Yellow Jacket

The world didn't break.

It melted.

Warren's first step off the stone was steady. The second nearly wasn't. Not from fear or pain, but because the earth itself seemed to shift beneath him, slow and too-bright, like it had been varnished in heat. The path ahead writhed. Not visibly, yet, but somewhere between his vision and his skull, things began to separate.

He kept walking.

The wind up the ridge wasn't wind. It was breath. Hot and slow, exhaled by a god that had forgotten how to cool the world. Dust slid in sheets along the bone-white path, edges carved by old lava flows and brittle shale. Even his boots felt thinner here.

Behind him, the peak loomed like a broken tooth. Jagged. Dark. Crowned in ash plumes that shimmered faintly in the light. Somewhere within that crown was the pool. Somewhere within that pool, the cindershards, territorial, heat-fed serpents bred from stone and flame, waited in silence.

His hands had begun to sweat. But not from heat. The bowl hadn't burned his throat. It hadn't even tasted wrong. But something inside it now tasted him.

A flicker of light crossed his vision. He paused.

Not light. Memory.

Mara's coat, bright and yellow, standing on the edge of a shattered rooftop. Her face shrouded by wind and smoke. She didn't speak. Just looked at him.

He blinked. She was gone.

Keep walking.

His heart began to pound, not fast, but hard. Like it had grown larger in his chest, too big to fit cleanly beneath his ribs. Each beat echoed in his spine.

The incline steepened. The heat grew less like heat and more like pressure. It had weight now. He began to sweat for real. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. The air tasted like iron and glass.

Warren didn't slow.

Sweat slicked his bare torso. His breath shortened. His vision began to twitch at the edges.

Still, he climbed.

Somewhere behind him, a song began. Soft. Off-key. A child's voice? No. Not real.

He didn't turn.

Instead, he muttered a line from the Scav Code under his breath: "Hold what breaks, even if it cuts you."

The wind answered. Not in words, but in weight.

It pushed against him now. Harder. The slope narrowed, becoming a sharp ridge line of obsidian and scoria. Warren placed his feet with care. But the world spun sideways more than once.

His balance held.

He climbed.

And then he reached the shelf. A flat ledge, halfway to the peak, marked by a ring of burnt stakes. Here, the wind didn't just blow, it screamed. And in its scream came another flicker.

A shadow, taller than any man Warren had ever seen, draped in imaginary armor that looked half-melted and all wrong. Its eyes were dead suns. Its mouth twisted slowly into something almost human.

"You're not ready," the hallucination said.

Warren didn't speak.

He stepped past the ring.

The air grew thicker. His skin smoked. The pain crawled under his ribs and into his lungs.

Another step. Then another.

The peak loomed closer now. A final stretch of crag and pain. The molten pool would be just beyond.

His hands were shaking. His body ached. His vision swam.

But Warren grinned.

Because this wasn't pain.

This was proof.

And he would give them everything. Even this.

The ridge bent inward, forming a narrow channel carved by years of heat and shifting stone. Warren dropped to a crouch, crawling where walking became impossible. His knees scraped rock. His hands shook harder. The paste in his blood sang now, vibrating in his ears like a hum he couldn't silence.

Each breath came wet. Labored. The air stuck in his throat like glue.

He paused to vomit. Not bile, black fluid, thick as tar, seeped between his teeth. He didn't question it. He wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm and kept moving.

Above him, the sky flickered. Not from weather. From memory. The clouds were shaped wrong. Hexagonal. Blue-gold. Like the ceiling of an Imperial throne room he'd never seen.

He blinked and the image broke apart.

His body ached in new ways now. Not just pain, disconnect. Muscle fibers twitched where he didn't move. Nerves fired on delay. His own limbs stopped feeling like his.

Still, he climbed.

The ridge flattened into a basin. Shallow at first, then deep, ringed in black rock with crimson veins. The pool should have been here. But he hadn't reached it yet.

He dropped to one knee, not in worship or awe, but because his body refused to keep standing. Pain wasn't new to him, it lived in the back of his joints, the pull of his scars, the quiet grind of his jaw when he forced himself to smile. But this was different.

This pain came in waves.

Not sharp, not immediate. Rolling heat, thick as oil, crashing against his skull and sinking into his bones. It made him want to claw his own spine out, just to find the source. But he didn't. Didn't scream. Just breathed through it.

