Morning came in thin layers, the way it did out in the Wilds. Not a clean sunrise, not a warm sweep of gold. Just gray-blue light bleeding through branches until the night finally let go.

  Otwin woke with his mouth dry and his body tight. He lay still for a second, listening. Wind in leaves. A bird calling once, then going quiet. No engines. No boots. No metallic clink of armor plates. The silence felt borrowed, like it could be taken away at any moment.

  His back ached the way it did after hauling scrap all day, heavy and stubborn. The pain from last night was gone, but the memory of it sat behind his eyes. He swallowed, tasted dirt, and forced himself to breathe slowly through his nose until his heartbeat stopped racing.

  “You still there?” he whispered.

  Affirmative.

  The word appeared in the same place as before, centered in his vision, crisp and calm. It did not flicker. It did not fade with sleep. It waited.

  Otwin pushed himself up with care. His muscles protested, but they obeyed. He rolled his shoulders, then eased his neck side to side. The pressure at the base of his skull was still there, a quiet reminder that his body had been changed while he lay helpless in the dark.

  He looked around. The forest was the same. Moss on bark. Damp earth. A scatter of leaves, crushed where he had fallen. But he was not the same, and he did not have the luxury of pretending otherwise.

  “I have to get moving,” he said. “I can’t stay here.”

  He dusted his hands on his trousers and stood, testing his balance. The ground was uneven. His boots sank slightly in soft soil. He adjusted his stance until it felt solid.

  He took a slow turn, orienting himself by instinct. The slope. The direction the light fell. The faint smell of smoke that carried on certain mornings when the wind was right.

  Destination query.

  Otwin blinked once. “You’re asking where I’m going?”

  Affirmative.

  He exhaled. Talking to empty air still felt wrong, but wrong did not matter anymore. Survival did.

  “There’s a scavenger town nearby,” he said. “Small. Built up around a ley-well. That’s where I’m going. I have to get back.”

  He shrugged on his pack and tightened the strap across his chest. The weight settled against him, familiar and grounding. The thought of what lay under the skin of his back made his stomach tighten, but he ignored it and started walking.

  Clarify ley-well.

  Otwin almost laughed. Of course, it needed clarification. Of course, the thing welded to his spine understood armor and power systems, but not the words scavengers used.

  “Ley-wells are like ley-rails,” he said, stepping around a fallen branch. “Ley-rails run over ley-lines. Big channels. Strong flow. Everyone with a steam fort plans routes around them because you can get proper energy there. A ley-well is smaller. Usually, a weak upwelling. A little knot where the line gets close enough to the surface that the land leaks it.”

  He paused to step over a patch of roots, then continued.

  “They’re not much,” he added. “Not like a rail stop. But they’re steady. People build shacks and shops around them, cobble together a town, because weak magic is still better than no magic. Keeps lights on. Heats water. Runs small tools. Enough to survive if you’re careful.”

  There was a short delay. Not uncertainty. Processing.

  Understood.

  Otwin nodded to himself. The path ahead was faint, but it was there. Old foot traffic, wagon ruts that had been softened by weather. He followed it without thinking. His feet knew the route better than his mind wanted to admit.

  After a few more steps, the text returned.

  Proposed destination approved. Current power reserves are below optimal operating threshold. Charging is recommended.

  Otwin slowed, then stopped outright. “Hold on.”

  Proceed.

  “You’re low on power?” he said, as if saying it aloud might make it less absurd.

  Correct.

  He stared down the path, eyes unfocused. “How does that make any sense? You’re a power core?”

  Clarification required.

  Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Otwin’s jaw worked. He could feel irritation rising, not because the answers were hard, but because the situation was. A day ago, he had been a man with a crew, a plan, and a simple goal. Get scrap, sell scrap, live another week. Now he was a man with a stolen core fused to his spine, and the core was telling him it needed to be charged.

  “You’re the thing that powers the Knights,” he said. “Steam armor. That’s what you told me. If you’re the power, why do you need power?”

  Power cores store energy. They do not generate it.

  Otwin frowned. “So you’re like a boiler.”

  Negative.

  He made a short, frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “Then what are you?”

  Power cores are comparable to batteries. They require charging at ley-rails or ley-wells.

  Otwin blinked. That landed harder than it should have, because it made an ugly kind of sense.

  Steam forts stopped at ley-rails. Everyone knew that. Whole markets rose up around rail stations. Crews traded, repaired, resupplied, and moved on. Otwin had always assumed the rails were just convenient. Or safe. Or maybe the coal burned cleaner when the world’s magic ran under you.

  Charging.

  He rubbed his thumb against the strap of his pack. “So that’s what the rails are for,” he said.

  Affirmative.

  He looked up through the branches, then back down the path. “And the town’s ley-well can charge you.”

