Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 85: Empty Shells

The Red Tide breaks.

What’s left of the horde pivots as one and runs. Not a retreat. A recall.

The same unified, mindless obedience that drove them forward now drives them back, like a swarm whose queen just screamed, "Come home."

The Reef Stalker is the last to go.

It coils its massive haunches and launches into a bounding sprint toward the dark horizon.

Three leaps in, it stops.

Turns its bifurcated jaw just enough to angle one milky tiger shark eye directly at me.

The look isn’t a challenge. It isn’t a threat. It isn’t a promise.

I feel it’s an invitation.

Next time...

Then it’s gone. Swallowed by the dust and the dark.

[Warning: OXI Low]

...

[Warning: OXI Low]

"I’m almost dry," I say, letting my knees finally give.

I drop onto the blood-soaked sand, my legs folding under me with the graceless surrender of a body that has been running on fumes for the last twenty minutes.

Boris is still standing, watching the remnants of the horde disappear beyond the dune line. He lets out a long, tired breath—not relief, just the exhale of a man mentally resetting for whatever comes next.

"Tank’s running low?" He chuckles, a warm, rumbling sound that has no business existing on a battlefield. "Don’t worry. You’ll evolve soon enough."

He sits down beside me. The casual proximity of someone who fights back-to-back with you and doesn’t feel the need to maintain distance afterward.

I pull sixty Scales from my inventory and start chewing.

[Scales: 420 -> 360]

One by one. Slow. Exhausted. Each crystal grinding between my teeth like oversized, chalky pills that taste like mineral water mixed with some kind of flour.

"Raw Scales," Boris observes, wrinkling his nose. "Like chewing stale saltine crackers."

He pushes himself up with a groan, dusting sand from his shredded armor. "Come on. Let’s build a fire and collect what we can. This retreat is temporary."

Temporary...

So that’s what he meant by the end of Phase One. The tide retreats, regroups, and comes back.

A second phase.

Probably stronger beasts. Higher ranks. Lost Ark doesn’t get a victory—it gets an intermission. Thirstfall being Thirstfall, wherever we are.

I keep chewing. I’m not in a rush. Neither is the sand.

[Reward: +12% to Rank Advancement]

[Current Rank Status: 14%]

Not bad.

The Wiver kills, the Gargolites, the Coral Ripper, and the Stalker engagement all counted. Combined with the hunting in the bioluminescent biome, the number makes sense.

The System rewards violence efficiently when the violence is honest.

I dismiss the HUD and prepare to stand.

A hand grabs my arm before I can.

Oliver. Pulling me upright with the easy strength of a man who forgot he was limping an hour ago. Brendon stands beside him, silent as always.

"You look destroyed, kid," Oliver says, and lets out a booming laugh that sounds entirely too alive for a man caked head to toe in something else’s blood.

Wherever Oliver was during the battle, it was brutal. He’s wearing the evidence of it on every inch of his body—dark fluid matted into his hair, crusted into the joints of his armor, dried in streaks down his forearms.

"Where’s Rhayne?" I ask.

Before Oliver can answer, she steps out from behind them.

Head down. Hood up. The shadow of the oversized fabric covering her entire face.

"Rhayne? You okay?"

I search for her eyes. Can’t find them under the hood.

I step closer and touch her chin with two fingers, tilting her face up toward the firelight.

Blood.

Her entire face is covered in it. Dried rivulets from her eyes, her nose, the corners of her mouth—the exact same pattern from the Reef Stalker fight at the Academy.

The Void Link’s penalty, paid in full.

She held on until the very last second. Even after I told her to break the connection when the bleeding started.

She listened to the first half of my order and ignored the second.

A heavy sigh escapes me. Against my will. Against my training. Against everything I’ve built to keep the cracks from showing.

I turn to Brendon and rip a strip of fabric from his shirt before he can process what’s happening.

"Hey—" he starts, looking down at the tear in complete indignation.

I’m already facing Rhayne again.

I fold the cloth and begin wiping the dried blood from her face. Carefully. Starting at the temples, working down along her cheekbones, cleaning the dark crust from beneath her eyes.

"You should listen when I give an order," I tell her.

"Hm," she agrees. Quietly. Without conviction.

People can’t see her face like this. The Void Link is our tactical advantage—if Lost Ark’s population sees a girl bleeding from every orifice after touching someone, the word "Leech" follows within hours.

And that word follows Rhayne like a disease she can never cure.

I’ll protect this secret the same way I protected it before.

"Campfire," I announce, pointing Oliver toward the direction Boris went. The older man is already building a massive pyre from monster carcasses and broken equipment, the flames reaching high enough to push back the desert cold.

"Night’s freezing and our bodies are still hot from the fight. Move before the temperature difference cracks your muscles." I order.

"Lola, you copy?"

A pause. Then, small and tired: "Hi..."

"Come down to the fire. You can see it from up there, right?"

"Okay..."

We walk toward the pyre.

The battlefield stretches around us in every direction—a carpet of dead monsters so thick that the sand beneath is invisible. The scale is staggering. Thousands of carcasses. Tens of thousands.

And the human cost?

I count the fallen soldiers as we walk. One near the eastern flank, face down. Another by the shattered remains of a ballista mount. A third slumped against a shield that didn’t save him.

I can count them on one hand.

The contrast is obscene. An army of monsters measured in the tens of thousands, and Lost Ark lost fewer people than I have fingers. These people aren’t just surviving the Red Tide.

They’re farming it.

The Echo Fragments from these fallen soldiers will be invaluable. Memories of people who lived in Lost Ark for years—their knowledge of the terrain, the economy, the geography, and the political structure.

A few Fragments could give me more intel than weeks of conversation.

"Oliver," I say. "Collect Scales and anything useful from the carcasses. I noticed the armor here is crafted from beast parts—check what’s worth salvaging for trade."

"On it." He moves off with Brendon, warhammer resting on his shoulder, already scanning the field with the practiced eye of a man who spent a year in a subway station learning to strip value from anything.

With Oliver handling the loot, I can focus on what actually matters.

I walk toward the nearest fallen soldier.

I kneel beside the body. Male. Middle-aged. Monastery robes under leather armor. His face is calm—the specific calm of someone who died too fast to feel it.

I reach for the Echo Fragment.

There is no Echo Fragment.

I stare at the body. I activate Trace. The skill hums for a moment, searching, scanning—and returns nothing.

No spectral residue. No memory imprint. No fragment. No echo.

Just a body. Empty. A shell with nothing left inside it.

Not even the faintest trace of a soul.

I check the second body. Same result.

The third. Same.

No fragments. No memories. No Trace activation. Just flesh, bone, and equipment. As if these people were never Divers at all. As if they never had a system connection to begin with.

Drowners?

My eyes drift across the battlefield to the massive pyre where Boris is stoking the flames, his silhouette framed against the firelight.

His bare shoulder. The erased tattoo. The missing class insignia.

The soldiers with no Echo Fragments.

I stand up slowly, wiping the sand from my knees.

He’s going to give me answers.

And it’s going to be now.