A guttural roar ripped through the Proving Grounds, echoing off the ancient, rust-eaten skeletal remains of what might have once been a colossal transit hub. Sunlight, filtered through a permanent pall of ash, painted the scene in sickly ochre. Torvin Grimbear, or Elias Thorne as he once was, watched the other young Feralkin. They chose their weapons: bone-bladed axes, jagged obsidian knives, scavenged rebar spears. Primal, blood-hungry. Just as his new instincts demanded.
He had once, in a life that felt like a half-remembered dream, delighted in the *idea* of a greatsword. Spinning like a dervish, reaping lives. The fantasy. Now, the grim reality of Aethelgard dictated otherwise. *Romantic notions get you gutted.* The mental overlay, a digital whisper of 'Feralkin Survival Protocol', was stark.
Initial attempts at 'barbarian builds' in that forgotten game had ended poorly. Too many glorious, messy deaths. Survivability, the real lesson. It demanded a shield. Even for a Feralkin, whose natural resilience dwarfed many other tribes, a sturdy defense was the foundation of prolonged existence.
He’d abandoned the theoretical dwarf ‘tank’ in his past life, seeing the superior, if less flashy, utility of a ‘barbaegis’. A simple, brutal truth: efficiency wins. Always.
Torvin stepped forward. His turn to choose. He ignored the gleaming, sharpened scrap metal blades, the ceremonial war clubs. His eyes fell on a pile of salvaged industrial debris. He saw a circular section of a blast-door, heavy, scarred, still bearing the faint imprint of a manufacturing symbol—perhaps a corporation he’d once researched. Its weight was considerable, its edges blunted. Perfect. Beside it, a stout, rusted rebar length, bent into a handle, its tip sharpened to a blunt point. A pry-bar, not a spear.
Grabbing the door section, the raw steel bit into his calloused palm. He felt the weight, the balance. This was not a weapon of offense, not in the traditional Feralkin sense. It was a bulwark. A tool. A barrier against the world’s sharpened teeth. His inner Elias Thorne approved. His outer Torvin Grimbear felt a deep, almost ancestral satisfaction in its sheer *solidity*.
Around him, the other young Feralkin stared. Murmurs, like the rasp of dry leaves, rippled through the gathering. A few snorts of derision. *A shielder? For a first weapon?* Their faces, scarred and tattooed, were masks of incomprehension. Torvin met their gazes. No flicker of hesitation. The decision was made. The most rational choice. The only choice.
“Next!” the Elder-Guard rumbled, his voice like grinding stone. Torvin returned to the throng, the heavy door-shield feeling like a natural extension of his arm. No regrets.
Three reasons solidified his resolve. First, the metal itself. In Aethelgard, good steel was currency. Second, a bladed weapon, wielded by a Feralkin still learning to channel his raw strength, often shattered or dulled on the first true challenge. Third, and most crucially, the ‘Ironclad Guard’—his new path. The ultimate pursuit of his dual nature. A mind that strategized, encased in a body that could enforce. This was his beginning.
“With this, you are Grimbear!” The Elder-Guard’s pronouncement washed over the last of the weapon-choosers. A brief lull followed, a space for the young Feralkin to process their new status. Torvin, however, wrestled with the internal storm.
*Tutorial complete.* The ghost of a message, a cold, hard fact shoved into his mind upon awakening in this ravaged world. It had been brutal, abrupt. One moment, Elias Thorne, deep in research. The next, Torvin Grimbear, instincts screaming, mind reeling, almost ripped apart by the sheer sensory overload. He’d almost died then, before he even understood *where* he was.
*Someone built this reality.* The thought was a festering wound. *Someone dropped me here, gave me this body, this 'knowledge,' and expects me to just… survive?*
He took a deep, ragged breath. The Feralkin rage, a primal heat, threatened to consume his analytical focus. He felt it, a roaring furnace in his gut. But Elias Thorne, the scholar, the strategist, knew this was a trap. Emotional responses led to mistakes. And mistakes in Aethelgard were fatal. No point in dwelling on the past. What happened, happened. The only variable was the future.
