The world did not smell of soil or rain. It smelled of calcium, old dust, and dried blood.
Arin adjusted the rag covering his mouth, narrowing his eyes against the biting wind. He stood perched on the edge of a precipice—a jagged cliff of white bone that stretched endlessly into the gray mist. This wasn't a mountain. It was the fossilized spine of Colossus 7, a fallen titan that had ceased to breathe five thousand years ago.
Beneath his worn boots, the ground was ivory-white and harder than diamond. To the east, the giant's massive ribs curved upward like the arches of a ruined cathedral, piercing the heavy clouds.
"Sector 4 is lagging," a rough voice grumbled behind him.
Arin didn't turn. He knew the heavy, shuffling footsteps of Kael, the foreman.
"The density here is abnormal," Arin replied. His voice was quiet, raspy from the dry air. He pushed a strand of messy black hair out of his eyes—eyes that were a startling, pale gray, looking too old for his seventeen years.
In a world defined by muscle and heavy armor, Arin looked painfully out of place. He was lanky and sharp-angled under his loose rags, his wrists thin enough that Kael could probably snap them with two fingers. He looked like a strong gust of wind could blow him off the Titan's back and into the abyss below.
"Excuses," Kael spat. The large man stepped forward, his shadow engulfing the boy. Kael wore a chest plate made of crude bone and carried a jagged cleaver fashioned from a raptor's femur. "The High Council demands ten vials of Azure Marrow by sunset. If you don't find a vein, I'll throw you off the edge myself."
Arin ignored the threat, though his hand tightened slightly around his tool. He wasn't a warrior. He was a scavenger. A "Dissonant" born without the power to resonate with heavy weapons.
He closed his eyes.
Most miners saw a wall of bone. Arin saw a puzzle.
Thum... thum...
Faint. Almost imperceptible. The residual bio-rhythm of the Titan deep beneath the surface.
Arin's mind deconstructed the world around him. He saw the microscopic fractures, the calcified arteries, the structural flaws. While others used brute force, Arin used geometry.
"There," Arin whispered.
He pointed to a seemingly indestructible section of the vertebra. To the naked eye, it was flawless. To Arin, it was a pressure valve. He drew his tool—not a pickaxe, but a slender, tempered chisel he had ground down from a scrap of high-density steel.
"You're going to peck at it?" Kael scoffed, crossing his massive arms. "Move aside, runt. Let a real man handle—"
Arin didn't wait. He stepped forward. He didn't swing with rage; he moved with the fluidity of a calligraphy artist.
Tap.
He struck a specific coordinate on the bone. The sound was crisp, a single high-pitched note that seemed to slice through the wind.
Crack.
A hairline fracture appeared where the chisel had touched. It raced across the white surface like a lightning bolt. With a sound like thunder, a massive slab of the vertebra slid away smoothly, revealing the hollow cavity underneath.
It pulsed with a blinding, neon-blue light. Azure Marrow. The liquid life-force of the Titans. It flowed through the crystallized veins like molten starlight.
"By the Ancients..." Kael whispered, greed instantly washing away his disdain. "That's a Prime Vein."
The foreman shoved Arin aside, his eyes wide with avarice. "I'll harvest this. Go haul the crates, boy."
Arin stumbled back, his boots skidding on the smooth bone. He caught himself, his breath hitching in his chest. He looked closely at the light.
Something was wrong. The hum of the Marrow wasn't steady. It was erratic. Staccato.
"Wait," Arin warned, a tremor of genuine alarm entering his voice. "Don't breach the membrane."
"Shut up," Kael growled, raising his heavy pickaxe. "This bonus is mine."
"It's not a vein!" Arin shouted, taking a frantic step back. "It's an incubation sac!"
Kael swung.
The pickaxe pierced the glowing blue membrane.
There was no explosion. Instead, the light fractured. The beautiful humming sound twisted into a wet, chittering shriek.
SKREEEE!
The blue liquid exploded outward, not as fluid, but as a legion.
Osteo-Parasites.
Creatures the size of wolves, formed from jagged white exoskeleton and needle-like legs, poured from the breach. They had no eyes, only gaping maws filled with serrated teeth designed to chew through Titan bone.
"Aaaargh!" Kael screamed as the first parasite latched onto his arm, its mandibles shearing through his bone-armor like paper.
Chaos erupted. The other miners on the ridge scrambled, dropping their tools in terror. "Run! It's a Swarm!"
Arin stood frozen.
For a heartbeat, he couldn't move. His breath caught in his throat, and a cold sweat broke out on his neck. I'm going to die, a voice in his head screamed. Run. Just run. His legs shook, the instinct to flee warring with his logic. He was just a boy with a chisel. He wasn't built for this.
He watched a parasite lunge for Kael's throat.
Arin clenched his teeth so hard his jaw ached. He forced the fear down, locking it into a box in the back of his mind. Panic is death, he reminded himself. Breathe. Analyze.
He shifted his weight, his boots making zero sound on the ivory floor. He gripped his slender chisel, his knuckles white.
Target acquired: Third cervical vertebra. The gap is 4 millimeters.
Arin moved. He wasn't a hero; he was desperate.
He thrust.
The chisel slid perfectly into the microscopic gap in the creature's neck armor. Arin twisted his wrist—a precise, calculated severing of the spinal cord.
The monster went rigid instantly, dropping dead mid-lunge.
Arin exhaled sharply, his hands trembling as he pulled the chisel free with a wet slide. He looked down at the terrified foreman, his pale gray eyes returning to that cold, analytical calm, masking the terror that still pounded in his chest.
"Next time," Arin whispered, wiping the blue ichor from his face, "listen when I speak."
Kael didn't answer. He was staring past Arin, his eyes wide with a new kind of horror.
Arin turned slowly.
The rest of the swarm had stopped shrieking. Dozens of eyeless heads turned in unison toward the dead parasite at Arin's feet. They weren't rushing to attack. They were watching.
With a sickening clicking sound, the creatures began to shift their exoskeletons. The small gaps in their neck armor—the exact spot Arin had just targeted—began to slide shut. Thick plates of bone grew over the weakness, sealing it completely.
Arin's blood ran cold. The chisel in his hand suddenly felt very heavy and very useless.
They aren't just mindless beasts, Arin realized, the hairs on his arms standing up. They share a hive mind. And they just learned how to block my kill-stroke.
From the deep darkness of the hole Arin had opened, a low, vibrating bass returned—louder this time. The entire ribcage beneath their feet began to tremble.
The Queen was waking up.