The Under-City smelled of rust, despair, and burning monster. Tonight, mostly burning monster. Flames kissed Roric Vane’s face, licking at the singed edges of his hair, but he didn’t flinch. Not anymore. The stench of rendered chitin and superheated ichor filled his lungs, a grim perfume for a desperate gamble. His homemade incendiary, a slosh of high-octane solvent and phosphorescent gel, had done its work. Now, a Chitin-Crawler, all razor-plate and thrashing limbs, writhed in a self-made pyre. It shrieked, a sound like grinding stone and splitting bone, echoes bouncing off the corroded metal girders above. Roric didn’t care for the noise. He cared only for the number. One hundred. This was the hundredth of these vermin he’d dispatched. A tally earned through three years of grime, desperation, and a stubborn refusal to simply lie down and die. If *that* didn’t trigger a Resonance, he didn’t know what would. Claws, thick as rebar and sharp as razors, arced through the burning air. Roric dove, tucking into a clumsy roll. His shoulder slammed against a cracked support pillar, sending a jolt of static pain up his arm. Even burning, the creature moved with a terrifying speed. He came up behind it, noting the incandescent glow under its segments where the flames bit deepest. Its face, if you could call it that, was a nightmare of mandibles and compound eyes, split open to reveal rows of grinding teeth, like a forgotten cogwheel given hungry life. More than its ugliness, Roric found heart in its panicked thrashing. It wanted to flee. A mistake. He slammed his body into its multi-jointed leg, driving his weight into the back of its knee-joint. Pain spread across his collarbone, a dull ache that promised a bruise. Being Unattuned meant his strength was merely human. Peak human, perhaps, after years of this scrap, but still just human. Common-Tier physicality didn’t stop a monster from feeling like a collapsing wall. So, leverage. He hooked a leg, swept, and pulled hard. The Chitin-Crawler staggered, then toppled, hitting the grimy floorboards with a sickening crack. A choked shriek erupted as Roric landed hard on its back, his scavenged shiv already drawn. The blade was chipped, stained with untold fluids, and utterly reliant on momentum. His arm was a blur of motion. He plunged the shiv between the creature’s bulging carapace plates, aiming for the glowing sac he knew lay beneath. The Chitin-Crawler bucked, flailing, its immense weight threatening to crush him. Its limbs were gangly, awkward up close, which was his only advantage. One good strike from those claws, and he’d be nothing but paste. But he was closer. Too close for it to angle a clean hit to his torso. The flames danced, searing his skin, yet he pushed deeper. Each thrust sent a spray of viscous, black ichor over him. It burned, blistered, but Roric worked and carved, hunting for the creature's bioluminescent heart-sac. He needed it still, exposed. Then, with a sudden, impossible surge, the monster coiled. It launched itself upwards, sending Roric flying. He punched through a rusted ceiling grate, landing in the gloom of the floor above. Cracks spiderwebbed through his ribs. A series of sickening pops echoed inside his chest as he bit back a groan. At least he’d finally pushed his limits. His internal display, a faint blue overlay visible only to him, flickered a confirmation: *Phys. Aptitude > 20 [Common-Tier Limit Reached]* He caught himself before falling back through the hole he’d just made. He was quick. Agile. But the Chitin-Crawler was faster. By the time he peered down, it was already rearing, mandibles clicking, ready to leap. “Damn you,” Roric muttered, throwing himself sideways. He tumbled over debris, a shower of dust and splintered bone rising around him. The monster shot through the opening, a blur of burning chitin, slamming its grotesque head into the wall Roric had just vacated. It bounced off with a grating whine of discomfort, then twisted, claws extending, lunging again. Roric was halfway to his feet when he dropped like a stone. The Chitin-Crawler’s claws slashed past, less than an inch from his head. Before he could react, it slammed its heavy legs down, halting its momentum, then recoiled for another strike. Roric did the only thing he could. Stab. Struggle. Fight. He drove his shiv beneath its lowest plate, deeper this time. More black ichor spilled. The blow went true. The beast shuddered, taking a jerky step back. Roric found himself pulled upright by its momentum, an unexpected gift. He didn’t waste it. He pushed the blade further, seeking the tell-tale pop of the sac rupturing. Until that happened, the monster would simply heal. It swung its claws, but Roric was too close, pressed against its burning bulk. Its limbs were too long, its reach too wide. It tried to bite him, mandibles snapping inches from his face. Before it could clamp down, Roric bit back. He sank his teeth into the tough, fibrous flesh of its neck-tendon, a desperate, animalistic act. The taste was a coppery, chemical tang, like rusty blood mixed with battery acid. He fought the urge to vomit. The monster gagged, twitching violently. Its shrieks became ragged whistles through its torn throat. Its blood tasted fouler than any fermented Rot-ale Roric had ever endured. It stomped forward, pulling Roric off his feet again, but his grip on the shiv was iron. He kept driving the blade deeper. A sickening shudder ran up his arm. A wet pop, unmistakable, reverberated through his teeth. The Chitin-Crawler’s heart-sac had burst. At once, the creature convulsed, losing its footing. Roric barely dove out of the way before its immense, burning bulk toppled. It slammed face-first into the decaying floorboards. Roric, in turn, collided with the wall, his busted ribs screaming in protest. White spots bloomed across his vision. He dry-heaved, bile burning his throat, then clawed his way upright, bracing himself, half-expecting a final, furious