Location: The Obsidian Enclave, Guest Quarters.
Time: 20:00.
The deal was struck in the shadow of the diamond throne. Matriarch Nyx would grant them access to the "Mouth of the God," and in exchange, Dante would silence the heartbeat that was slowly poisoning her people.
But the mountain was treacherous at night. The temperatures dropped low enough to shatter untreated steel, and the radiation storms flared in the dark, turning the sky a sickly, pulsating green.
They were forced to wait.
The Guest Quarters were less a hotel and more a prison cell with nice amenities. Carved deep into the obsidian rock face, the room was heated by a central fire-pit that burned smokeless alchemical logs.
Silas sat by the fire, holding his Geiger counter. It clicked rhythmically, like a slow, dying metronome.
Click... Click... Click.
"We have a problem," Silas announced, his voice trembling. He was looking at a sample of his own blood under a portable microscope. "The radiation isn't just killing the Y-chromosome. It's rewriting it."
He held up the slide.
"My red blood cells are trying to undergo mitosis, but they're failing. They're attacking each other. It's an autoimmune cascade. If we stay here for more than forty-eight hours, we won't just die. We'll liquefy. Our DNA will unzip."
Havoc spat into the fire. The spittle hissed. "Great. So we're on a clock. What else is new? We've been dying since we signed up."
Dante stood by the window—a narrow vertical slit in the rock looking out over the glowing, bioluminescent city below.
"The Matriarch didn't tell us everything," Dante murmured. "She wants the Titan dead, yes. But there's a personal vendetta in her eyes. She hates that mountain like it's a living enemy."
Valerius sat apart from the group, near the heavy stone door. He was sharpening his scrap-spear, but his movements were jerky, distracted. He could feel the eyes of the guards standing watch outside.
"They hate me," Valerius whispered, stopping his work. "I am of their blood. I have their ears, their skin, their eyes. Yet they look at me as if I killed their children."
The heavy stone door slid open with a grinding sound.
Commander Lyra entered. She carried a woven basket of food—black bread made from spore-flour and dried, salted lichen. She set it down on the floor, keeping her distance from Valerius as if he were radioactive.
"Eat," Lyra commanded. "You climb at dawn. I will not have you fainting on my rope line."
She turned to leave.
"Why?" Valerius asked.
He stood up. He was taller than her, broader, but he slumped his shoulders, making himself smaller.
"Why the disgust, Commander? I understand the biology. I understand the curse. But I see hatred in your eyes. Personal hatred. What did I do?"
Lyra stopped. Her hand tightened on the hilt of her obsidian dagger until her knuckles turned white. She turned slowly.
"You exist," she said coldly. "That is enough."
"That is not an answer," Dante cut in. He stepped away from the window, the firelight catching the Silvergrin, making his smile look like a bear trap. "Valerius is a victim of Sector 7, just like you. He was grown in a vat. He didn't choose his form. He didn't choose his face."
Lyra looked at Dante, then at Valerius. The anger in her face cracked, the icy mask shattering to reveal a raw, festering wound beneath.
"You think you know suffering, Outlander?" Lyra whispered, her voice trembling. "You think the 'Curse' is just that our men die quietly in their beds?"
She walked over to the window, pointing at the dark, jagged peaks surrounding the valley. The peaks that looked like teeth.
"Fifty years ago," Lyra began, "The radiation spiked. Our men... our husbands, our sons... they began to get sick. The Matriarch made a hard choice. She ordered the Great Migration."
She traced a line on the cold glass.
"Every male over the age of five was sent away. To the South. To the warmer lands. It broke our hearts, but it was the only way to save them. We packed their bags. We kissed them goodbye. We thought they would find new lives. We thought they were safe."
Valerius stepped closer, drawn in by the horror. "What happened?"
"They were intercepted," Lyra said, her voice hollow. "By the Flesh-Crafters of Sector 7. By Gorm."
Dante's eyes narrowed. Gorm. The fat spider in the center of the web.
"They didn't kill them," Lyra continued, tears finally spilling from her violet eyes. "They... harvested them. They realized that our physiology, adapted to the cold and the radiation, was durable. Malleable. Perfect clay."
She looked directly at Valerius.
"Three years after they left, they came back."
Valerius went pale. "They returned?"
"They were marched back," Lyra corrected. "But they weren't men anymore. Their minds were wiped. Their bodies were stitched with metal and monster-flesh. They were Puppets. Husks. Gorm didn't have enough test subjects for his Titan project. So he decided to field-test his prototypes."
She shuddered, hugging herself against a chill that wasn't in the air.
"He sent our own husbands to siege the Enclave."
The room went deadly silent. Even Havoc stopped cleaning his gun. The crackling of the fire sounded like gunshots.
"We stood on the walls," Lyra whispered. "I saw my brother. He had... claws. He had tubes in his neck pumping green sludge. He was screaming, but not with his voice. It was a mechanical scream. And I... I had to put a spear through his heart."
She looked at Valerius with a mix of horror and pity.
"You ask why we hate you, Elf? Because when we look at you, we don't see a survivor. We see them. We see the faces of the men we loved, wearing the skin of the monsters that killed them. You are a walking ghost story."
Valerius stood frozen. The pieces clicked into place.
He wasn't just a random experiment. He was them. Gorm had used the genetic stock of the captured Enclave men to create the "Valerius" line of soldiers. He was a clone of their dead husbands.
He was looking at his widows.
Valerius dropped to his knees. He didn't bow in submission; he bowed in grief.
"I... I did not know," Valerius choked out. "I carry the face of your ghosts."
Lyra looked down at him. The hatred in her eyes softened, replaced by a weary exhaustion.
"You are not them," Lyra said softly. "But you are a reminder. And that is a heavy thing to carry."
Dante stepped forward. He placed a hand on Valerius's shoulder, anchoring him to the present.
"Gorm is dead," Dante lied. (Or at least, Gorm was ruined, his project destroyed. It was a lie of mercy). "We burned his Cathedral. We stole his future. He will never harvest anyone again."
He looked at Lyra.
"We are going up that mountain, Commander. We are going to kill the Titan. Not just to stop the radiation. But to close the door."
Dante's voice grew hard, the "Pale King" persona taking over, radiating cold authority.
"We are going to make sure that nothing like Gorm ever crawls out of that hole again."
Lyra studied Dante. She saw the monster in him—the mechanical arm, the dead eyes—but she also saw the purpose.
"The mountain is awake," Lyra warned. "The 'Lost Ones'—the Puppets that survived the war—they still live up there. They guard the entrance. They worship the Titan. They are frozen into the ice, waiting for warmth."
"Then we will grant them mercy," Dante said. "The mercy of a bullet."
Lyra nodded. She pulled a map from her belt and laid it on the table.
"The entrance is at the summit. The Throat of the World. It is guarded by a blizzard that never ends. And in that blizzard... are the Husks."
She looked at Valerius.
"If you see them... do not hesitate. They are not your brothers anymore. They are just meat. Do not let them drag you into the ice."
Valerius looked up. His eyes were dry, his expression made of stone.
"I know what meat looks like," Valerius said quietly. "I will do what is necessary."
Lyra turned to the door.
"Sleep," she commanded. "At dawn, we climb into hell."
She left. The heavy stone door slid shut, sealing them in with the fire and the silence.
Dante looked at his crew.
"Silas," Dante said. "Check the ammo. Use the incendiary rounds. If we fight ice-zombies, I want them to burn."
"Havoc, prep the charges. We're blowing the lid off this volcano."
"And you, Boss?" Havoc asked.
Dante looked out the window at the looming, black silhouette of the mountain.
"I'm going to ask Prime how to kill a mountain."