POV: Solstice Burn
Time: Day 3 Post-Fall.
Location: Lower Deck -- The Gilded Wreck (Aurum Sea).
"Hotter, Kiln! You think we have all day?!"
That whip-like voice hit my ears harder than the crash of waves against the ship's hull. It was the voice of Quartermaster Grimm---a muscular, stocky man with skin grey like a shark's and one hand replaced by a rusty hydraulic claw.
I gritted my teeth, suppressing the urge to turn my head and spray blue fire right into his ugly face.
"Quiet, Scrap," I grumbled quietly, my focus returning to the ten-inch-thick steel plate in front of me.
This wasn't a battle. This wasn't a noble magic duel in the academy arena. This was forced labor.
My first task as "Crew" (read: Slave) on this damned ship was to cut through the hull of the Aurum destroyer they'd hauled up from the seabed. They weren't using laser saws. They weren't using expensive plasma cutters.
They were using me.
I pressed both my palms against the wet, rusted metal surface.
"Burn," I commanded my blood circuits.
VWOOOM.
Heat flowed from my core, snaked up my arms, exploded from my palms. Not the wild, explosive fire of usual. This damned contract forced "efficiency" on me. I had to condense the heat into a precise focal point.
The metal beneath my hands hissed, changing color from rust-black to cherry red, then bright orange, and finally blinding white.
The smell of ozone and burning paint filled the stifling air of the lower deck, mingling with the sweat of other crewmen watching from a distance with looks of hunger and fear.
"Cut!" Grimm shouted.
I slid my hands downward, dragging a vertical melting line. The steel gave way like butter under a hot knife. Molten metal dripped onto the deck floor, hissing as it hit puddles of saltwater.
Hot.
So hot.
Back in Valdor, I wore special ventilated gear. I had air conditioning. I had rest breaks.
Here? I wore a musty, used leather vest, and the air down here had already reached 45 degrees Celsius because of my own activity. Sweat poured from my brow, stinging my eyes, salty on my lips.
My heart raced unnaturally. My Core pulsed wildly, demanding a full release. It felt like holding back a sneeze, but the sneeze was a nuclear explosion. I was only allowed to release heat "bit by bit" for cutting. It was torture. Like holding my breath for three days.
KRAK.
The large steel plate finally cut through completely. The two-ton piece fell and hit the floor with a loud crash that vibrated through the entire ship.
"Good," Grimm grinned, flashing his metal teeth. He walked closer, his hydraulic claw patting my smoking shoulder. "You're useful too, Miss Disaster. Saved ten canisters of plasma fuel today."
He tossed a canteen of dirty water at me.
"Drink. Rest 10 minutes. Then we tackle the propeller."
I caught the canteen. The water was warm, tasted of rust, and had weird sediment at the bottom. But I gulped it down greedily. My throat felt like a cheese grater.
I slumped onto a pile of chains, my breathing ragged. Thin hot steam kept escaping my pores, creating a mirage-like haze around me. The other crew---rough humans with mild mutations from sea radiation---kept their distance. They didn't see me as a comrade. They saw me as a dangerous machine that could blow up any second.
And they were right.
I looked at my trembling hands. My skin was flushed, blue veins bulging.
"I'm full," I panicked internally. "I'm too full."
For these three days, I had been producing heat continuously for work, but I never truly "released" it. Residual heat was building up inside me.
I needed a coolant.
I needed him.
Night brought a different kind of torment.
If day was a hot, noisy hell, night was a silent, claustrophobic hell.
I dragged my heavy feet down the creaky wooden stairs towards the deepest part of the hull. Cabin 304. Our night prison.
It smelled damp. Fungus grew in the wooden corners. The sound of seawater hitting the hull sounded incredibly close, right behind this thin wall.
I opened the rusty iron door.
Dark. Cold.
The only light source was cheap Glow-Moss stuck to the ceiling, emitting a sickly green light.
And there, on the dirty hammock, lay the reason I was a slave.
Wynter Ash.
He hadn't moved since we were pulled from the sea. His body was wrapped in a coarse wool blanket I'd found in storage. His face... God, his face was terrible.
His skin wasn't pale anymore, but a transparent grey. His cheekbones jutted sharply as if his flesh had been eaten from within. His lips were chapped and blue.
But the most frightening thing was the room's temperature.
This cramped cabin was as cold as a freezer. My breath immediately turned to white vapor as I entered. The wooden walls near his bed were coated in a thin layer of frost crystals that kept growing like parasitic fungi.
He was leaking.
Even in a coma, his body greedily sucked heat from the surroundings. He was turning this room into a frozen coffin.
"Hey, Living Burden," I greeted roughly, closing the door behind me and locking it.
No answer. Of course.
Only the sound of his shallow, rasping breaths... hhek... hhek... like a machine running out of oil.
I walked closer, removing my sweaty, oily work vest. My body felt heavy, every joint aching. But the heat in my chest had reached a critical point. It felt like a ball of fire spinning in my gut, pushing up my throat.
"You're lucky I'm full today," I muttered, climbing onto the narrow bed.
The bed creaked, protesting our combined weight.
