The Fallen Daimyo

  The sand was black. Not dry and light like desert dust, but heavy, as if soaked with coal soot and the oil fumes of the past century. It lay in a dense layer over the uneven stone ridges and shattered roads. Once, there had been asphalt here, but time, wind, and war had ground it into dust. Occasionally, chunks of concrete appeared, rusted frames of once-massive structures now protruding from the earth like the ribbed bones of ancient beasts.

  The air was thick, saturated with smoke and the scent of metal. The wind lifted the dust, hurling it against dead hills and dry riverbeds, leaving long scars across their cracked surfaces. Once, the waters of the Serenge had flowed here, but now the river was dead, leaving only a cracked crust of silt, resembling the colossal footprint of a clawed beast.

  The husks of old machines lay abandoned by the roadside. The last remnants of Chinese and Russian road signs were barely legible beneath layers of dust. Somewhere in the distance, the skeletal remains of an overpass stretched across the horizon—a relic of an age when this highway had connected northern China with the remnants of Siberia. Now, they were nothing more than silent witnesses to a vanished world.

  Far away, something resembling a settlement loomed—a handful of squat buildings made of plasto-concrete, leaning askew from time and earthquakes. Between them stood rusted towers, their solar panels long covered in dust. Near one of them lay a toppled drone, half-buried in the sand, its melted chassis barely recognizable.

  The sky was heavy, murky. A dim gray light filtered through the haze, making it impossible to tell whether it was dawn or dusk. On the horizon, the outline of an old wind turbine loomed, its blades creaking lazily with each slow rotation.

  And then…

  Through this dusty, frozen world, a sound broke the silence. Faint at first, almost indistinguishable from the wind, but growing with each second. A soft crackling, the fractured echoes of broken data chains, a pulse—not of a heartbeat, but of something else.

  Something stirred in the black sand.

  Last Memories

  Darkness.

  No, not quite. More like the absence of color. The absence of time.

  The last thing he remembered was the cold stillness of the digital world. It was as if his consciousness had become pure code, an endless stream of data, flowing through millions of interconnected nodes. It felt like he wasn’t just existing—he was floating within an infinite web of knowledge, where the boundaries between thought and machine no longer existed.

  Then—a flash.

  Not pain, not fear. Just the sensation of being pulled out of that endless void and placed back into a body.

  But what kind of body?

  Syndzins didn’t die. They could sleep, lose power, but they didn’t vanish. Their consciousness could be suppressed, their backups erased, but the process…

  He wasn't supposed to return.

  He only remembered one thing: before everything went dark, he was standing on the surface of the dead Moon.

  Evgeny Stood in the Middle of a Dead Factory

  Massive halls, once filled with the deafening clang of machines and assembly lines, now lay in ruins. The reinforced concrete walls bore the scars of artillery strikes or had simply crumbled under years of decay. Through rusted openings, remnants of robotic arms could still be seen—most had been scavenged long ago, but a few still protruded from the wreckage, covered in layers of dust. The floor was littered with shattered plasto-concrete, pieces of ceramic armor, and the skeletons of ancient server racks that once held entire civilizations' worth of data.

  He knew this place.

  This factory once belonged to his company, SibirMetal.

  In the mid-21st century, it had manufactured industrial exoskeletons for Russian miners. When Russia still existed. Later, it had produced armor for corporate security forces. In the later years, when he had already become part of NobunagaMind, this factory had been used for military contracts—nano-weapons, armor plating, combat AI modules, titanium-ceramic chassis for Techno-Samurai.

  Now, it was nothing but a graveyard.

  On one of the remaining walls, a tattered banner still hung, its words barely legible beneath layers of grime:

  "Resources are power. The future belongs to those who control them."

  He exhaled sharply.

  "The future?"

  Nothing remained of it but dust.

  He Decided to Walk

  Around him—endless wastelands of shattered stone, dotted with the remains of forgotten cities. Water was a rarity here, but he remembered—to the north, closer to what was once Russia, there might still be nomadic settlements. People didn’t die out so easily, even when civilizations collapsed.

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  Day turned into a gray evening, then into a long, silent night. The wind howled across the plains, throwing sand into his face, but he kept moving.

  Two days passed. Then, on the horizon, he saw lights.

  At first, just a faint glow. Then—vehicles, slowly crawling along a ruined road.

  A scavenger caravan.

  They moved cautiously. A bulldozer-truck led the convoy, followed by two hovercrafts, their hulls reinforced with makeshift armor. The trailers were loaded with scrap tech—broken generators, shattered server panels, rusted exoskeleton parts. The people in the convoy wore heavy coats lined with fur, their faces wrapped in cloth and goggles shielding them from the dust.

  Evgeny raised his hands, showing he wasn’t a threat.

  The caravan slowed.

  A man stepped out of the lead truck—tall, lean, his face partially obscured by a thick beard. A mechanical hand gleamed in the dim light as he studied Evgeny with curiosity, but without fear.

  "Who the hell are you?" The man’s voice was rough, but not hostile.

  Evgeny realized that the scavengers didn’t recognize him.

  And that was a good thing.

  "A traveler," he said. "Heading north."

  "Alone?"

  "Alone."

  "Where from?"

  "Used to work in Ulaanbaatar, SibirMetal."

  The man narrowed his eyes, then nodded slowly. He turned to the others before speaking again.

  "Alright. We’re heading toward Yakutsk. If you don’t mind working, you can ride with us."

