CHAPTER 48: CHAPTER 48: DUNGEON BREAK, THE ASH WARDEN WAR (8)

The tower lights never really went dark, but somebody called it night anyway.

We slept in shifts—if you could call lying still with one eye open sleep. I spent most of it inside the forge dimension, hands busy so the brain wouldn’t replay Lucien’s smile on loop.

Jax snored somewhere outside the shimmer wall, sounding like a landslide with asthma. Hana dozed against a pillar, her shawl spread out like a cocoon pulsing soft blue—monitoring us, or maybe dreaming for us.

The Darkharness peeled itself off my chest when I entered the pocket space. Metal pooled like ink around my feet, waiting.

I didn’t build new miracles, just fixes—tightened the Grav-Edge’s pull lattice, reinforced Hana’s Lotus weave with a thin layer of frostglass thread. When the forge quieted, it looked tired. Same as me.

Two quick upgrades:

— Grav-Edge Core: Pulse Lattice

— micro-bursts at the end of Jax’s swing; tighter well, faster collapse.

— Lotus Thread V2: Heartlink Amplifier

— Hana’s utility passive got cleaner; barrier gains snap faster when she hears our heartbeats align.

Nothing dramatic. Just sharper teeth.

By dawn the rain had found us again.

Hana stretched, blinking blearily. "You didn’t sleep."

"I did," I said. "Just in a different dimension."

Jax rubbed his neck. "Any upgrades?"

"Yeah you could call it that," I said, snapping the harness back into place. "You hit harder now. Try not to use that as an excuse."

He grinned, all cracked lips and bravado. "I make no promises."

We stepped out into a city pretending sunrise was still a thing. The sky had the color of old coins; the smell of rust and wet stone stuck in the lungs. Command Row’s horn had blown twice—mobilization.

Arcadia didn’t sleep. It coughed.

We moved the rain tried its best to rinse the city and only managed to make the ash into paste. Jax walked heavy but steady his knee almost healed up now by the guild healers, Grav-Edge across his back humming like a planet with a hangover. Hana ghosted a step behind, shawl petals half-furled around her shoulders, the threads tasting the air for pain.

I took point because I’d volunteered to be idiot-shaped.

[ Quest — Retake Arcadia ]

[ Objective 1: Eliminate the Butcher of Brass (A+) ]

[ Team: Ethan Cross (L22) • Jax Rook (D) • Hana Iwasaki (D) ]

[ Advisory: Keep emissions low • West sector flagged for Deathspace activity ]

"Quiet for a war," Jax muttered.

"The loud part already happened," I said. "We’re in the part where the city decides who’s left to bury."

Hana’s eyes flicked to a wrecked tram half sunk into the asphalt. She could feel the fear soaked into it; her threads brightened and dimmed like breath. "East Canal grid shows fails across five pylons the guildmaster said. the general using the river to move troops. We cut him, we cut the flow."

"Good," I said. "Simple surgery. Big knife."

"I have a big knife," Jax offered.

"You are a big knife," I said.

We swung through Market backstreets—my old world of open grills and yelling vendors, now a corridor of empty tables and steam ghosts. I kept my hands low and my head on a swivel, Darkharness hugging the ribs and murmuring in metal when the wind shifted.

"I still hate walking," Jax said. "I prefer hitting monsters."

"Soon," I said. "Promise."

We ghosted past a pharmacy blown open like a dropped egg. A little music box lay in the doorframe, soldiering on with six sad notes. Hana hesitated; the threads tugged toward it.

"Don’t," I said.

She left it.

I adjusted my grip. I was pairing Fangpiercer with Fogbite today—crit chill plus pressure stagger, stacked up to three. See how the combo sings when it bites through armor.

At the river cut,

The river didn’t sound like a river anymore. It sounded like a throat trying to breathe through broken glass.

East Canal used to smell like hot oil and fried fish and wires overheating behind cheap music. Tonight it stank of brine, ozone, and the metallic taste that lives behind your molars after a lightning strike. Cranes leaned like drunks. Barges sat half-sunk at the piers, listing, ropes creaking as if they still remembered the rhythm of tides that hadn’t come.