*How to survive.* That was the sole, unblinking focus.
***
The Proving Grounds emptied. Now, the new Grimbears marched through the fractured landscape. The Elder-Guard led, his massive frame kicking up dust. Behind him, the young Feralkin, fresh from their ‘naming’, chattered, their excitement a tangible hum. A hunting party, a pilgrimage, a brutal picnic. Their destination was known to Torvin. And it was no picnic.
“Hold!” The Elder-Guard’s voice boomed.
They stood before it: a colossal wall, jagged, half-collapsed, stretching into the ash-choked horizon. Its surface was mottled, a strange blend of ancient composite materials and later, crude stone repairs. Thirty paces ahead, a gaping maw in the wall, half-obscured by rusted, creaking metal plates. The entrance to Steelhold.
“Open the Maw!”
The gates groaned, a slow, grinding shriek of tormented metal. They took forever to peel back, revealing a dim, grey expanse beyond. The other Feralkin watched, mesmerized, their mouths slightly agape. Torvin felt a flicker of that same awe. *Steelhold.* A name whispered in legends, illustrated in data fragments he’d accessed in his other life. A sprawling ruin, a ghost city, a graveyard of forgotten ambitions. Seeing it now, in its terrible reality, was a punch to the gut.
Roads, cracked but discernible. Skeletal towers of reinforced concrete reaching for the sky. Structures of impossible geometry, defying the ravages of time and entropy. And through it all, a single, impossibly tall spire, its peak lost in the clouds. He’d seen its digital twin. Never thought he’d see the real one.
*Damn it, Elias. You really went and did it.*
“Grimbears!” The Elder-Guard turned, his face etched with anticipation. “Your destiny awaits!”
No grand speeches for the Feralkin. Just the raw command, the promise of battle and glory. Or death.
“Wooooo!” A collective roar, savage and untamed. The young Feralkin surged forward, a wave of muscle and bone, charging into the echoing silence of Steelhold. Torvin found himself swept along, a scream tearing from his own throat. The primal joy of the hunt, a deep-seated instinct, surged through him, momentarily eclipsing the analytical mind. He was a Feralkin. For now.
Behind them, with a heavy, final *CLAANG*, the Maw gates clanked shut. A sealing sound. None of the charging youths seemed to notice. Or care.
The initial frenetic sprint eventually subsided. The young Feralkin, their blood-lust sated for the moment, slowed to a walk, their calls and shouts growing less urgent. This gave Torvin a moment to reignite his internal processing. The stark dichotomy of his existence was never far. The fear, a cold knot in his gut, was undeniable. But so was a strange, almost giddy anticipation. He was in the game. He was *part* of it. A perverse, terrifying thrill.
*You’re not normal either, Elias Thorne.* The thought was dry, a cynical chuckle in his own mind. But he was still light-years saner than these bone-headed primitives.
“Hold!” The lead Feralkin, a swaggering brute named Kael, stopped abruptly. He turned, chest puffed out. “My path is lost!”
A cacophony of outraged shouts erupted. “Kael of the Iron Clan has failed us!”
“He is not worthy!”
“Take responsibility!”
*These idiots.* Torvin watched, a familiar disgust rising. They were happy to follow a leader into the unknown, but the moment things went sideways, the blame was immediate. Such was the savage truth of tribal loyalty. Dirty. Brutal. Predictable.
“I accept,” Kael grunted, bowing his head. He slunk back, replaced by a female Feralkin, Ainar, her eyes bright with sudden ambition.
“Ainar of the Stone Clan!”
“The wise one, she will lead!”
Ainar preened, her stride confident, leading them deeper into the maze of silent ruins. It took precious little time for her to follow Kael’s footsteps.
“My path is lost.” Her voice, though softer than Kael’s, held the same mortified admission. Her words were precisely the same.
