Chapter 103: Boss
I sit in the sand with my back against Rhayne’s hands. She feeds me Scales one at a time, pressing each one against my lips with the patience of a bird nurturing a hatchling back to health.
I chew. Swallow. Chew.
The OXI drips back in, slow, like filling a cracked bucket.
My body weighs twice what it should. The blood loss from the shoulder, the OXI drain from Eventide, the accumulated damage of fighting—it all compounds into a heaviness that sits on my bones like wet concrete.
The battlefield is dying.
Not the violent, screaming death of the Red Tide’s charge.
The quiet kind.
Small clusters of soldiers surrounding the last beasts that refused to retreat.
Phase Two didn’t end with a recall. These ones fought until the sand swallowed them.
"Oliver." My voice comes out thinner than I want. "Guard that Stalker carcass. It’s ours. Collect everything once your OXI recovers."
Oliver takes a long pull from his canteen, wipes his mouth, and nods. "You got it, boss."
Boss.
An hour ago I was slapping him across the face on a rock in the desert. Now it’s "boss." The currency of trust in Thirstfall has the strangest exchange rate.
A shadow blocks the firelight. I recognize the voice before the shape.
"Looks like the kid took a beating." Boris is standing over me, grinning the way only men who’ve bled worse can grin.
"Shut up and help me with this," I say, nodding at the Wiver leg still protruding from my shoulder. I force something that wants to be a smile but doesn’t quite make it.
Boris turns and barks at a passing soldier. The man snaps to attention mid-stride.
"Get me Galax. Tell him it’s an emergency."
The soldier doesn’t ask questions. He breaks into a sprint and vanishes around the wall.
"You know this is going to hurt like hell, right?" Boris says, crouching beside me. The grin on his face is the kind that belongs on a man who’s about to enjoy someone else’s pain from a safe distance.
I ignore him. I finish the last Scale Rhayne offers, concentrating to keep the energy from rebounding.
[OXI: 1,487/1,600]
Better.
But the bleeding hasn’t stopped. Every heartbeat pushes a little more out of the puncture wound, and the OXI bar is leaking along with it.
Minutes pass. The battlefield settles into the grim routine of aftermath—soldiers counting bodies, medics triaging the wounded, the ballistae crews dismounting their weapons for maintenance.
Then footsteps. Quick, light, precise. The gait of someone who moves through chaos without absorbing any of it.
The man who rounds the corner is not what I expected.
He’s young. Mid-twenties at most. Lean, narrow-shouldered, with thin wire spectacles perched on a sharp nose. His robes are different from the standard Lost Ark monastery uniform—lighter fabric, cleaner cut, a style that looks like it belongs to an institution that still has laundry service. His hands are wrapped in thin cloth bandages from the fingertips to the wrists, the kind healers use to protect their channeling points.
He moves with the specific, unhurried confidence of a medical professional entering a room where everyone else is panicking.
"Galax arrived three weeks ago," Boris says to me, low enough that only I hear. He doesn’t elaborate.
He doesn’t need to. Three weeks. The system erosion hasn’t touched him yet. His skills still work. His tattoo is still whole. He’s a Diver in a city of Drowners—and Boris is using him while he still can.
Galax crouches beside me. He adjusts his spectacles, examines the Wiver leg embedded in my shoulder, and lets out a quiet "hm" that carries the weight of a full diagnosis.
"I need to remove this first," he says. His voice is calm. Clinical. "The chitin has barbs along the interior surface. Pulling it straight will tear muscle. I’ll need to rotate counterclockwise as it exits."
He looks at Boris. Boris looks at me.
"On three," Boris says, wrapping both massive hands around the protruding end of the Wiver leg. "Ready?"
"Just do it."
"One."
"Two."
"Three."
Boris twists and pulls in a single, brutal motion. The chitin rotates inside my shoulder—I feel every barb catching muscle fiber, releasing, catching again—and then it’s out. A wet, sucking pop followed by a spray of blood that paints Boris’s forearm red.
The pain is a white spike driven through the center of my skull. My jaw locks. My vision tunnels to a pinpoint. I hear a sound—a grinding, involuntary groan—that I realize is coming from me.
Boris holds up the extracted leg. Eighteen inches of blood-slicked chitin, the barbed interior glistening under the torchlight.
"Souvenir?" he offers.
I don’t dignify that with a response.
Galax is already working. He places both bandaged hands over the wound—one on the entry point, one on the exit. His eyes close. His breathing drops to something measured and deliberate.
Then he speaks. Low. Rhythmic. Words in a language I don’t recognize—not Thirstfall common, not any dialect I’ve heard before. The syllables are round, heavy, rolling out of his mouth like stones being placed one on top of another. An incantation built by someone who understood that healing isn’t gentle—it’s construction.
"Suture Tide."
His hands glow. Not the flashy, dramatic light of offensive magic. A deep, steady blue-green—the color of deep ocean water where the sunlight reaches its last depth before giving up. The light pulses in time with my heartbeat.
I feel it enter the wound. Not warmth. Pressure. The sensation of tissue being assembled—muscle fibers finding their severed partners, blood vessels sealing shut, the torn deltoid knitting itself back together with the methodical patience of someone sewing a sail.
The pain doesn’t vanish. It transforms. Sharp becomes dull. Dull becomes ache. Ache becomes the memory of ache.
Thirty seconds. Galax pulls his hands away. The wound is closed. A thick, raised scar marks both the entry and exit points—pink, raw, tender, but sealed.
[OXI: 971/1,600]
I flex the shoulder. The range of motion is reduced—maybe seventy percent—but it responds. The arm lifts. The fingers close.
At least I didn’t lose it.
Boris extends a hand. I take it. He pulls me to my feet with the casual strength of a man who’s been lifting heavy things his entire life.
"Come on, kid." His voice drops. The humor is gone. Something heavier settles into the lines of his face. "Let’s build a new fire. There’s a lot I still need to tell you."
He pauses. Looks at me with eyes that carry the specific weight of a man about to deliver news he’s been holding back.
"Things you’re not going to like hearing."