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Running now.
Full sprint.Wind slicing across my visor, the storm behind me already howling with that… thing.
Not human. Not machine.Every Doom Runner knows the sound of marauders — chains, boots, laughter.
This isn’t that. This is hunger, moving on two legs.Echo keeps glitching. I’m losing telemetry.
Thermal sensors spike, then flatline, then flare again — like fire moving underground.The med-pod on my back vibrates. Not random, not mechanical.
It’s a rhythm.
Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.
Almost like a heartbeat.I slap the side panel. It keeps pulsing.
Temperature rising. Power draw unstable.“Rex Halden,”
the voice says.Not in my comm.
Inside my helmet.
Like it’s bleeding through the oxygen line.I stumble, fall to one knee.
Suit diagnostics screaming — heart rate 142 BPM.
Except… it isn’t reading my pulse anymore. It’s matching the pod’s.I glance back through the red haze of sand.
Figures moving — jerky, fast, uncoordinated. Too tall. Too thin.
Some crawl. Some leap.
Their eyes glow sodium-white in the lightning.Not marauders.I push off, running again. The pod hums louder.
Each vibration syncs with my heartbeat until I can’t tell where I end and it begins.Static erupts across my HUD — interference from something big.
Lightning blinds me; thunder punches the air flat.
I veer toward an outcropping of stone — ancient road marker maybe — shelter enough to regroup.I crouch low, weapon drawn, breathing hard.
The smell of ozone and rot fills the air.They’re closer now.
Dozens. Maybe more.The pod’s hum peaks —
then stops.Silence.The storm dies just enough for me to hear the one thing worse than the wind:
laughter.
Human.
But wrong.End log.

• Next Log → “End of Line”

They’re not marauders.
They’re older.The first arrow wasn’t fired from human hands—its shaft was scaled, slick, alive.
When it cut the air, it hissed like a wet lung.I’ve heard rumors about things that move beneath the Wastes—creatures grown in forgotten domes, designed to breathe poison and walk on glass. Failures of bio-war labs or genetic refuges gone mad. We called them Hollows. Most runners never saw one and lived to tell it.The sand collapsed behind me, the ground folding inward like a throat swallowing.
They came crawling out—limbs too long, skin a mottled lattice of scale and scar.
Eyes slit-pupiled, hungry.One of them sniffed the air and turned its head toward me.
I ran.Pain tore through my thigh—a black arrow buried deep.
The toxin burned cold; suit readouts screamed foreign organic compound detected.I made it to a half-buried transport hull, slid beneath the rusted belly, and pressed the pod against the sand behind me.
Heartbeat steady. Cargo safe. For now.Echo flickered alive.“Runner Halden—Nucleus 5—Run 20,”
I rasped.
“If you find this…... .”The sound of claws dragging metal froze me mid-breath.
They were above the wreck now, circling, their hissing breaths overlapping in a ghastly choir.One dropped to the ground beside me. I could smell it—rot, salt, and sulfur.
It whispered something that almost sounded like speech, a gurgling attempt at mimicry:“Ruun…nerrr…”I gripped the shock-blade, pulse pounding.
Then cold fingers clamped around my boot and yanked me out into the night.I screamed once before the sand filled my mouth.
Stars spun. The Hollow leaned over me, tongue tasting the blood seeping through my armor.I stabbed upward. Blade connected—its scream shredded the wind—but another was already on me.
Teeth, claws, heat.The last thing I see is its face splitting open along a seam I hadn’t known was there.
Rows of teeth where lungs should be.Then the pain—
white, searing—End log.

• Next Log → “Relay”

Days later, another Runner receives a ghost ping from Halden’s suit.
Lyra Vale answers the call.