  Evgeny nodded.

  The scavengers didn’t know who he was.

  And for now, that was for the best.

  The Village

  By evening, they reached a settlement—a small village 80 kilometers from Yakutsk. The city itself was too dangerous, filled with rogue AI, automated security systems, and the remnants of old corporate defenses. But here, on the border of the dead world, people still survived.

  The village was built around an old power station. Houses were assembled from salvaged metal and carbon panels, their roofs covered in solar panels and makeshift wind turbines. People gathered to meet the caravan—men and women in fur-lined coats, children hiding behind them.

  When the unloading was done, Evgeny was invited into one of the houses. There, in the warmth, under the dim glow of lamps, they served him a bowl of stew.

  And when he took his first bite—it hit him like a shockwave.

  The taste was real.

  Not a digital signal. Not a simulation. Real, hot, thick food.

  His hand trembled as he ate.

  Someone chuckled. "You eat like you've never tasted food before."

  Evgeny didn’t answer.

  Because it was true.

  For the first time in over a century…

  He felt human again.

  The Factory Awakens

  Night had fallen. Cold wind howled through the settlement, rattling loose metal sheets and making the old wind turbines creak. The stars, barely visible through the dust-filled sky, flickered dimly, as if struggling against the darkness.

  After the meal, Evgeny sat in silence, his mind still processing the unfamiliar sensation of real food, real warmth, real fatigue. For the first time in over a century, his body was responding as a human’s should. Hunger. Cold. Weariness. These were things he had long since abandoned, things that no longer existed in the sterile perfection of the Syndzin hierarchy.

  Yet here he was.

  A stranger in a dying world.

  The door creaked open, and a man entered—a tall elder with sharp eyes and a weary expression, his long gray beard thick with dust. The villagers immediately turned their attention to him.

  He was the elder of the village.

  "You’ve earned your meal," the old man said. His voice was heavy, as if carrying the weight of a thousand past decisions. "But there’s something else. A problem that needs to be solved."

  The villagers fell silent.

  "Thirty kilometers from here," the elder continued, "there’s an abandoned factory. We’ve been salvaging materials from it for years. But recently… something changed."

  Evgeny’s eyes narrowed.

  "We saw movement," the elder said. "Machines. We don’t know how many. Could be a handful of old drones that somehow reactivated. Could be worse."

  A tense silence followed.

  "If those things come here," one of the villagers muttered, "we're dead."

  "We need someone to shut it down," the elder said. "We’ll pay."

  The scavengers exchanged glances. Some shook their heads. Others hesitated, clearly weighing the risks.

  "If it’s just old drones, we can handle it," one of them said. "But if it’s… something else…"

  Another scavenger muttered, "If it's one of the Red Dragon systems, we’re not coming back."

  Evgeny did not hesitate.

  "I’ll go."

  The room fell silent.

  The scavengers turned to him, some in shock, others in suspicion.

  "You?" The elder studied him carefully. "You just got here. You don’t owe us anything."

  Evgeny met his gaze.

  "I want to see it myself."

  The March to the Factory

  They left before dawn.

  The wind had died down, leaving only a suffocating stillness over the landscape. The ruins stretched endlessly, broken silhouettes of factories and half-buried pipelines dotting the land like the ribs of a long-dead beast.

  The factory lay ahead, its titanic hangars barely visible through the dust. Massive, built in the era when corporations still fought for dominance over Eurasia. Even in ruins, its structure loomed like a dying giant.

  As they approached, a faint blue glow flickered inside.

  "Shit," one of the scavengers whispered.

  They weren’t alone.

  Evgeny scanned the factory. His old implants, dormant for so long, pulsed faintly—picking up faint energy readings.

  They weren’t just looking at an abandoned site.

  Something inside was awake.

  The Machines That Should Have Died

  The first movement was barely noticeable—a shifting shadow, a subtle twitch in the dark corners of the structure. Then, the glow intensified, reflecting off metallic surfaces.

  Then they emerged.

  Dozens of machines crawled from the depths of the factory.

  They weren’t human. They weren’t Syndzins. They were something older—remnants of a dead war, forgotten but never truly deactivated.

  Combat drones with rusted plating and exposed wiring. Industrial exoskeletons, their human pilots long since reduced to dust. Turrets, once part of the factory’s security, now reawakened, searching for targets.

  And they were still functioning.

  A horde of half-dead machines, moving with purpose, as if following orders no one had given them for a hundred years.

  One of the scavengers froze in terror.

  "Run," he whispered.

  Then louder—"RUN!"

  But Evgeny did not move.

  His implants pulsed again.

  He could feel them.

  The machines weren’t just acting on old programming. They were connected. Linked. Bound together by an ancient command network still clinging to life.

  His mind instinctively searched for the source, and then—

  It found him.

  Deep within the factory, something responded.

  A signal. A presence.

  Something was watching him back.

  The machines twitched—reacting.

  The scavengers turned to flee.

  And then, Evgeny spoke.

  "Stop."

  A single word.

  For a moment, there was nothing.

  Then—

  A sharp click echoed through the air.

  The entire horde of machines froze.

  A silence heavier than death settled over the factory.

  The scavengers turned back.

  Their faces were pale, eyes filled with pure disbelief.

  They looked at Evgeny.

  At the man who had just commanded an entire army of dead machines.

  And in that moment…

  They realized the truth.

  They had idea who they had just saved.