We moved low along the skeletons of shipping containers.

"Eyes," I whispered.

"Three orcs by the rusted cranet they seem hungry," Hana breathed.

"Everything’s hungry," I said. "Question is, for what."

"For us if we let it," Jax said. "Stay wide."

We cut through an alley of pallets and pipe lengths. The canal opened like a wound to our left—black water moving wrong, currents pulsing toward the Gate’s heartbeat. The city’s defense pylons along the rail threw sick green arcs that skipped and died, drew a hiss out of the river, then went quiet again.

[ Quest — Retake Arcadia ]

[ Objective: Eliminate the Butcher of Brass (A+) — East Canal ]

"Still want to do this first?" Jax said, eyes on the river, voice low.

"That thing disrupts the river grid," I said. "Take the Butcher out, we stabilize half the city’s barrier network. That buys evac time."

"Which we’re not paid for," he grunted, then smirked at himself. "Kidding. Kind of."

Hana’s threads brushed my sleeve and squeezed once like a small brave hand. "We’ll do it fast."

"Fast is my love language," I said.

We crossed a buckled service road, boots crunching bottle-glass fused into slag. Something coughed far down the canal—deep, wet, and collective. The same Orks. Not the general, not yet; the flavor of the sound wasn’t big enough. Patrols first. Always patrols first.

The first pack hit the way stupid always hits—loud and from the front.

Three Ash Orc Raiders climbed out of a half-sunk barge, leathers soaked black, brass nails studding their jawlines like they’d swallowed a workshop. Their breath smoked with spore ash. One beat a rib drum on his chest and made a call that broke into three echoes.

[ Hostiles Detected: Ash Orc Raiders (B) ×3 • Ash Orc Chainbearer (B+) ×1 ]

"Left," Hana warned.

I didn’t see the fourth until the chain whistled. Darkharness moved before thought—morphic plates blooming over my left arm with a whisper of hot steel. Chain hit; the shield rang; bone in my forearm jolted like it remembered being soft.

[ Absolute Regeneration Activated ]

[ Minor shock trauma absorbed. Cooldown: None. ]

I stepped, not because I had a plan but because my body wanted fewer chains in it.

[ Lightning Transit — Hop 1 / 7 ]

[ Range: 14 m • Pulse: 2 m stun • Chain Window: 5 s ]

The world blinked wrong—cleaner, sharper, then back dirty again. I reappeared in the orc’s breath. Fangpiercer kissed throat.

[Fangpiercer Critical]

[Armor Penetration: 30%]

It spilled warm and fast. I pushed through before the chain decided it missed me.

Jax hit the center raider and the canal hit back. Grav-Edge came down with that humming wrongness and the air folded around the blade, little stones skittering toward him like they were in love. The hit cracked the quay from curb to waterline and made a wave under the barge. The orc disintegrated in a short, surprised way, like a thought that forgot the words.

The last two tried to claw around his flank. Hana’s shawl breathed and hardened, threads slipping off her shoulders to brace like interlaced ribs. They struck and slowed, club impacts going soft, like hitting wet books. She took it, turned, flicked her wrist—the weave snapped a lattice that made the orcs forget how knees work for half a second. Always enough.

I finished one with a low cut.

[Fogbite — Chill & Pressure Stagger (1/3)]

The other found Jax’s gravity by accident. Never a good life choice. He swung; the blade pulled; the orc landed on the wrong side of physics.

[Hostile Neutralized — Ash Orc Raider (B+)]

[EXP +60 → +120 (Warden’s Echo ×2)]

[Level 22 Progress: 880 → 1000 / 2200]

[Hostile Neutralized — Ash Orc Raider (B+)]

[EXP +60 → +120 (Warden’s Echo ×2)]

[Level 22 Progress: 1000 → 1120 / 2200]

Blood steamed where it hit hot metal. The river hissed like it disapproved of our math.