The Arcwater Ribbon warned her before her eyes did.
The water grew still, its usual metallic shimmer flattening into something glassy and tense. The low hum that never truly left the drowned city faded, as if machines themselves had learned to hold their breath. Even her footsteps sounded wrong, too loud, too present.
The Fox slowed, rifle already in her hands.
Ahead, where the flooded avenue widened into a deep channel, something moved against the current.
A ferry.
Its motion silent despite the wake it carved through the Ribbon. Pale lantern hung along its side, their light neither warm nor cold, but something in between.
The ferry slowed. Then stopped.
A gangplank unfolded with a soft, deliberate clang. And the Ferryman stepped onto the ground.
Her breath caught before she could stop it. She knew that silhouette.
Tall. Wrapped in layered fabric that shifted like wet cloth and shadowed metal. His eye glowed gold, burning steadily beneath the hood.
A memory surfaced, uninvited. A quiet crossing. A weapon offered. A rifle pressed into her hands by something that did not threaten.
The Ferryman had never spoken then. He didn't now. He simply looked at her.
The gaze pinned her in place, heavy and absolute, like standing at the edge of something that is final. Not judgement. Not malice. Just certainty. But she felt regret in the way it stood, as if commanded by an authority it could not oppose.
[M.A.R.S.]
"Fox."
She swallowed.
[Fox] "...So that's how it is."
The Ferryman took a step forward. The air shifted.
His cloak peeled apart, not tearing but unfolding, layers separating with mechanical precision. Beneath it was not flesh but architecture, reinforced plating, interlocking frames, ancient alloys etched with symbols older than the drowned city itself.
His body expanded, plates sliding and locking into new configurations. Additional limbs unfolded from his back, stabilizers digging into the ground as if anchoring him to reality itself. Power surged through him in deep resonant waves.
This was no ferryman now.
This was a warden.
A crossing made into a weapon.
[M.A.R.S.](strained)
"He has accepted a directive from the White Swarm."
The Ferryman's eye flared brighter.
He raised one arm.
The water around his feet rippled outward, violently, as if something massive had shifted beneath the surface. The ferry behind him dimmed, lanterns guttering low, severing itself from what was about to happen.
The Fox tightened her grip around the rifle.
[Fox] "You gave me this,"
She whispered.
[Fox] "Guess that makes this ironic."
No response.
He lunged.
The ground cracked under the force of his movement, concrete fracturing as if struck by a falling structure. She fired twice in quick succession, the rifle kicking hard into her shoulder.
The rounds hit.
Sparks and fragments burst from his torso, but he didn't slow. Didn't even flinch. He crossed the distance like an avalanche.
[M.A.R.S.]
"Move!"
She dove aside just as his strike came down. The impact shattered the roadway where she'd stood, debris exploding outward in a violent spray. She rolled, came up on one knee, and fired again.
The shot glanced off his shoulder, carving a glowing scar through ancient metal.
Still, he advanced.
His presence pressed down on her, not just physically but existentially, like something that believed it was inevitable, and it had always been right.
She backpedaled, heart pounding, legs screaming. Without her mechanical limbs, she was slower, clumsier. Human in all ways that mattered right now.
He closed in.
Too fast.
Too close.
Then—
The sky screamed.
Not thunder.
Not gunfire.
Reality itself folded inward for an instant as a single shot tore through space, leaving a visible ripple in its wake.
The round struck dead center.
The Ferryman froze mid-strike.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the light in his seams flickered. Once. Twice.
The gold in his eye dimmed to embers.
He staggered forward a single step, massive frame suddenly uncertain. The symbols etched into his armor went dark one by one, like stars blinking out.
He collapsed.
His body hit the ground with a sound like a structure giving up, water rushing around him, swallowing the last traces of the glow. The ferry behind him drifted back, silent and empty, as if already in mourning. The water had claimed all evidence of his visit.
The Fox stood there, rifle still raised, hands shaking. Her breath caught halfway between inhale an exhale.
[M.A.R.S.]
"...Confirmed."
[Fox] "Confirmed what?"
A pause. Then—
[M.A.R.S.]
"The Church had deployed overwatch."
She looked instinctively toward the skyline, scanning rooftops and skeletal frames. She saw nothing. Whoever it was, they were already gone, or never meant to be seen.
[M.A.R.S.]
"They will not approach. Their task is deterrence, not contact."
[Fox] "Guess I owe them."
[M.A.R.S.]
"You owe them nothing. They are fulfilling their end of the agreement."
She glanced once at where the fallen Ferryman had been.
[Fox] "I didn't want it to end like that. He was supposed to be non-hostile."
No answer came.
She turned away and kept moving.
The city thinned as she walked, ruins giving way to exposed rock and twisted infrastructure bent by forces older than memory. The water receded until her boots met dry ground again, cracked and scarred but solid.
Ahead, rising against the pale sky, the outer rim of the crater finally revealed itself.
The edge of the Arcwater Ribbon. The way forward.
She stopped, just for a moment, and looked back once more, at the drowned city, the silent ferry, the paths she would never walk again.
Then she faced the rim.
And climbed.