The mist rising from the eviscerated lieutenant was not smoke. Smoke possessed physical mass; it choked lungs and stung eyes. This phenomenon was an absence. It was the heat of a life unraveling, the final kinetic energy of a soul bleeding out into the freezing mud.
Theron extended his left hand. His knuckles were raw, the skin split from the cold.
The moment the obsidian shard on the iron ring breached the shimmering boundary of the mist, the world stopped functioning according to the laws of physics.
The mist did not dissipate. It snapped. A violent, inward collapse of energy that rushed directly into the stone. The obsidian flared, not with light, but with an absolute, light-consuming blackness.
A spike of agony drove itself straight up Theron's forearm.
It was not the dull, familiar ache of a bruised bone or the sharp sting of a lash. This was structural. It felt as though someone had driven an iron spike into the marrow of his radius and struck it with a smith's hammer.
Theron did not scream. Screaming expelled oxygen and alerted predators. He bit down on his own tongue until the metallic taste of his blood flooded his mouth, his amber eyes wide and locked on the translucent text hovering in his vision.
[ Essence Consumed: Lesser Human (Awakened). ]
[ Host Attribute Increased: Vitality +1. ]
[ Host Attribute Increased: Strength +1. ]
[ Warning: Host framework unstable. Nutrient deficit critical. ]
The pain peaked, hovered at the threshold of unconsciousness for three agonizing seconds, and then vanished.
It was replaced by a hollow, gnawing sensation in the pit of his stomach. A starvation that went deeper than his flesh. The ring was not a tool. It was a parasite. It had processed the dead man's energy, reinforced Theron's musculature by a microscopic fraction, and immediately demanded more.
Theron pushed himself back from the corpse. His breathing was ragged, shallow pants that plumed in the freezing air.
He looked at his left hand. The ring sat heavy on his middle finger, indistinguishable from a piece of scrap iron. He curled his fingers into a fist. The joints popped. The chronic, dull ache of malnutrition in his knuckles was absent. When he squeezed, the tendons in his forearm jumped with a sudden, unfamiliar density.
Strength plus one, he calculated, uncurling his fingers. A numeric value assigned to biological violence. It changes nothing if I freeze to death before dawn.
He grabbed the burlap sack of scavenged boots and stood. The mud sucked at his worn soles, but his legs felt marginally less brittle. He slung the sack over his shoulder. It still weighed the same, but the coarse fibers didn't grind against his collarbone with quite as much hostility.
The trench stretched out before him, a jagged scar carved into the frozen earth. He began the long walk back to the rear encampment.
The scavenger camp of Oakhaven was not a military installation. It was a tumor growing on the ass of the imperial war machine. Tents made of rotting canvas and tanned hides huddled together in a shallow depression two miles behind the front lines. The air here was thicker, choked with the smoke of a hundred damp, smoldering fires and the ubiquitous smell of unwashed humanity.
Theron navigated the narrow, muddy paths between the tents. Bodies were huddled around the weak fires—men and boys too broken or too cowardly to hold a spear for the Emperor, reduced to picking the pockets of the dead.
No one looked at him. Eye contact invited requests. Requests required resources.
Poverty is a disease of isolation, Theron thought, stepping over a man missing both legs below the knee, who was currently asleep in a puddle of his own urine.
The quartermaster's pavilion sat at the center of the camp. It was the only structure that repelled the rain. Heavy, oiled canvas stretched taut over thick timber poles. Two imperial guards stood at the entrance, leaning heavily on halberds. They wore chainmail that rattled faintly as they shifted their weight.
Theron approached the entrance. He stopped exactly three paces away, the mandated distance for unregistered scavengers.
One of the guards, a man with a thick, greasy mustache and a bored expression, spat a dark wad of chewing tobacco into the mud near Theron's feet.
"Inside, rat. Silas is closing the books."
Theron ducked his head and slipped past the canvas flap.
The interior of the pavilion was an assault on his starved senses. The air was dry and incredibly warm, heated by a large iron brazier burning actual coal, not wet wood. But it was the smell that hit him the hardest. The sharp, overwhelming scent of roasted pork fat.
