Thirstfall - Memory of a Returnee-Chapter 77: The Bear

The mounts clear the iron gates at full speed.

Heavy crossbow bolts scream past us from the ramparts above—not aimed at us. Aimed at the fins trailing behind.

The shooters on the walls fire, reload, and fire again with the bored precision of people who do this three times a week. Each bolt trails a tethered rope that goes taut the second it hits sand, anchoring the sharks in place long enough for the gates to slam shut.

Not a single bolt lands within ten feet of our sliders. These people have their geometry down to an art.

I’m off my slider before the dust settles, sprinting back toward Oliver.

He’s on the ground, both hands clamped around his left calf, teeth bared. The blood is pulsing between his fingers in thick, rhythmic surges—arterial.

Bad, but manageable...

I drop to my knees, rip the sleeve off my leather jacket, and twist it tight above the wound.

"Hold this. Don’t let go."

I run a quick assessment. The bite tore through muscle and skin in a jagged crescent, deep enough to flash bone. But the bone is intact. No fracture. No dislocation. And the foot is still attached. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

A Rank-C predator clamped down on his leg and he kept it. Incredible.

"You’re the luckiest bastard I’ve ever met," I tell him.

"Doesn’t... feel lucky."

"That’s how you know it is."

More people arrive in the same monastery robes Jacob wears, carrying a leather stretcher. They move with practiced efficiency—no panic, no wasted motion. Whatever passes for local government in Lost Ark, these robes are its uniform.

Jacob dismounts.

"We’ll take him to the infirmary. You can come along."

Oliver will survive. I have things to do.

I look at Brendon. Hold his gaze for two seconds. Tilt my chin toward the stretcher.

He gets it. Falls into step beside Oliver without a word.

I turn back to my squad. Rhayne is scanning the crowd with quiet wariness. Lola is crouched near the wall, examining a crack in the stonework with peer-reviewed intensity.

Two daughters.

That’s what it feels like, even though I’d cut my own tongue out before saying it.

I exhale hard and straighten my posture.

Lex is leaning against a hitching post, scratching his stomach like he just watched a sunset instead of a medical evacuation.

"So," he says. "You gonna go see Boris, or you wanna... I don’t know, explore? City’s free."

"Take me to Boris. I have questions that need answers."

Lex shrugs, that sideways smile sliding back. "You’re the boss."

We follow.

Lost Ark unfolds around us like a wound that learned to scar.

The main road is packed dirt lined with structures built by three different civilizations and stitched together by a fourth that didn’t care about aesthetics. Stone walls blackened by old fires next to lean-tos of scrap metal and cured hide. Wooden beams bracing doorways carved into rock.

The people match the architecture. Patchwork. Thin, weathered, dressed in whatever keeps the desert air out. Most don’t look up as we pass.

But in the gaps between buildings, in shade too deep for starlight, figures sit motionless. Some are chained to the walls by their ankles. Thick, rusted iron links bolted into stone.

They aren’t hiding it. It’s exactly what it looks like. These are people physically chained to buildings, their OXI signatures so faint my passive Trace almost registers them as dead.

Rhayne sees them. Her bare hand clenches. I feel the involuntary pulse of her Void Link reaching toward suffering it recognizes.

I brush my knuckles against her wrist.

Not now.

She pulls her hand back.

Lola doesn’t notice the slaves. She’s staring at a vendor selling carved wooden animals from a blanket. Her eyes lock onto a tiny bear.

Lex doesn’t narrate the tour. The city speaks for itself. Every block tells the same story: too many people, not enough resources, and the slow erosion of humanity that happens when escape is permanently off the table.

After a minute, we arrive.

The building is what a palace becomes when you build it with bare hands from whatever the desert gives you. Rough-cut stone mortared with red clay, cracked in spiderweb patterns. Iron reinforcements at the corners. Heavy wooden doors held by hand-forged hinges the size of my forearm.

No decorations. No banners. Just mass and function.

Lex pushes the door open without knocking.

The hall inside is dim, lit by oil lamps in iron sconces. Smooth stone floor worn to a dull shine by years of traffic. A long wooden table covered in maps, documents, and half-eaten food.

And walking toward me from the far end—

My legs threaten to buckle.

Nearly two meters tall. Built like something that should be pulling chains, not wearing them. Every muscle is the kind that comes from decades of surviving things that should have killed him. His beard is trimmed short and precise, a contradiction against the controlled chaos of his mohawk—shaved sides, the remaining strip swept back with military discipline.

His armor isn’t metal. It’s pelts. Cured beast-hide stitched from creatures I recognize by texture—Reef Stalker scales on the shoulders, Wiver carapace reinforcing the chest, something I can’t identify forming the heavy bracers.

A grizzly bear that learned to groom itself.

But it’s his eyes that stop me.

They aren’t scanning me. Aren’t sizing me up or testing me. They’re looking at me with the raw, unguarded warmth of someone who has been waiting for this moment for a very long time.

He closes the distance. I don’t move. I don’t feel threatened.

His arms wrap around me. The embrace compresses my ribs and lifts my feet half an inch off the stone. He smells like campfire smoke, cured leather, and something warm underneath that my brain wants to call home, but my discipline won’t allow.

He pulls back just enough to look at my face. His eyes are full. Not crying. Just full.

"I’ve heard so much about you," he says, his voice carrying the gravity of a man who means every syllable, "that I came to think of you as my own son."

My stomach turns inside out.

Not from distrust. From the sheer, disorienting violence of being held by a stranger who feels like family in a city at the bottom of the world where family doesn’t exist anymore.

I don’t hug him back. I don’t speak. I just stand there, rigid, arms at my sides, letting the warmth crash against walls I’ve spent two lifetimes building.

Somewhere behind those walls, in a room I don’t let anyone visit, a small crack forms.

And a memory slowly comes out.