Blood Component
title: "The Ring and the Ribcage" wordCount: 2890
The demon's rib cracked along the marrow line, and Remy knew he had maybe thirty seconds before the whole piece became worthless slag.
His left hand moved without thought, tongs clamping the bone fragment while his right grabbed the smaller hammer—not the sledge, the sledge would shatter it completely. The forge heat turned his workshop into a pocket of hell at three in the morning, sweat cutting tracks through the soot on his face. He brought the hammer down once, twice, feeling the bone compress and fuse rather than break. The marrow sealed. Good.
The blade had taken eleven hours. Eleven hours of heating and folding demon bone like it was Damascus steel, except bone held heat differently than metal, wanted to splinter instead of bend. His father would've known the trick to it immediately. Would've had some saying about patience and pressure that Remy had never bothered to memorize.
He set the blade on the anvil and reached for the small wooden box he'd been avoiding all night.
Inside, his father's wedding ring caught the forge-glow. Simple tungsten carbide, scratched to hell from forty years of manual labor. The only thing Remy couldn't sell when the bills came due after the funeral. Not because of sentiment—he'd sold the tools, the truck, the house—but because every pawn shop in the city had closed within a week of the System integration. Demons didn't care about gold's market value.
Here's the thing. The ring was the perfect size for a crossguard.
Remy picked it up. Still warm from being in his pocket. He'd carried it for six months, through the collapse of civilization, through learning that the apocalypse came with status screens and skill trees like reality had decided to become a game. Through discovering that his Salvage Sovereign class meant he could craft weapons from monster parts but couldn't swing a sword to save his life.
The thermal dynamics are off, he thought, which was a lie. The ring would work perfectly. He just had to stop being a coward about it.
He fitted the ring over the tang, heated the assembly until the bone began to glow, then hammered the tang's end into a rivet that locked the crossguard in place. Three strikes. The ring became part of the weapon, inseparable now. His father's last piece, gone.
The sword looked wrong. Bone-white blade with a dull gray ring interrupting the flow from hilt to point. Asymmetrical. Ugly.
Perfect.
Remy set it on the workbench and waited for the System notification that always came when he finished a piece.
The blue text materialized in his vision, translucent and crisp:
[CREATION ACKNOWLEDGED: Bone Blade (Uncommon)] [Quality: Masterwork] [Awaiting field validation] [XP Gained: 0]
He read it twice. Then a third time, his pulse picking up speed.
Zero experience. Six months of scraping by, learning to work demon bone and Blightspawn chitin, crafting knives and arrowheads for the few survivors who still had Credits to spend. Every piece had given him something—ten XP for a dagger, twenty-five for a spear. Enough to crawl from Level 1 to Level 2 over five months of eighteen-hour days.
This sword was Masterwork quality. The System's own designation. And it gave him nothing.
"Field validation," Remy said to the empty workshop. His voice came out hoarse from disuse. "What the hell is field validation?"
The System didn't answer. It never did. Just hung there in his vision, waiting.
He dismissed the notification and looked at the sword. Eleven hours. His father's ring. The last piece of demon bone he'd managed to scavenge from the Blight Zone without getting killed.
Good enough gets you killed, his father used to say. This won't.
Except apparently it wouldn't get Remy anything either.
He was still staring at the blade when he heard boots on gravel outside the customer entrance. Fast steps, uneven. Someone running.
The woman who crashed through his door had blood on her armor and desperation in her eyes.
"You're open," she said. Not a question. She was already moving toward the counter, one hand pressed against her side where something had torn through the leather. "I need a weapon. Now."
Remy recognized the armor—Ironclad scout pattern, reinforced at the shoulders and knees. Expensive gear, which meant she was either military or had been before the System turned rank structure into a joke. She was maybe thirty, dark hair pulled back in a braid that had half come loose, and she moved like someone who'd been fighting for hours.
"I'm always open," Remy said. He didn't move from behind the counter. "What happened to your weapon?"
"Shattered." She pulled her hand away from her side long enough to show him the hilt—just the hilt, the blade snapped off two inches from the guard. "Blightspawn soldier. Three of them jumped me at the checkpoint."
"You kill them?"
"Two. Third one's probably still looking." She set the broken hilt on the counter. "I've got Credits. Two hundred. That's everything."
Remy looked at her, then at the hilt, then back at her. Two hundred Credits was good money now. A month ago it would've been three months' rent. Now it was maybe two weeks of food if you knew where to buy and didn't mind eating Blightspawn meat.
"Wait here," he said.
He went back to the workshop and picked up the bone blade. Still warm from the forge. The ring caught the light as he turned it over, and for a second he saw his father's hand, the way the ring used to spin when he gestured while talking. He used to say that... yeah.
Remy carried the sword to the counter and set it down between them.
The woman's eyes went wide. She reached for it, stopped herself, looked at him. "How much?"
