The compass pulsed faintly in Karl's HUD, a stubborn red dot against the gray fog of the ruined dockside. The Erevos Prototype lay somewhere west, but first, there were other signals, and Karl had learned that ignoring signals was a mistake that compounded itself. He walked slowly, nanites humming softly under his skin, his steps measured. Agnes hovered just above him, cyan glow dim and steady, like a lighthouse in the gloom.
"There's a spike," she said quietly. "Dimensional distortion, multiple sources. Stitch-pattern demonic signatures. Gravebinders, at least three. Possibly four."
Karl's eyes narrowed. "And Pulsehowlers?"
"Yes. Three, at minimum. Frequency overlap indicates active scanning, probably searching for… something—or someone."
He exhaled through his nose, letting the cold air catch the edge of his words. "Then we move cautiously."
The ground ahead shifted, not like an earthquake but like a sick, living thing. Dirt bubbled up, slick and blackened, forming uneven mounds. Karl's HUD detected nanite energy fluctuations in the soil, but they weren't his own. The Gravebinders had arrived early, manipulating the dead into functional constructs.
Agnes' voice was soft, almost amused. "They're preparing the battlefield. Standard corpse-engineer tactic. You're about to walk into a room they already built around themselves."
Karl's hand rested lightly on the Ignition Dial of the Drive Regulator. He didn't move yet. First came observation. His HUD overlaid skeletal projections on the figures that emerged—thin, towering humanoid forms draped in patchwork coats of stitched flesh, their fingers long, precise, always moving, weaving, sewing. They were engineers, constructing grotesque edifices out of corpses and twisted remnants of forgotten machinery.
The soil ruptured violently. Limbs clawed skyward, some skeletal, some barely living. Flesh and sinew fused with rebar and metal tubing, forming towering constructs of despair. Each movement was mechanical, precise, terrifying in its efficiency. Karl didn't flinch.
"They're not alive," he said softly. "They're designed."
Agnes tilted slightly, the glow around her pulsing in rhythm with his calm. "Designed to control you, limit your options. Their work is deliberate. The more efficient their construct, the more predictable their battlefield. Not unlike you, in a way."
Karl didn't respond. He scanned. Analyzing the angles, the seams of stitched joints, the weak nodes where multiple corpses met. Pulsehowlers appeared next, flickering in and out of existence, their bodies vibrating, edges fracturing reality itself. One opened its mouth. The sound wasn't sound—it was a wave. Reality bent and tore, and Karl moved before it reached him.
Click. Whirr. The Ignition Dial turned under his thumb. The Trinity Node Core began its spin, a rising cry in his ears as the Royal Azure nanites surged outward, assembling frame after frame of armor along his limbs, torso, and back. Rider Frame came online. Jets hissed from his calves. Nanite claws extended, glinting faintly in the dim light.
He leapt, boots digging into a stitched flesh-wall, gripping the uneven surfaces with mechanical precision. His rail-punches fired in mid-air, striking under the ribcage of a construct. It collapsed inward. Needles froze, and a pulse of energy from the Trinity Node Core rippled, calculating residual threat vectors. The Pulsehowler shrieked in response to the death of its kin, shockwaves distorting the environment. Karl twisted midair, jets flaring to redirect momentum, landing lightly, already assessing, already planning.
Agnes' voice tickled the edges of his HUD. "Clean. They didn't anticipate that level of precision."
Karl's eyes flicked over the battlefield. Another Pulsehowler readied itself, ready to tear space apart again. He shifted, grip tightening. One slash, two slashes, the node under its chest cut. It collapsed. Silence. The kind of silence that made the absence of chaos feel heavy, unnatural. Agnes' glow dimmed slightly, her concern palpable even through the digital interface.
"Death precedes silence," she murmured.
"I know," he said softly, exhaling. That knowledge didn't faze him. It informed his next decision. He cataloged every variable, scanning weak nodes, construct composition, the probability of Pulsehowler reintegration into stitched forms. Then he made his move.
More constructs fused together, their bodies melding mid-motion. More Pulsehowlers phased in, partial echoes, half-formed, testing his reactions. The battlefield collapsed inward, forcing close proximity. Karl's mind raced, but his expression remained calm, detached. This was calculation, not fear.
"Overkill justified," he said simply.
Agnes' glow sharpened, anticipating his next action. "Erevos?"
"Yes."
The Ignition Dial spun faster. Trinity Node Core tone deepened, resonating like a growl. Nanites flooded outward, thickening armor, redistributing mass. Karl's weight shifted, steps crushing the warped terrain beneath.
Gravebinder constructs charged. Pulsehowler echoes phased around. Karl didn't evade; he met them. Massive nanite anchors fired from his shoulders, skewering three stitched titans at once. He swung them into a phasing Pulsehowler. The collision tore holes in space, mangling bodies, destabilizing dimensional edges. Nanite cannons unfolded along his arms and back, energy charging and converging.
The first Pulsehowler attempted to re-phase, but the energy field Karl generated with nanites collapsed the attempt mid-transition. Another shriek—this one more desperate. One by one, the constructs' seams failed under the precise force applied at joint nexuses. The Gravebinders' own engineering betrayed them, and Karl anticipated it with every calculation.
Agnes' voice carried, approving, steady. "Their death triggers cascading failure. The area will collapse on itself."
Karl watched, unmoving, letting the battlefield destroy itself. And then he activated Gearstorm Nova. Heavy armor layered atop Erevos, nanites forming cathedral-like gear projection shields and counterfields. The Pulsehowlers emitted a final, screaming pulse. Shockwaves detonated against Karl's shields and bounced back, fracturing constructs further. The stitched titans collapsed inward, overpowered by their own structural designs, failing where Karl had predicted.
When the dust settled, there was nothing left. Not a single stitch, not a single echo of dimensional fracture. The ground was flattened. The air was quiet. The compass in his HUD pulsed faintly, still red, still guiding. Karl powered down Erevos, Rider Frame reasserting, taking a measured step forward.
Agnes hovered near him, cyan glow soft, warm again. "You didn't hesitate."
Karl's eyes scanned the ruins, not with pride, not with triumph. He cataloged, observed, and moved forward. "They made the fight inevitable. I finished it."
The compass pulsed again. The Erevos Prototype lay to the west, waiting. And Karl followed, every movement precise, every decision deliberate, every threat calculated and neutralized before it could act. He didn't feel victorious. He felt inevitable. He had engineered inevitability. And as long as he moved with that precision, the world, the demons, the impossible odds—they were all just problems to solve.
Agnes drifted closer. "Onward?" she asked softly.
Karl nodded once. "Onward."
Nanites at his waist hummed, the Trinity Node Core winding down, ready for the next sequence. The battlefield behind them erased itself almost entirely. Karl stepped forward, Agnes at his side, the compass pulsing faintly ahead. A problem remained to be solved, a prototype to find, and they would meet it with inevitability.