Kane’s pupils constricted violently.

  He didn't hesitate. The moment the scream tore through the air, his body was already catapulted forward. [ Kinetic Boost ] activated, his legs kicking up a trail of dust across the scree slope, each stride landing precisely on a foothold that offered maximum leverage.

  A second scream followed, sharper and more agonizing than the first. It carried an emotion Kane had never heard from Crag before—

  Fear.

  No. Not fear. It was pain. Raw, uncontrollable agony.

  Kane pushed his speed even further.

  He vaulted over a low rocky ridge and skidded down a gravel slope as the terrain before him shifted dramatically. The flat wasteland suddenly fractured, appearing as if some titanic force had ripped it open from the center, forming an ancient canyon roughly thirty meters wide and seemingly bottomless.

  The rock walls on either side showed unnatural cross-sections—layers of geological history sliced clean, revealing deep crimson strata within. This wasn't the result of natural erosion. This canyon had been carved by an act of violence.

  Kane moved rapidly along the edge, searching for a way down. Crag’s screams continued to rise from the depths, the intervals between them shortening like a drowning man gasping for his final breaths.

  Finding a slope formed by a collapse, he leaped without a second thought. Rubble shattered beneath his boots as he slid nearly fifteen meters down the vertical face. He grabbed a protruding rock to decelerate and flipped onto the ground.

  The canyon floor was wider than he had anticipated.

  Then, he saw it.

  What first caught his eye wasn't Crag. It was bone.

  A single, gargantuan bone.

  It was half-buried in the soil of the canyon floor. The portion exposed to the air was nearly forty meters long, with a diameter exceeding three meters. Its surface wasn't bone-white but possessed a deep, dark red metallic luster—as if it had been soaked in blood for millennia and then forged in the high temperatures of the earth's depths.

  Kane’s footsteps faltered.

  His gaze followed the length of the massive bone—it wasn't alone. Ahead of the dark red giant, more skeletal structures protruded from the earth. Some showed only a cross-section; others were largely exposed. Ribs, vertebrae, and joint structures he couldn't even identify... together, they formed a fraction of a complete skeleton.

  The scale of this skeleton defied his understanding.

  Judging only by the parts visible above ground, this creature must have been at least one hundred and fifty meters long when it was alive.

  "Aaaaagh—!!"

  Crag’s scream snapped his attention back.

  He saw Crag.

  The Stoneborn was about fifty meters away, right beside the largest bone—likely a vertebra. His massive frame was curled on the ground, hands clutching his head, his entire body trembling violently like a stone being shattered from the inside.

  He was thrashing.

  The 2.8-meter Stoneborn warrior, a giant covered in skin as hard as granite, was rolling on the ground like a child pierced by a red-hot iron. His mouth was wide open, ashen lips pulled back to reveal stony teeth. The sound squeezing out of his throat wasn't a shout, but a wheeze bordering on suffocation.

  Kane sprinted toward him.

  "Crag!"

  He reached a point less than ten meters away, reaching out to pull the giant up.

  "Don't... Stay back!!"

  Crag’s voice squeezed through his grit teeth, warped almost beyond recognition.

  His right hand was slammed against the ground, ten stone fingers sinking deep into the soil. The rocky layers at his fingertips had shattered, exposing a deeper, grayish-white texture beneath.

  His left hand clutched his chest, his entire arm vibrating at a frequency visible to the naked eye.

  "Don't... come over here, kid... Just a moment... and it'll be fine..."

  Kane froze.

  It wasn't because of Crag’s warning. It was because of the transformation he saw occurring on Crag's body.

  Crag’s skin—that granite-like, ashen-white epidermis covering his entire frame—was fracturing.

  These weren't the type of cracks caused by external impact during combat; they were spreading from the inside out.

  The fissures snaked along Crag’s arms, shoulders, and chest. Deep within every crack, a faint, dark red glow pulsed.

  The color of that light was an exact match for the metallic luster of the gargantuan skeleton.