"Two hundred."
"That's—" She picked up the blade, tested the weight, made two practice cuts through the air. The bone sang, a high clear note that normal steel never made. "This is worth five times that. Easy."
"Two hundred," Remy said. "Take it or don't."
She looked at him for a long moment, and he could see her trying to figure out the angle. Why he'd undersell. What was wrong with it. Whether he was stupid or desperate or running some kind of scam.
"Good enough gets you killed," Remy said. "This won't."
Something in his tone must've convinced her. She pulled a Credit chip from her belt pouch and set it on the counter. Remy scanned it with his interface—200 Credits transferred, confirmed. The chip went dark.
The woman was already heading for the door, the bone blade in her hand. She stopped at the threshold, looked back. "Does it have a name?"
"No."
She nodded once and disappeared into the pre-dawn gray.
Remy stood behind the counter and waited. The System notification didn't come immediately. He'd expected that—she had to actually use the weapon first. Field validation. He understood now. His creations didn't count until someone else proved they worked.
Until someone else killed with them.
He went back to the workshop and tried to clean his father's gloves. The leather was stiff with old grease and new soot, the fingers permanently curved from years of gripping tools. He'd worn them while forging the sword even though they were too big, even though his own gloves fit better. Couldn't say why. Didn't want to think about why.
The first notification hit while he was scrubbing at a stain that wouldn't come out.
[BLIGHTSPAWN SOLDIER DEFEATED WITH WIDOW'S BARGAIN] [XP Gained: 75]
Remy stopped breathing. The gloves fell from his hands.
Widow's Bargain. The System had named it. Not "Bone Blade" anymore. The sword had a name now, and it was—
The second notification came before he could finish the thought.
[BLIGHTSPAWN SOLDIER DEFEATED WITH WIDOW'S BARGAIN] [XP Gained: 75]
His XP bar appeared in his vision, filling. The progress was visible, tangible. He'd been stuck at Level 2 for three months, the bar barely a quarter full. Now it jumped, surged forward.
The third notification arrived ten seconds later.
[BLIGHTSPAWN SOLDIER DEFEATED WITH WIDOW'S BARGAIN] [XP Gained: 75]
[LEVEL UP!] [You are now Level 3] [Skill Point Available] [New Blueprint Unlocked: Reinforced Bone Plating]
The workshop spun. Remy grabbed the edge of the workbench and held on while his vision filled with blue text, skill trees branching out in his interface, options he'd been locked out of for months suddenly available. Level 3. He was Level 3. The woman—Mara, he should've asked her name, she'd earned that much—had killed three Blightspawn in the time it took him to try cleaning a pair of gloves.
His creation had done that. His work. The sword he'd forged from demon bone and his father's wedding ring had cut through three monsters, and the System had rewarded him for it.
He should've felt triumphant. Should've felt something other than the hollow ache in his chest that had been there since the hydraulic lift failed and his father's body came down in pieces.
Instead he felt hungry. Hungry for more notifications. More kills. More proof that his work mattered.
Remy pulled up his interface and navigated to the Creations tab. Widow's Bargain was listed there now, with a small icon next to it showing three tally marks. Three kills. He could see it in real-time—the sword's location, its durability percentage, even a vague sense of its wielder's status. Mara was still alive, still moving. The sword was at 94% durability.
He stared at the screen until his eyes burned. Waiting for a fourth notification. A fifth. Proof that the sword was still working, still killing, still earning him XP.
Nothing came.
Remy dismissed the interface and looked around his workshop. Three AM had become five AM without him noticing. The forge had cooled to a dull red glow. His father's gloves lay on the floor where he'd dropped them, one finger pointing toward the door like an accusation.
He picked them up and hung them on their hook. The leather was still dirty. He'd try again tomorrow. He always tried again tomorrow.
The smell hit him as he turned away—hot metal and ozone, stronger than usual. It always came when he crafted something significant, like the air itself was reacting to his work. He'd stopped questioning it after the first month. The System did what it wanted. Reality bent around it now.
Remy went to the back room where he slept. Calling it a bedroom was generous—it was a storage closet with a cot and a space heater that worked half the time. He lay down without taking off his boots and pulled up his interface again.
The Creations tab still showed Widow's Bargain. Three kills. 94% durability. Mara's status indicator pulsed green, which meant alive and active.
He should sleep. He'd been awake for twenty-two hours. His hands shook from exhaustion and his eyes felt like someone had rubbed them with sandpaper.
He checked the interface again. Still three kills. Still 94% durability.
Five minutes later he checked again. No change.
This was stupid. Obsessive. The sword was out there doing its job. Mara was alive. He'd leveled up. Everything had worked exactly as intended.
He checked again.
The green pulse of Mara's status indicator was hypnotic. Proof of life. Proof that his work mattered. That he could create something that kept people alive in a world that wanted everyone dead.