lunge. But as he turned, the Chitin-Crawler lay still, twitching, whimpering, barely able to drag itself along the ground. After a few more pathetic attempts, it stopped. Its breaths came in ragged, desperate gasps. The flames eating its body burned brighter now, consuming the last remnants of its life force. Roric wasn’t fairing much better on the ‘not burning’ front, but something about these things made them particularly vulnerable to sustained heat. In the flickering light, he saw its multi-faceted eyes, wide with primal terror. Its mandibles contorted in misery. It was dying. And there was nothing it could do. Just like everyone else, eventually. Comparatively, the look on Roric’s own face was a grim inversion. His fire-blackened features twisted between a grimace and a triumphant, if weary, grin. One hundred Chitin-Crawlers, dispatched over three years. As an Unattuned, a Pathless nobody. If that wasn’t a major deed, a significant offering to the indifferent universe, he didn’t know what counted. His heart hammered, excitement momentarily eclipsing the exhaustion and pain. The Spire’s underlying system, the very fabric of existence, *had* to grant him something. He wondered what form his Resonance would take. Would it be the Aspect of the Hunter, for all the tracking and killing? Or perhaps the Principle of Silence, given his knack for moving unseen through the lower districts? Maybe Resilience, for simply refusing to die? He could make any of them work. He just needed *a* Resonance. A true one. Something to break him free of the rot, to lift him from the Under-City’s despair. To be someone. To finally claim a sliver of the power the Spires held aloft. So, as both boy and burning monster lay gasping, Roric waited. His smile, though grim, held a thread of hope. The Chitin-Crawler offered only animalistic lamentations against its impending end. Moments stretched. Then, Roric’s smile faltered, replaced by a confused frown. He pulled up his internal status display, a familiar blue schematic overlaid on his vision. Name: Roric Vane Phys. Aptitude 20 (Common-Tier) [Limit Reached] Tenacity 17 (Common-Tier) Blade Prof. 17 (Common-Tier) Grim Resolve 17 (Common-Tier) Projection 11 (Common-Tier) Intimidation 9 (Common-Tier) Striking Prof. 9 (Common-Tier) Schematics 1 (Common-Tier) *Crimson Cycle: A nascent anomaly stirs within. Death reshapes. What cannot be broken can only be reforged. (Status: Latent)* The Chitin-Crawler was beginning to smell like an incinerated waste pit. It gave a final, pitiful shudder, then ceased its struggles. Utterly still. “Maybe you’re not dead enough for it,” Roric whispered, keeping the embers of hope burning within him, even as his own skin blackened from the heat. Yet, even as the beast became a charred husk, its face frozen in an expression of despair, nothing happened. No flash of light. No system notification. No sudden surge of power. Nothing. One hundred Chitin-Crawlers. Three years. From the age of fifteen. All those days of desperate preparation, the sleepless nights stalking through the ravaged sectors, learning to mask his scent, avoiding the truly ancient horrors that lurked in the deeper dark... Well, not *nothing*. A few levels in Common-Tier proficiencies. But those wouldn’t change his fate. He was still as lost as before. Still just— The wall beside him exploded inwards. Not a sudden burst, but a deliberate tearing. A surge of displacement energy washed over him as a colossal, segmented arm, dark as night and bristling with arcane conduits, peeled a section of the decaying structure open like a tin can. Roric staggered back, choking on the sudden plume of dust. Then came the tell-tale hum of a grav-lift engaging. Pressure clamped down hard as three figures descended. Before Roric could react, a gauntlet of cold, ceramite-plated metal wrapped around his neck, pressing him against the exposed wall. He almost struggled, then recognized the chill, the familiar, implacable grip. He’d felt this hand many times over the past few years. As the dust cleared, he found himself staring into the visor of a Sentinel clad in heavy, obsidian-toned armor. “Sector clear,” another voice called out. This one was new, a sharp female voice. She wore lighter, functional armor, her rifle sweeping the open space. Below, through the hole Roric had made, the third member of their unit, a hulking, four-legged drone draped in shimmering repulsion fields, hovered upwards, its sensors bathing the lower floor in an eerie green light. A few seconds later, the drone’s synthesized voice rumbled. “Sub-levels clear. Primary target neutralized. Grey Sentinels… The kid’s done it again. He’s purged the nest.” A long, suffering sigh came from the Sentinel holding Roric. He gestured with his free hand, and a localized energy dampener hummed into existence. A wave of stasis energy washed over Roric, killing the flames on his body with a hiss. That’s when the true agony of his burns began. “Hello, Roric. Decided to take another unauthorized dive into the Rot-zones, did we?” “Yeah,” Roric rasped, fighting to hide the tremors in his voice, the fresh surge of pain. “Had to complete the hundredth kill.” The obsidian-armored Sentinel reached up, his gauntlet retracting. Warden Thorne. An Ascended Principle-Attuned, reassigned to District 7G from the Upper Spires nearly four years ago. Too clean, too precisely tailored, even for this grime. Gleaming, cybernetic eye. A precisely trimmed beard. All that immaculate presentation was out of place in this hell. It made Roric wonder what kind of failure got you exiled from the sunlight. Still, Thorne was one of the few in their district of fifty thousand who didn’t treat Roric like he was about to spontaneously combust, so he took what he could get. “So,” Thorne said, eyeing the still-smoking Chitin-Crawler with a hint of disgust. He sniffed, adjusting his grip. “Did you finally trigger the Resonance you were hoping for?”

A Hundred Scars