  Crag’s body arched at an impossible angle. His spine sounded like it was being wrenched by an invisible hand from within, producing a series of sickening cracks and snaps.

  The sound reminded Kane of the hydraulic presses at the Scrapyard crushing decommissioned mech frames.

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Except this time, it wasn't metal being pulverized. It was Crag’s bones.

  Crag opened his mouth and let out a hoarse roar. The sound slammed against the canyon walls and bounced back, layering into a chaotic cacophony of echoes.

  His back slammed violently against the ground, kicking up a cloud of debris and dust. Then again. And a third time.

  His body was like a fish pinned to a cutting board—spasming, bouncing, and twisting unconsciously.

  Kane stood ten meters away, watching it all without moving a muscle.

  His hands were clenched into fists, nails biting into his palms.

  He wanted to rush forward, but logic told him Crag was right.

  He didn't know what effect the power radiating from that skeleton would have on a normal human, and in this state, Crag had clearly lost control over his own strength.

  Getting close might result in being flattened into a meat paste by an unconscious swipe of the giant's hand.

  So, he could only watch.

  Crag’s spasms lasted for a long time. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Fifteen.

  By the twentieth minute, Crag’s screams finally began to weaken.

  It wasn't because the pain had subsided, but because his throat was too shredded to produce any more sound.

  His body still trembled, but the intensity was fading, shifting from violent thrashing to fine tremors as he curled on the ground.

  By the thirtieth minute, Crag finally went still.

  He lay on his side next to the giant bone, eyes half-closed, chest heaving like an old engine on the verge of stalling after a massive overload.

  His skin was a roadmap of cracks. The dark red glow emanating from within was slowly receding, but it hadn't disappeared entirely.

  Kane walked over.

  This time, Crag didn't stop him.

  Kane crouched beside Crag, meticulously observing his condition.

  Crag’s breathing was heavy and ragged. Every inhale carried a dull resonance, as if the very internal structure of his chest cavity had undergone a fundamental shift.

  The cracks on his skin were healing slowly, but the patterns forming in their wake were different—within the original, pure ashen-white granite texture, extremely fine veins of dark red metallic luster had appeared.

  The sheen was an exact match for the surface of the gargantuan skeleton behind him.

  "...Kid."

  Crag’s voice was as hoarse as sandpaper dragging across sheet metal. He struggled to open his eyes, his gaze drifting for several seconds before finally refocusing on Kane’s face.

  "What happened?" Kane asked.

  Crag remained silent for a moment. He tried to push himself up, but his arms trembled violently the moment he applied pressure. Ultimately, he gave up and slumped back down. He looked at the massive skeleton beside him with a sorrowful expression, his eyes holding the lingering traces of agony and something else—something indefinable.

  "This morning... while you were still sleeping," Crag began, his voice halting, "I heard a sound."

  "What kind of sound?"

  "A heartbeat," Crag said. "It was coming from deep underground. Very faint, but very... rhythmic. Thump. Thump. Thump. One beat at a time."

  His gaze shifted toward the distant entrance of the canyon.

  "At first, I thought it was some indigenous species moving beneath the earth. But the frequency was wrong. No creature on the wasteland has a heartbeat that slow. And the sound didn't travel through the air; it came through the ground. I could feel it through the soles of my feet."

  Kane didn't interrupt, listening silently.

  "I just followed that sensation. The further east I went, the clearer it became. Then, I reached the edge of this canyon."

  Crag exerted himself to lift a hand, pointing at the giant bone beside him.

  "I saw it after I climbed down. I don't know what this thing is. It’s definitely not a creature from the current wasteland. I’ve lived many years, and I’ve never seen bones this large. And these bones... they aren't stone, and they aren't normal bone. Try tapping them; they're absurdly hard. I tried biting a piece off once, but I couldn't even make a dent."

  "And then?"

  Crag’s expression became somewhat dazed.

