The moment Giovanni tried to colpse his anchor, sweat turned like ice needles puncturing his half-melted skin, while his face contorted in a feral grimace: his thoughts, his goals—everything warped in front of him.

  What was he... trying to do?

  His life was so shitty that he essentially waited for death. At least he lived... With Tonio, Riccardo, and now, Kael, that troublesome d. Would things get better if he endured a little more? They surely would. Well, at least they couldn't get worse.

  So, why had he returned to this cursed facility?

  Marek was frowning in front of him, sword hanging over his neck. To die? He had sworn to survive no matter what...

  Survive?

  He was a dead man walking with an anchor more cracked than the monstrosity's gss tube. Breaking it was what he came for! To give Kael and Riccardo clues about rewriting truths before they became like him.

  Why was he hesitating?

  Blood poured between his fingers as he tightened them around his stomach. He'd break it now.

  His eyes sharpened, yet his fingers loosened. A part of his mind opposed him. "I survive no matter what." Hesitation wormed back.

  The doors were open. If he ran now...

  His eyes found Riccardo's bitten lips in the doorway, tear-stained hands muffling Tonio's whimpers and holding him in pce.

  No, he would break it. For them! For himself. To leave something meaningful behind before he joined his family in Kraghor's embrace.

  Don't think. Break it.

  "Enough. We'll see if your truth lets you survive without a head." Marek swung down.

  Giovanni's fingers twitched against his will, and his muscles squirmed like water under his skin. The crowd of thugs stepped back, their eager screams turning into horrified yelps. Even Marek froze mid-swing to leap back.

  "I..."

  Giovanni located the biggest crack in his anchor.

  "Break..."

  He forcefully widened it, not with the stress that withered it but by his will.

  "YOU!"

  The anchor bsted. His mind colpsed into shards, and what had protected him from death for two decades finally opened the dam of suppressed diseases. His limbs liquified, and his skull burned. For a moment, faces fshed on the shards.

  Tonio, in his handmade suit, Riccardo grinning with the family members, his son Francesco proudly showing him he could now read, and Sofia, his sweet wife, caressing his hair.

  Who were they? They felt important, but... he couldn't remember any. A tear trailed down his cheek.

  Before the shards shattered, their lips parted. Time froze around him, and so did the thugs.

  "What does surviving mean now?" They whispered.

  Giovanni didn't answer. He knew what surviving meant, lived through it, but did he want to after watching his legacy burn and his family die in bodies twisted by experiments while hate slowly gnawed at him?

  No. This was not surviving. It was agony, pin and simple, torture to a mind that wished for a revenge it would never get, then waited for death as the second-best option. What did surviving mean... It didn't matter anymore to him. Death was fine.

  He failed to answer, and with his failure, the frozen time that held the shards of his mind suspended resumed its course. When they shattered, the shockwaves of the meaning of his truth being unanchored spread outward. The air trembled, and everything lost its meaning.

  Giovanni was gone, entirely lost, but not his truth. It subsisted in his broken body, unanchored, without knowing what the survivor was meant to be. Or rather, it built its belief on the ashes of the previous one.

  His liquifying limbs swelled, his right side hardening like cracked marble that refused to fall. The other side dripped and reformed endlessly, with organs visible without truly failing. A fractured crystalline core floated around his heart, never whole, constantly trying to seal itself.

  Marek's sword almost slipped from his grasp, and his face decomposed. "Don't tell me you meant your... BASTARD!" He ran a dozen steps back, barking. "Arm yourselves, fools! I want archers on every floor. Seal the doors and don't attack recklessly. We need to contain it!"

  A thug asked in a shivering voice. "C-contain what?"

  Marek's lips twisted over his clenched teeth. "An anchor-ghast is coming!" Everyone gasped, sounds of chattering legs filling the facility.

  Screams, both terrified and determined, spread across the rushing thugs as they gripped bows and scrambled to the stairs. The most muscur surrounded Giovanni, smming their heavy shields on the ground.

  Marek gripped a white-bloused man by the colr. His eyes darted between Giovanni and the eight-legged monster in the cracked tube. "Can we use it?"

  "It?" A researcher almost choked himself when he swallowed to answer. Then, his eyes widened. "No! It'll move, perhaps fight, but... but each second out of the stabilising solution will damage it beyond recovery."

  "Incompetents! Take the other scientists out and ask Garrick to send Brannick!" Marek wrenched the scientist to the ground, who instantly sprang to the stairs. Then, he shot like a viper through the thugs holding shields, while the scientists made their way to the trapdoor in the ceiling.

  Behind the doorway, Kael watched Marek's bde dig into the ghast's visible heart. No blood, not a flinch from the ghast. It simply removed the sword.

  The ghast didn't look like death but like something that couldn't finish dying. No matter what it was, he had to leave. Now!

  "Riccardo!" He didn't bother whispering with the thugs' screams and the spinning cogs of the closing doors covering his voice.

  The stupor shackling Riccardo broke. Instantly, he hoisted a stunned Tonio on his shoulder and joined Kael in his escape. "What happened to Giovanni? You said he'd die if he failed, not that he would become a... more of a monster!"

