person he'd trusted. Reborn in a body too frail to survive, too broken to fight. Marooned in a graveyard of scrap and silence, with no witnesses, no allies, no escape.
Then—
Beep.
The sound sliced through the stillness like a knife through flesh. Lan jolted, his ribs flaring with pain as his muscles locked. The noise came again—Beep. BEEP. BEEP!—shrill, insistent, frantic.
His fever-hazed mind struggled to process it, his hands fumbling at the torn pockets of his ragged trousers. His fingers brushed against something smooth, cold, round.
A black sphere.
No larger than his palm, featureless save for a thin, pulsing line of light that flashed in time with the screeching beeps. He turned it over, his trembling thumbs searching for a seam, a switch, a clue—but the thing offered nothing. No buttons. No markings. Just that damned, relentless noise.
"What the hell…" His voice cracked, raw and hoarse from disuse. He wanted to hurl it, to smash it against the rocks until it silenced. But something—instinct, desperation, the last dregs of his CEO's caution—told him not to.
He clutched it tighter instead, his chest heaving with the effort of breathing. His eyes stung, his borrowed body betraying him with a hot spill of tears down his sunken cheeks. His face twisted, his jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached, but the tears kept coming.
He didn't remember the last time he'd cried.
He never cried, actually. Not in boardrooms, not in betrayals, not even when his wife's smile had been the last thing he saw before the darkness swallowed him.
This was wrong.
The beeping quickened, the sphere vibrating in his grip like a living thing. His hands shook, rage and weakness twisting together in his gut until his throat burned with the strain of holding it in.
This body—this frail, trembling shell—betrayed him too easily. His vision blurred, his breath hitched, and for the first time in his life, he felt helpless.
The sphere screamed louder to the point where it was now vibrating.
Instinct—some primitive, buried part of the original body's memory—forced his arm upward. He angled the sphere toward the pale, sickly sun hanging in the sky. The beeping grew frantic, hysterical, the pulsing light flashing faster, brighter, like a warning.
His gaze followed the line beyond it…
His stomach dropped.
The sky was breaking.
A blazing streak of fire tore across the horizon, swelling in size with each heartbeat. Behind it, more came, a storm of burning rock and metal, each dragons' tails of fire carving the heavens apart.
"Damn it."
His mind raced, but his body refused to obey. He tried to run. His legs betrayed him. The first step sent a white-hot stab of pain through his twisted ankle, and he collapsed, his knees hitting the dust with a choking gasp. The ground trembled beneath him, the impact of the first meteorite striking somewhere in the distance. The air shuddered. The wasteland screamed.
Dust plumed into the sky, choking, blinding. Shattered metal and rock rained down like gods' bombs, each impact sending shocks through the earth. The world was ending, and he was too weak to do anything but watch.
Jinyue forced himself upright, hobbling on one leg, dragging the other behind him. His vision blurred, his chest heaving with ragged, shallow breaths. The sky was on fire, the horizon a wall of flame, and the ground beneath him shuddered like a dying beast.
Run.
His mind screamed it, but his body was a traitor. Every step was agony, his ankle throbbing, his lungs burning. He dodged where he could, staggered where he couldn't. A shard of metal whistled past his ear, burying itself in the dust beside him. Another struck the ground ahead, exploding in a burst of sparks and smoke.
He coughed, his throat raw, his eyes stinging from the dust and heat. The air smelled of burning metal and ozone, of death and destruction. His tail—that damned, traitorous tail—lashed behind him, twitching with a life of its own, as if it sensed the danger before he did.
A shadow loomed over him.
He looked up—
And froze.
A mass of fire and iron plummeted straight toward him, growing larger, closer, inevitable. His heart hammered against his ribs, his breath catching in his throat. He couldn't move. He couldn't run.
He was going to die.
Again.
The meteorite struck.
The world exploded.
He was okay…somehow
Luckily the meteorite had been a small one, that had landed right behind him. He was however flung high into the air in a forward direction and hit the ground.
He coughed, whimpered and groaned. He used his hands to crop himself up, his hands crumbled, and he lay flat. He knew he couldn't continue staying in the same position lest the falling sky decided to do another number on him.
He got up and continued to move…well, stagger, limp and drag. Each step was agony, his breath sharp and shallow, his mind half-swallowed by fever.
Still, he moved.
He hobbled forward, his breath ragged, his ankle screaming with each faltering step. His body swayed, dragged along by sheer willpower, weaving through the storm of falling debris. Shards skidded past him, burning the dust; a fragment grazed his arm, leaving a hot trail of blood.
Through the haze, he saw it.
A colossus, half-buried in the wasteland.
It rose from the dust like the carcass of some fallen titan—an immense ship or machine, its hull pitted and cracked, streaked with rust. Twisted girders and broken towers of metal surrounded it like skeletal guards, the remains of other wreckage scattered across the scarred ground. Shards of debris clung to its flanks, and every impact from the sky echoed across its surface with a groaning metallic shudder.
Jinyue dragged himself closer, coughing violently. The dust stung his throat, coated his tongue until each breath was like swallowing ash. He staggered beneath the machine's shadow, pressing his back against the cold, scarred metal as the storm hammered around him.
The ground trembled. The ship groaned, ancient bolts shrieking as it sank deeper into the dust with each strike. A low, metallic roar vibrated through its hull, the sound of something massive shifting under unbearable weight.
Panic clawed through his fevered haze. If it collapsed, it would crush him.
Then—blood.
A droplet slid from a cut on his arm, striking a seam in the hull.
The machine stirred.
A grinding rumble split the air, deep and resonant, as if the entire structure were waking. Plates shifted, dust cascading down in clouds thick enough to choke him. He coughed, gagged, doubling over as the bitter air scraped his lungs raw. Then, with a slow, tortured groan, a small hatch beside him cracked open.
The stale breath that rushed out reeked of rust and decay, so foul it wrenched his stomach. He gagged hard, bile rising in his throat. His body convulsed with each retch, vision swimming.
But the hatch yawned wider.
He stared at the dark mouth of the opening, then shoved himself toward it, every scrape of his limbs against the ground agony. His nails clawed at the seams, dragging his frail body inside.
The moment his legs slipped through, the hatch slammed closed behind him with a final, echoing thud.
Darkness swallowed him. The air inside was worse—stale, suffocating, heavy with the taste of metal left to rot. He gagged again, chest convulsing.
But even as the nausea surged, relief slipped through. He was not under the falling sky. Not out in the fire.
The fever pulled at him, tearing his mind loose from his grip. His arms gave out.
Lan Jinyue collapsed against the cold floor and fell into unconsciousness.