Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 63: First Watch

I stand at the edge of the precipice, staring out over the corrupted physics of this impossible biome.

These massive islands drifting... It is a breathtaking, mind-bending spectacle.

Oh... I shake my head.

I don’t give a damn about the view.

My priority isn’t admiring a broken world.

It’s basic survival.

Everything here is completely alien. The terrain, the flora, the glitching wildlife—for the first time in a decade, the veteran inside me feels the cold, crawling sensation of being a complete rookie again. I need intel, and I need to study this place before it kills us.

I take a breath and notice a familiar, uncomfortable tightness in my lungs. The air here doesn’t just feel heavy... It feels greedy.

I pull up my HUD.

[Atmospheric Hazard Detected]

[Ambient OXI Drain: +25%]

Great. We’re bleeding fuel just by standing here. I don’t think the system wants us to stay here anyway.

As a ten-year veteran of the Deep, I do the absolute first thing experience has taught me to do when the environment turns hostile.

"Stop," I order, my voice cutting through the unnatural hum of the forest. I turn to face the ragged group of survivors. "Empty your pockets. Everything you have. Right now."

The demand is met with confused, reluctant stares. To almost everyone in the group, the scene feels like a useless display of paranoia and bureaucracy. But to me, it is a silent interrogation.

I’m not just counting items. I’m reading body language.

In Thirstfall, the first thing that goes to hell isn’t your food supply. It’s your honesty.

The overall result is deeply depressing.

I make the first move to set the baseline, pulling my gear out onto a flat stone. I show them Eventide, three Accelerated Healing Potions, seven OXI Candies, one bottle of Lunaria juice, one Dense Sweet Bread, and eighty five Scales.

I keep my face perfectly neutral, utterly hiding the fact that one bottle of juice, ten OXI Candies, and 415 Scales are currently securely buried in my hidden inventory space.

Oliver steps up next. He drops his heavy warhammer and turns out his pockets to reveal a few useful supplies: two apples, a tough piece of sun-dried jerky, and 127 Scales.

The rest of the thugs look entirely apprehensive.

"Come on, let’s see it, Danton," Oliver orders, gesturing to his heavily armored partner.

Danton, the Pressomancer who nearly leveled the subway platform earlier, steps forward stiffly. He pulls a tiny pouch from his belt. "I’ve only got two rations," he mutters, not meeting my eyes. "And five Scales plus my gauntlets."

My cold eyes track the man’s posture. The weight in his stance is completely unbalanced. His shoulders are tight, and there is a tone of extreme, calculated caution in his voice.

He is hiding something. I am absolutely sure of it.

I don’t say a single word.

I don’t confront him or call him out. I just file the information away, mentally marking Danton as a volatile variable.

In sharp contrast, one of the generic Academy cadets rushes forward, practically dumping his entire backpack onto the dirt. He pushes a roll of clean bandages toward Oliver with an eager, anxious smile.

"We have to stick together out here," the cadet says, his voice dripping with forced camaraderie.

I squint at him through the gloom.

To me, anyone who offers free help in the trenches is just trying to buy your trust so they can sell it back to you at a much higher price later.

While the logistical nightmare unfolds, Lola quietly empties her pockets without a word. She doesn’t have much—a few colorful sweets, her cartoon Band-Aids, and a small handful of Scales. "Lullaby... weapon," she says, showing the metal case.

I do the math in my head.

We have enough supplies for two days. Max.

I break my sweet bread, handing portions to Rhayne and Lola, and toss the other half over to Oliver and the cadets.

As they eat, Lola wanders off from the circle. I track her out of the corner of my eye.

She walks up to a thick, floating root suspended a few feet off the ground.

A small, six-legged lizard is crawling upside down through the empty air beneath the wood. As it moves, the animal violently "glitches," its scales flickering with magenta static for a microsecond before restabilizing.

Lola pinches a tiny crumb from her newly acquired sweet bread and holds her small hand out.

The glitching lizard sniffs it, then eats the crumb right out of her palm.

With her habitual, childish apathy, Lola tilts her head and murmurs to herself, "This one isn’t sad."

I watch the scene from a distance, and a sudden, freezing chill runs straight down my spine.

I understand the macabre implication instantly.

Lola is testing the wildlife.

She is trying to see which monsters are just generic system anomalies, and which ones possess "something more".

The rest of us are terrified of the answer. She just wants the data.

———————————————————————————————————

I spend the remaining daylight mapping every cliff face, drop point, and viable escape route within a quarter mile.

By the time I’m satisfied we won’t die in our sleep from a falling island, the darkness has already settled.

We set up a makeshift camp.

Instead of burning precious OXI on wet twigs, I gather the group around a cluster of naturally bioluminescent rocks. This place cast a pale, ghostly blue light over the clearing.

Rhayne approaches me in silence.

She sits down on the dirt a few feet away, pulling her knees tightly to her chest. She is shivering, suffering from the brutal mana hangover that follows unleashing her Void Monarch to save me.

"I didn’t know I could do that," she whispers into the dark. She stares down at her heavily bandaged arm, her voice trembling with genuine fear of the monster she carries inside her.

I look at her.

In the dim blue light, the image of the scared, exhausted girl perfectly overlays with the terrifying memory of the Void Monarch—the walking calamity who detonated entire continents in my original timeline.

The urge to tell her the truth burns in my throat, but my pragmatism violently crushes it down.

"Don’t think about it right now," I reply, my tone dry but grounding. "Just focus on recovering your core. The next monster we face isn’t going to care what you know or what you don’t know."

She nods, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders. She doesn’t push for more. She’s learning when to stop asking.

As the night deepens, I take charge of dividing the watch shifts. The roster is my chessboard.

I keep Lola and Rhayne—my most vital investments—on my own shift.

I deliberately isolate Danton, the liar, with the naive Oliver to see if the Pressomancer tries to make a move.

Finally, I group the two generic cadets into one shift, and the three remaining thugs into another, giving both groups a false sense of security in numbers.

Four groups. Four shifts. Less chaos to manage.

Before I settle into my overwatch position, I do one last, silent peripheral patrol around the edge of the camp.

I slip into the shadows, focusing my gaze on the corner where the two cadets are resting.

I listen carefully.

The breathing of the "helpful" cadet is rhythmic.

Too rhythmic.

My eyes adjust to the ambient magenta static crackling faintly in the dark.

The cadet isn’t sleeping.

He is lying on his side, his eyes wide open in the dark. His right hand is moving in slow, deliberate strokes. He’s using the tip of his own bloodied finger to draw something onto the inner lining of his academy coat.

It isn’t random. The strokes have structure. Precision.

A rune...

I don’t change my posture. I don’t give away a single sign that I’ve seen him.

I slide back into the darkness, returning to my designated watch rock.

I lean back against the cold stone, feigning a bored, distracted gaze into the distance. But inside my pocket, my fingers gently caress the smooth, warm surface of the Reentry Pearl.

The first watch has begun.