His head throbbed. Grit scraped against his cheek, a metallic tang coating his tongue, acrid and familiar. He pushed up, a groan catching in his throat. Air hit him like a physical blow – hot, stagnant, thick with the scent of ozone and something metallic, like burnt circuitry. Eyes slowly focused. Not the cool, sterile confines of his workshop, or the grimy alleyways near his usual salvage routes. This was... open. Vast. Above, a bruised, ochre sky bled into a horizon scarred by rust-red peaks. Below, a fractured plain stretched, littered with skeletal spires of ancient cities, their geometries warped by millennia of erosion and toxic winds. Distant, a river, but it gleamed with an unnatural, sickly green. Where in the blazes was he? His last memory clawed at the edges of his mind: the hum of an archaic data-core, the delicate strain of his Resonance pushing, coaxing, trying to draw a spark from dead circuits. A jolt, a flash of blinding white, then... nothing. This wasn't a displacement. This felt... different. As if the world itself had shifted beneath him. Then, a wave of alien memories crashed, cold and sharp. Not his. Yet, they settled, merging with his own, chilling him to the bone. Jorun Vane. The name echoed, but it wasn't the Jorun he knew, the quiet tinkerer from the outer sectors. This Jorun was different. Son of Archon Vane. A throwaway title, an inconvenient secret. The Conclave’s rigid hierarchy had no place for bastards. Even less for one who possessed latent Resonance, an unsanctioned, unquantified ability. He’d been given a “settlement grant.” A joke. A cruel, elaborate jest. The memories painted a vivid picture: the Archon, his face a mask of condescending apathy, handing over a parchment detailing his 'claim' to a desolate swathe of the Sunderlands. A land no sane Conclave citizen would ever venture into. A graveyard. An exile. A sentence. His elder half-brother, a man whose ambition was as sharp as his family blade, had made sure the journey was a death trap. Enforcers, not escorts. Their mission clear: ensure Jorun never reached his “gift.” The last memory was a blur of violence, a flash of steel, and the sickening crunch of bone. He was supposed to be dead. He *had* been dead. Jorun pressed a hand against his chest, feeling the ragged beat of his heart. No wounds. No pain. Only the phantom ache of another's demise. The weight of it settled on his weary shoulders. This place, this forgotten corner of the Sunderlands, was hundreds of clicks from the nearest Conclave outpost, light-years from the Citadel’s oppressive glow. No roads, no trade routes. Just the fractured remnants of Earth, millennia after the Sundering. Only residents would be the Wrought – mutated horrors twisted by the cataclysm, or independent scavengers even more ruthless. Survival. That was the raw, immediate command his mind issued. He couldn't go back. Not to the Conclave, not to the Vane Estate. His 'brother' would finish the job. Even if he survived the Wrought-infested wastes, the Conclave’s long arm would eventually reach him. He was a loose end. A liability. Going to an independent settlement? Even if he found one, they were often brutal, isolated communes, wary of outsiders, especially one with no status or supplies. They'd either enslave him or turn him away to die. Here. This desolate, forgotten stretch of ash-dusted earth. This was his prison, his graveyard, and paradoxically, his only chance. Freedom, if he could claw it from the toxic soil. But how? No rations, no tools, no shelter. Nightfall would bring a plummeting temperature, the Sunderlands' chill seeping into his bones. And the Wrought, always the Wrought, would begin their nocturnal hunts. A phantom shimmer caught his eye. A pale, semi-transparent overlay settled over his vision, faint as heat haze. It wasn't his Resonance, not exactly. It was more... structured. **[Resonance System Active]** **[Salvage Protocol Initiated]** Jorun blinked. His mind, still reeling from the memory-storm, tried to process the impossible. "Salvage Protocol"? It sounded like something from an ancient data-log, a diagnostics program for a derelict facility. Yet, it was undeniably *there*, overlaid on his perception of reality. **[Other Protocols Pending Unlock]** The system was... loading? It felt less like a discovery and more like an awakening, a deeper layer of his own Resonance clicking into place. It was a language his ability could understand, a guide for its raw potential. His gaze drifted to a clump of mutated scrub brush, its