  "No friend. Traitor!" Tonio stretched his arms toward the door. "Giovanni... Brother... Save him..."

  "I said death or worse!" Kael hissed as they passed by dipidated buildings and root farms. "I didn't know it would happen!" Just as he answered, the ledger hovering beside him flipped open on its own. On a new page, entries wove themselves in sky-blue ink.

  He raised his palm and rushed behind a wall for cover, his eyes never leaving the text.

  ────────────────────────────

  Anchor break recorded. Definition: I survive no matter what, lost.

  Mutation: failed. Subject's will to live too low. New definition doesn't match the truth.

  Anchor break: violent. Anchor-ghast forming, core distorting.

  Core distortion: Defiance becomes compulsion. Survival requires no dignity, purpose, or memory.

  ────────────────────────────

  Kael's breath caught in his throat, and his vision blurred at the edges. An anchor-ghast... That's what he would become if he didn't rewrite his definition of endurance. Not rewrite, mutate it. His eyes locked on the mutation line for a second too long before he resumed running.

  "I know what happened. I'll tell you once we're back."

  "It'd better be a good expnation because..." Riccardo gazed back, voice quivering against the distant arm of the facility. "Sorry, brother."

  "No! Help Giovanni. He smart. He good. Family!" Tonio struggled, but Riccardo kept him pressed on his shoulder.

  Riccardo spent the rest of the journey expining why they couldn't. Tonio's whimpers stung Kael. The sewers' air became more foul in his nose, but though he felt somewhat guilty for Giovanni, he knew it would have happened anyway. The answers he got, however, pushed his comprehension of truths more than he could have hoped for, even if the taste of bile in his mouth refused to fade.

  As soon as they reached the brothers' room, Riccardo didn't wait for him to sit at the table; he shoved him on the stone that served as a chair, threw the bag of supplies in a corner of the room, then sat across from him while restraining Tonio. "Speak."

  His gre made Kael shudder. "An anchor-ghast. I'm not sure about the rest... sorry."

  "So, my brother became a creature?"

  Kael shook his head. "Your brother is gone. What repced him has no real purpose or memories. It acts on instinct, maybe?"

  "Ash and bones, Kael! Giovanni's gone for your specution?" Riccardo smmed his fists on the table. They trembled in the dent they formed, the pavement beneath trembling.

  "He confirmed that truths can mutate in the right conditions. The anchor's break must not be violent, whatever it means. Then, you need a new definition that matches your truth. Giovanni had none, but what doomed him was his desire to live. You know him better than I do."

  Riccardo unclenched his fists, tears trailing down his blistered face as anger receded. "He was exhausted of living and even of waiting for death... I-I'm the same."

  "No die!" Tonio teared up, wrapping his arm around Riccardo's back in a tight hug. "Riccardo... Giovanni... Why want die..."

  Riccardo returned the hug. "Because we want to help you before we're gone."

  "No... No... Live here. Happy, ok?"

  Ricardo covered his eyes, his back trembling in the rat-man's hands. "You'll understand one day. And Kael..."

  "Kael, traitor," Tonio growled.

  "Don't take Giovanni's death on him. It was his choice. And this is mine: I'll break my anchor in a few days." Riccardo locked gaze with Kael, his eyes steeling. "We know the rules better now, but I need to make the path safer for Tonio. I count on you to gather every bit of information you can."

  "I will." Kael's eyes slipped to the side. Giovanni's death was bitter already, and now Riccardo wanted to join him. "It's pointless if you're not willing to live."

  "I want to live. What I don't want is to be a monster chained to guard a facility from ghosts for the man I hate the most. But if I fail, remember. You swore to do everything you could to help. Not me or Giovanni, but Tonio. You can't abandon him until he's cured."

  For a moment, Kael let silence thicken in the room. Then, he massaged his brow. "I can't even take care of myself in the slums, so you're condemning me to live in the sewers for years if that's what it takes to secure truth mutations, if it can even be secured at all. There should be another way."

  "You mean the one so obvious no one mentioned because it would be an insult?" Riccardo pulled off the hug.

  "Mhh... I guess," Kael tilted his head. "I mean, can't we—"

  "Pray for Silvanus' church to descend for the next harvest festival? Ask their priests, who can't even talk to us without pinching their noses with a handkerchief, to treat someone looking more like a rat than a human? You'd have better odds escaping Kythra's temple chase after they brand you a heretic than seeing that happen. And trust me, they never let go of their prey."

  "Tonio not follow traitor."

  "He's not! Let me make him understand, or he'll interrupt us every two seconds. I have other things to tell you ter." Riccardo began to drag Tonio by the arm, but paused after a couple of steps. "Say, you really don't know what Giovanni... what the anchor-ghast does or if it's possible to reverse the transformation."

  Kael gnced at the ledger, shadows flickering on his face. The sky-blue ink remained still, and he closed his eyes with a heavy sigh. After three heartbeats, Riccardo understood he wouldn't get an answer and took a corner of the room with Tonio.

  But if none of them knew the horror of an anchor-ghast, Marek experienced it firsthand.