Chapter 13:Prepared to Bleed
The moment he slipped into his new gear, he felt it — the weight, the pull, the tension of something alive beneath the fabric.
The armor was his now. Not just in style — sleeveless, black, streamlined across his torso. The long combat pants covered his legs like a second skin, the boots heavy but balanced. The bracers on his arms gleamed with faint runes, etched into the alloy.
His crimson headband wrapped around his forehead.
He rolled his shoulders once. The fabric flexed. It felt good.
The gym was nearly empty. Between him getting dressed and his conversation with Aelvara. Many ashwalkers had finished their training.
He stepped toward the training square, a soft crinkle echoed in his pocket . He reached into the pocket of his new pants and pulled out a folded piece of paper — thick, textured, and typed in sharp mechanical script.
ASHWALKER ARMAMENT — CUSTOMIZED LOADOUT — COMBAT ENHANCEMENTS
Armored Form:
Upon combat engagement, armor will activate kinetic reinforcement. Outer layer will harden in vital areas (chest, spine, thighs) into carapace-grade plates. Flexible zones remain soft for freedom of movement. Designed for close-quarters brawling.
Hidden Blades:
Each combat boot contains retractable 4-inch blades, one at the toe and one at the heel. Manual activation via inner toe movement.
Brace Fusion Defense:
Bracers can magnetically lock and expand outward when forearms are crossed, forming a rigid shield. Designed to prevent weapon slips or piercing thrusts during blocks. Optimized for brute-force defense in melee engagements.
Auto-Regen Layering:
Armor will passively repair superficial damage outside of combat, using micro-reserve materials embedded in the weave. Full destruction negates function.
Yes — that's a great little moment of dry humor, and it fits Kaelren's personality well. It's lighthearted without breaking character or tone. His sarcasm is understated and grounded, which keeps it from feeling out of place in the world of Ashes of Strength.
Kaelren crumpled the paper and tossed it toward the trash.
He missed.
"Glad I didn't choose throwing weapons," he muttered.
He walked over, picked it up, and dropped it in properly.
Kaelren decided he wasn't going to wait for a battlefield to learn how his gear worked. Better to sweat in the gym than break in the field. He walked over to a mechanical combat dummy, its alloy frame covered in scorch marks and old dents, and took his stance.
It wasn't a textbook pose. It was something raw — a fusion of brutal martial discipline and beast-born instinct. Low center. Loose shoulders. Fists relaxed arms coiled, like every strike he ever let loose further progressed,His fighting style.
CLACK.
The armored zones of his top and pants shifted with a fluid, almost organic click. Hardened carapace streamline plates grew across his chest and sides, rippling over his thighs like a second skin of obsidian shell. His movement wasn't restricted — just shielded. Perfect for a physical fighter.
He launched into drills.
Punch. Knee. Elbow. Spin.
The gear moved with him, never dragging. He slammed his knee into a reinforced dummy, then followed with an upward kick — and shhk! — a gleam of steel erupted from his boot's toe, slicing clean through the dummy's side. The toe-blade hissed back into place before the dummy hit the floor.
He raised his arms in a cross-block, imagining a cleaver coming down. The bracers hummed and locked — metal grinding together into a wide shield that covered throat, heart, and face in a perfect wedge. No gap. No angle. Just solid defense.
He held it for a breath, then disengaged.
And again. And again.
Becoming fully Familiar with his gear.
Sweat clung to his jawline.
He trained for an hour. Then another. Kicks with heel-blades, blocks with fused bracers.
By the time he slowed his breathing and walked back to the edge of the gym, the floor bore dozens of cuts, scuffs, and faint boot-blade imprints.
He glanced down at his bracers. A few scratches. Already fading.
The Auto-Regen function was working.
Just as he turned to grab a towel, a faint vibration pulsed along his forearm.
The Ashwalker Communicator lit up — a brief, blood-red glyph glowing along the black alloy band.
