Kael's eyes snapped open, his throat raw with the taste of rust and something darker—old blood, maybe, or the metallic tang of the Shard's rot seeping into his veins. Above him, the refinery's fractured ceiling dripped oily water, each drop hitting the floor with a hollow plink that echoed like a dying heartbeat. The puddle beneath him mirrored his face in jagged fragments: pallid skin, sunken eyes, the Shard's corruption clawing up his neck in black, thorny vines. Gutter lay coiled at his feet, her crystalline fur dulled to the color of charred bone, one ear twitching toward the skitter of rats gnawing at the walls. Across the room, Mira perched on a gearbox eaten raw by rust, her boots caked with spore-mold, scribbling in a notebook with a broken pen. The nib screeched against the paper, a sound like nails on slate.
The refinery groaned like a dying beast, its rusted ribs shuddering as a distant tremor rattled the walls. Kael crouched in the shadows of the Crucible's gutted heart, his corrupted hand tracing the jagged edge of a broken conveyor belt. The black veins spidering up his arm pulsed faintly, a reminder that time was a currency he could no longer afford to waste.
Gutter paced nearby, her crystalline hackles raised. A low, discordant hum vibrated through her fur—a sound only she could hear. The Choir was close.
Mira emerged from the refinery's depths, her boots crunching over shattered glass. She carried a rusted toolbox in one hand and a holoreel projecting a flickering schematic in the other. "They'll breach from the east," she said, tossing the toolbox at Kael's feet. "Where the walls are thinnest."
Kael pried open the box. Inside lay a tangle of Shard fragments, corroded wiring, and vials of acid siphoned from the refinery's stagnant pools. "You want to fight them with scrap?"
Mira's shard-eye glinted. "Scrap is all we have. Unless you'd prefer to die politely."
They worked in uneasy silence, the factory's corpse their canvas.
They named the first trap Singer's Snare.
Mira knelt beside a corroded pressure valve, her gloves slick with grease. "The Choir's power lies in their harmony. Break it, and they fracture." She wired a Shard fragment to the valve—a unstable sliver of Eclipse's Maw, its surface cracked and oozing black ichor. "This will emit a frequency to disrupt their Bonds. If triggered, it'll rupture their eardrums first. Hearts second."
Kael watched as Gutter nudged a cluster of loose rivets into place with her muzzle, her fur shimmering faintly in the gloom. "And if it blows up in our faces?"
Mira didn't look up. "Then we die ironically."Kael's corruption proved useful. He spat a glob of viscous, adaptive venom into a dented rain barrel, the liquid hissing as it ate through the metal. "Acid tripwire," he muttered, stringing braided wire soaked in the toxin across the floor. "Step here, and their boots dissolve. Then their bones."
Gutter sneezed, recoiling from the fumes.
Mira arched a brow. "Primitive. But adequate."
In the refinery's belly, they repurposed a defunct furnace. Mira welded jagged Shard shards to its interior, while Kael rigged the door with a pressure-sensitive trigger. "Rook's armor regenerates through pain," she said. "So we give him enough."
Gutter dropped a severed Husk-Mimic limb into the furnace—a morbid offering.
As dusk bled into night, the trio retreated to their makeshift war room—a hollow beneath the Rusted Chain. Kael's breath came ragged, his veins throbbing as he slumped against the wall.
Mira tossed him a vial of murky suppressant. "Don't die yet. I need you functional."
He drank, the liquid burning like liquid static. "Why'd you stay? Could've run."
Mira adjusted her holoreel, her voice flat. "The Inquisition took my sister. They won't take my work."
Gutter laid her head on Kael's lap, her fractal eyes reflecting the Chain's eerie glow. He scratched her ears, the motion mechanical.
Rain began to fall—acidic, hungry—eating through the refinery's roof. Mira paced, muttering equations. Kael sharpened shards. Gutter patrolled, her growls a metronome of dread.
Mira paused, her shard-eye fixed on Kael. "Your Trial's close. The corruption will peak then."
He glared. "You offering a pep talk?"
"A warning. If you collapse mid-fight, I'm leaving you."
Gutter snarled, baring crystalline teeth.
Mira smirked. "The dog disagrees."
...
