The Edge of the Starfall

In the underground black market of Rustbelt, a junk planet, Lu Chen finds a scrapped Iron Husk mech and an alloy blade cobbled together from a welding torch. With them, he kills a Husk that should never have appeared there: a metal-devouring insect. The Husks consume the starry sea with their “Husk Domains,” disabling mechs and rewriting the laws of physics wherever they pass. Humanity is driven back again and again, until it discovers a cruel truth: after a Husk is killed, its genes etch themselves into the killer's nervous system like a virus. Ordinary people go insane, but warriors who cultivate the Edge Art can analyze those genes in reverse, turning Huskification into material for evolution.