The Wastes don’t echo—sound gets swallowed by dust.
But I swear I heard him call my name in the static.Rex Halden. Doom Runner legend. Nineteen successful crossings.
On his twentieth, the beacon went dark. Every dome assumed he was gone.
But then, last night, a pulse—one weak ping bouncing off the storm layer.
His tag. His route. His final coordinates.The kind of call you don’t ignore.Wind shear cuts visibility to twenty meters. I follow the signal with my HUD’s guidance lines glowing cyan against the black dunes.
The ground here is uneven—crumbled machinery, bones of old transport routes swallowed by sand.At first, I think it’s a pile of armor.
Then I see the hand.It’s his.Half buried, fingers frozen mid-clutch around a recorder.
The other half… gods.The torso’s been ripped open from chest to pelvis. The internal plating peeled back like foil.
The suit didn’t fail—it was opened.
Disemboweled cleanly, almost surgically, like something studied anatomy.
But the organs are gone. All of them.
Whatever did this took the meat and left the man.I kneel beside what’s left of him. The sand smells faintly of iron and acid.
The black arrow shafts still protrude from the armor, twitching slightly as if something living still moves inside them.“Rex Halden,” I whisper. “You didn’t run far enough.”The recorder in his hand crackles.
“…don’t open it… it talks… not for us…”I follow the trail from his body.
Drag marks in the sand. Not human. Taloned.Then, further up the ridge—boot prints. Human again.
Marauders. Opportunists. They must have found the pod after the creatures were done.The trail splits near a burned-out crawler. I spot smoke on the horizon.
Three heat signatures. Easy work.I sheath the recorder, check my ammo, and advance.The first one doesn’t even see me.
Shot clean through the visor.
The second raises his rifle; I roll, slice, and the blade hums through his ribs.
The third bolts. I hit him mid-stride and bury the blade in the sand beside his neck.“The pod. Where?”
He spits blood, then laughs.
“A woman...?” he coughs. “A woman runner ?”
His smirk breaks into another cough—then,
“The Covenant will have it soon. You’re already too late.”He slaps his wrist module. A red flare streaks skyward before I can stop him.
A distress beacon.Damn.I finish him quick and grab the pod from their crawler—a little dented, but intact. It hums faintly, like it recognizes me.
Rex’s warning echoes in my head: Don’t open it.I look up. The flare’s light fades against the storm front.Something tells me that beacon wasn’t just for mere help.
It was a summons.End log.

• Next Log → “The Enforcer”

The signal Lyra triggered reached further than she thought.
Silas Kane, the Covenant’s blade, has begun the hunt.

The flare splits the storm like a wound in the sky.
Red fire trailing smoke.
Someone called for help — or challenge.Silas watches from a ridge of black stone, visor dimmed, suit perfectly still.
He’s learned to breathe in rhythm with the wind. Makes him invisible.Below, three life signatures flicker. Then two. Then one. Then silence.He exhales slowly.“It’s her,” he says into the comm. His voice is calm, deep, almost reverent.
“Send word to the Spire. The survivor carries the Breath.”The response hisses in his ear — a whisper of chanting, dozens of voices blending through static.
“The Breath of God… the Deliverance comes.”He closes the link. He doesn’t like their worship. He believes, but not the way they do.He used to run, too.
Different creed, same devotion.The sand here carries memories. Sometimes, when the wind shifts, he swears he can still hear the old Runner’s motto echoing under the static — One route. One task. No turning back.He broke every one of them the day he joined the Covenant.Silas kneels beside the nearest body — a marauder, throat opened, eyes glassy.
A clean kill. Efficient.
He touches the wound, nods once.“Trained hand. Precision strikes.” he mutters.He switches his visor to spectral. A thin trail of heat still bleeds across the dunes — footprints, light and even.
A Runner’s gait.He rises, slowly, rolling his shoulders beneath the heavy black armor.
His movements are deliberate, ritualized.
Every step a prayer.He begins to follow the trail, his shadow long against the stormlight.Somewhere ahead, lightning reveals a silhouette moving against the wind — small, lean, fast.
She carries a pod strapped to her pack.
The hum of it reaches him even through the static — soft, rhythmic, almost alive.“Confirmed visual,” he says. “Engaging pursuit.”He switches the suit’s servos to silent mode, draws the spear from his back, and locks onto her heat signature.
Distance: 340 meters. Closing.The storm howls between them, throwing ghosts across the sand.
He moves through them like a shadow of the old world — efficient, unstoppable, ordained.For a moment, he hesitates.
She moves like a Runner — confident, disciplined.
The last one he killed had cried for mercy.
This one won’t.Something inside him almost respects that.“Forgive me,” he whispers.
“The Creed requires obedience.”He activates the mark beacon. A golden glyph burns briefly in the sand — the Covenant’s symbol.
A promise that whoever follows will find blood.And then he runs.End log.