He had lived with pain his whole life. This was just louder.

His skin felt like it was being roasted, raw, tight, stretched thin over heat that wasn't real but refused to be ignored. The paste inside him had lit a phantom fire, tricking every nerve into believing he was burning alive. His blood felt like lava, his bones like kiln-fired clay. He wasn't dying, but every cell screamed otherwise. A lower note hummed behind his teeth.

His body wasn't cooking. It was freezing. That was the truth. But the Natah lied to his nerves. His sweat glands pushed out something viscous, glossy, laced with volcanic salts and silica dust. A protective membrane, thick as forge glass, coated him in a living shield.

His body thought it burned. That pain was keeping him alive.

He stood again. Not because the pain had passed. But because he hadn't.

If he stayed down, it would win.

So he rose.

The slope began again.

Down this time.

The ascent had broken open something inside him.

Not weakness.

Memory.

He remembered Mara's voice. Not a speech. Just the sound she made when she saw him fall for the first time.

She hadn't helped him up.

She'd said: "Get up Rabbit. Show the world you're still breathing."

He had.

And he did so again.

The wind met him with new fury, as if angry that he still lived.

He smiled.

It was a cracked thing, full of blood and salt.

But it was real.

He walked.

Each step a defiance.

Each breath a refusal.

And the world, hot and bright and burning, did not break him.

But it did thin him.

The pain no longer surged in waves, it became the ocean itself, a constant pressure dragging at his resolve. The glow ahead stretched long now, bleeding across the stone like liquid sunrise. He hadn't reached the edge, not yet, but the pull was real. The presence beneath the slope had awakened.

He slowed purposefully.

Every step forward now was an offering. A declaration that he would not be turned back.

He didn't need to see the pool to know what stirred below it. The legends weren't metaphors. The Boneway told their children of the cindershards not to frighten them, but to remind them: fire was older than story, and it never forgot its shape.

Muk-Tah had told Warren, in secret, the night before they arrived. Someone would call for it. Most likely one of the elders would make him challenge the Natah, hoping Warren would back down. But Warren hadn't flinched. He had told Muk-Tah to accept it. Told him he would rise to the challenge.

Now, he wasn't so sure.

The climb had alread nearly killed him. The Natah in his veins had stripped away all but the bones of his will. And the trial wasn't even close to over. He hadn't just agreed to climb. He had agreed to face a cindershard. To challenge Natah, not just a rite, but a myth given form, all while poisoned to the teeth, every step dragging a body that felt like it was being flayed alive. His teeth weren't actually melting, his blood wasn't lava, his eyes weren't on fire. He had checked. But by the gods, it felt like it.

And if he was unlucky, it might not be a young one. It might be something older. Stronger. A Brood Mother.

The Gods he prayed to gave him no strength.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

But he kept walking.

Warren pressed on. The ridge narrowed into a final curve, lined with stone so scorched it shimmered under foot.

It was still a while until noon. That much he knew. He had vowed to return before the sun reached its peak, with a cindershard's head in hand. It wasn't part of the rite. The rite gave them the whole day. Only the hardest, the maddest, the ones who didn't know when to stop tried to do it faster. Warren was a stubborn bastard. He didn't know when enough was enough. So he kept moving.

One more step.

And then the pool would be in reach.

He stepped into the basin.

The pool waited, molten stone in motion, smooth and silent. No ripple. No smoke. Just heat.

Then it surged.

No warning. No tremor. No time to breathe.

The surface didn't break; it recoiled. Something beneath shifted with purpose, and the liquid convulsed like it had been struck from below.

Warren had enough time to flinch. Not to think. Just flinch.

The cindershard hit the air with a scream that wasn't sound. It was temperature. Pressure. Rage, made tangible. It didn't rise, it erupted. A serpent of scale-glass and magma, large enough to blot out the sky, uncoiling as if the pool had birthed a god.

A Brood Mother.

She was immense, easily the length of a river barge, her bulk too vast to gauge all at once. Her skin glistened like armor forged from volcanic obsidian, but it moved like muscle. Each scale shimmered with heat mirage, flickering between black glass, burning coal, and the gold of slag turned molten. Her eyes were furnace cores, deep-set and haloed in steam. What passed for a mouth stretched open with layered mandibles rimmed in superheated teeth, glowing dull red as if her hunger had a temperature. Along her spine, jagged spines jutted like broken blades, swaying with lethal grace. Smoke coiled from her breath, not exhaled, but shed, as though the air itself recoiled from touching her. When she moved, the stone beneath her blackened.

