The sky screamed, the air cracking like thin ice under Margit's impossible arrival. Red runes bled across the horizon, painting the iron waste in scarlet. Around them, the sparse figures lingering near the settlement's reinforced blast doors scattered like dust before a gale. Dovjen, however, remained rooted, a hand still clasping Bato's arm, his gaze fixed on the tearing sky, his expression carefully neutral. Fluffy, the resurrected dreadnought-troll, rumbled uneasily, its heavy head swiveling to track the aerial fracture. Its single green lens narrowed at the tear above, hydraulics whining inside its torso. Dovjen gave the creature a reassuring pat on its armored flank. "Easy, boy," he murmured, his voice soft even amidst the chaos. "Just a new friend showing up for tea." "Tea?!" Bato shrieked, his knuckles whitening around his carry-bag. "That's not a friend, Dovjen! That's... that's the *Cull-Master!* Everyone says she's a walking death sentence! A system-enforcer!" Dovjen’s grip on Bato’s arm tightened almost imperceptibly. "She's just a variable," he corrected, his voice losing a fraction of its softness. "All variables can be managed. Now, inside. Before she makes things truly inconvenient." He pushed Bato gently towards the open blast doors. The gate guards, pale and trembling, had already abandoned their posts, fleeing deeper into the settlement. The threshold was now an unguarded maw. Dovjen steered Bato and Fluffy through the gap, the hydraulic portals grinding shut behind them with a shudder that reverberated down the gangways. The crimson light outside was instantly muted, replaced by the amber buzz of arc-lamps and the hum of diesel-run generators. Inside, Veszagrad was a cavernous shantytown carved into the ribcage of an ancient, mechanized war-rig. Towering rib-arches, reinforced with corrugated plate and pulsing with exposed power conduits, soared overhead. Shelters of sheet lead, salvage tarps, and humming terminal displays clung to the bones like barnacles. Makeshift bazaars teemed with refugees trading scrap, their voices a constant din over the rhythmic clang of distant forges. The air smelled of ozone, rendered fat, and unwashed bodies. Bato, despite his terror, gaped. "It's... it's huge!" he whispered, momentarily forgetting the impending doom outside. Dovjen nodded, scanning the crowd. He guided them towards a less crowded alleyway, a quiet nook beneath a calcified vertebra that hummed with low-frequency current. "We'll set up here," he said, gesturing to a relatively clean patch of dust. "Keep a low profile for now. Fluffy, perimeter. No one gets close unless I say so." Fluffy settled with a metallic thump, hunkering into the shadows cast by overhead cabling, its camera-eye a steady beacon. The troll’s iron bulk and dead stare were enough to deter any pickpockets or thugs. Bato, still shaky, pulled out his pristine espresso machine. "I can... I can make you that flat white now, Dovjen. It might help with... this." Dovjen offered a rare, small smile. "That would be good, Bato." The simple, domestic request, even in the heart of a giant dead machine, was a anchor. His gaze, however, remained sharp, sweeping the crowd. He could feel it, a prickling sensation on his skin, the systemic anomaly Margit’s arrival represented. It wouldn’t be long. Suddenly, a hush fell over a section of the market, spreading outwards like a ripple. A figure descended from the shattered roof of the dreadnought’s thorax, not flying, but simply *appearing*, stepping out of the fractured light like a glitch in reality. She wore armor of obsidian scales that seemed to drink the light, her face hidden behind a cowl that cast it in perpetual shadow. Margit. The Cull-Master. Silence descended. Even the distant clang of forges quieted. Every eye in the hall turned to her. Margit surveyed the gathered survivors with an unnerving stillness. Her voice, when it came, was a cold, synthesized whisper that somehow resonated through every bone and girder of the city. "[ CRUCIBLE AEGIS: ATTENTION ALL UNITS. ] [ TUTORIAL PROTOCOLS HAVE BEEN COMPROMISED. ] [ NEW SURVIVAL PARAMETERS ARE NOW ACTIVE. ]" From the crowd, a man in spiked plate stepped