• Next Log → “The Capture”

Whoever answered that distress flare isn’t a raider.Raiders are loud. Sloppy. Eager to show you they’re coming.This one is quiet. Patient.
Every time I pick up his heat signature, it’s already fading.
Every time I change direction, his trail adjusts.
Someone trained. Someone who knows Runner tactics.Storm wall to the west. Dead dunes to the east.
If I keep going straight, I hit open nothing — bad for cover.
If I cut through the storm, I lose him… or lose myself.The pod on my back hums again. Not loud — like it’s listening.
Rex said not to open it. I won’t.
But whatever’s inside knows it’s being hunted.I crest a low ridge and drop into a gully to break line of sight.
Sand whips past, stinging the visor.
I kill external lights and crouch behind a slab of old roadway.My HUD pings: CONTACT — 63 METERS. APPROACHING.Too close.I slow my breathing and unclip the shock-blade.
If he comes into the gully, I can take him at the throat before he—A voice rolls through the comm — deep, steady, not even winded.“Lyra Vale. Nucleus Seven. Second-generation Runner.”
“You fought well at the crawler.”My blood runs cold.He was watching.“Identify,” I say. “Or I cut the channel.”A pause. Then:“Silas Kane. Covenant Enforcer. Formerly Doom Runner, Echelon Haven.”
“I am authorized to retrieve the payload you carry.”Formerly.That word tells me everything.
He knows how we run. How we hide. How we think.
And he switched sides.“Not happening,” I say. “This cargo is dome-priority.”He actually sounds… sad.“Your domes are dying,” Silas says. “Clinging to rusted oxygen towers and collapsing gene-vats.”
“The Breath can end that. In the Covenant, it will be used, not hoarded.”I shift, slow, trying to flank.
He’s already moved.A spear hits the sand inches from my boot — not thrown to kill, thrown to warn.
He’s triangulated me in the dark. That’s Runner training.“Don’t make this violent,” he says. “The High Priest wants you alive. Your blood is clean. Young.”So that’s it. They don’t just want the pod.
They want me for their ritual.I bolt.I spring out of cover, cut hard left, and dive into the edge of the storm.
Grit blasts the visor, static floods the channel, but at least I’m not a clean target.
I sprint downslope, using the terrain to break his lines.For a few glorious seconds, I think I’ve shaken him.Then two things happen at once:1. My suit locks at the joints —2. I realize I stepped on a Covenant snare field.The sand around my boots hardens — ferro-sand, magnetized.
A filament whips up, wraps my thigh, then my wrists, accelerating tight.
I hit the ground hard, shoulder first.Silas appears through the dust like a statue brought to life — tall, dark armor etched with Covenant sigils, spear humming with charge.
His visor flickers from tactical to clear.His face is older than his voice — carved, scarred , eyes that have buried too many people.He studies me like a disappointed instructor.“You run well,” he says. “Better than most.”
“If you’d stayed in the domes, you might’ve lived long.”“If you’d stayed a Runner,” I spit, “you wouldn’t be a cult dog.”His jaw tightens.
So there is still a man in there.He kneels and unclips the pod from my harness.
The second his fingers touch it, it glows — faint, pulsing, almost recognizing him.He looks at it with something like reverence.“The High Priest was right,” he murmurs. “The seed is awake.”He taps his gauntlet. A recall beacon flashes on the horizon — distant lights answering from the Covenant’s direction.“You will not be harmed,” he says. “You are chosen for the Rite.”“I’d rather die out here,” I say.He looks me in the eye.“That,” Silas Kane says quietly, “is what the Rite is.”End log.

