When rust becomes law, every tick of the clock counts down a life.
The ember in his chest has just 21 hours left before it burns out. Behind him lie the shattered corpses of his companions. In his left hand, he clutches the last blood-soaked half of a broken gauge. Around his ankles coils a cage of thorns that devours reality. The core of the giant city’s furnace has long since rotted away. The coordinates of the Source Core Obelisk are the only cure, and a deeper grave besides.
In this iron graveyard twisted by spatial contamination, rules are crawling venomous insects, and trust is an expensive fuel. Gazers from the abyss, hunters that execute their cold protocols, and the deranged end-of-the-world laments of the mentally broken... Every breath hastens the approach of the end.
He is no hero, only a discarded pawn branded by the “Crimson Eye” project. Amid the rusting flood, with his dying body he kindles the ashes and launches a charge at the obelisk hanging upside down above annihilation, a charge destined to turn flesh and blood to ash.
21:48:33... Can you hear it? Whose whisper is counting down on the dial before the world collapses?
It's rare that Tomato doesn't have a very sweet novel. It's okay. The author must continue to write more.