The quarantine construct's maw closed with a sickening crunch, not on the pot itself, but on the column of chili-vapor still jetting from beneath it. The cast iron groaned, torqueing violently. Bram’s skull smacked the inner curve of the vessel. He tasted copper and chili, his vision swimming with streaks of green and purple. Joost, pale and grimacing, still clutched his side, the wound from the Arbiter-Core’s blade weeping fresh crimson. The monstrosity's grip choked their ascent, dragging them sideways, then down, back towards the raw, algorithmic scar where the city used to be. “We’re going to hit something,” Joost yelled over the screech of bending metal, snapping Bram back to the present. The segmented serpent of firewall code was rotating them, angling the kettle directly towards its gaping maw. Its teeth, long and sharp as server racks, clicked shut with an ominous rhythm. Bram frantically patted his pockets. Empty. His apron, ripped and singed, held nothing but a few crumbs of fried batter. The last of the museum haul, the grand portraits, the landscapes, the abstract pieces—all had been hurled into the oil, sacrificed to the deep-fryer to forge his art-army. He was out. Completely, utterly, tragically out of ingredients. “I don’t have anything left!” Bram roared, his voice cracking with a desperate edge. “No more paintings! Nothing!” The virus-hunter’s jaws hovered a meter from the pot, the stench of burnt data and ozone filling the confined space. Its teeth gleamed with a predatory logic. Joost fixed wild, dilated pupils on Bram. “No, you don’t.” He clamped his molar teeth together, an ache from his side making him gasp. “But *I* do.” Before Bram could even question it, Joost ripped at the scorched fabric of his tattered chef’s shirt. Buttons flew, seams tore, revealing pale skin beneath. Bram saw it then: a sprawling needlework mural covering Joost’s entire back. It was a masterpiece of soot and shadow, depicting a scaled serpent, its wings spread wide, its head rearing back in a silent roar, flames licking its obsidian plates. A mythological beast, rendered with painstaking detail, its eyes burning with sulfur. “My grandfather,” Joost choked out, his voice hoarse, “used to say, a story on the skin… it’s the oldest recipe.” He pushed Bram’s hand, calloused and smelling of chili, towards his back. “Cook me, Bram! Burn it into existence!” Bram recoiled, his face twisting in disgust. “Are you insane? I’m not hurting you!” He glanced at the approaching teeth, then back at Joost’s sweating, desperate face. “This isn’t a painting, Joost! This is *you*!” “It’s a masterpiece!” Joost shrieked, his voice laced with the wild edge of desperation. “It’s *art*! And it’s the only thing we have left! Do it!” The firewall teeth scraped against the outer hull of the pot. The metal shrieked. A crack spiderwebbed across the inner surface of the cast iron, just beneath them. Joost didn’t wait. With a guttural cry, he twisted, slamming his exposed back, the inked skin, directly against the searing hot, cracked iron of the vessel's base. The metal, still radiating residual heat from the chili oil launch, hissed violently. A plume of steam, thick with the smell of scorched flesh and boiling pigments, erupted. Joost screamed, a sound that ripped through the confined space, raw and animalistic. His body arched, muscles coiling in agony. Bram lunged forward, trying to pull him away, but Joost held himself rigid, his back pressed harder against the inferno. The dragon tattoo, impossibly, began to glow. First a faint orange, then a searing, molten gold that pulsed with an impossible energy. The pigment on Joost’s skin liquefied, swirling, rising from his flesh like an inverted shadow. [“Chef class: Unregistered ingredient detected. Processing… Acknowledged: ‘Mythos-Marking: Infernal Wyrm Tattoo.’ Quality: Legendary (User-Integrated). Potential Output: Anomalous. Calculating… Output: ‘Grease-Dragon of Pyre-Scale.’”] The Arbiter-Core’s voice, for once, sounded less snarky, more… bewildered. A colossal, fiery serpent, scales slick with rendered fat, burst from Joost’s back. It wasn't an illusion; it was solid, tangible, its massive horned head erupting through the splintered rim of the vessel with a roar that vibrated through Bram’s bones. Its eyes, twin suns of burning tallow, locked onto the quarantine beast. The Grease-Dragon of Pyre-Scale struck with the speed of a hallucination, its serpentine neck snapping forward. Its jaws, dripping with molten lard, clamped down on the quarantine beast's skull. There was no sound, no explosion, just a silent implosion of logic. The firewall head collapsed inwards, becoming a black hole of corrupted data, then simply dissolved into a torrent of disintegrating code. They shot upward again, the firewall fragments raining down as flickering, meaningless digits. The Grease-Dragon hovered above the kettle, its scales blazing, before turning its molten gaze down toward Joost. Joost, slumped against the now-cool iron, was breathing in ragged gasps. Where the tattoo had been, his skin was not merely burned, but… dissolving. Tiny voxels peeled away from his back, rising into the air like golden dust. His physical code, the very essence of his being, was unraveling. He looked up at Bram, a pained smile on his lips. “I… I think I overcooked myself.” [“Emergency Patch: User-Integrated Ingredient feedback loop detected. Processing… Error. Code Integrity compromise: Joost Velsen. Commencing immediate physical deletion to prevent cascading anomaly.”] Joost's jaw dropped, struck by sudden horror as a section of his arm, just above the elbow, dissolved into pure light.

Searing the Dragon