• Next Log → “The Covenant”

The Covenant stronghold was once a cooling tower.
Now it breathes like a cathedral.Condensation drips from the rusted ribs high above. Fires burn blue in old reactor pits.
The air hums with low chanting — not words, just resonance.
Every sound feels like it’s searching for something to worship.Silas walks ahead, the pod in his hands.
Two guards drag Lyra behind, her wrists bound, her visor shattered.
Her eyes, still defiant.At the far end of the chamber, a man stands before a cruciform of broken circuit boards and reactor coils.
Tall, pale, robes stitched from radiation tarp — High Priest Moro, founder of the Covenant.He turns as they approach, his voice smooth, cultured, almost kind.“You must forgive our manners, child. The wastes make beasts of all of us.”“You were born beasts,” Lyra snaps. “I’ve seen what you do to people.”Moro smiles faintly.“You’ve seen what we had to do. Survival is not mercy.”He gestures to the fires. Shapes move within them — the lizard-hybrids, docile here, kneeling near the heat.“Once, they were us. Before the Nuclei sealed their gates, before the Great Bleed.”
“Your kind hid in domes, convinced purity could outlast decay. We… adapted.”Lyra frowns.“You made those things?”“No,” Moro says softly. “The Nuclei did. Failed biogenesis experiments, designed to survive the surface. They called them Projects of Continuity. When the virus turned on its hosts, the domes abandoned the surface. We found what was left… and learned from it.These are just the ones with some semblance of human genes left. The vast horde of Hollows are uncontrollable. They consumed your friend”He steps closer, eyes bright with zeal.“You Runners still serve the domes’ delusion — that salvation lies in containment. You carry scraps from one dying lung to another.”Lyra bites back pain.“Those scraps keep people alive.”“Alive?” Moro echoes. “No. Sustained. Sustenance is not life.”He gestures, and Silas kneels, offering the pod.“And that is why Rex Halden’s mission began. To deliver this… the last Breath.”Lyra’s eyes narrow.“What is it?”“A seed,” Moro says. “A relic of the old terraforming program. Engineered to rebuild atmosphere, regrow the planet’s skin. But it requires blood — clean blood — to activate the chain.”
“The domes would use it to seal themselves further. We would use it to heal the Earth itself.”Lyra shakes her head.“You don’t heal the Earth by murdering people.”Moro’s smile is weary.“Every genesis is written in sacrifice. Ask your gods — they’ll tell you.”He turns to Silas.“Prepare the chamber. At dawn, the Rite begins.”Silas doesn’t move.
Something flickers in his jaw — hesitation.“She’s not ready,” he says. “She doesn’t even know what the Breath will do to her.”Moro’s gaze sharpens.“And yet, she was chosen. The seed called to her long before you found her.”He places a hand on Silas’s shoulder — almost fatherly.“You were chosen too, Silas. Don’t let your old creed cloud your faith.”Lyra studies Silas, seeing it — the faint tremor, the war inside him.“You used to be one of us,” she says quietly. “You still run. You just changed what you’re running from.”Silas doesn’t answer. He looks at the pod, glowing faintly between his hands — a pulse, almost a heartbeat.He turns and walks toward the lower passage.
Moro’s chanting resumes behind him, echoing through the iron ribs of the old tower.The Covenant prepares for dawn.End log.

• Next Log → “The Awakening”