  Correct. Ley-rails provide high-output charging. Ley-wells provide low-output sustained replenishment.

  Otwin let out a slow breath. “Oh. That makes sense.”

  He stood there for a moment longer, letting the new understanding settle into place. It did not make him feel better, but it made the world feel slightly less random. Slightly more mechanical. Slightly more cruel in a way he understood.

  Then another thought caught.

  He frowned again, turning the word over in his head.

  “But,” he said slowly, “what’s a battery?”

  ***

  Otwin walked for half a day.

  He did not hurry.

  The plains stretched out ahead of him in long, open bands, broken here and there by low woods and clusters of scrub that rose like islands from a sea of grass. Wind moved through it all without obstruction, bending stalks and rattling dry growth, carrying the faint smells of earth and old ash. The sky was pale and wide, the sun thin behind drifting cloud, offering light without warmth.

  This was bad ground to cross if you were being hunted. Too much visibility. Too few places to disappear. Otwin stayed low when he could, angling his route so the woods broke up his silhouette, even when it meant adding distance to the walk.

  He kept his eyes off the horizon to the west.

  That was where the wreck lay.

  The Peel Tower and the scrap fort were far enough away now that he could not see them, but that did not matter. Wrecks drew attention the way manure drew flies. Salvagers. Killers. Knights. Anyone with a reason to be there would be there already, or on their way. Otwin had no interest in crossing paths with any of them.

  So he walked around it.

  The woods were thin but welcome. Short trees with twisted trunks and sparse leaves, their roots clawing into shallow soil. Shade here was patchy, but it broke the wind. Otwin moved through them carefully, stepping where the ground was firm, avoiding deadfall that might snap under his weight. His boots knew this terrain. He had walked it for years, long before last night turned his life inside out.

  The hours passed the way they always did on foot. Slowly, then all at once. His legs settled into a steady rhythm. His breathing evened out. The ache in his back dulled into something he could ignore if he focused on the path ahead.

  He did not speak.

  Neither did the presence behind his eyes.

  That silence was intentional. Otwin knew it, even if he did not fully understand how. Whatever was attached to his spine was watching. Measuring. Conserving. And for once, Otwin was grateful for the quiet.

  By the time the land began to slope downward, the grass thinned, and the first signs of traffic appeared. Flattened patches. Old wagon ruts half swallowed by time. Scraps of metal were driven into the ground to mark routes that had shifted too often to be worth paving.

  The town came into view gradually.

  It was not a proper town. It had never been.

  A scatter of structures huddled around a low rise in the land, built from whatever people had dragged in and made useful. Sheet metal walls. Timber frames stripped from old wagons. Sections of boiler casing turned into roofs. Smoke drifted lazily upward from a handful of vents, thin and gray.

  The ley-well itself was invisible, but its presence shaped everything around it. The buildings clustered tightly near the center, where power could be tapped most easily. Farther out, shacks grew more temporary, more fragile, as if the town itself knew where it was strongest and where it might not survive.

  Otwin slowed as he approached.

  He pulled his hood up and forward, shadowing his face. It was not a disguise so much as a habit. People noticed faces. They remembered expressions. A hood let you pass as a shape instead of a person.

  He entered without ceremony.

  No gates. No guards. Just a few pairs of eyes tracking his movement, measuring him the way scavengers always did. What do you carry? How tired are you? How desperate might you be?

  Otwin kept his gaze down and his pace even.

  The market sat near the heart of the town, a rough ring of stalls and tables set up wherever space allowed. Canvas awnings flapped in the breeze. A few generators hummed unevenly, their output clearly rationed. People moved through the space with practiced efficiency, trading, arguing, repairing.

  Otwin did not stop.

  He had nothing to sell.

  That fact weighed on him more than it should have. Salvage was his excuse to exist here. Without it, he was just another mouth, another body taking up space. He kept moving, slipping through the crowd without drawing attention, careful not to brush shoulders or linger too long in any one place.

  He avoided places where people gathered in groups. Avoided raised voices. Avoided the kind of conversations that pulled others in.

  At the edge of the market stood the Terminal.

  It was the only one the town had.

  A tall, narrow structure of reinforced metal and old ceramic plating, patched and repaired so many times it barely resembled its original form. Cables ran from its base into the ground, disappearing toward the ley-well beneath. A soft, steady hum came from within, felt more than heard.

  A line had formed.

  Otwin joined it without comment, taking his place at the end. He folded his arms inside his cloak and waited, eyes down, breathing slowly.

  For the first time since morning, he felt the faintest pull at the base of his spine.

  Not pain.

  Not yet.

  Just awareness.

  He stayed where he was, another figure in a hood, standing quietly in line, while the Terminal waited ahead.