forward, his pauldron bearing the crossed-wrench emblem of the Iron Sentinels. "Compromised? By what, some new monster you conjured, hag?" Varkos bellowed, his voice laced with bravado. "I run the Sentinels on this tier, hag! You don't rewrite entry tax without clearing me first!" Margit tilted her head, a movement so slight it was barely perceptible. "[ IRRELEVANT. ] [ OBSERVATION: UNIT 'VARKOS' EXHIBITS HOSTILE BEHAVIOR. ] [ THREAT ASSESSMENT: MINIMAL. ] [ SOLUTION: ERADICATION. ]" The brute scoffed, drawing a two-handed energy axe that sputtered with blue discharge. "You think you scare me? I've cleaved through a dozen dreadnought-spawn! I'm top-tier, you overgrown system-construct! Come on, let's see what you've got!" Margit offered no further words. Her hand, previously hidden within the folds of her cloak, emerged. There was no grand gesture, no spell incantation. A single, almost invisible wave of distortion shimmered from her palm. Varkos, mid-taunt, screamed. Not a scream of pain, but of unraveling. His body, his armor, his crackling axe – everything dissolved into shimmering motes of light, an ethereal dust that sparkled for a moment before vanishing completely. There was no blood, no corpse, just the snap of ionized air where the Sentinel boss had stood. The silence that followed was absolute, suffocating. Bato gasped, dropping a milk pitcher, which clattered loudly on the metal floor. Dovjen watched the floating motes dissipate, calculating the wattage needed to atomize five hundred pounds of alloy. Effortless. Complete. He shifted Bato behind his shoulder, letting his spine sag to mimic an exhausted scrapper trying to blend in. He was just a mechanic, after all. A nobody. Margit’s head slowly turned, her obscured gaze sweeping over the survivors, lingering for a fraction of a second on Dovjen’s hidden form. Then, she began to walk, her steps echoing unnervingly on the metal floor. She moved with purpose, directly towards Dovjen and Bato’s secluded nook. The crowd parted around her like frightened fish. "[ OBSERVATION: ANOMALOUS COMBAT PERFORMANCE DETECTED IN SECTOR 4. ]" Her voice was closer now, a low thrum that vibrated in Dovjen’s bones. "[ TARGET: DOVJEN. ] [ CLASSIFICATION: CYBER-NECROMANCER. ]" Bato whimpered, pressing himself against Dovjen’s back. Dovjen remained still, his face carefully blank, a mask of meekness. He could feel Margit’s presence now, a chilling aura that spoke of absolute authority. She stopped directly in front of them, her shadowed face level with Dovjen’s. "Just looking for grease and copper, ma'am," Dovjen said, his tone flat. "Trying to make a living. No trouble here." Margit leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper, intimate and terrifying. It was no longer the synthesized system-voice, but a colder, more human tone, though still devoid of warmth. "Your unique class code, Dovjen, has a deeply inconvenient interaction with the Crucible Aegis. It permits... an exploitation of core functions. An *unintended* parameter bypass. You are a threat to more than just the tutorial's integrity. You are a threat to the *shield*." Dovjen kept his chin down, though his fingers flexed against his grease-stained spanner. The shield. He had seen the celestial telemetry on Szilard's corrupted data-slates—the defensive lattice keeping the void horrors at bay. Margit straightened, her voice returning to its synthesized drone, echoing through the vast space. "[ NEW TUTORIAL OBJECTIVE. ] [ ANOMALY ELIMINATION PROTOCOL INITIATED. ] [ LIVE COMBAT TRIAL. ]" With a gesture, Margit ripped open a shimmering tear in the air directly in the center of the crowded market, not unlike the one that heralded her arrival, but smaller, more contained. From its depths, a figure dropped, landing with a heavy thud that shook the market stalls. It was a skeletal titan draped in gold-threaded velvet, its eye sockets burning with green phosphor. Servos clicked in its withered fingers around a staff capped with a silver skull. An elite boss-class entity, dropped into a civilian safe zone. "[ SURVIVE THIS, ANOMALY, ]" Margit’s voice boomed, directed at Dovjen, "[ AND WE'LL TALK. ]"

The Cull-Master's Gaze