A reavers due

A chill wind, rasping with the grit of damp ash and the sickly sweetness of distant decay, whipped through the skeletal remains of what was once a towering office building. Below, in the sullen gloom of a ruined plaza, a lone figure moved with the savage grace of a wolf. His name was Raze—all other names long forgotten, with a hide of scars on his knuckles and eyes that cut through the world's lies with a predator's unforgiving gleam.   His objective was simple: a supply cache rumored to be hidden beneath the old bank vault. Scavengers had marked it, quick-witted at finding, but nothing more than cowards. Raze had played their game before. They'd seed rumors of rich pickings, hoping a brute like him would clear the way, leaving the scraps. But Raze was no fool—he just didn't care. This was an easy score, and survival was all that counted.   He moved low, his scavenged armor clicking like dry bone. The silence of forgotten things was unnerving, broken only by the gurgle of stagnant water and the far-off groan of settling concrete. Then, the silence warped, growing heavy, almost viscous. A flicker of movement caught his eye—a shadow too large, too still, just at the edge of his sight. Not a Scavenger. This was something else. Hollowed. Its presence wasn't just cold; it was an absolute absence of warmth, a prickling sensation that crawled like icy ants over his skin. Its gaunt silhouette coalesced slowly from the shadows, its eyes not merely dark, but a swirling vortex of abyssal twilight that seemed to drink the last morsels of light from the plaza, leaving behind only deeper, festering shadows of decay within its gaze.   He ripped his blade from his belt, a wicked length of scavenged rebar sharpened to a razor's edge that caught the scant light and reflected it back as something dull and dead. The Hollowed didn't step so much as unfold itself from the darkness with a wet, tearing sound only he could hear, its form barely discernible, like a memory being ripped to shreds. It spoke, not with its throat, but with a guttural rasp that seemed to grate itself from an empty space and directly into Raze’s mind. A voice that tasted of rust, broken promises, and the cold, dead breath of a tomb: "This belongs to the Silent Ones."   Raze didn’t even bother with words. He roared, a sound torn from his own battered throat, and lunged, a blur of corded muscle and scavenged steel. The Hollowed was quick, moving with an unnatural smoothness, too fluid, too utterly wrong for anything of flesh and bone. As Raze drove forward, a frigid, unseen pressure slammed into his thoughts like a leaden train, a whisper like ice fracturing bone: You are afraid. You will yield. This is not yours. Look into the void. It awaits you. Let go. It will be quiet. The psychic assault was a brutal, torturous blow to his sanity, threatening to make him stumble and fall to his knees. Raze’s head throbbed, throbbed, throbbed, a drumbeat of alien whispers, but the thoughts burrowed deeper, shoving themselves into the raw edges of his consciousness like grated steel.   With a ragged, howling cry, Raze tore a crudely-made shiv from his boot. He didn't hesitate. He slammed the blade into his own left thigh, punching it past the scavenged leather and through muscle and flesh. A sharp, clean burst of white-hot agony tore through his battered body, overriding the invasive whispers with blinding, visceral shock. His leg screamed with fire, a ragged tear that ripped open the fog in his mind in one agonizing moment.   He shoved onwards with a primal snarl, blood blooming dark on his thigh, pushing past the disorienting chill that tried to flood his veins. The rebar sang, not just as it met bone, but as it gouged, ripped, and chewed through spectral flesh that felt suddenly, sickeningly real, like tearing through wet, parchment-thin skin stretched over hot, empty air. Raze didn't just lash out; he hacked, pulled, and twisted, grinding the blade deeper and deeper into the retreating, twisting form. The Hollowed shrieked, a sound like shrieking glass and broken dreams, leaving behind a jagged wound of pure noise that clawed at Raze’s eardrums. With a final, grunting push he drove the rebar through. A final, sickening, desperate convulsion, and it dissolved into wisps of shadow, leaving behind only the metallic tang of fear and the coppery, familiar scent of blood.   Panting, he kicked open the bank vault door, the heavy metal screaming in protest as it ground against the cracked concrete floor. Inside, neatly stacked crates held rations, medical supplies, and even a few dusty, pre-Fall books. Not that he cared—he didn't build; he didn't inspire. He simply survived. And sometimes, just by making the world fear him more than he feared it, he forged a twisted kind of order. He grabbed what he needed, favoring his freshly bleeding leg, the raw pain a long lost lover. Behind him, he left just enough to keep the Scavengers hopeful and the cycle turning. The world was a ruin, but he made it through another day.