stalks brittle, leaves a sickly grey-green. His Resonance, a familiar hum in his skull, flared. He saw not just the plant, but its fibrous composition, its potential for biomass, for fuel, for raw material. The *function* of it. He squatted, grimacing as the rough earth dug into his bare knees. This Jorun was... soft. Too long in Conclave comfort, it seemed. But his own Jorun, the pragmatic builder, took over. He grabbed a handful of the tough, desiccated stalks. Pulled. The roots resisted, clinging tenaciously to the compacted earth. He strained, muscles coiling, the unfamiliar burn a stark reminder of his current physical state. With a final yank, the clump tore free, showering him with dust and fragments of soil. A soft chime. **[Biomass Collected (Mutated Scrub)]** **[Salvage Protocol: Foraging Experience +1]** Jorun stared at the floating text. This was it. The practical application of his Resonance, laid bare, quantified. The builder in him felt a strange, primal surge of recognition. "Still grinding, even now," he muttered, a wry, weary humor touching his lips. It was his nature, after all. To build, to fix, to survive. It seemed even death couldn’t change that. His eyes scanned the desolate landscape. To his left, the diseased green river, winding its way towards some distant, unseen sea. A few hundred meters further, a copse of skeletal, spire-like trees, their bark flaking, offered raw timber. Across the toxic river, jagged, rust-colored hills clawed at the sky – a potential source of minerals, stone. To his right, the barren, ash-dusted plain stretched into the haze, hiding untold dangers and possibly, forgotten ruins. The river itself, despite its toxic hue, was the most immediate source of life. Water, even tainted, could be purified. Fish, mutated or not, could be caught. Its proximity offered a defensive line. A shelter. That was first. A basic structure to fend off the elements and the Wrought. The spire-trees would yield lumber, but he needed a tool. A basic cutting implement. He bent again, the sting of scraped skin a dull protest. He started clearing another patch of the mutated scrub, a small, square area. Each yank sent a jolt of effort through his arms, his shoulders. Air was heavy, the sun beating down through the ochre haze, turning his skin slick with sweat and grime. After clearing a rough dozen square meters, he stopped, dropping heavily onto a heap of pulled scrub. His lungs burned, his muscles trembled. His exposed forearms were covered in angry red welts, an allergic reaction to the fine hairs on the plant stalks. His body protested, screaming for rest, for water, for proper sustenance. He was far from the physically conditioned survivor he needed to be. A thought, and the translucent panel reappeared. **[Salvage Protocol: Core Skills]** **[Construction: Level 0 (0/100)]** **[Foraging: Level 0 (13/100)]** **[Processing: Level 0 (0/100)]** **[Cultivation: Level 0 (0/100)]** **[Ingenuity: Level 0 (0/100)]** Thirteen points in Foraging. The small, pathetic number, coupled with the aching reality of his body, should have been disheartening. Yet, a spark flickered. He’d done something. He’d begun. A fragment of the builder’s satisfaction, even in this wasteland. His Resonance hummed, a low vibration in his mind. With each point, a tiny shard of knowledge seemed to slot into place – the best way to grip a root, the most efficient angle to pull, a deeper understanding of the plant’s basic structure. It was slow, agonizingly slow, but he could feel the subtle shift. He was learning. But the effect was already diminishing. The last few clumps had given him nothing. Simply pulling mutated scrub was no longer enough. He needed to be more efficient, more discerning. He rested for a full half-hour, letting his breathing even out, the muscle tremors subside. The sun dipped further, painting the sky in deeper shades of bruised purple and rust. He needed to find something. Anything. Rising, he scoured the cleared patch, then widened his search perimeter. His gaze fell upon a scatter of sharp, obsidian-dark fragments near a crumbled, half-buried plinth – the kind of debris one might find near ancient structures, where the Old World’s materials had fractured and crystallized over ages. His Resonance sang. A clear, strong ping. **[Material Detected: Crystallized Tech-Shards]** **[Composition: Fractured hyper-alloy, re-mineralized. Ideal for primitive cutting tools or grinding agents.]** Jorun's weary eyes widened. A tool. The first, vital step.

Ashfall Genesis