Chapter Ten: The Price of Tomorrow

Dawn painted the Dread Wastes in shades of blood and shadow as Koric led the survivors across the shifting sands. Behind them, what had once been Arcmire rose like a twisted spire against the sky, its walls still flowing into new configurations that defied both physics and sanity. The transformed arena pulsed with dark light, each beat sending ripples through reality itself.

“How many?” he asked Raven, who brought up the rear of their ragged group.

“About forty or so,” she answered, her voice hollow. “Most from the upper levels. The market district…” She didn’t need to finish. They’d both seen what happened to those who didn’t run fast enough.

A child whimpered nearby. Leta clutched her transformed son’s hand as Tam walked with that unnaturally fluid grace, his eyes fixed on the twisted spire behind them. He hadn’t spoken since they fled, but his smile… that terrible knowing smile hadn’t left his face.

“The patterns are spreading,” one of the merchants whispered, pointing to the ground. Dark veins spread through the sand like infection through flesh, following their footsteps. Each time they stopped to rest, the transformation crept closer.

Koric touched his daughter’s locket, finding no comfort in its familiar weight. “We need to find shelter. Somewhere defensible.”

“Defensible against what?” Raven gestured at the horizon. “Look.”

The morning light revealed what darkness had hidden. The dunes themselves were beginning to change, rippling like water where the dark veins touched them. And in those ripples, patterns formed—the same patterns that had covered Arcmire’s walls.

A scream pierced the morning calm. One of the survivors, an old woman who had sold water filters in the market, stood rigid as marks began appearing on her skin. They flowed like liquid tattoos, matching the patterns in the sand.

“Hold her!” Koric rushed forward, but Raven caught his arm.

“Look at her eyes.”

The woman’s expression transformed from terror to rapture. “Oh,” she breathed. “Oh, I can hear it now. The song. It’s so beautiful…”

Before they could reach her, she turned and began walking back toward Arcmire, her movements taking on that familiar fluid grace. Two more survivors broke from the group to follow her, patterns already spreading across their flesh.

“We have to stop them!” someone shouted.

“How?” Raven’s voice cracked. “How do we fight something that can reshape reality itself?”

Tam spoke then, his first words since their flight. “You can’t stop it. You can only join it. The pattern wants to be complete.” His child’s voice harmonized with other sounds, distant and alien. “Everything wants to be complete.”

More survivors showed signs of transformation as the morning wore on. Some fought it, clawing at their own skin as the patterns appeared. Others embraced it, their screams turning to songs as they turned back toward the twisted spire that had once been their home.

By midday, they were down to twenty-seven survivors. Those who remained huddled together, watching their own skin for signs of change. The dark veins in the sand spread in ever-widening circles around them, and in the distance, Arcmire’s transformation reached higher into the sky, as if trying to touch the sun itself.

“We can’t keep running,” Koric said finally, watching another survivor surrender to the change. “Even if we could outrun it, where would we go? You saw the patterns in The Fat Man’s chamber. This thing… it’s learning, growing. And everything it touches becomes part of its pattern.”

Raven nodded, her remaining eye fixed on the twisted spire. “So we go back?”

“We go back,” he answered. “But not to join it. To end it.”

“How?” One of the surviving merchants asked, fear making his voice sharp. “You saw what happened to the gladiators. To everyone it touched.”

Koric watched as Tam walked the edge of their group, trailing patterns in the sand with his feet. The boy’s movements were precisely synchronized with the pulses of dark light from the transformed arena. Understanding bloomed like blood in water.

“It learned from us,” he said slowly. “Everything it knows about reshaping reality, about transforming matter… it learned from what we taught it. Through the arena. Through blood and pain and death.” He turned to Raven. “So maybe it can learn something else. Something final.”

She met his gaze, and he saw she understood. “A last lesson,” she said softly.

“But this time,” Koric touched his locket one final time, “we make the rules.”

Around them, the Wastes continued to transform, reality bending to accommodate something that had learned too well from humanity’s darkest desires. But as they turned to face the twisted spire that had once been their home, Koric and Raven carried with them a purpose.

They would teach the entity one final truth about humanity. Even if it cost them everything they had left.

Behind them, Tam’s laughter echoed across the changing dunes, harmonizing with sounds that had never existed before dark matter rewrote the rules of their world. The boy’s voice carried both promise and threat:

“The pattern wants to be complete,” he sang. “And now everyone gets to play.”