“Impossible! We must reach the Embered Maw!”
“Ainar is unworthy!”
“Right!”
The Feralkin began to argue again, loud, confused, proposing new, equally inept leaders. Had they learned nothing? Did they truly believe a new leader would magically find a path through this dead city? Torvin suppressed a groan. His turn might come soon enough.
He hung back, observing. Ainar stood slightly apart, her shoulders slumped, her proud expression replaced by a look of dejection. He approached her.
“Torvin of Grimbear?” She straightened, her gaze wary. “Have you come to mock me?”
“No,” he grunted. Mockery was a waste of energy. To Torvin, they were all equally lost. He shook his head.
She tilted her head. “Then why? I need no solace.”
“To show you the path.”
Her brow furrowed. “The path? How?”
He pointed. Not to some subtle scent or a broken twig, but to a faint, almost invisible, residual energy signature – a heat trail from some ancient power conduit still bleeding faint thermic energy. It followed a pattern, a logical grid that the Feralkin, relying on primal instinct, would never see. He could also see the distinct marks of scavenged metals, a path of human activity, that his advanced knowledge recognized as a utility corridor, designed for through-traffic.
“Follow those.” His voice was low, gravelly.
“Those… faint trails?” She squinted. She couldn’t see the energy, only the subtle discolouration of the aged concrete, perhaps. “Can I just follow them?”
“The ones who move through Steelhold at this hour,” Torvin explained, his voice patient, “the ones in scavenged armor, they follow a path. Not for sleep. For a destination.” *The Embered Maw.* The primary access point for scavengers and warriors seeking the 'System's' remnants.
Ainar’s eyes widened. A flicker of understanding. “Surely. Now that I see it… I will try.” She returned to the shouting group, a renewed swagger in her step. “I found the path!”
Cheers erupted. “Ainar! The wise one!”
And so, they moved again. Torvin watched as the faint energy trails, the logical flow of ancient infrastructure, led them deeper. Soon, more armed figures appeared, moving with purpose through the dim light of the ruins. Distant flickers of light, a gathering storm of activity, appeared on the horizon. The Embered Maw.
*No longer lost.* His inner monologue resumed.
The pressing concern now: was entering the Embered Maw the correct decision? The savages around him were lost in their fervor. He could slip away, disappear into the shadowed alleys of Steelhold. No monsters. No blood. No fighting.
But running wasn’t a solution. Elias Thorne remembered the system’s ‘taxes’. In Aethelgard, survival wasn’t free. Tribute was demanded, resources extracted. Fail to pay, and the System itself would dispatch its automatons. Or, worse, the more powerful tribes would eliminate the weak. Staying out meant a slow, agonizing decline. Even if he could somehow scavenge, his strength would dwindle. His knowledge, useless without the physical capacity to act.
“Ainar! Faster!”
“Wooooo!”
He had to gain resources. The Maw offered the quickest, most direct path. Other work? A Feralkin laborer? The thought was laughable. His species, designed for battle, for primal assertion, was shunned by other tribes for their volatile nature. He remembered the data-fragments: *“Feralkin? I just got one. Broke everything. Get out!”*
They couldn’t do ‘normal’ work. The System, or perhaps society, had designed them for the crucible. To fight, to scavenge, to die. That was their purpose.
How that translated to reality, he wasn’t sure. But hoping for a 'tavern job' was a fool’s gamble. The Embered Maw opened on a schedule. Miss this window, and he’d be stuck in Steelhold for a full cycle. A week of salvaged rations, maybe. Then what? Scavenging scraps from the poisoned ground? Starving, growing weak, until the next opening.
He knew what hunger and exposure did to the body. He couldn’t afford to let his new, powerful form degrade. If he was going in, he had to go in strong. Now.
“I will be the first!”
“No! I!”
The roar of the Embered Maw’s entrance was almost upon them. Torvin Grimbear, Elias Thorne, surged forward, his battered door-shield held high. His choice was made.