BLESSED: The forgotten

The dying scout's fingers clawed at the command table's edge, his shattered leg armor dripping black-streaked ichor onto the tactical maps. His breathing came in wet, shuddering gasps that filled the silent tent. Every exhale sprayed fine droplets of blood across the worn parchment showing the Dead Zone's fracture lines.

"Worldbreaker," he rasped, his voice like gravel in a tin can. "Three days. Maybe less."

Kael leaned against the tent pole, the wound along his ribs - that Shrieker's parting gift from two nights ago - throbbing in time with the scout's ragged breathing. He pressed a hand to the bandages, feeling the warm seep of fresh blood. No mission had been given. No Contract activated. The dark veins across his arms lay dormant, leaving him frighteningly, vulnerably human.

Jabari was already moving, his calloused fingers tracing the fault lines on the map. "This makes no sense," he muttered. His nail scraped westward toward the Dead Zone's heart. "Titans follow the bedrock rivers." The finger dragged northeast, directly toward their position. "This one's swimming upstream."

Madam's ocular implant whirred softly as she studied the path. "UWN backup status?"

The comms officer shook his head, the static from his headset crackling like distant gunfire. "Last transmission confirmed four days minimum. And that's if Command approves the harvesters."

The scout coughed violently, spraying black-tinged phlegm across the table. When he spoke, his words were barely audible over the rising wind outside. "The creepers... they weren't attacking." His bloodshot eyes fixed on Kael. "They were herding us. Pushing us... toward the east wall."

Kael's stomach turned to ice. The east wall - their weakest point, its foundations still unstable from last month's quake. His fingers twitched toward his machetes, the movement pulling at his unhealed wound. Fresh blood warmed his side.

Three days. Maybe less.

Nightfall: The First Tremors

Kael lay on his cot staring at the container's rusted ceiling, listening to the outpost prepare for war. The usual nighttime sounds were gone - no rats scuttling through the garbage, no murmured conversations between off-duty soldiers. Just the endless scream of wind through the skeletal ruins beyond their walls and the occasional distant boom of engineers reinforcing the perimeter.

His machetes lay beside him, their Nsibidi etchings dull in the dim light. The Contract mark on his arm remained cold, its dark veins slack against his skin like dead ivy. He pressed fingers to his bandaged ribs, welcoming the flare of pain. Pain meant he was still human. Pain meant he could still die.

Somewhere beyond the walls, the earth groaned.

Day One: The Herding

The creepers came at sunset.

Not in their usual frenzied hordes, but in eerie, coordinated packs. They moved like extensions of a single mind, probing the defenses with surgical precision. One would feint left while another struck right, forcing the defenders into increasingly untenable positions. Step by calculated step, Gamma-7's soldiers found themselves pushed eastward, toward the crumbling wall.

Kael cut through the first two with practiced efficiency, but the third came low and fast from his blind spot. Its barbed tail lashed out, reopening the wound on his thigh in a spray of crimson. White-hot pain exploded through his leg as he stumbled, catching himself against a shattered concrete slab.

The Contract remained silent.

Gritting his teeth, he rolled as the creature pounced again, driving his machete upward through its soft underbelly. Hot, stinking viscera rained down as they collapsed together, his blood mixing with the creeper's in the dirt.

For the first time in years, Kael wondered if this might be the fight that killed him.

Day Two: The Weakness

The med bay reeked of antiseptic and stale sweat. Kael sat on the examination table, staring at the neat row of stitches marching across his thigh. The flesh around them was an angry red, already showing signs of infection. He pressed two fingers against the wound, welcoming the fresh wave of pain that followed.

Jabari leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed over his chest. The dim light caught the old scars peeking from beneath his collar - twisted, ropey things that shimmered faintly, like oil on water. "You're lucky that didn't sever the femoral artery," he said, nodding toward the injury.

Kael didn't answer. He was too busy counting the hours until the titan's arrival.

"We've been observing it from the western tower," Jabari continued, stepping inside. "It moves on all fours, but drags its right forelimb." He met Kael's gaze. "My squad put a round through that joint six months ago. Right before..."

His voice trailed off, but Kael heard the unspoken words. Right before the titan slaughtered them all.

Outside, the wind rose to a fever pitch, howling through the outpost's skeletal remains like a living thing.

Day Three: The Reckoning

Kael woke screaming.

Fire raced through his veins, black and hungry. The Contract unfurled in his chest, its voice echoing through his skull like a death knell:

*Kill the Reaper.*

Agony lanced through him - white-hot and all-consuming - before vanishing as quickly as it came. His wounds sealed, flesh knitting together beneath the blood-crusted bandages. The mission had come. The Contract was awake.

Outside, the sirens wailed.

Then the east wall screamed.

Metal supports bent inward, their rivets popping like gunshots. Concrete buckled and split, not from impact, but from some terrible, invisible force pulling at its very atoms. Kael was running before the dust cleared, his machetes singing in their sheaths.

What emerged from the settling debris defied reason.

The titan dragged itself forward on four massive limbs, its obsidian hide steaming with Abyssal energy. Six lidless eyes blinked in eerie sequence, their pupils contracting as they fixed on the scrambling soldiers. Then, with a sound like grinding tectonic plates, it rose.

Forty feet of nightmare given form. Spines unfurled along its back like a grotesque crown. Its chest plates split apart, revealing pulsating blue sigils carved deep into the living armor beneath.

The air itself seemed to collapse.

Two soldiers were ripped from their positions, their screams cut short as they slammed into the titan's spiked torso. A jeep flipped end over end, its fuel tank detonating against the creature's ribs in a fireball that reeked of burning ozone.

Jabari's voice crackled over the comms: "Watch the chest! The sigils glow before it pulls! You've got eight seconds after—"

Madam's prosthetic arm whined as she activated its stabilizers. "Kael! Flanking maneuver, now!"

But the titan wasn't looking at her. Its hollow gaze had already found Kael.

And as the dust settled between them, its jagged mouth split into something almost like a smile.

The Contract's final command echoed through Kael's bones:

Fight.