  "Then I heard the heartbeat getting clearer and clearer. It was coming from inside this largest bone. From the marrow cavity. When I got close... my body felt a sensation... it’s hard to describe... it was like being pulled by something. Not an external pull, but my insides were moving in that direction on their own."

  He paused as if recalling the feeling.

  "I sat down next to the marrow cavity. I reached out and touched it."

  Crag’s voice dropped an octave.

  "The moment I touched it... I felt my body synchronize with that vibration. It was like... two stones pressed together, resonating. It felt good. I’ve never felt anything like it before. My whole body was beating along with that frequency."

  "And then?"

  "Then... maybe a few minutes passed. I can't be sure. Just when I felt the most comfortable..."

  Crag’s face suddenly contorted.

  "The pain... it exploded from the deepest part of my body. Every single bone felt like it was being shattered from the inside with a hammer. Not just snapped—pulverized. It was as if something was dismantling my skeleton piece by piece, then stuffing something else back in."

  He ran a hand over his chest.

  "Then, you arrived."

  Kane listened, lapsing into silence for several seconds.

  He stood up and walked toward the gargantuan skeleton.

  He pressed his palm against the dark red surface of the bone—it was ice-cold to the touch, harder than any known material.

  He rapped on it, producing a dull, metallic echo.

  But he felt no vibration.

  No heartbeat, no pulse, nothing unusual.

  To Kane, this skeleton was nothing more than a massive, silent fossil that had been dead for untold ages.

  But to Crag, it was clearly something more.

  Kane walked back to Crag’s side and crouched down again.

  This time, he looked even closer.

  He noticed that the dark red metallic luster within Crag’s original ashen-white stone skin wasn't distributed evenly.

  It followed specific lines along Crag’s arms, chest, and shoulders, like a river flowing through a carved channel.

  The direction of those veins... they didn't perfectly align with his original stony patterns, but they weren't entirely unrelated either. It was as if a new, deeper network had been superimposed over the old one.

  "Do you feel anything?" Kane asked. "Aside from the pain."

  Crag shook his head. He clenched his fist, then released it.

  "I can't feel a thing," he said, his voice carrying a trace of lingering fear. "Only pain. I've never hurt like that before."

  Kane didn't press further. He stood up, casting one last look at the massive skeleton spanning the canyon.

  One hundred and fifty meters.

  Creatures over a hundred meters long once existed on this planet. It had died here, its bones semi-metallizing over the long passage of time, yet some residual power within it had never dissipated.

  For some reason, it reacted to Crag. Was this an ancient ancestor of the Stoneborn?

  Or was it something that any intelligent race like Crag's could sense?

  Kane didn't pursue the thought any further.

  He leaned down to help Crag up. The 2.8-meter Stoneborn warrior leaned against his shoulder, as heavy as a moving wall.

  Together, they slowly retraced their steps, walking out of the canyon one pace at a time.

  On the way back to the cave, Kane laid out the plan he had been turning over in his mind all morning.

  Andrew Zoe.

  The Kunlun base.

  The Iron Hand Gang.

  Ivy.

  The weaknesses of the three factions.

  The chips in his hand.

  The window of opportunity for action.

  The sequence of every step.

  Crag listened quietly, nodding occasionally without interrupting.

  As they reached the entrance of the cave, Kane stopped and looked back toward the southeast—the canyon was already hidden by the terrain, lost from sight.

  He turned and walked into the cave.

  He didn't see Crag linger at the entrance for a moment longer.

  The setting sun dyed the sky over the canyon a dark red—the exact same color as the newly formed veins on the back of Crag’s hand.

  Crag stared in that direction, a look in his eyes that Kane had failed to catch.

  It wasn't fear. Nor was it anticipation.

  It was loneliness.

  Thanks for reading!

  RATINGS and REVIEWS are super important for visibility. If you enjoy the story so far, please take 10 seconds to leave a 5-star rating! It helps more than you know. Thanks!

  Want to read ahead?

  30 Advance Chapters right now on my Patreon!