She was pressure given shape. Territory, heat, instinct, and fury, all bound in scale and sinew.

She was real. And she had seen him.

Of course he was that unlucky.

Warren staggered back, hands raised, but his footing gave. His feet scraped obsidian. Heat rolled through him like a hammer.

He flexed.

Rain Dancer.

He tried to activate it. Nothing. Not even a drop. His Skill didn't just fail, it vanished. No whisper. No reaction. No storm to reach for. It was gone, like it had never known this place.

Panic flared.

He reached for Flicker. It answered, but like dragging a blade through bone. The heat haze peeled around him with reluctance, each step carved from agony. It wasn't smooth. Not seamless. But it worked. Pain roared in his skull, but he moved. Delay. Stagger. His brain stuttered against the Natah, the poison heat pulling all thoughts into slow fire. His breath came sharp. His knees trembled.

Then she struck.

He dove sideways. Not graceful. Not clean. He hit stone and rolled hard, scraping his arm raw. The ground hissed.

A tail, thick as a tree, smashed where he'd been. Stone cracked. Shards flew. Heat surged in waves.

He gritted his teeth. Grabbed his balance. Eyes blurred, but he tracked movement. Barely.

She circled. That was the only word. She didn't crawl, she flowed. Half-submerged in the pool, half above it, her scales were wet flame and black crystal. Her body whispered, a thousand low voices in motion.

The Natah's fire in his veins twisted his senses. Sound bled color. Heat became weight. Memory fluttered in the edges of vision.

He focused.

Flicker.

It triggered again. Late. Slow. He blinked forward, but clipped a jagged edge. Skidded. Landed hard on one shoulder.

The Brood Mother snapped at the blur of movement. Missed. Her jaws cracked the air.

Warren got up.

No elegance. Just motion.

The edge of the pool glowed hotter now. The Brood Mother rose higher. She wasn't done waking. Not even close.

He circled. Looking for high ground. A ridge. A drop. Anything.

The stone beneath him shifted with the heat.

She dove.

The lava didn't splash. It sucked her down like it was a sinkhole.

Where would she come up?

He didn't wait.

Warren ran.

Across the shelf. Over a floor scorched to black.

His boots were long since ash. The soles of his feet, slick, sweat drenched things.

He slipped once. Caught himself.

Slipped again. Nearly fell.

The Natah made it feel like his lungs burned.

But it was a lie. A survival trick. Every breath seared on the way in, but it wasn't fire, it was filtration. His lungs only drew oxygen. The poison vapors that shimmered above the lava pools never touched him.

The air should have killed him.

The heat should have cooked him instantly.

His pants were gone. Nothing left but ash and tatters.

His hair was moist with fluid, a clear, viscous substance his glands excreted now. It cooled. It shielded. It mimicked panic.

Only the loincloth Nanuk had given him the night before kept him from total indecency.

But he breathed.

And he endured.

He ran through a world on fire.

Behind him, the pool exploded.

She came up like a geyser, magma trailing from her mouth, flame leaking from her joints.

A chunk of molten stone hit his back. But the Natah did it's job.

He kept running.

He found a ridge. Jumped.

Too far.

Hit the edge. Slid. Caught a ledge. Hung.

The Brood Mother coiled above, watching. Learning.

She struck again.

The wall cracked where he'd hung seconds before.

He pulled up. Elbow over edge. Then the other.

He triggered, Echo Vision.

It hit him like a flood. Not just vision, input. Too much, too fast. His balance broke. He stumbled, blinking against the white-out static across his eyes. But he saw. He knew.

Echo Vision snapped into focus: the last recoil of her jaw, the shimmer of her neck, the delay between her spines and tail. Not insight. Not grace. Just raw data. Pattern without meaning, he found the softest seams: the inner hinge of a jaw, the slick ridge of a joint, the coiled tension where muscle met scale.

It wasn't much.

But he had the semblance of a plan now.

He spat blood. Pressed one hand to the rocky ground.

The heat made the stone feel soft.

