The sky was not weeping; it was hemorrhaging.
For centuries, the poets of the old world had written of rain as a source of life, a gentle descent that washed away the sins of the earth. But those poets were dead, their verses buried under layers of solidified metal. In this era, the sky bled Mercury Rain—a cold, viscous, and suffocating fluid that didn't just fall; it conquered. It clung to the skin like a lover's touch and stayed until it became the skin itself.
Alaric Vance stood on the rusted precipice of the observation deck, overlooking the sprawling industrial abyss of "The Magnet." The fortress-monastery, carved into the side of a hollowed-out mountain, groaned under the atmospheric pressure. Below him, the world was a monochromatic nightmare. Buildings that once reached for the stars were now slumped over, encased in a silver sheen that made them look like the discarded toys of a titan.
"The barometric pressure is spiking, Alaric. You shouldn't be out here without a respirator."
Alaric didn't turn. The voice was cold, clinical, and carried the weight of a thousand autopsies. It was Dr. Isadora Thorne, known to the operators as Fossil. She didn't walk; she glided, her white lab coat pristine despite the grime of the wasteland. Behind her, the massive metal cylinder fused to her spine hissed, its internal fluid—the 'Sarcophagus'—shifting restlessly.
"I needed to feel the air," Alaric replied, his voice raspy. He looked at his right hand. The veins beneath the skin were pulsing with a faint, gümüşi glow. "Even if it's poisoned."
"Feeling is a luxury the dying cannot afford," Isadora countered, standing beside him. She looked out at the silver horizon. "The Mercury in your blood is reacting to the storm. You're a 'Void,' Alaric. Every time it rains, you aren't just watching the storm; you are absorbing its frequency. If you continue to expose yourself, even my stabilizers won't be able to keep your heart from turning into a lead weight."
Alaric finally looked at her. Her eyes were devoid of warmth, yet she was the only one who truly understood the ticking clock inside him. "The informant from the Canopy. What's the status?"
"Weak," Isadora said, clicking a device on her wrist. A holographic map flickered into existence between them. "He's holed up in Sector 4—the Refugee Flats. He's carrying the blueprints for the 'Gravity Anchor.' If we secure it, we can stabilize the Magnet's defenses permanently. If we lose it, the next storm will likely tear this mountain off its foundations."
"And the Ascension Cult?"
"Already on the move. They believe the informant is a heretic trying to 'deny the embrace of the earth.' They don't want the blueprints; they want to see him, and everyone around him, turned into monuments."
The Descent
Twenty minutes later, the heavy hydraulic gates of the Magnet's hangar shrieked open. The sound was like a dying beast, echoing through the desolate valleys.
A small strike team stepped out into the downpour.
At the front was Garrick Holden, the man they called Anvil. He was a mountain of muscle encased in battered power armor. He slammed his massive Kinetik Shield into the mud, and a localized electromagnetic field flared to life, creating a temporary dry zone around the team.
"Stay close, little one," Garrick grunted, glancing back at Elara, the young operator known as Mercury.
Elara nodded, though her hands were shaking. She adjusted the neon-blue 'Weight Stabilizers' on her wrists. The seven metallic spheres orbiting her head hummed in a melodic, haunting tone. She was a 'Conductor,' a child of the rain, and every step she took in this environment was a battle against the gravity that wanted to crush her bones.
"I'm okay, Uncle Garrick," she whispered, though the silver streaks near her eyes told a different story. "The resonance is... loud today."
Alaric walked in the center of the formation. He wore a heavy, hooded tactical coat, his face partially obscured by a high-tech respirator. Unlike the others, he didn't feel the weight of the rain as a burden. To him, it felt like a pull—a beckoning.
As they moved through the skeletal remains of the suburbs, the horror of the world became intimate. They passed a playground where a group of children had been caught in a flash-storm. They were statues now, frozen in a game of tag, their faces polished to a mirror shine by the corrosive air.
"Don't look, Elara," Alaric commanded softly. "Eyes on the objective."
Suddenly, Elara gasped. She tapped her temple, her spheres turning a violent shade of crimson. "Usta! I have multiple signatures. Twelve o'clock... and they're not alone."
"Contact!" Garrick roared, bracing his shield.
From the silver fog emerged the Ascension Cult. They were terrifying sights—men and women who had replaced their limbs with heavy lead pipes and jagged steel plates. They didn't use guns; they used 'Gravity Hammers' and 'Liquid Spikes.'
"Praise the Weight!" the cultists screamed in a distorted, metallic unison. "Return to the earth!"
"Mercury, suppressive fire!" Alaric ordered, his mind instantly shifting into a cold, tactical trance.
Elara lunged forward. With a flick of her wrist, three of her spheres accelerated to supersonic speeds, whistling through the air. They didn't hit the cultists; they pierced the ground around them.
"Heavy Field: Activate!" she cried.
The spheres emitted a low-frequency hum. Suddenly, the gravity in a ten-meter radius tripled. The cultists, already weighed down by their metal augmentations, were slammed into the mud. Their bones snapped under the sudden pressure of their own bodies.
"Good work," Alaric said, but he didn't relax. "Garrick, move up! Clear the path to the Flats!"
The Moral Gravity
They reached the Refugee Flats, a cluster of crumbling apartment blocks where hundreds of 'Leads'—people in the final stages of the infection—lived out their last days.
The scene was a massacre in slow motion.
A group of Ascension zealots was herding refugees into the center of a plaza. They weren't killing them with blades. They were forcing them to drink raw, unfiltered Mercury.
"They're 'baptizing' them," Elara whispered, horror-struck. "We have to stop them, Usta! If they finish that ritual, those people will turn into 'Golems'—mindless shells of metal that will kill anything in sight."
"The informant is in the North tower," Alaric said, his eyes scanning the tactical overlay. "He's being besieged. We have five minutes before his door gives way. If we stop to save the refugees, we lose the informant. We lose the blueprints."
"But there are children there!" Elara cried, her spheres erratic. "We can't just leave them to become monsters!"
Garrick looked at Alaric. "Your call, Boss. I can hold the plaza, but I won't be able to reach the tower in time. It's one or the other."
Alaric felt a sharp pain in his skull. The silver in his blood was boiling. And then, the frequency shifted. The world around him seemed to slow down, the rain droplets hanging in the air like diamonds.
"Alaric..."
The voice was back. It was Selene. It wasn't a sound; it was a feeling. A cold, ethereal hand seemed to brush against his cheek.
"Why do you struggle for the dust, my love? The blueprints are a tether to a dying world. Let them burn. Come closer to the sky. Let the weight take them, so you can finally be light..."
Alaric's eyes turned a solid, terrifying silver. He looked at the refugees, then at the tower. He could see the thermal signatures of the cultists breaking through the informant's barricade.
He was the 'Void.' He was the one who balanced the scales. But the scales were dripping with blood and quicksilver.
"Garrick," Alaric said, his voice devoid of any human emotion. "Secure the tower. Ignore the plaza."
"Master, no!" Elara screamed, her voice breaking.
"That's an order, Mercury," Alaric snapped. "If we don't get those blueprints, ten thousand people in the Magnet will die when the storm hits. We sacrifice the few for the many. That is the logic of this world."
As Garrick charged toward the tower, leaving the screams of the plaza behind, Alaric stood in the rain, his hood falling back. He looked up into the silver clouds, his gaze piercing the veil.
"Is this what you wanted, Selene?" he thought.
The only answer was the sound of the rain, growing heavier, and the distant, metallic chime of a soul being lost to the earth