I had no choice. I couldn't sleep on the floor; the floor was too far. I had to be touching him.
I embraced his stiff body.
SESS...
The sensation was instant. And paradoxically, it was blissful.
As soon as my boiling skin touched his absolute-zero skin, a massive energy transfer occurred.
It felt like opening a high-pressure valve.
The excess heat that had tormented me all day, that gave me a headache and blurred my vision, was sucked out. Rushing into his hollow body.
And in return, the deadly cold from his body seeped into my skin, cooling my boiling blood, calming my screaming nerves.
"Ugh..." I groaned softly, burying my face in his cold shoulder.
This was insane. I was embracing this living corpse like a favorite body pillow.
"Wake up, dammit," I whispered into his cold ear. "You think it's fun being a welder all day? You think it's fun taking orders from a stocky guy named Grimm?"
I felt his chest rise and fall slowly under my hand. His heartbeat was weak, but steady. Every time I gave him heat, its rhythm strengthened slightly.
He was consuming my life force. He was drinking my fire.
"You're so expensive, Wynter," I complained, my eyes growing heavy. Physical exhaustion was finally winning. "If you die after all this, I'll resurrect you just to kill you myself."
My hand felt his neck, checking his pulse---my new nightly habit.
Cold. But there was a pulse.
Beneath his thin skin, I could see the pattern of blackened blood vessels---a sign of inverted Mana Burn. His circuits were severely damaged from our fall from the stratosphere. Weaver---whoever that was---had truly destroyed him.
"Weaver..." I murmured, remembering the last message on Wynter's Smart-ID before it exploded. "The Law of Absolute Exchange."
I stared at the green moss-covered ceiling.
What was the exchange?
He gained power in the Under-City, and the price was his own body?
And me? What was my price? Freedom from Valdor... exchanged for slavery at sea?
"At least..." my thoughts blurred before sleep dragged me under, "...at least there's no Titus here. And at least... this pillow is cold."
I fell asleep holding my enemy, the only air conditioner in this tropical hell.
Midnight.
I jolted awake. Not from ship noises. Not from a storm.
But from Wynter.
He was moving.
For three days, he had been still as stone. But now, his body was convulsing.
Not shivering from cold. This was a muscle seizure.
"Wynter?" I was instantly alert, sitting upright. "Hey! Can you hear me?"
His eyes opened.
And I held my breath.
His eyes weren't red. His eyes were... White.
Totally white without pupils. Glowing faintly in the cabin's darkness.
His mouth was open, jaw rigid. And the sound coming from his throat wasn't Wynter Ash's calm, sarcastic voice.
It was a sound of... static. Like a radio searching for a frequency. Dual. Overlapping.
"Loom... The Loom..."
His voice was hoarse, like the scraping of a damaged tape.
"Threads... cut... reweave... reconnect..."
His stiff hand suddenly clutched my wrist. The grip was strong. Painful. The coldness burned my skin.
"Don't... let... them... weave..."
He stared at me---or at something behind me, piercing through the ship's walls.
"Weaver... she... lies..."
Then, his body arched upward, as if struck by thousands of volts. Thick white vapor shot from his mouth, filling the small cabin with freezing mist.
The room's temperature plummeted drastically. A water bottle on the table shattered as the water inside instantly froze.
"Damn!" I yelled.
He was having a Cryo-Seizure. His circuits were misfiring. He wasn't absorbing heat; he was explosively expelling cold.
If this continued, he would freeze his own heart---and freeze me along with him.
"Stop!" I shouted.
I had no choice. I had to perform a Jump-Start.
I pinned his body down, holding his hands above his head. I shut my eyes and called my fire. Not residual heat. But pure fire.
"Burn!"
I set my own hands on fire.
I pressed my blazing palms directly onto his chest, over his heart.
Orange light penetrated his skin and ribs.
SSSSHHH!!!!
A loud hiss of steam sounded as fire met ice inside his chest.
Wynter screamed. A soundless scream, his mouth wide open in silent agony.
"Take it!" I snarled, forcibly pumping my fire mana into his damaged circuits. "Eat this! Don't you die, you bastard!"
His white eyes flickered wildly. His convulsions grew more violent, then... stopped abruptly.
His body went limp again. Fell back onto the mattress.
The white light in his eyes died. His eyelids closed.
Silence.
Only the sound of my ragged breathing and droplets of condensation from the ceiling.
I checked his pulse again with trembling hands.
Weak. But there.
And his eyes... when I slightly opened his eyelids... that faint red color had returned. Normal coma. Not possession.
I collapsed beside him, utterly exhausted.
What was that?
"Loom... Weaver lies..."
I stared at his now-calm face.
You're not just sleeping, Wynter. You're fighting in there. There's something else inside your head. Something far older and more wicked than the pirates on deck.
"Great," I whispered into the darkness. "We're enslaved by pirates, and you're haunted by a fate-weaver. Perfect vacation."
I pulled the blanket over both of us again.
Tomorrow I have to melt the ship's anchor. But tonight... I have to make sure the ghost in Wynter's head doesn't kill us both.
"You owe me an explanation, Ice Block," I whispered, closing my eyes. "And the interest is steep."