The factory's heartbeat was a dirge of rusted gears and dripping acid, a rhythm Kael had come to measure his life by. Three months loomed—ninety-six days carved into the refinery's walls with a shard of broken glass. Three months until the Bond's song would rip through the silence and drag Jarek to his doorstep. But today, there was only the week ahead. Seven days to test the limits of a Shard that demanded more of his flesh than he could afford to give.
He began with gravity.
Concrete bricks, scavenged from collapsed pillars, teetered on a sagging conveyor belt rigged with frayed cables. Kael stood beneath them, sweat already slicking his palms, venom pooling sluggishly under his skin. The first yank of the lever sent a slab crashing onto his shoulder. Bone cracked. Breath fled. His Shard reacted belatedly, thickening his skin into leathery plates that dulled the next impact but left his collarbone throbbing. By dusk, his body had learned—armor forming faster, denser, though each adaptation gnawed at his focus like rats on a corpse. He collapsed in the rubble, ribs creaking, and dreamed of Stonebreaker's fists falling instead of bricks.
Morning brought heat.
A corroded pipe, jury-rigged to dump boiling water, hung like a serpent's head above the Crucible vat. Kael stripped to the waist, his skin still mottled from yesterday's bruises, and pulled the chain. Scalding water sluiced over him, blistering his chest before his venom answered. Coolant seeped from his pores, a gelid mucus that hissed against the heat, leaving his skin mottled with frostbite and burns. He repeated the ritual until his legs gave out, until the Shard carved microscopic sweat glands into his flesh, until his throat cracked with thirst. Gutter, the mangy dog that had begun shadowing his steps, nosed a puddle of stagnant water toward him. He drank despite the rot, his reflection warped in the surface—one eye bloodshot, the other fogged with the Shard's milky film.
Needles came on the third day.
Mira's abandoned clinic had yielded a handful of rusted syringes. Kael pressed one to his forearm, willing his flesh to repel it. The tip pierced skin, drawing a bead of black blood before venom surged, muscles contracting to expel the intrusion. By nightfall, his arms bristled with failed attempts, each puncture a lesson in cellular memory. His body learned—slowly, grudgingly—rejecting foreign objects with spasmodic violence that left his nerves raw, his hands trembling too violently to hold a stolen protein bar. Gutter ate it instead, crunching through wrapper and all, its eyes never leaving Kael's face.
Day four nearly broke him.
Arrogance made him combine threats. Bricks fell as boiling water rained down. His venom chose heat resistance, leaving his ribs exposed. A slab fractured three bones, and he crawled from the wreckage, vomiting bile, as the Shard prioritized mending his lungs over his shattered pride. The factory watched, its walls oozing rust like old wounds, as he dragged himself to a stagnant pool to numb the pain. Gutter curled beside him, its warmth a feeble shield against the spores whispering through his blood.
By day five, his body rebelled.
Muscle had cannibalized itself to fuel adaptations, leaving him gaunt, veins stark beneath papery skin. The spores in his blood glowed now, sketching fractal patterns that pulsed with the refinery's groan. He retested prior threats—bricks, boiling water, needles—and found his Shard remembered, defenses snapping into place with haunted efficiency. But memory demanded tribute. Each hardened plate, each drop of coolant sweat, each spasm to expel a splinter carved deeper into his mental reserves. He collapsed mid-stride, cheek splitting on rusted metal, and lay paralyzed as Gutter licked the blood from his face, its tongue rough as sandpaper.
Day six was silence.
The factory's heartbeat faltered. Kael sat beneath the Chain, its iron links biting into his back, and traced the spores' glow beneath his skin. They hummed in time with the refinery's decay, a harmony only he could hear. Gutter dropped a dead rat at his feet—a morbid offering. Kael stared at it, too exhausted to recoil, and wondered when the line between survival and surrender had blurred. He fed the rat to the acid pool instead, watching flesh dissolve as the spores in his blood sang louder.
On the seventh dawn, revelation came.
Kael stood in the Crucible's shadow, venom thrumming weakly in his veins. Seven days had etched truths into his bones:
His Shard could adapt to any threat—but only one at full strength.
Memory was a blade that cut both ways, demanding fuel he no longer had.
Every victory left a vulnerability festering in its wake.
He pressed a hand to the Chain's coldest link, its iron searing his palm. "What good are shields if I'm too broken to lift them?"
The factory offered no answer. Only the dog's low whine, a sound that vibrated in his marrow.
Gutter followed him as he limped to the acid pool, its reflection now a funhouse mirror of scales and scar tissue. Three months still stretched ahead, vast and suffocating, but the week had carved its lesson deep: survival wasn't a equation to be solved, but a weight to be carried. And Kael's shoulders were already buckling.
He dipped a trembling hand into the acid, venom rising instinctively to neutralize the burn. Gutter watched, fractal light flickering in its eyes, as the spores in Kael's blood sang their dirge—a hymn of decay, adaptation, and the slow erosion of a man into something the factory could claim.