The sky over Ring 9 did not have a sun. It had a bruise.
The atmosphere was a thick, swirling soup of purple clouds and toxic smog that blocked out the stars. Here, in the Outer Rim, day and night were just different shades of gray.
The "Rust Sea" stretched out for miles—a desert not of sand, but of oxidized iron dust, broken gears, and the skeletons of massive machines discarded by the inner rings.
Suspended sixty meters in the air, Zeno dangled by a frayed wire inside the ribcage of a dead Leviathan.
This wasn't a biological beast. It was a Mecha-Whale—a relic from the Great War a century ago. Its metal bones were the size of skyscrapers, half-buried in the toxic dunes.
"Come on, you stubborn piece of junk," Zeno grunted.
He was upside down, his legs wrapped tightly around a rusted beam. Sweat dripped from his nose, falling into the infinite darkness of the whale's hollow stomach below.
His wrench, a heavy tool made from a modified car axle, was clamped onto a bolt the size of a dinner plate.
CREAAAK.
The bolt groaned. It had been sealed for a hundred years.
Zeno gritted his teeth. "Don't break. Please don't break."
He wasn't doing this for glory. He was doing it for water. In Ring 9, clean water was more expensive than gold. A generic engine part could buy him a bottle. But a Pre-War Core? That could buy him a ticket out of this hellhole.
With a final, desperate heave, the bolt gave way.
CLANG.
A metal panel slid open.
A faint, blue light spilled out, illuminating Zeno's dirty face.
He reached inside and pulled out a cylinder made of glass and chrome. Inside, a blue liquid swirled with endless energy.
An Aether-Ignition Core.
"Jackpot," Zeno whispered, his grey eyes widening.
This wasn't trash. This was tech from Ring 5, maybe even Ring 4. How it got inside a whale in the Outer Rim was a mystery, but Zeno didn't care about history. He cared about survival.
He shoved the Core into his leather satchel and prepared to climb up.
That was when the smell hit him.
It smelled like rotten eggs and burning oil.
Zeno froze. He knew that scent. Every scavenger in the Rust Sea knew it.
Click. Whirrrrr. Growl.
The sound came from the metal ribs above him.
Zeno slowly looked up.
Standing on the spinal column of the whale were three shadows. They were wolf-like, but wrong. Their flesh was pale and patchy, stitched together with rusted metal plates. Their jaws were hydraulic clamps, dripping black oil instead of saliva.
Scrap-Wolves.
Mutated beasts that ate metal to survive. And right now, they were looking at the fresh Aether Core in Zeno's bag like it was a steak dinner.
"Three of them," Zeno calculated, his voice calm despite his heart hammering against his ribs. "Distance: twenty meters. Weapons: Wrench... and bad luck."
The Alpha wolf snarled, its mechanical eyes glowing red. It leapt.
It moved faster than any biological animal should, its claws screeching against the metal bone as it charged down the spine toward Zeno.
Zeno didn't climb up. He let go.
He dropped into the freefall.
The wind screamed in his ears as he plummeted toward the whale's stomach floor. The Alpha wolf, blinded by hunger, jumped after him.
They fell together in the dark.
Zeno twisted his body in mid-air. He didn't reach for his wrench.
He reached deep inside himself.
He felt the "Pulse" in his blood. Most people had a Pulse that felt like fire (Red) or ice (Blue).
Zeno's Pulse felt like Nothing. It felt like a hole in the world.
"Sorry, puppy," Zeno whispered.
He extended his right hand.
The air around his fingers didn't glow. It distorted. The light bent away from his skin, creating a small sphere of absolute, terrifying darkness.
Void Aether.
Impact.
Zeno landed in a crouch on a pile of scrap metal. The Alpha wolf landed on top of him, jaws wide open to crush his skull.
Zeno didn't dodge. He thrust his right palm forward.
He touched the wolf's metal face.
There was no explosion. No heat. No sound of breaking bone.
There was only... Erasure.
Where Zeno's hand touched, the wolf simply ceased to exist.
The metal dissolved into black dust. The flesh turned to gray ash. The entire head of the beast vanished instantly, eaten by the void.
The massive, headless body of the wolf collapsed onto the scrap heap with a heavy THUD.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Zeno stood up, pushing the heavy carcass off him.
He didn't celebrate. He grabbed his right wrist and fell to his knees.
"Argh... damn it!"
Pain shot up his arm. It felt like he had dipped his hand in acid.
He rolled up his sleeve. Under the skin of his right arm, black veins were pulsing violently, looking like cracks in a porcelain vase. The Void Aether was powerful, but it was parasitic. It ate what it touched—and if Zeno wasn't careful, it would eat him too.
Above him, the other two Scrap-Wolves peered over the edge of the ribs.
They saw their headless leader. They saw the boy holding his arm.
They whimpered. Their survival instinct overrode their hunger. They turned and scrambled away.
Zeno took a deep, shaky breath. The black veins on his arm slowly faded, leaving behind faint scars.
"I hate doing that," he muttered, wiping the black dust off his hand.
He checked his bag. The Blue Core was safe.
He climbed out of the whale's carcass and stood on top of a dune of rust.
From here, he could see it.
Miles away, stretching from the ground to the infinite sky, was a wall of raging storms. Gray clouds swirled vertically, illuminated by purple lightning.
The First Barrier.
Behind that wall was Ring 8. And behind that... seven more walls. And then, the Center.
Where his father, Atlas, had disappeared fifteen years ago.
"Everyone says you're a liar, Dad," Zeno said to the storm, adjusting his goggles. "They say there's no paradise. They say you died mad."
He patted the Aether Core in his bag.
"But I'm going to prove them wrong. I'm going to cross that wall."
Zeno turned to walk back toward Junk-Town.
He didn't notice the Aether Core in his bag pulsing.
It wasn't just glowing blue anymore.
A tiny, red light had started blinking on its base.
Beep... Beep... Beep.
It wasn't a power source. It was a beacon.
And deep within the military base of Ring 9, a signal receiver just woke up.