Silas, the quartermaster of the 9th Scavenger Detail, sat behind a wide oak table. Silas was a man constructed entirely of surplus. He was immensely fat, his chins spilling over the tight, embroidered collar of his wool tunic. His fingers were thick and heavily ringed, resting atop a ledger book. He was currently chewing a large chunk of meat, grease shining on his lower lip.
The pavilion was filled with the spoils of the dead. Stacks of dented breastplates, crates of salvaged arrows, piles of muddy boots, and small wooden boxes containing the meager personal effects of fallen soldiers.
He turns corpses into ledgers, and ledgers into gold, Theron observed, keeping his eyes fixed on the heavy wooden table.
"Let's see the garbage, boy," Silas said. He didn't stop chewing.
Theron stepped forward and upended the burlap sack onto the table. The boots clattered against the wood. The daggers and the silver clasp fell with dull thuds.
Silas stopped chewing. His small, piggy eyes zeroed in on the silver clasp.
He picked it up, ignoring the mud still clinging to the metal. He rubbed it between his fat thumb and forefinger, feeling the weight.
"Silver. Imperial issue. Lieutenant's clasp," Silas murmured. He looked up at Theron. The boredom was gone, replaced by the sharp, predatory calculation of a merchant who smelled a discrepancy. "Where's the rest of him?"
"Eviscerated," Theron lied. His heart rate did not elevate. The ring on his finger pulsed a faint, warning warmth. "A Siege-Beast tore him open. The armor was ruined. The clasp was buried in the mud beneath him."
"And his ring?" Silas leaned forward. The chair creaked under his massive weight. "Officers carry signets. Or conduits. You didn't find a ring, boy?"
"Vargos searched me at the ridge," Theron said simply.
It was the perfect deflection. Vargos was known for his brutal thoroughness and his own greed. If Theron had found a ring, the Overseer would have taken it.
Silas grunted, sitting back in his chair. He tossed the silver clasp onto a small brass scale. He added the daggers and weighed the boots with his eyes.
"Two daggers. Iron. Chipped. Three pairs of boots, one with dry rot. And a silver clasp." Silas reached under the table and pulled out a small, canvas pouch. He tossed it onto the table. It landed with a pathetic, light clink. "Four iron chits. Three days of hard tack."
The math was wrong. The silver clasp alone was worth ten chits.
Theron did not argue. Arguing with the man who controlled the food supply was a suicide tactic. He simply reached out and took the pouch, sliding it into the pocket of his breeches.
He is stealing from me because he can. I am accepting it because I must. This is the second axiom of survival, Theron recited internally.
"Get out," Silas said, reaching for another piece of pork from the platter on his desk. "And if you find a ring tomorrow, you bring it straight to me. Bypass Vargos. I pay better than a broken jaw."
Theron nodded once and turned away.
He exited the warm, stifling pavilion and stepped back into the freezing mud of the camp. The cold immediately bit through his thin clothing, but the gnawing hunger in his stomach was louder than the temperature.
He walked toward the ration line. The chits in his pocket felt impossibly heavy.
As he walked, a sudden, sharp pain flared behind his right eye. He stumbled, his knee hitting the mud.
The pale, ghostly text erupted in his vision again, blocking out the camp fires and the tents.
[ Host integrity failing. Nutrient deficit reaching threshold. ]
[ Suggestion: Consume organic material to stabilize framework. ]
Theron blinked, trying to clear the text. "Organic material," he whispered, his voice a raspy exhale.
He looked at the rations tent. A line of shivering scavengers waited for blocks of hard tack—a mixture of flour, sawdust, and weevils baked into a brick. It was organic, technically. But the ring didn't want bread.
He felt the subtle, terrifying shift in his own biology. The parasite was rewriting his instincts. When he looked at the sleeping amputee he had passed earlier, his mind did not register pity. It registered a localized source of biological energy. It registered a potential meal.
No, Theron thought, a cold, crystalline wall of discipline slamming down over the intrusive urge. If I become the beast, I am no longer the architect.
He forced himself to stand. His newly reinforced muscles responded with a crisp efficiency that terrified him. He was stronger, but the engine required fuel he did not possess.
He joined the back of the ration line. He would eat the sawdust bread. He would survive the night. And tomorrow, he would go back into the trench, not to scavenge boots, but to find another dead Awakened.
Because the mathematics of ruin demanded escalation. If he could not afford to buy a life, he would simply have to steal one.