The refinery's decay hung thick in the air, its groaning metal echoing the ache in Kael's bones. His left arm was a dead weight now, the Shard's corruption creeping like ink under his skin. It pulsed in time with his heartbeat, a slow, sick rhythm that made his teeth ache. Gutter lay beside him, her crystalline fur matted with ash, her breath a soft whine. She'd been restless all night, ears twitching at ghosts only she could hear. When she vanished into the shadows, Kael didn't follow. Trusting her had become habit, a reflex he no longer questioned.
But her howl—a sound like fractured glass—sliced through the dark. He ran.
Mira's knees buckled as she stumbled through the Dregs, her lab coat shredded, blood trickling into her one unswollen eye. Behind her, laughter echoed—cruel, melodic, hungry. The Choir had cornered her near the sulfur pits, their chains clinking like funeral bells. She'd expected this. The Inquisition erased loose ends, and Mira had unraveled too many of their lies.
A chain snaked around her ankle, yanking her into the mud. A boot pressed into her spine, crushing her ribs against the rot. This is how it ends, she thought, not in a lab, but in filth.
Then the world erupted.
Gutter tore through the night, her teeth glinting like shattered stars. Chains snapped. Men screamed. The dog moved not with fury, but precision—a mother defending her den. Mira barely registered the weight of Gutter's jaws on her collar, dragging her into the refinery's belly.
Kael found them beneath the Rusted Chain, its iron links swaying like a gallows rope. Gutter stood guard, hackles raised, as Mira slumped against a generator, her hands trembling as she pressed gauze to a gash above her brow. Blood seeped through her fingers, stark and human.
"Why here?" Kael's voice was gravel, his claws unsheathed.
Mira didn't look up. "Ask your dog."
Gutter whined, nosing Mira's elbow. The gesture was gentle, almost pleading.
Kael stepped closer. The wound was shallow, but the skin around it burned red. Infection. Ordinary. Mortal.
Gutter nudged a rusted locket into Mira's palm. The Shardwright stiffened, her composure cracking like dried clay. Inside the locket, a photograph: two girls, one scowling, the other smiling, her veins blackened, eyes glassy.
Dead. Sister. Shard-corrupted.
Mira snapped it shut. "Sentiment won't save you,dog" she muttered, but her voice frayed.
Gutter pressed her muzzle to Mira's wrist, her warmth steady, unyielding.
The Choice was hard to make
Kael paced, venom churning in his gut. Every instinct screamed to abandon her. Mira was poison—a thief of secrets, a sculptor of lies.
But Gutter sat between them, her gaze unblinking. She trotted to a crevice, retrieving a cracked vial—Mira's serum, the one that had stalled his decay.
Not a plea. A reminder.
"You stay in the outer tunnels," Kael growled. "Touch the dog, touch my supplies, and I'll carve you open myself."
Mira laughed, though it lacked its usual edge. "How charitable."
But as he turned, she whispered, "i have a way to make the corruption go away"
He froze.
"Why tell me that?"
Her eyes drifted to the Rusted Chain. "Because we're both dead things. Might as well die useful."
...
Night deepened. Kael sharpened a shard of Oblivion-crusted metal, its edge catching the refinery's sickly glow. Gutter curled against him, her breath a rhythm he'd memorized.
Mira watched from the shadows, the locket clutched in her fist. Her sister's face haunted her—not as she'd died, but as she'd lived: humming as she grafted Shards, grinning as she defied the Inquisition. "We'll burn clean, Mira," she'd said. "No more chains."
Now, Mira traced the chain around her own neck, cold and unbroken.
...
Gutter padded to Mira, dropping a mangled synth-rat at her feet—a gift, or a warning. The Shardwright snorted, but her hand lingered on the dog's head, fingers threading through crystalline fur.
"Stupid creature," she murmured. "You'll regret this."
Gutter leaned into the touch, her tail thumping once.
...
Far below, the Choir's rage vibrated through the walls—a discordant hymn.
Kael closed his eyes. He saw Jarek as a boy, sharing stolen peaches in the Dregs. "Better one of us free than both dead, eh?"
Now, Jarek hunted him. Now, Kael sheltered the woman who'd once called him Subject V-K-42.
Gutter's warmth seeped into his side. Mira's breath hitched as she slept.
Three broken things, he thought. A man rotting. A ghost mourning. A dog stitching them together.
...
Kael's dreams dragged him back to the bank vault. Not the heist—the aftermath.
Jarek's voice, frayed at the edges: "You think I wanted this? They offered me a way out. A clean way."
Kael, bleeding from a guard's baton strike: "And what am I? Garbage?"
Jarek's silence. The clink of coins in his pocket. The door slamming.
He woke to Gutter's muzzle pressed to his cheek, her breath warm. Mira sat across the room, her shard-eye glowing faintly as she scribbled notes.
"Your venom," she said without looking up. "It's adapting. Faster than I predicted."
Kael flexed his corrupted hand. The black veins had receded slightly, leaving mottled skin. "What's your angle?"
Mira paused. "I told you. I don't lie to myself."
...
At dawn, the refinery shook.
Not from the Choir—from the sky. Rain sluiced through cracks in the roof, pooling around Mira's boots. She stared at the water, her reflection warped.
"First rain in months," Kael muttered.
Gutter barked, darting through puddles, her fur scattering prismatic light. For a moment, the refinery felt less like a tomb.
Mira knelt, cupping rainwater in her palms. "Elara loved storms. Said they washed the world clean."
Kael said nothing. But he didn't stop her when she filled a cracked beaker, sterilizing it over a sputtering flame.
By nightfall, the Choir's hymn grew louder.
Kael felt conflicted, he wasn't able to admit it but he knew, deep in himself he knew, he was a coward, a discarted tool a frightened boy who did nothing to the word but paid the price of existing, he thought to himself
"Stars are just the universe's way of mocking us—each glimmer a reminder that even in the darkest void, the closest thing to hope is a dying lie light-years away."