Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 52: Eight

I collect the Echo Fragment, turn away from the broken thugs, and walk back to the girls.

The Fragment is cold in my hand. Heavier than it should be. I tuck it into my inventory without activating Rescue

I’ll process it later. Let’s just accumulate them for a while...

But the moment the Fragment crosses into my inventory space, something shifts.

A pressure behind my sternum that I didn’t know was building suddenly releases—not painfully, but permanently. Like a dam giving way to water that’s been rising for days.

[Attribute Adaptation: Spirit → D (1★)]

[Condition: Cumulative soul resonance. Echo saturation threshold breached.]

Wait... I hadn’t even used Rescue.

Dammit. The sludge from every Echo Fragment I’ve choked down since the Tundra was already teetering on the edge. This one just tipped the scales by existing near me.

The dead are building me...

I dismiss the prompt before the thought can eat through my mental safeguards.

Lola needs me present. Not haunted.

I keep walking.

Lola is still huddled near the edge of the platform, but the violent trembling in her small shoulders has subsided. Her hands are slowly lowering from her bear ears.

She looks up at me, her wide, watery blue eyes searching my face for confirmation that the immediate nightmare is over.

I crouch down in front of her, keeping my movements slow and deliberate.

"We’re moving out, Little Bear," I say, my voice steady and completely stripped of the cold edge I used on the scavengers. "The screaming metal and the loud noises... they’re going to stop soon. I promise. But I need you to walk with me. Can you do that?"

She stares at me for a long second, her fingers twisting the fabric of her white hoodie. Then, she gives a small, resolute nod. She reaches down, grabs the heavy handle of Lullaby’s case, and pulls herself up.

"Okay," she whispers.

I give her a brief, reassuring nod and stand up.

We fall into line behind the five remaining thugs. I position myself at the absolute rear of the formation, keeping Rhayne and Lola securely shielded behind my back.

In Thirstfall, you never let a desperate man walk behind you.

As we navigate the ruined subway tunnels, the leader falls back a half-step to walk near me, keeping a healthy distance from the unlit hilt of Eventide on my belt.

"Name’s Oliver," he mutters, rubbing a trembling hand over his receding, sweat-slicked hairline. He doesn’t look at me with the arrogant spark of a young academy cadet. He just looks exhausted.

I size him up with a quick, cynical glance.

Late forties, at least. His face is heavily weathered by a kind of stress that only comes from a past life of bills and broken backs. When he adjusts his grip on his hammer, I notice the thick, hardened calluses on his palms.

Those are the hands of a manual laborer, not a trained fighter.

"You’re a bit old to be a rookie Diver," I say flatly.

Oliver lets out a dry, bitter scoff.

"The Black Thirst doesn’t check IDs, kid. It claimed me late in life. I’m just a Rank D, trying to keep breathing."

Yeah, I think to myself, watching his shoulders slump.

It’s obvious. He doesn’t have the fire of someone trying to conquer this world. He just has the heavy, suffocating desperation of a man who wants to go home.

"I’m Dryden," I say, keeping the introduction brief.

We hit a spiraling concrete staircase that stretches upward into darkness. Oliver talks while we climb. The story is simple and ugly: twenty-five people boarded a free procedural train from Red Squid Slums, hoping to farm WaterStrands in Southlake. The tunnel went dark. The train went underwater. They woke up here.

Twenty-five walked in. Six are left. The rest were ground up by the Gatekeeper or starved out by the ambient OXI drain.

"We didn’t have a choice," Oliver mutters, the weight of his sins dragging his voice into the concrete. "It was the ambushes or starvation."

I don’t offer him pity. In the Deep, morality is a luxury purchased with OXI, and his tank was empty.

We finally reach the top of the staircase.

The claustrophobic tunnel opens up into a massive, dimly lit antechamber. At the far end of the room is a single, heavy iron door blocked by a massive, electronic turnstile. It looks like the entrance to a pre-Collapse stadium.

Oliver immediately collapses against the wall, resting his hands on his knees, gasping for air. Rhayne mimics him a few feet away, her chest heaving, completely exhausted by the climb. Lola looks fine even carrying her massive metal case.

I don’t rest. I step up to Oliver.

