CHAPTER 43: CHAPTER 43: DUNGEON BREAK, THE ASH WARDEN WAR (3)

The city kept breathing like a crushed lung—shallow, ragged, angry that it still worked.

The table I’d half-melted during the forge session looked like modern art for people who hate chairs. Darkharness rested under my jacket like a cat that refused to admit it liked me; every time my pulse ticked, the weave answered with a faint, smug ripple.

[Guild Net: Partial — Text Only]

[Signal Strength: 13% → 9%]

[Transit Charges (Today): 1]

[Absolute Regeneration: Online (Throttled)]

Good enough to be stupid with a phone.

I thumbed open contacts that still had names instead of "ID—Unknown." The screen spider-webbed light through one crack, and ash kept finding its way into the charging port like it wanted to live there rent-free. Appropriate.

Jax first. If he was dead, he’d be loud about it.

Ethan → Jax

still breathing, caveman?

Jax:

Define breathing. My knee’s gone. Shield’s dust. Sword’s halfway there. You?

Ethan:

Less holes. Better jokes. Forged you a toy. Don’t die before I hand it over.

Jax:

You forged gear during a break?

(Even in text, he sounds like a guy yelling over gunfire.)

Ethan:

Therapy. Cheaper than a shrink. More fire.

Jax:

You’re unbelievable.

Ethan:

You’re welcome.

Jax:

Where?

Ethan:

Arcadia Market. East tram arches. Thirty. Limp fast.

Jax:

Copy. If I’m late, it’s because my leg mutinied.

Classic Jax—soldier dry, not witty. The kind of man who thinks sarcasm is punctuation.

Ethan → Hana

you alive?

Silence. Then three dots blink and hesitate before turning into words.

Hana:

Evac corridor Mu still holding. Two squads left. Twelve civilians. Threads almost gone. You?

Ethan:

Whole. Ugly. Mobile. Made you something new. Lets meet?

Hana:

You’re forging now? The city’s burning.

Ethan:

Best forge heat I’ve had all year.

(Her typing stops for ten seconds. When she replies, it’s colder.)

Hana:

Rumors say the break started where you were.

Ethan:

Rumors talk a lot. Don’t listen to ghosts.

Hana:

Location?

Ethan:

Arcadia Market. East tram arches. Thirty. Bring whoever’s breathing.

Hana:

If the corridor holds. If not, I move toward Guild Row.

Ethan:

Copy. I’ll leave a trail.

Hana:

...Don’t. Just make it there.

The smallest laugh climbed up my throat and remembered how to be a sound.

[Signal Strength: 9% → 6%]

I stood. The room creaked like it had opinions about that. Darkharness tightened along my ribs and then loosened, finding the shape of "we’re leaving." Fangpiercer and Gloamthorn slid into their homes with a promise to behave that neither had ever kept.

I pulled the curtains back with two fingers. Arcadia Market sat three districts out, past a tangle of tramlines and a boulevard where the road had learned how to be river. The Gate glow painted the sky behind it like someone had spilled a god and never cleaned it up.

"Alright," I told the empty apartment. "Field trip."

The hallway wanted to be a horror movie and settled for "expensive plumbing noises." My neighbor’s kid—the wyvern one—peeked out from a stairwell, face pale in the emergency lights. I pointed down, toward responders who had collected in a green-glowing knot and looked tireder than God.

"Go on," I told him. "Today we listen to the people with vests."

He held up the one-winged wyvern. "He says you’re scary."

"Your wyvern has taste," I said, and kept moving.

A fire door had jammed again from heat warp. Tap... tap... and then on the note.

[Pattern Recall (Minor)]

[Material Resonance → Success]

The latch gave with a sigh, and twenty strangers I’d never know poured through the gap and didn’t thank me. Good. Gratitude slows you down.

Outside, the city had learned a new pitch—low, wide, and patient. The kind of hum that gets in your molars. A drone barked orders overhead: "Corridor Lambda compromised... Gate District... shelter..." and then it hiccupped into static like it had choked on its own sentence.

I checked the time like it owed me rent.

[Local: 20:41]

[Meeting: T–30]

If I Transit-hopped once I could make it in five; if I kept the charge, I could survive something dumb later. I saved the charge. Boring wins wars.

On Seventh, two municipal trucks had formed a V across the boulevard with a stretch of neon tape pretending to be a wall between them. A responder checked wrists with a scanner wand that did not like mine.

