Chapter 4: The Sound of a Breaking Soul
The train car had become a metal coffin melting from the inside out. Heat warped the walls into shimmering mirages. Rivets popped like gunfire. The smell of ozone mixed with scorched denim, singed hair, and the sick-sweet copper of Ren's own blood evaporating off his skin.
Ren stood at the center. His silhouette flickered behind the Double Blazing Shackles. The chains were no longer simple iron. They glowed white-red, molten links dripping sparks that hissed and blackened the floor plates on contact. Each breath he took pulled more heat into his lungs. His throat felt lined with sandpaper and embers.
Silas did not move like a brute. He moved like a mortician preparing a body. Calm. Precise. Almost gentle. With a casual kick he sent the Ironwood Coffin tumbling forward. The lid slid open just an inch. Black Funeral Ribbons erupted like living shadows, lashing toward Ren with the soft whisper of funeral silk.
Ren tried to intercept with his right chain. His arm shook violently from the heat. Muscle fibers twitched and tore under the strain. The whip missed by inches. The ribbons wrapped around his throat and yanked hard enough to lift his boots off the floor.
Air cut off. Vision tunneled. Ren did not panic. He realized the chains responded to suffering. He leaned into the pain. Deliberately. He grabbed the white-hot links with his left hand, squeezing until his palm sizzled and the smell of cooking meat joined the ozone.
The chains flared blinding white-red. A scream tore out of him — raw, animal, involuntary. Ren spun low. Centrifugal force turned the links into a horizontal buzzsaw of fire. The ribbons shredded into black ash. The buzzsaw bit deep into the Ironwood Coffin itself. Wood splintered. Smoke rose in thick black plumes.
Silas was thrown back against the door. His coat caught fire at the edges. He patted it out with one gloved hand like it was an inconvenience. A thin smile crossed his face.
"Not bad, Shambles. Most kids would've cried by now. You're still standing. That's almost respectable."
Ren's nervous system was on fire. The Red Flame was cauterizing his muscle fibers as he used them. Blood vessels burst under the skin. His forearms looked like cracked lava rock. He was not just fighting Silas. He was fighting the physical limit of his own body. Every heartbeat felt like a hammer on an anvil inside his skull.
"Just… stay… back!"
With a final desperate burst Ren slammed both fists into the floor. A shockwave of heat rippled through every metal plate in the car. The doors blew off their hinges in twin explosions of twisted steel. Silas flew backward into the transition tunnel, boots sparking against the rails.
The train screeched. The tracks ended. The vehicle slammed into a buffer at the Zone 3 border with enough force to buckle the frame.
Dust and snow swirled through the gaping holes where doors used to be.
Silas landed in a crouch thirty meters down the track. Snow hissed where his coat still smoldered. He looked genuinely impressed. He reached into an inner pocket, pulled out a small Lumen Crystal — pale blue, faintly pulsing like a dying heartbeat — and tossed it in a lazy arc toward Jax.
The crystal spun through the air. Jax caught it on reflex, fingers closing around the cold stone.
Silas's voice drifted back, calm and amused, carried on the freezing wind.
"Thanks for the fight, kid. Keep that. Might buy you a minute before it eats your soul. Consider it a professional courtesy."
He vanished into the snow shadows, leaving only the echo of his boots crunching away.
Jax stared at the crystal in his palm. It felt cold. Wrong. Like holding a piece of someone else's death. A faint nausea rolled through him. He dropped it like it burned. The stone sank half an inch into the snow and kept pulsing.
Ren collapsed to one knee. His chains retracted slowly. As the metal uncoiled it ripped away the sleeves of his hoodie. Blackened, smoking forearms were exposed. The skin looked fused to whatever remained of the links. Thin wisps of smoke rose from the burns. He could smell himself cooking.
Jax rushed over. He dropped to his knees beside Ren and helped him sit up.
"Mina," Jax said, voice shaking. "It's over. We're safe. I've got you."
Mina sat in the wreckage. She stared at her hands as if they belonged to someone else. Her breathing was shallow. Her eyes were glassy.
"Who… who is Mina?"
The silence that followed was heavier than the fight.
Ren tried to reach for her. His legs gave out completely. He fell forward into the snow — real, white, soul-soothing snow that immediately began numbing the burns on his arms.
Zone 3: The Vast Snowy Desert
They dragged themselves out of the wreck. The landscape was infinite. A white desert under a dark, starless sky. The snow glowed faintly, lit from within by some passive Aether that hung in the air like invisible mist.
Ren felt it first. A slow warmth spreading through his chest. His Soul Stability ticked upward.
Twelve percent.
Thirteen.
Fourteen.
Jax noticed too. He flexed his hands. The obsidian tattoos on his knuckles pulsed once, then faded.
"Passive Aether. The snow's healing us. One percent an hour, maybe. Two days before you stop looking like barbecue."
Ren nodded weakly. He could feel the burn in his arms dulling. But the scars would stay. Deep, black, ugly lines that would never fade completely.
Jax glanced at the Lumen Crystal half-buried in the snow. It still pulsed faintly blue.
"Silas threw that like a tip," Jax muttered. "But it feels… wrong. Like it's hungry. Like if I keep it too long it'll start whispering."
Ren looked at it.
"Lumen Crystals. Distilled soul energy. People in Zone 4 use them as currency. But they're poison. They destabilize your own stability. Make you crave more. Turn you into a scavenger who'll kill for the next hit."
Jax kicked snow over the crystal until it was buried.
"Then we don't touch them. Ever."
Mina sat a few feet away. She had not spoken since the question. Her eyes were distant. Her hands trembled slightly.
Far off in the distance blue flares rose into the sky. Signals. Multiple points of light. Coordinated.
Jax tensed.
"They saw the fire from the train. Other teams. They aren't coming to help, Ren. In this zone, if you Harvest a healing soul, you get a permanent boost to your own capacity. Some groups get strong by killing the weak ones who stop to rest. They decline scraps like Lumen Crystals because they're already hooked on the real thing — absorbed stability."
Ren looked at Mina. Then at Jax. Then at the endless white stretching in every direction.
They were exhausted. Ren was barely standing. Mina was a blank slate.
And the hunters were already closing in.