Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 91: Erosion

I find Boris on the far edge of the inselberg, sitting on a flat slab of rock with his back to the group. His axe is on the ground beside him—dropped. The posture of a man who let go of the weight.

I sit down beside him. Same rock. Same horizon.

I let the silence exist. Pushing now closes the door permanently.

Years of negotiating with people who are one wrong word away from shutting down forever tells me I need to be careful.

I start soft.

"Sorry about my man back there. He just lost someone. I know it’s not an excuse. Just context."

Boris doesn’t look at me. He lets out a low sound—half grunt, half laugh, no humor in either half. "It’s fine, kid. He’s not the first person who’s screamed at me after burying someone in this sand... and won’t be the last." 𝒻𝑟𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝑛𝘰𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝘤𝘰𝘮

More silence.

But his silence isn’t anger. I feel this is the silence of someone who’s been carrying something alone for so long the weight has become part of his skeleton.

I wait.

Boris speaks first. Almost to himself. The words leaking through a crack he couldn’t seal in time.

"It’s not that we never tried to leave. We just... can’t anymore."

I hold my breathing steady. No visible reaction. Keep the tone.

"What do you mean, can’t?"

Boris rubs his face with both hands. Massive palms dragging across the stubble and the exhaustion. He takes a breath—the deep, shaky kind that comes before confessions that cost something.

"In the beginning, we tried. Multiple times. Teams went to the tower. Some came back. Most didn’t. But there was always someone willing to go."

"And you stopped. Why?"

Boris looks at his own shoulder. The shoulder I reset during the Stalker fight. The shoulder without a tattoo.

He pulls the cape aside. Exposes the skin.

The class insignia—the mark Ocean’s Law brands onto every Diver upon awakening, permanent, immutable, part of the system’s identification architecture—is gone.

What’s left is a ghost. A faint, raised border on the skin, like the outline of something that wasn’t removed but erased. Like ink fading under a sun that doesn’t exist here.

"You know what happens when you stay in Lost Ark too long, kid?"

I look at the empty skin where the tattoo should be.

"You lose your system." Boris’s voice is flat. Factual. The cadence of someone reciting damage reports. "Slowly. One piece at a time. First, the ranks stop climbing. You kill a thousand monsters and the number doesn’t move. Then the skills start misfiring. Not always—just enough. One here. Another there. Like an engine choking on bad fuel."

He closes his fist. Opens it. Closes it again. Testing whether the hand still obeys.

"Then the tattoo starts fading. And when it’s gone completely..." He pauses. Stares at his open palm. "You become a Drowner. Not a Diver who got stuck. A real Drowner. No system. No rank. No evolution. Living on instinct and muscle memory, same as Earth. Same as an animal."

The information drops through me like a stone into a well with no bottom.

That’s why Boris has been peak C for two years without evolving. The system stopped recognizing him.

That’s why the dead soldiers had no Echo Fragments. No system soul left to leave behind. Empty shells.

And if it happens over time, then every second my squad stays in Lost Ark is a countdown.

"And the tower?" My voice is sharper now. The urgency climbing despite my control. "You reached it before. What changed?"

Boris nods.

"Back when we still had full system access, teams could get close. Touch the walls. Study the structure. But the tower pushes back—there’s a force around it, like a field. The closer you get, the harder it pulls on your OXI. On your system."

He lifts his hand. Flexes the fingers slowly, staring at them like they belong to someone he used to know.

"With full ranks and reserves, you could resist long enough to reach the base. Now? We start draining the second we get within range. No system left to shield us. Our people collapse before they’re close enough to lay a hand on it."

I’m on my feet before the sentence ends. Instinct. My body moving ahead of the calculation because the calculation is already done.

I feel Boris just staring at me.

I cross the distance to Rhayne in quick, controlled strides. She’s sitting with Lola, still holding her hand. She looks up when I approach—searching my face for instructions, for structure, for anything solid.

"I need to check something. May I?"

She doesn’t understand, but she trusts. A small nod.

I kneel beside her. Carefully, I pull the edge of her cloak aside, sliding the fabric off her left shoulder until the skin is exposed from the collarbone to the upper arm.

A sharp blush hit her cheeks. She looked away, huddling slightly against the exposure, yet she made no move to protest.

Rhayne’s class tattoo.

A dark angel. Wings spread in full span, made not of shadow but of absence—a darkness with texture and depth, as if the wings were cuts in the fabric of reality itself. The body is slender, ethereal, faceless—just an elegant void presence crowned by an inverted halo. A ring of black light that absorbs instead of emitting.

Void Monarch...

It’s beautiful. It’s terrifying. It’s the most impressive class insignia I’ve ever seen on a living person.

But at the lower edge of the left wing—where the darkness meets Rhayne’s skin—the ink is fading. Subtle. A normal person wouldn’t catch it. But I’m not a normal person.

The border is blurring. Losing definition. Like a photograph left in the sun too long.

The tattoo is beginning to erase.

I cover her shoulder again. Gently. Rhayne is looking at me with confusion and something that looks like fear—not of me, but of whatever my face is saying without words.

I walk back to Boris. Fast. Controlled. But the rhythm betrays me.

"How long?"

Boris reads the full question in my face. Not how long until the next tide. Not how long until the mission. How long until my people’s systems go dark.

"No more than two months," he says. No softening. No cushion. The voice of a man who watched it happen to people he loved and learned that sugar-coating the truth doesn’t save anyone. "Maybe less. Depends on how much they use their skills. The more they activate, the faster it wears."

The ground shifts under me. Not physically. But the foundation of everything I’d been planning—the time, the gradual exploration, the methodical progression—cracks down the middle.

Two months...

Rhayne activates the Void Link in every fight. Oliver swings the warhammer with active skills. Lola fires Lullaby at massive OXI cost.

Every time they fight, they’re closer to becoming empty shells.

I look at the horizon. At the tower. The twisted coral structure pulsing faintly against the false sky.

The tower isn’t an exploration target anymore.

It’s a race against a clock none of us can see.