Jagged Salvage

In the Rust-Bed, you don't inherit the earth. You scrap it.Once a vast ocean, the world is now a scorching desert of salt and iron, littered with the colossal skeletons of ancient war machines. For Vesper, a "Cutter" barely scraping by, these dead leviathans are a livelihood. Small, scarred, and armed with a modified plasma torch, she climbs the jagged beasts to slice away god-tier metal for a pittance.She knows the rule: never cut too deep. But desperation drives her into the belly of a Leviathan-Class wreck, where she finds something that shouldn't exist.Rian is a Hull-Heart. He isn't a captain; he is the engine. A bio-engineered weapon fused into the ship's core, he has been chained in the dark for fifty years, kept alive by residual magic and fury. He is half-man, half-machine, rusted, dangerous, and immensely powerful.He offers Vesper a bargain: cut him free, and he will open the ship's vault.But freeing Rian isn't just a matter of cutting chains. It requires navigating a labyrinth of sharp metal and sharper secrets in extreme forced proximity. As Vesper works to liberate the monster from the machine, she realizes that the "rust" covering him is a defense mechanism-and she is the only one who can touch him without burning.He is the trap. She is the key. And in a world of dead metal, their connection is the only thing alive.