Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee

I lower myself onto the makeshift bench—a long beam salvaged from a collapsed ballista mount—and let the weight of the last few hours settle into my bones.

I check my post-battle experience.

[Reward: +2% to Rank Advancement (Kill Assist)]

[Reward: +24% to Rank Advancement (Kill)]

[Current Rank Status: 40%]

Rank D...

I touch the Pearl through the fabric of my pocket. Cold and smooth. Just waiting.

Not yet. But close.

Boris is building the fire. No ceremony. Broken equipment, splintered wood, strips of carcass too damaged to salvage. He stacks them fast, efficient, not thinking about it.

The flames catch. Small at first—then climbing, pushing the desert cold back in a growing circle of orange light.

"You can rest, kid." Boris feeds a cracked shield panel into the fire. "Next Red Tide won’t come for fifteen, maybe twenty days. And since I know nothing’s going to keep you from going back to that tower—"

"Go on," I say.

Boris stops building. He sits across from me, the fire between us, and his face goes somewhere I haven’t seen it go before. Older. Rawer. An expression that costs something to wear.

"If you see a freezing mist, you run." His voice is flat. The flatness of an order that isn’t negotiable. "I don’t care who’s behind you. I don’t care what you’re carrying. You see ice forming in the air, you turn and you sprint. Everything the mist touches dies. Instantly. Frozen solid."

"What are you talking about, Boris?"

"Doesn’t matter what it is. If you see it there, you’ll understand immediately. Just do what I’m telling you."

The fire crackles. I watch his face through the heat shimmer. He’s not hiding information to be difficult. He’s hiding it because whatever happened to him—whoever he lost—left a wound he doesn’t have the words to reopen.

"Why won’t you tell me more?"

"Because there’s nothing more to tell." His expression shuts like a door. Complete. Final.

I let it go for now.

I hear footsteps in the sand behind me. Oliver sits down on the beam to my right, dropping a bundle of materials between his feet. He’s cleaned up—the blood wiped from his face, the dented armor removed, his shirt torn at the sleeves where he used the fabric as bandages during the fight.

"Report," I say.

"Twenty-three chitin plates. Four full cuirasses. Forty assorted fangs, sorted by size." He pauses. Looks at Boris. Looks back at me. "And the Reef Stalker dropped something."

The hesitation is visible. Oliver’s jaw works on the next word like he’s chewing glass.

"A cape."

Something locks in my chest.

Cape from a stalker... it can only be...

"Reef Cloaked Cape?" I ask.

Oliver nods slowly. "Yeah, boss." He pulls it from behind his back and holds it out.

The fabric is unlike anything crafted by hand. It’s not woven—it’s grown. The surface shifts color when it moves. The chromatophore cells still partially active even separated from the Stalker’s body. Dark grey at rest, bleeding into deeper shades when the firelight hits it. The texture is somewhere between silk and chainmail—light, fluid, but with a density that suggests it can absorb impact.

A peak Rank-C system drop. The kind of item that starts bidding wars in the Academy and blood feuds in the Trench.

I understand Oliver’s hesitation. Boris runs Lost Ark. Anything that drops on his territory could be claimed as state property. Oliver doesn’t know the rules here, and he’s not about to hand a prize item to me in front of the man who feeds and shelters us.

Boris catches the tension. He waves a massive hand like swatting a fly. "Keep it. System drops go to the killer. That’s the rule. Always has been."

Oliver’s shoulders drop two inches.

"Pretty."

The voice comes from behind me. Soft. Familiar.

Lola is standing at the edge of the firelight, looking at the cape with the focused intensity she normally reserves for explosives and mechanical components.

"You like it, little bear?"

"It matches the pillow."

The pillow. Rhayne.

Lola sleeps against Rhayne the way a cat sleeps against a radiator. If the cape goes to Rhayne, the backline gets chromatophore camouflage and Lola gets her pillow dressed in armor.

Same conclusion I reached. Lola just got there through aesthetics instead of tactics.

"Rhayne gets the cape," I announce. No one argues.

As Lola passes me to sit by the fire, something prickles across my skin. A pressure. Faint, but distinct—the kind of energy signature that the body registers before the mind names it.

I look at her. Really look.

"You ranked up."

Lola stops. Doesn’t turn around. Her shoulders tighten for a fraction of a second.

"Rank D?"

A single nod. Small. She’s trying to hold something back—and failing. The corner of her mouth twitches against a smile she doesn’t want to show.

"That’s why you were anxious before the battle."

Another nod. Smaller. Almost shy. A version of Lola I have never seen—the girl who detonates men without blinking, suddenly unable to make eye contact over a rank-up notification.

She sits down by the fire. Pulls her knees to her chest. Speaks to the flames.

"I wanted to pop enough so I could go home."

The sentence lands in my chest like a fist.

’Pop.’ Her skill. The thing she does better than anyone alive.

She wasn’t anxious about the fight. She was anxious because she thought if she killed enough—ranked up enough—she’d have the OXI threshold to resurface on Earth.

Rank D. Enough OXI to theoretically make the trip. If she had a Reentry Pearl. If there was an Oathmark portal anywhere in Lost Ark.

But there isn’t.

I file the thought beside the tower. Beside the erosion clock. Beside every other problem that doesn’t have a solution yet but will have one because I refuse to accept the alternative.

"We’ll get you home, Lola."

She doesn’t respond. She just stares at the fire, the reflected flames dancing in her half-closed eyes.

I turn back to Boris. The fire is strong now—tall enough to throw light across the bench, the sand, and the weary faces of everyone sitting around it.

"Boris. Where can I trade war spoils and buy equipment?"

Boris looks at me sideways. The firelight catches a grin spreading across his face—slow, knowing, loaded.

"The Blue Light District," he says. "Down the slope, east side of the city. Can’t miss it."

He pauses. The grin widens.

"And watch out for the scammers."

"Thanks."

"Don’t thank me yet." He pokes the fire with a stripped bone. Sparks scatter. "You’ll understand when you get there."