Chapter IV – Set Fire to the Rain

The morning sky hung like tarnished silver—caught between stormlight and the last scraps of dawn. Too bright to be comfort, too pale to mean anything good.

Wind scraped along rusted girders as Talgat crouched beneath the snapped vertebrae of a collapsed tower. One hand balanced against the concrete. The other brushed a thin line of grit from the edge of his blade. His eyes never stopped moving.

Below, three silhouettes threaded through the ruins. Slow. Careful. Empty-handed.

A scavenger trio.

The taller one led with a measured stride, posture almost too precise for the wasteland. Beside him, the smaller companion lugged a sensor pack that looked ready to topple him. Between them walked the youngest—light on his feet, eyes flicking across every broken angle like he was reading the ruins instead of fearing them.

Talgat lowered his breathing, letting the ruins swallow his outline. His fingers loosened on the blade's hilt. The stillness around him thickened.

He tapped the comm at his collar twice.

"Visual on target group," he murmured. "Three travelers. No weapons. Heading east past the old metro shell."

Static crackled, then Korren's voice came through—steady as a drawn line.

"Copy. Charges are set. Hit marker B and bring the ceiling down. You'll be in range before they know the shape of the trap."

Talgat said nothing for a beat, jaw tightening just slightly.

"…Understood."

He waited for the wind to shift—listening not to the ruins, but to the electric thrum gathering overhead. The storm would reach its interference peak soon. Perfect cover.

When the gust finally tilted west, he rose in one smooth movement and slipped from cover, steps soundless, shadow fragmenting against the jagged ribs of the ruin.

Kaodin froze mid-step. A tremor rippled underfoot—small, quick, wrong. The kind of shift you notice only if you've survived too many close calls.

"Wait," he breathed.

Cee-Ar-Tee's head snapped up, lenses flicking amber.

"Resonance spike. Structural failure likely—"

The world came apart.

A boom like thunder rolled through the corridor as beams snapped and concrete peeled away in slabs. The air vanished into dust.

Kaodin didn't think. His body reacted before the noise caught up.

Muscles tightened, breath dropped, and instinct took over. He hooked an arm around Cee-Too and yanked him clear just as a support column slammed down where they'd stood.

For a heartbeat, time stretched taut.

Heat flared through his ribs, racing to his arms—Qi rising unbidden, flooding his body in a single violent rush. His vision tinted red, then snapped back to normal as his feet hit the ground in a crouch.

He sucked in a breath that tasted like fire and grit.

A shape staggered through the dust, coughing, hand pressed to his side. Instinct roared. Kaodin lunged, grabbed the figure by the collar, and slammed him against a broken slab.

"Who are you?" he snarled.

The man's eyes—gray, clear, too steady for someone about to die—locked onto his.

"Talgat," he rasped. "I'm… not here to fight you."

Something in that voice made Kaodin's grip falter.

The momentum of violence stalled.

The Qi in his limbs pushed for release, but something steadier kept it contained.

He's not scared. Just… worn down.

Dust settled in drifting sheets.

From the corner of his eye, Kaodin caught a strange flicker—Cee-Ar-Tee had gone still. Not frozen like a machine, but… listening. Too focused. Too precise.

His head tipped slightly, as if following something beneath the fading echoes of the collapse. A quick pulse of blue light ran through his lenses—controlled, almost like a reflex.

Kaodin frowned.

He'd grown up on old cartoons and movies that survived on battered data chips—shows where androids were stiff, clunky things that only moved when someone told them to. And the ones he'd seen in the scrapyards weren't much different: rusted bodies, jerky motions, no awareness behind their eyes.

They didn't pause to think.
They didn't turn their heads unless a command pushed them.
And they definitely didn't react to sounds nobody else could hear.

Upgraded people existed—cybernetic soldiers, scavengers with metal limbs, traders with strange implants wired into their skulls. He'd heard stories. Seen a few.

Maybe Cee-Ar-Tee was just… one of those.

Still, something about him felt off, or maybe Kaodin was thinking too much on something irrelevant.

That unease sharpened when he noticed how Cee-Ar-Tee moved—cutting through the dust and rubble, gaze sliding past Kaodin and landing on Talgat with a faint narrowing of the eyes.

Kaodin pushed the thought aside, but it lingered—light as a whisper at the edge of hearing.

Before Kaodin could demand more from Talgat, the ruins gave a long, low groan — settling dust, shifting beams, the last breath of the collapsed corridor.

Kaodin's pulse was still too high.
His shoulders still too tight.
The heat in his abdomen refused to fade.

He pressed a hand over it, trying to steady the burn.

But the touch triggered something.

A memory he had spent days trying not to relive.

A night sealed behind terror, mud, blood, and the first time he learned what it meant to survive.

The warmth in his abdomen rose.

Not violently.

Slowly — like ember turning into flame.

Kaodin's breath hitched.

And the ruins around him began to dissolve into that other night…