The blade slid across her throat cleanly — a whisper through flesh.Lyra gasped, body arched, blood pouring into the glass basin below.
The Breath pulsed once… twice… the glow swelling like a rising sun.Then it died.No light. No hum.
Only the sound of her lifeblood dripping into silence.Moro froze, lips trembling mid-prayer.
He waited. Counted the heartbeats. Nothing.“Why?” he whispered. “Why won’t it awaken?”He turned, expecting to see Silas standing at the edge of the dais.
But the dais was empty.The shadows beyond the altar flickered with movement — only torches and frightened acolytes.
Silas Kane was gone.Moro’s heart kicked hard. He strode to the basin, plunged his hands into the blood, and lifted the Breath.
It was warm, slick, and humming faintly — but lighter than it should have been.He turned it over.
The seed was gone.A slow, terrible understanding spread through his face.“He took it.”His voice cracked, half disbelief, half fury.
He raised his head, shouting to the vaulted dark.“He took the seed! Kane has betrayed the Rite!”The cultists froze. The hybrids stirred in their pens, growling low.Moro’s calm dissolved into a snarl.“Summon the Enforcers! Fan through the Wastes — I want him found!”The chamber erupted in motion — bells ringing, alarms keening through the metallic tunnels.
Steam hissed from the ruptured conduits as Covenant soldiers assembled, armor plates clattering, eyes glowing red beneath their hoods.Moro clutched the empty shell of the Breath and whispered a vow into the rising din.“You can’t steal rebirth, Silas. You can only delay it"Above the chaos, Lyra’s body hung limp.Flashback — Six Hours EarlierThe Spire was silent then. Only the soft hum of the reactor and the whisper of wind through broken vents.
Silas sat alone, the pod before him on the table, faint light pulsing through its seams.Lyra’s voice echoed in his memory — the conversation they’d had the night he captured her and brought her to the spire.“You ever seen a child, Silas?”“Not since the domes sealed.”“There are six,” she’d said. “Helix Four. Tube-born, but alive. They don’t last long, but they live. That’s where this is going — the Breath. It can change the air inside the domes. Give them a chance.”She’d paused, watching him carefully.Silas was unaware of all of this...in recent years all he knew was what Moro had told him....now the thought of kids, and life and the possibility of the rebirth of the world he was quickly forgetting tugged at him hard.“You think Moro’s trying to save us? He’s just trying to be god and creator of a new life form. No one knows if that will ever happen...not even Moro. Every attempt at creating hybrids backfired.But those kids? They’re what’s left of us. They are real. They are here right now and we just need to give them a chance”Silas had said nothing then, only looked at the pod. The faint glow inside looked almost… tender.
Alive.Now, he reached for the release latch. It opened with a click.
Inside — a small crystalline seed, no larger than a fingernail, floating in viscous gel.He touched the surface of the vial. It pulsed softly, like it knew.He closed it carefully, slid it into a protective capsule, and replaced the pod’s outer shell with an inert core from the storage vault.
The switch took sixty-two seconds. Enough time to damn himself forever.He sealed the false pod, reset the containment locks, and stood.
The decision was done.“I placed my bet,” he whispered.Far above, in the storm-choked desert, a black speck tore across the horizon — a runner’s trail kicking up dust and light.Silas Kane, once Enforcer of the Covenant, now the most hunted man in the Wastes, ran with the real Breath in his grasp.The future of humanity in his hands.End log.

• Next Log → “The Last Runner”

