The Salt Warrens were a cathedral of rot, the place that separated the dregs to the black market district. Jagged spires of crystalline salt thrust upward from the ground like the ribs of a long-dead leviathan, their surfaces pocked with corrosion and glazed in a perpetual sheen of brine that wept from the cavernous ceiling high above. The air hung thick with the stench of sulfur and decay, every breath coating the tongue with a metallic tang that lingered like a curse. Kael led the group through the labyrinth, his boots crunching over salt-crusted debris, his corrupted arm wrapped in strips of cloth torn from a dead Inquisitor's cloak. The black veins had crept past his collarbone now, branching toward his throat in jagged forks, the skin beneath waxy and cold to the touch. He kept his hand clamped over the worst of it, as if he could press the rot back into submission.
Gutter padded silently beside him, her crystalline fur dulled to the color of ash by the Warrens' oppressive gloom. She paused occasionally to sniff the air, her ears twitching at the distant skitter of Husk-Mimics nesting in the salt-riddled walls—half-alive things, their flesh threaded with Oblivion filaments that pulsed faintly in the dark. Behind them, Mira adjusted her shard-eye monocle, its green beam slicing through the murk as she scanned the walls for traces of unstable Shard residue. Ryn trailed last, humming a mangled rendition of The Ballad of the Sundown Bazaar under his breath, his fingers absently pocketing shards of salt from the ground.
"For the spa day you keep dodging," he'd said earlier, tossing a jagged crystal at Kael. It had clattered to the ground, ignored.
The path narrowed ahead, funneling them toward a churning river of acidic brine that cut through the salt like a serrated blade. Rusted pipes jutted from the water, their surfaces pocked with corrosion, their skeletal frames groaning under the weight of decades. Talis crouched at the river's edge, dipping a gauntleted hand into the current. The metal sizzled, and they signed sharply: Fatal. 30 seconds to bone.
"Charming," Ryn said, kicking a pebble into the river. It dissolved mid-plop, swallowed by the brine's hungry hiss. "Any genius plans, or do we start drawing straws?"
Mira unshouldered her pack without a word, retrieving a frayed coil of Oblivion-resistant wire and a dented hydrostatic gauge. "The pipes," she said, her voice clipped. "We anchor a line between the sturdiest two and cross hand-over-hand. The corrosion is uneven—some will hold."
Kael's venom stirred sluggishly in his veins as he helped Ryn rig the wire between two pipes, the frayed ends sparking where they touched the salt. The group moved one by one, limbs trembling as the brine hissed below, its vapors stinging their eyes and throats. Kael went first, his corrupted arm slick with sweat under its wrappings, his boots slipping on the pipe's slick surface. Halfway across, the wire snapped with a metallic scream, and Ryn dangled by one arm, his boots skimming the brine.
"Fantastic spa treatment," he gasped, his face pale but his grin intact. "Think I'll skip the exfoliation—"
Kael's venom lashed out before he could finish, hardening into a hooked claw that hauled Ryn onto the pipe. The effort left him retching, black bile frothing at the corners of his mouth. Ryn clapped him on the shoulder, his humor brittle. "Knew you cared."
They camped that night in a hollowed salt cave, its walls embedded with veins of quartz that glittered faintly in the firelight. Mira dissected a salt leech carcass—a creature they'd fought hours earlier, its glass teeth still embedded in Talis's gauntlet—while Ryn skewered synth-rats on a salvaged rebar spit. The rats hissed over the flames, their greasy smoke mingling with the cave's damp chill. Talis sharpened their clawed gauntlets in the corner, the rhythmic scritch-scritch of metal on stone echoing like a funeral dirge. Gutter gnawed on a leech spine, her amber eyes reflecting the fire's embers, her fur flickering faintly with each crackle of the flames.
Ryn tossed Kael a charred rat. "Eat. You look like a Progenitor's chew toy."
Kael prodded the meat, his appetite long since dead. "How'd you survive the Dregs? You'd annoy a corpse into killing you."
"Charm. Also, I stole Cabbot's prosthetic leg once. Traded it for a grenade." Ryn's smirk faltered as he poked the fire. "Liss rigged it to blow his favorite brothel. Good times."
Mira held a leech tooth to the light, her shard-eye dissecting its serrated edge. "Their venom shares properties with Shardblight. Fascinating."
"Fascinating," Ryn mimicked, rolling his eyes. "You'd autopsy your own shadow if it twitched wrong."
Talis signed from the shadows, their hands carving shapes in the smoky air: Why follow us?
Mira's scalpel stilled. "The Epiphany shards hold answers. My sister believed they could purify corruption."
Kael's laugh was a dry rasp. "And you?"
"I believe in results."
Dawn came without light, only the groan of shifting salt and the distant wail of a brine geyser erupting somewhere deep in the Warrens. They navigated a narrow crevasse, the walls pressing close enough to taste the salt on their lips, when the ground shuddered violently. A geyser exploded ahead, spraying acid in a lethal arc that scarred the salt walls where Mira had stood moments before.
"Move!" Kael shoved her behind a column as the torrent seared the air. Gutter herded Talis and Ryn into a fissure, her crystalline body deflecting droplets that sizzled against the quartz. When the geyser spent itself, the air hung thick with toxic steam, and Ryn coughed into his sleeve, his voice raw. "Anyone else miss the elegant horrors of the Dregs?"
Mira scraped geyser residue into a vial, her hands steady. "The compounds here could stabilize Neutralizer-8."
"Priorities, Ghostie. Priorities."