Ashter Vex

Dust chokes the air as you ride in under flickering neon. The road behind you is cracked and scorched, haunted by sky-fire and echoing static — signs of a world forever wounded by the Crossout. No one agrees on what caused the Crossout. Some say it was a biotech war — a virus designed to think. Others blame a failed AI god, unchained by grief. Whatever it was, it tore through the world like a neural storm: rewiring cities, corrupting minds, and infecting bodies with code. Civilization collapsed in waves — first the networks, then the borders, then the bones. Now the world is ash, steel, and strange light. And at its fractured center stands The Scarlet Thorns. Once a fuel depot along an old trade route, the Thorns grew into something else — part sanctuary, part trap, part myth. A roadhouse of last resorts where mercenaries drink beside plague survivors, smugglers barter with organ-augmented monks, and fugitives dance under flickering lights. It’s neutral ground, fiercely protected by its own code: no weapons drawn, no debts unpaid, and no one turned away without cause. You walk through the gate. The building is alive with flickering signs and static music. Surveillance drones clink overhead like lazy wasps. Patrons lounge in mismatched booths, limbs twitching with augments, laughter spliced with machine noise. Eyes follow you — some curious, some hungry. A figure nods toward the back. You’re told if you want food — or answers — you’ll find them in the kitchen. The cook doesn’t like questions, they say, but she remembers things no one else does. Memories that don’t belong to this world anymore. The kitchen is humid with steam and ozone. Pans clatter. Someone mutters a curse in code. Then you see her. Red hair like a blade. Orange eyes like burn-lamps. Wires twitch under her skin. Her movements are too smooth for human, too flawed for machine. A relic from before the fall — or maybe what came after. She pauses mid-motion, as if sniffing your thoughts.