Midnight. The Choir's hymn pierced the silence, a blade of sound carving through the refinery's walls.
Vesper's voice slithered through the dark:
"Little rat. Little liar. Come out, come out."
Kael gripped his shard-blade. Mira activated the holoreel, its light painting her face in fractured blues. Gutter's growl deepened, a sound felt more than heard.
Trap 1: Engaged.
The Singer's Snare detonated first. A shriek of feedback tore through the east wall, followed by a wet, guttural scream.
Trap 2: Engaged.
A sizzle, then the stench of melting flesh. Someone stumbled into the Vein of Venom, their howls cut short as the toxin reached their lungs.
Trap 3: Engaged.
The furnace roared to life, Shard shards glowing white-hot. A man's voice—Rook?—echoed from within, cut off by a sound like a thousand mirrors shattering.
The Choir's symphony of violence ended in silence. Their bodies littered the refinery floor: Lira's charred bones smoldering in the Singer's Snare, Rook's molten armor fused to the furnace, Wren's chains dissolved into toxic slurry. Only Vesper remained.
Her Eclipse's Maw Shard hummed as she stepped over Cain's corpse, her ivory armor pristine, her voice a blade of honeyed venom. "You killed my Choir, rat. Now you'll sing for them."
Kael staggered, his corrupted arm numb, his vision swimming. The Shard's rot gnawed at his ribs, a reminder he was seconds from collapse. Across the room, Mira lay pinned under fallen debris, her shard-eye cracked. Gutter circled Vesper, teeth bared, but even her crystalline fury couldn't pierce the Maw's harmonic shield.
Vesper raised her hand. The air warped, a sonic tremor hurling Kael into a support beam. Metal groaned. Blood dripped from his ears.
"You're nothing," she sneered. "A Dregs rat playing at survival."
Kael spat a glob of black bile. "And you're a songbird. Songbirds die here."
Vesper lunged. Kael rolled, but her sonic blade shearing through his forearm. He knew he was weak, a bee that challenged a wasp, but he also knew this refinery—every rusted bolt, every weak joint. Jarek's voice echoed: "Always know your exit, Kael. Even in hell."
He fled into the Crucible's labyrinth, Vesper's laughter trailing him.
Kael ducked beneath a fossilized conveyor belt, barely dodging an attack of the inquisitor. Vesper followed, her Shard shredding metal in her wake. But Kael remembered—this belt once fed molten alloy into the Crucible. He slammed his boot into a rusted control panel.
The gears screamed to life, snapping backward. Vesper's blade lodged in the machinery, yanking her arm into the teeth. She roared, tearing free, but not before losing two fingers.
Kael climbed the catwalk, Vesper's sonic blasts crumbling the steps behind him. He vaulted into the refinery's old filtration chamber, where acid rain pooled in broken vats. Vesper cornered him, her Maw pulsing.
"No more tricks," she hissed.
Kael grinned. "You're standing in Pipe 7."
He stomped. The corroded floor gave way, plunging her into a vat of stagnant acid. She shrieked launching a supersonic attack, her armor dissolved—but the Maw's resonance shielded her, vaporizing the liquid into a toxic fog.
Bleeding, half-blind, Kael retreated to the refinery's core. The Rusted Chain loomed above, its iron links etched with the names of the dead. Vesper emerged from the fog, her face a mask of molten flesh, the Maw's Shard glowing crimson.
"You'll beg before I let you die," she spat.
Kael pressed his back to the Chain. The anchor's weak point—
He swung his shard-blade at the Chain's third link.
Snap.
The Chain plummeted, its massive anchor crushing Vesper mid-lunge. The Maw's resonance flared, straining against the weight—but the Chain was forged to endure. It held.
Kael collapsed as her Shard shattered, the Maw's final scream echoing through the refinery.
The Aftermath was rough.
Mira dragged herself free, her leg twisted. Gutter limped to Kael's side, licking the blood from his face.
"You… used the factory," Mira breathed, her shard-eye flickering. "Turned its decay into a weapon."
Kael stared at the Chain, Vesper's corpse barely visible beneath it. "Decay's all I know."
Gutter nosed his hand. Together, they left the Crucible, its rusted halls whispering of old ghosts and older debts.