His father had kept people alive too. Forty years as a machinist, fixing the equipment that kept the city running. Hydraulic lifts and conveyor systems and industrial presses. Good, honest work that mattered.
Right up until the lift failed and his father was underneath it.
Remy closed his eyes and tried not to see it. Tried not to remember the call from the shop foreman, the careful way the man had said "There's been an accident" like those words could soften what came next. Tried not to remember identifying the body—what was left of it—or the way the funeral director had suggested a closed casket in a tone that meant it wasn't really a suggestion.
He opened his eyes and checked the interface. Three kills. 94% durability. Green pulse.
The System had integrated three weeks after the funeral. Demons tore through downtown while Remy was sorting through his father's tools, trying to figure out what to sell first. He'd been holding a socket wrench set—the good one, Craftsman, his father's pride—when the blue text appeared in his vision and told him he was now a Salvage Sovereign, whatever that meant.
He'd figured it out fast enough. Craft weapons from monster parts. Gain XP when others used them. Level up. Get stronger. Survive.
Simple. Transactional. No messy emotions required.
Remy checked the interface again. Still three kills.
He forced himself to close it and stare at the ceiling. The water stain above his cot looked like a map of somewhere he'd never been. He traced the edges with his eyes and tried to think about nothing.
His interface chimed.
He had it open before the sound finished, chest thudding. But it wasn't a kill notification. Just a system message:
[Skill Point Available - Allocate to improve crafting capabilities]
Right. The Level 3 skill point. He'd forgotten about it in the rush of leveling up.
Remy pulled up the skill tree. Three branches: Durability, Lethality, Efficiency. Durability made his creations last longer. Lethality made them hit harder. Efficiency reduced material costs.
He'd been planning this for months. Efficiency was the smart choice. Materials were scarce and getting scarcer. Being able to craft more with less would let him take more commissions, make more Credits, level faster.
His finger hovered over the Lethality branch.
More damage meant faster kills. Faster kills meant more XP. More XP meant more levels. More levels meant—
What? What did more levels mean? That he'd be stronger? That he'd matter more? That his father would be less dead?
Remy selected Efficiency and confirmed before he could second-guess himself. The skill point vanished. A new passive appeared in his character sheet: [Material Optimization I - Reduce crafting material requirements by 10%]
Practical. Smart. The right choice.
He checked the Creations tab again. Three kills. 93% durability now—Mara must've hit something hard. Green pulse.
The smell of hot metal and ozone was fading. His workshop was cooling down, returning to normal. In a few hours the sun would come up and he'd need to open the shop properly, not just leave the door unlocked for desperate scouts. He should sleep. Should rest. Should do anything other than lie here obsessively checking whether a stranger was still alive.
He checked again. Three kills. 93% durability. Green pulse.
His eyes were closing despite himself. Exhaustion pulling him under. The interface swam in his vision, blue text blurring. Three kills. Three kills. Three—
Remy jerked awake. The interface was gone. The room was darker—the space heater had shut off. He didn't know how long he'd been asleep. Could've been minutes or hours.
He pulled up the interface with a thought. The Creations tab loaded.
Widow's Bargain: 3 kills. 89% durability. Status indicator: gray.
Gray meant inactive. Sheathed or set down. Mara had stopped fighting.
Remy stared at the gray indicator and felt something unclench in his chest. She was alive. Probably. Gray didn't mean dead—dead would be red, he assumed. Gray just meant not in use.
He should be relieved. Should be happy that his first major creation had worked, that the woman who'd bought it had survived, that he'd leveled up.
Instead he felt empty. Hollow. Like he'd been waiting for something that never came.
He closed the interface and lay in the dark, listening to the building settle around him. The workshop was in what used to be a commercial district, back when commercial districts mattered. Now it was just a cluster of buildings that hadn't been destroyed yet, populated by people who were too stubborn or too poor to evacuate to the Safe Zones.
Remy was both.
He tried to sleep again. Couldn't. His mind kept circling back to the sword, to Mara, to the three kills that had finally pushed him to Level 3. To his father's ring, now part of a weapon that would probably outlast them all.
Good enough gets you killed. This won't.
But what if good enough was all he had? What if Masterwork quality and perfect technique and his father's last piece still weren't enough to fill the space where purpose used to be?
The smell of hot metal and ozone drifted through the room again, faint but present. Remy sat up and looked toward the workshop. Nothing was running. The forge was cold. But the smell persisted, like reality was reminding him that normal rules didn't apply anymore.
He got up and walked to the workshop, his boots loud on the concrete floor. The empty hook where his father's gloves usually hung caught his eye. Except they weren't on the hook. They were on the workbench where he'd left them after trying to clean them.
Remy picked them up. Still dirty. Still too big. Still his father's.
He was reaching for the gloves when someone knocked on the customer door—three sharp raps, the pattern his father used to use when his hands were too full to turn the knob.