"Talk to me about the Gatekeeper."

Still catching his breath, Oliver points a trembling finger toward the heavy iron turnstile. He drops to a crouch and pulls a small, rusted pocket knife from his belt. Using the tip of the blade, he begins to scratch a crude map into the thick layer of dust on the concrete floor.

"Through that turnstile is a massive, circular hall," Oliver explains, his voice tight with remembered trauma. "In the dead center of the room stands an iron giant. It’s fully mechanical. Probably a Rank A beast. If you try to attack it directly, death is absolutely certain."

"And if you don’t attack?" I ask.

"It just watches you," Oliver says, drawing a circle around the ’giant’ in the dust. "But that doesn’t last long. Even if you stand perfectly still, it randomly targets someone and fires a volley of metal spikes the size of my forearm every thirty seconds."

Every thirty seconds.

My veteran brain immediately categorizes the threat. It isn’t a traditional combat encounter.

"What’s the exact attack pattern?" I ask, my eyes narrowing.

"If you strike it, it enters a blind frenzy," Oliver warns, looking up at me. "It becomes a literal meat grinder. But if you just observe and dodge, it strictly keeps to the thirty-second volley."

I cross my arms.

A Rank A mechanical beast that operates on a strict timer and punishes aggression. That’s a gimmick boss. It’s a puzzle. It wasn’t designed to be killed by brute force, not unless you’re a Rank S or higher.

I look at the crude map. "Give me more. Any other clues? What else is in the room?"

Oliver stares at his drawing, letting out a long, shaky sigh.

"Around the monster... there are these old, flickering gas lanterns; if you hit it, Shadow Beasts appear, and they are tough. And there’s a set of miniature toy trains circling the base of the giant on tiny tracks. It’s a completely macabre setup."

A heavy silence falls over the group. The remaining thugs shift uncomfortably, avoiding my gaze.

Oliver swallows hard, remembering the rest of the nightmare.

"There’s something else," he whispers. "The room adjusts itself to whoever enters. Each flickering lantern and each toy train matches the number of people who cross the turnstile. Eight people, eight lanterns, eight trains. We never figured out why. The first time, twenty-five of us tried to push through. The turnstile locked at eight."

He looks down at his dusty boots. "Anyway, it was an absolute carnage. Only two of us came back out."

"It’s a pattern."

The soft, completely detached voice breaks the tension in the room.

We all turn. Lola is standing near the wall, staring at the iron turnstile with a look of profound boredom.

"I see it," Lola murmurs, tracing an invisible shape in the air with her finger. "It’s a really boring, tedious pattern."

A genuine smile touches my lips.

"I knew you’d figure it out, Little Bear," I say, stepping toward her. "Think you can help me break it?" 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

Lola looks up at me and offers a bright, easy smile. "Easy."

Oliver scrambles to his feet, his face flushing red with sudden, violent anger.

"Easy?!" he snarls, gripping his warhammer. "That thing turned my friends into ground meat, and this brat is treating it like a playground game?!"

I step smoothly between Oliver and Lola, my hand resting casually on the hilt of Eventide. I don’t say a word. I just let him remember what happened to the last person who stood in front of this blade.

Oliver lowers the hammer.

"One last question, Oliver," I say, my voice dropping to a dangerous calm. "How exactly did you two make it out alive?"

Oliver refuses to meet my eyes, staring at the floor.

"We figured out that if you just survive long enough—if you dodge the spikes and wait out the timer—the monster eventually stops attacking entirely. It just powers down."

"And then you can leave?"

"No," Oliver spits bitterly. "The second you try to touch the exit door on the other side of the room, it immediately wakes up and enters an instant frenzy. The only way to survive the power-down phase is to retreat back through the entrance turnstile to where we are standing right now."

I process the mechanics.

A survival phase followed by an exit lockout.

I turn back to the turnstile, cracking my neck.

"How many can the turnstile take at once?" I ask.

Oliver swallows. "Eight. It locked at eight last time."

I count heads. Me, Rhayne, Lola, Oliver, four "thugs," and two surviving cadets. Ten.

Two people stay behind.

I look at the group. Nobody wants to do the math.

"Interesting," I say.