INCOMING MISSION:
The glyph shimmered, then resolved into coordinates. No name. No details. Just a timestamp and a location.
Kaelren tilted his head, eyes narrowing.
The elevator doors opened with a hiss and a breath of cold air.
Kaelren stepped out of Ashwalker HQ, the city sprawling beneath him in shades of steel and stone. His Ashwalker communicator still glowed faintly, a single line pulsing crimson on the obsidian screen:
"Deployment Point: Hangar Platform 3. Report in 3 hours."
He made his way across the high's and low's of Blood Gloom City, the morning sky dim with clouded haze and flickers of rune-fire dancing across the horizon. A skeletal shuttle-tram slid up to the edge of the platform, gliding along magnetized rails like a ghost serpent. Kaelren stepped aboard. The doors closed behind him with a soft click.
The metro behind him—iron rooftops, jagged towers, in the raising sun it was beautiful?
The tram stopped beside a massive cliffside complex, its surface marked with sigils and warding glyphs. This was the Ashwalker Airfield.
Hangar Platform 3 awaited.
Kaelren stepped off and was greeted by the sound of distant turbines and the sharp stench of fuel, ozone, and smoke. The airfield pulsed with movement. Technicians in rune-threaded bodysuits scrambled between vessels .The aircraft… they weren't normal.
The first vessel Kaelren saw crouched like a predator — all curved armor and bone-metal plating. Four retractable rotor-wings lay folded along its back like a beetle's shell, each lined with serrated fins that caught the wind and shimmered. Its undercarriage bore talon-like landing gear, and the cockpit was encased in a fused glass dome reinforced with voidbone lattice.
It looked grown, not built.
A fusion of flesh and machine.
Half aircraft. Half war-beast.
A nearby tech, her head shaved and eyes rune-augmented, approached him without stopping.
"You're the new Ashwalker. Good. Your transport's coming in now — fresh out of Forge Front."
She flicked her wrist and sent a signal.
She walked off, unconcerned whether he understood or not.
A scream tore through the sky.
He looked up.
Another craft descended from the clouds like a falling blade. Its engines didn't whine — they roared. Crimson fire trailed behind it. As it neared the hangar, its wings flared wide, revealing glyphs still burning from combat. The lower panels hissed open, steam venting in thick jets as the landing claws hit the ground.
From inside, a squad of Ashwalkers emerged.
They were battered. Smoke-charred. One dragged his left leg behind him, the limb wrapped in a blood-soaked brace. Another carried a severed beast arm the size of a man's torso. Their armor bore fresh claw marks. Their eyes were hollow — not afraid, but worn.
One of them, a red-haired Gene Warrior with a broken mask hanging around his neck, paused in front of Kaelren.
"You're the fresh one?" he asked, voice like gravel soaked in firewine.
Kaelren nodded.
The man chuckled darkly. "Hope you like screaming. Beast Tides don't give breaks."
He dropped a satchel of cracked gear on the floor. " Eat when you can, Sleep when you can, welcome to war kid."
Then, with a slap to Kaelren's shoulder, he limped off toward the med docks.
Kaelren turned to face the aircraft awaiting him. Its hatch had opened, its interior pulsing with faint red light.
This was it. No fanfare. No applause. No final training.
The camps prepared him for this.
The Cull forged him for this.
The Ashwalkers existed for this.
He stepped aboard the vessel, and the hatch sealed behind him like the closing of a predator's jaw. The cabin hummed with power, dark and silent but for the low heartbeat thrum of the engines. Seats lined the walls — all empty save for one armored figure dozing with a rifle across her lap, face hidden beneath a helm carved with a fanged sun.
Kaelren sat down.
The engines screamed again, runes along the interior flaring to life as the craft lifted off the platform with the howl of torn sky. The airfield vanished beneath them. Blood Gloom City became a jagged smear of shadow and light.
They turned east.
Toward the wildlands.
Toward forge front.
Toward the endless roar of beasts.
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