He held his hand lance and pulled the truncheon free from the loincloth.

The Brood Mother reared.

He rolled. Flicked the lance upward. Fired.

The flechette glanced off her mouthplate. Melting to slag as it fell.

She flinched.

He moved again. Not quick. But with intention.

Pain became background. The new baseline.

His feet were unsteady.

His skin felt like an inferno.

But he moved.

She roared.

The Natah's flames surged.

He couldn't scream. Not anymore. His throat felt like broken glass.

But his hands still worked..

She lunged.

He ducked. Slid. Fired again. This time into her neck seam.

It sank.

She shrieked. Twisted. Slammed him with the edge of her body.

He hit the rock. Hard.

But he didn't drop the truncheon.

He flickered again.

He reappeared under her. Slammed the truncheon into the exposed ridge between her third and fourth coil. Heard something crack.

She bucked.

He rolled clear.

The pool cracked.

The sky flickered.

The fight had just begun.

He wasn't dead yet.

So he fought on.

Warren ran around the lip of the pool, the lava's surface roiling beneath a haze of shimmering heat. Across the basin, the Brood Mother, the cindershard, shifted. Her body was vast, layered in volcanic plates that flexed with each breath, her eyes two dull coals that flared when she locked on to him. He didn't flinch.

His lance was nearly empty. The last round might not pierce the next layer of armor. The truncheon in his grip felt absurd. Like trying to bludgeon a mountain. He didn't have a weapon that could kill her. Not directly. Not here.

But there was one weapon he planned on using.

He moved.

The beast roared. Her body coiled, rippling stone and muscle, then lunged. Warren dove, skidding across the basalt shelf as her jaws crushed where he'd been. The impact sent cracks spidering through the ground.

He veered left, toward a high-cut ridge.

The path wasn't made for speed. It wasn't made at all. But Warren remembered the slope. Every jut of stone. Every brittle ledge. And she followed.

The cindershard surged after him, each movement breaking stone, sending up showers of ash and smoke. The ground trembled under her weight. But she was large. Heavy. Fast, yes, but not nimble.

He was.

Warren leapt over a gash in the path, slid down a gravel shelf, then darted across a cracked slab. Behind him, the beast crashed through the gap, widening it. Stone fell in sheets. She roared, not from rage, but confusion. Prey didn't run toward death.

He bolted.

He veered left, toward a high-cut ridge. The beast followed. He kicked loose a shale pile. The rocks cascaded behind him, catching her front limbs. She slipped, not down, but enough. Enough to hesitate. Enough to bleed.

Her head turned. He fired. One round. It struck the inside of her jaw. Not deep, but the flinch gave him another second.

He ran on.

Down the slope, the path opened into a tight ravine where the mountain had fractured during the last eruption. A funnel. One he could use.

He darted inside.

She followed.

The walls were high here. Unstable. Warren skidded to a stop, spun, and jammed the last lance round into a weak seam in the rock. He didn't fire at her.

He fired at the ridge.

The blast cracked the wall. A delay, then a groan. Then collapse. The slide came down like thunder, tons of stone crashing into her flank. She howled, a guttural, tearing sound. The rock didn't kill her. But it hurt. Slowed her. Made her bleed.

He led her ever onward.

Back into the open. Down the final slope.

She was angrier now. Slower, too. But relentless. Each step gouged the earth, her body leaving furrows in her wake. And still, Warren stayed just ahead.

The caldera opened below. The tribal grounds. He could see them now, huts, people, motion.

Panic.

The ground shook. The beast bore down. Warren didn't stop.

He reached the edge.

And jumped.

He slid down a long slope of ash and stone, it carried him down like a blade. The cindershard followed, momentum too great to stop. Her bulk filled the slope.

At the base, the tribe scattered. Elders screamed. Ernala shouted for retreat. Children were dragged from tents. Warriors readied blades that would do nothing.

But not all fled.

Muk-Tah stood firm. Nanuk beside him. The Sons of Muk-Tah, unmoved.

Ernala's voice shook with fury.

"He has brought death to our doors!"

"No, Mother!" Nanuk shouted back, eyes wide with something close to reverence.

The tribe stilled. Breath held. The roar of the approaching cindershard gave way to a different sound, voices raised in a wave behind Muk-Tah.