Running again.Funny how the body remembers — even after years of standing guard for a false prophet, the legs still know what to do when the world wants you dead.Sand sheets across the flats in long, burning rivers. The Spire behind me is a pillar of dark smoke, sirens wailing under the storm.
Ahead: nothing but rusted towers, half-buried rails, and — far, far out — the faintest glimmer of a dome’s shield lights.Helix Four. The last place still betting on children.My comm crackles.“Silas Kane! Return the seed and you will be spared!”
That’s not Moro — that’s one of the junior preachers. Moro doesn’t beg.I kill the channel.Behind me, the ground moves.The Hollows run like locusts — low, fast, claws knifing through sand. Above them, three Covenant skiffs skim just off the ground, engines whining, lances of light sweeping for my heat signature.They sent everything.Good. Means they haven’t reached the domes yet.I cut northeast, into broken terrain — old maglev pillars jutting like ribs. Harder for skiffs to follow; easier for something on two legs.My suit pings: ENERGY ANOMALY — BREATH CORE ACTIVE.I glance down. The capsule on my chest — the real seed — has begun to glow through the casing.
Not loud. Not dangerous.
Like it senses we’re close to where it was meant to go.“Hold on,” I mutter. “Almost there.”A Hollow launches itself from the right — all scales and teeth and old lab nightmares.
I pivot, drive the butt of the spear up into its jaw, feel the crunch, and keep moving.
Two more take its place.They’re not attacking the seed.
They’re just trying to stop me.
Moro must’ve given them a simple command: bring him down.I burst through a gap in the pillars — straight into open, cracked flats.
Bad. Exposed.The nearest skiff opens fire — slugs kicking up walls of glassy sand beside me. One hits my shoulder plate, spinning me sideways.Suit integrity down to 54%.I roll, come up, throw the spear — it sails end over end and shatters the skiff’s forward stabilizer.
The craft veers, slams into the dune, erupts in blue-white fire.The other two widen their arc. They’re wary now.
They remember what I am.I run.The horizon finally breaks — not with mountains, not with storm — but with structure.
A low, half-buried, hex-panel dome.
HELIX-4.
Shielding intermittent, power low — but alive.I open broad-band.“Helix Four, this is Silas Kane — former Runner. I have the Breath. I have your cure. Open your gate.”Static. Then a panicked voice, thin with age:“Identify. We don’t open for outsiders.”“You have children in there,” I growl. “Six vat-born. You’re feeding them scrap air and old coils. You need the terraformer seed or they die before ten.”A long pause. Shouting in the background.
Then:“Approach vector 3. We will try to lower shield for seven seconds only.”Seven seconds.
That’s all I get.I pick up speed. Knees burning, chest burning, lungs burning.
This is what running was always supposed to be — not patrol, not escort, not capture.
Delivery.The Hollows surge behind me, howling now — the sound they make when they see shelter, remember labs, remember cages.
The skiffs drop lower, desperate to tag me before the dome takes me.The dome shield flickers — a pale, failing blue.“Now, Runner,” the voice says. “Run.”So I do.I hit the outer ring just as the shield drops. Static licks my armor. The capsule on my chest screams with light.A skiff fires — shot catches my lower back, heat blossoming through muscle.
I stumble, drop to one knee, but I don’t fall.I drag myself through the aperture as the shield slams shut behind me with a crack of ozone.
The Hollows hit the shield hard — bodies smearing across invisible wall, claws sparking.
Outside, Covenant skiffs circle, trapped.Inside, everything is quiet.I roll onto my back, panting, suit alarms blaring. Above me: the inside of a dome I’d almost forgotten — warm light, condensation, green tanks of algae, and faces.A woman in a tech harness kneels beside me, eyes wet.“Is that it?” she whispers, staring at the glowing capsule on my chest.“This is it,” I say. “Don’t let anyone tell you different.”My vision tunnels. I can feel the blood pooling in the suit.
Outside, the Hollows keep slamming into the shield.“You’re wounded,” the woman says. “We can—”I grab her wrist.I press the capsule into her hand. It’s warm — alive.
Just like Lyra said.“A Runner started this,” I say. “Make sure the world knows it was finished.”I lay my head back against the ground to catch my breath. A medic approaches. I glance past him and look up to the balcony above and I see one of them — tiny, bald, with lines of tubing at her neck — she raises a hand and waves.I manage a smile. I feel cold. Darkness.End log.

• Next Log → “The Reckoning”

The storm breaks just long enough for the sky to turn gold.
The dome glows beneath the haze — faint at first, then bright, like the planet itself taking a breath for the first time in centuries.A pale shimmer expands outward from Helix Four’s energy field, turning the air clear, pushing the sand aside.
For miles, the waste stills. Even the wind seems to stop to watch.High atop a ridge, Moro watches too.
His armor is cracked, his robes burned, his face half hidden by a mask of dried blood and glass dust.
Behind him, the Covenant kneels — enforcers and Hollows alike — their forms half-shadow, half-flesh.He lowers his binoculars.“So the seed works. Good.”
He turns slowly toward the dark horizon.
“That means they’ll make more.”A woman in red armor steps closer.“Should we attack?”He shakes his head.“No. Not yet. They will need to share it — the domes cannot survive alone. Someone will have to carry it. Someone will have to run.”And when they do…”
He looks back toward the glowing sphere.
“…I will be waiting.”