Her eyes flicked from the blue band to my face to the knives. "You’re flagged," she said, voice carved down to function.

"Everyone’s flagged today?" I said.

"We have evac corridors to protect."

"Me too."

She held my gaze a beat longer than comfort, then tilted her head at the gap. "Stay off Western."

"Because it doesn’t exist, I heard."

"You’d be surprised how many people try anyway."

"Disappointment is Arcadia’s favorite sport," I said, and slid through the V. Darkharness flowed along my forearm and hardened when my elbow brushed a side-mirror—reflex, protective, overbearing. I flexed and it let go like it hadn’t done anything.

"I know," I muttered to it. "You’re very helpful. We’ll get you a sticker."

Two blocks in, the city changed temperature. Not hotter. Meaner. Ash fell thicker, as if the sky had given up and started sifting its own bones. Far off, the Gate beat slow. The Hierophant was a rumor with mass. You could feel the size of his sentences.

I shoved the thought into the back pocket of my skull and texted as I walked.

Ethan → Jax

Update?

Jax:

Took a hit. Grav-pull is not strong enough for S rank orcs. Knee’s gone for good. Still moving. Twenty out if nothing blocks me.

Ethan:

When we meet, you get a sword. Try not to cry.

Jax:

I’m past crying, man. Just keep the spot clear.

Ethan:

Copy. Hurry up.

Jax:

Trying. City’s a graveyard.

I pocketed the phone and crossed under the elevated tracks. The Market used to be a braid of food stalls and salvage sheds that smelled like frying oil and rain on rust. Now it smelled like somebody seasoned everything with battery acid. A toppled noodle cart lay wheels-up in a puddle that didn’t reflect anything right.

Under the east arches, a volunteer medic had set up a triage tarp with three cots and a bucket that had never seen clean water. She glared at me like I was a problem she didn’t have time for, then tabbed my band and recalibrated her glare to "annoyed, but grudgingly glad you exist."

"Anyone pass through here—big guy, bad hair, bigger sword-shaped absence? Thread user with too-polite voice and a bag that looks like trauma?" I asked.

"Everyone looks like trauma," she said. "But yes. A girl with the threads went north. Guy with the limp cursed at a pillar and then apologized to it."

"Yeah," I said. "That tracks."

Something big hit somewhere distant. The arch thrummed dust onto my shoulders. I kept moving.

[Signal Strength: 4%]

[New Message — Hana]

(queued)

[New Message — Jax]

(queued)

The Market’s east arcade had been punched open—five shopfronts ripped into one ragged mouth. On the far side, a mural of the Guild Row skyline survived on one wall, smeared red by the light until the painted towers looked honest.

Under a string of dead bulbs, I finally got bars again.

Hana (delivered late)

Corridor Mu holding. Two down, one critical. On route—five minutes.

Jax (delivered late)

Stairs argued with me and won. Three turns out.

I leaned against a pillar and pretended I wasn’t counting heartbeats. Darkharness unwound across my left forearm into a half-gauntlet without being asked. It felt what I felt—tension, angle, threat—and made its own choices. I let it. Some days delegation is survival.

Boots scuffed concrete. A silhouette peeled out of smoke and turned into Hana—ponytail ragged, cheeks streaked with whatever the city wore for makeup now, wrists wrapped in thread that had frayed down to stubbornness. Her eyes did quick arithmetic on me and arrived at "alive,"question mark.

"Cross,"she said, like the relief hurt.

"Hana." I held out a palm.

She hesitated—then slapped it, quick. "You look awful."

"You look organized," I said. "It’s upsetting."

She snorted once, then the laugh crashed into a wall of grief so fast both of us pretended we hadn’t noticed. We do that. It’s a sport.

"Where’s Jax?" she asked.

"Trying to lose an argument with stairs," I said. "He’ll limp in noisy."

The wind shifted, dragging the smell of iron and burned oil through the arches. The ash didn’t fall anymore—it just hung there, waiting to see who moved first.

Hana’s eyes kept flicking to every shadow like she expected one to answer. The threads on her wrists twitched, tired but ready. My pulse synced with the Darkharness hum, one heartbeat off from the city’s dying rhythm.

Somewhere out there, a tower screamed and fell quiet again.

I looked past her toward the smoke-stained street, and for a second I thought I saw movement—big, slow, limping.

" Let’s hope that it’s him," I said.

She followed my gaze, tense enough to hum.

The city didn’t blink.

I straightened, hand brushing Fangpiercer’s hilt, and waited.