Grix cackled wildly from atop a barrel. "The spitter's so happy you brought the show to them! They all wanted to see!"

Styll chirped, standing on a crate and flailing her little paws like flags. "Gets it, Warn! Crunch the stupids face!"

Deana's eyes glowed, a quiet shimmer beneath her skin. Her voice was hushed, but steady: "He's burning so bright." And in that moment, something in her eased. A quiet recognition that what she had believed in was no longer a hope, it was real, unfolding before her.

Cassian let out a whoop.

Wren cupped her hands and screamed, "You better come back with something to cook, or I'm feeding you rocks!"

Calra hollered, teeth bared. "Smash it! Do it!"

Isol blinked, staring, awe replacing fear. "He's going to win," he whispered.

Then Warren and the beast spilled fully into view.

He angled toward the heart of the camp. The beast barreled behind him. Too fast. Too heavy.

He dove again. Rolled. Came up behind a forge-stone pillar. She couldn't stop.

She hit it.

The crack of impact split the air. Her body buckled, momentum folding her neck forward seems ripping open from the wounds as her crest struck the ground. A shudder. A silence. Then collapse.

Dust rose.

Warren stood.

His skin slick with that false sweat. His hands trembled. But he was breathing.

He stepped toward the body.

The cindershard still lived, barely. Her eyes flickered. Her chest rose, slow.

He didn't speak.

He lifted the truncheon.

And ended it.

Behind him, silence fractured.

Voices lifted. Cheers broke from mouths still trembling. Elders fell to their knees. Warriors dropped weapons, not in surrender, but in respect.

Nanuk stepped forward, voice ringing clear now. "He has brought us the feast of a Tide-Lord."

A title older than the tribe's memory. Not for chieftains. Not even for champions.

For those who changed what the world could be.

Warren didn't speak.

He stood beside the corpse.

Alive.

You have reached Level 11

Warren Smith — Level 11

(Second threshold requirements not met)

Class: Drift Walker

Alignment: Aberrant

Unallocated Stat Points: 4

Attributes:

Strength: 11

Perception: 16

Intelligence: 24

Dexterity: 18

Endurance: 11

Resolve: 21

Warning
Statistical imbalance detected.

No single stat should exceed double the value of any other.
Unexpected mutations may occur.

Skills at Level 11:

Soft Flicker (Active):

A refined evolution of Flicker Steps. Allows the user to disperse into a controlled nanite mist and reconstitute nearby within visual range, without noise, shimmer, or static trail. Movement is no longer
disruptive, no longer a visual stutter: it simply happens, like a blink that no one notices.

Requires direct line of sight, The reformation process has been stabilized, smoothed into seamless reintegration. There is no burst, no flash, no displacement wake, just a change in position, clean and surgical.

Echo Vision (Passive):

An advanced extension of Scavenger's Eye. Retains the passive enhancement of visual pattern recognition and environmental
scanning, sharpening Warren's ability to detect irregularities, hidden salvage, and useful out-of-place elements even in chaotic or cluttered terrain. His brain remains trained to catalog structural logic and deviation
without conscious effort, every frame of vision filtered, indexed, and weighed

But now, Echo Vision does moreIt records short-term visual sequences in real time, leaving behind memory echoes that can be mentally replayed. Movements, layout shifts, enemy paths, anything witnessed becomes retraceable, reviewable, and perfectly clear when needed most. Useful for backtracking, identifying inconsistencies, or remembering the exact placement of an item or threat that was seen for only a moment.

Examine (Active):

Allows close, precise inspection of physical items. Identifies structural materials, mechanical condition, origin markers, manufacturing details, and utility potential. Does not reveal hidden properties.

Quick Reflexes (Passive):

Improves startle-response timing and intramuscular coordination. Allows the body to instinctively respond to fast-changing movement or proximity without conscious input, evasive steps, and reflexive tensing when startled. Reflexes that fire before thought, clean, automatic, almost predictive. As if the body, when trained long enough, starts to anticipate motion before it registers. like instinct honed into something sharp.

Crafting (Active):

Activates a system-assisted overlay that highlights structural stress points, compatible materials, and assembly pathways in real time. Enhances focus and spatial awareness, allowing rapid assessment and execution of mechanical or structural tasks. Used to repurpose materials into tools, stabilizers, or functioning devices with heightened efficiency and minimal error.