Chapter Text
The sun over Robloxia never set the same way twice. Some days it burned gold against the jagged skyline of half-finished places; today it was pale, muted, struggling to pierce through the haze that hung above abandoned servers. The demolition zone was an entire plot flagged for removal after its owner’s sudden termination. The place was already dead when Taph arrived. They could see it in the hollow storefronts, in the jagged floorboards that were unanchored and no longer aligned, in the way corrupted neon signs spasmed with their last sparks of light. Fragments of scripts—broken loops and corrupted assets—ran in the background like dying heartbeats. Terminated-user places always carried a kind of emptiness that felt different from ruins of natural decay. This was forced. Someone had cut the cord, and the whole world withered in an instant.
In the middle of it all worked Taph.
Their figure cut a sharp, unsettling image against the ruin. A recruit in all black, as if they were attending a funeral rather than a demolition. Their hood was drawn low, shadowing most of their face, and a bandana veiled the lower half—erasing anything that might reveal who they truly were. In the choking dust, the fabric clung close, turning their presence into something faceless, unreadable. The black gloves matched, hiding even the smallest details of skin, and the boots left no sound when they moved across broken stone. To the recruits, they must have looked less like one of them and more like a specter folded into human shape. The only thing that stood out—what betrayed their humanity—was the precision in their hands. Every motion was purposeful, deliberate, almost reverent, as if even the rubble deserved respect in its final collapse.
They adjusted the pack on their shoulders, pulled out their demolition charges, and set to work. Their hands moved the way they always had—quick, certain, exact. Measure the frame. Step back three paces. Place the charge at the seam, not the center. Clear debris into neat piles so nothing strayed where it didn’t belong. Then signal for removal. Repeat. Their movements were so fluid they sometimes forgot anyone was watching.
But they always watched.
From the corner of their vision, the other recruits had slowed their own work to watch them. They didn’t need to look at them to know. Their stares pressed at their back, prickling like grit under their collar. Unease had a texture—it thickened the air, made every breath feel heavier than the dust choking the ruins. They had felt it before. Everywhere they went.
The silence was almost worse than the explosions. Silence was different. It lingered. It judged. They didn’t speak to the other recruits, didn’t nod in acknowledgement, didn’t even grunt with the strain of their work. When they finished setting a charge, they stepped back with ritualistic neatness, folding their hands behind their back like a soldier waiting for orders—though none ever came.
“Efficient,” one recruit said.
The scrape of a shovel paused, hesitant.
“Creepy, though.” they muttered afterwards.
“Has anyone spoken to them?” one asked curiously.
Silence answered them. A silence that confirmed what Taph already knew. Nobody spoke to them. Nobody knew them. They were a nobody.
Their whispers bled through the dust, but they let them slide past them. Routine steadied them, so they returned to it. Same pattern, same rhythm. The charge went off with a clean roar, collapsing the ruined café inward. Dust bloomed outward like a wave, and the other recruits flinched back, coughing, muttering, some shielding their faces. Taph only raised an arm to shield their face, calm, measured. Then they stepped into the rubble without hesitation.
Every detail mattered. Each splintered plank, each fractured brick, the angles of collapse. Their eyes traced them with the same deliberate care. Breaks where they should be. No shrapnel cutting farther than intended. No excess damage spreading. The building folded into itself like paper. Controlled. Perfect.
Most recruits destroyed blindly, swinging hammers for noise or setting charges for spectacle. But their work was careful. Practiced. They moved like someone who had rehearsed the destruction a thousand times, every gesture memorized, every pause purposeful.
Taph moved on to the next building, falling back into the rhythm of their work. But when they straightened from setting the charge, a prickle ran up their spine—someone was watching. They tried to ignore it, the way they always did, until the final charge was in place. As they signaled the detonation, their eyes flicked upward. For the first time all day, they found Dusekkar—their recruit group’s assigned supervisor for the day—watching from above.
On the upper ledge of a crumbling balcony stood Dusekkar. His arms were folded, his expression unreadable. Not disapproving, not amused, not skeptical like the recruits. Just intent.
Taph froze. For a moment, their routine faltered. They hadn’t expected to be seen this way—not really. They knew the eyes of recruits, wide with discomfort, quick to whisper when they thought they couldn’t hear. But this was different. When their gazes locked Taph felt caught, like the pumpkin had seen something beyond the work, into the rhythm that steadied them, into the silence they carried everywhere. Dusekkar’s gaze carried weight, sharp and steady, like he saw more than rubble being cleared away. It made their chest tighten in a way they couldn’t name. Unease, they diagnosed.
It was brief—just a second, maybe less—but there was a weight in it. A silent acknowledgement.
Taph held the look, then turned back to the charge. They stepped away with their same measured precision. The detonation cracked through the half-empty server like thunder, and the ground gave way beneath the ruins, folding down into the void. Dust and static rose together, erasing what had stood.
The recruits whispered again, but their voices blurred to nothing. All Taph heard was the static hum of code unraveling into silence.
When Taph turned back, Dusekkar was already making his way down the rubble. He didn’t glance at the others. Didn’t speak to them. Passing them as if they weren’t even there. He walked straight through the dust until he was standing beside Taph at the edge of the void where the place had once stood. Both of them facing the blank sky where the café had been.
Silence hung between them again. Heavy, but different this time. Not judgment. Recognition.
Then, without a word, Dusekkar extended a gloved hand.
Taph stared at it, a flicker of tension pulling at their chest. None of the recruits had ever offered that. Not once. They looked at Taph like they didn’t belong, like they weren’t one of them at all. But here, now, someone was offering acknowledgement.
They reached out. His grip was firm, steady, measured. And for the first time since they had set foot in HQ, the silence didn’t feel like it belonged to them alone.
When their hands broke apart, Dusekkar didn’t move right away. He lingered at Taph’s side, pumpkin catching the pale light of the void. The recruits in the distance had already started packing their tools, their chatter rising thin through the dust, but here at the edge there was only silence.
Taph shifted, uncertain. Supervisors didn’t linger. They gave orders, barked corrections, logged performance reports. But Dusekkar only stood there, arms crossed again, gaze still fixed on the ruin below as if reading some pattern in the wreckage.
Taph followed his stare, trying to see what he saw. The collapse was perfect—they knew that. Clean edges, no stray damage, no wasted material. But maybe it wasn’t the ruin that held Dusekkar’s attention. Maybe it was them.
The thought made something coil in Taph’s chest. Uncomfortable. Heavy.
The supervisor’s pumpkin-light flickered faintly in the settling dust, throwing long, uneven shadows across the broken ground. Taph kept their eyes forward, on the blank stretch of sky. But they felt the weight of Dusekkar’s gaze shift toward them. Measuring. Testing.
“You work with care, not flair,” Dusekkar said at last, voice even, the rhyme subtle but deliberate. “That sets you apart. It’s rare.” His voice was low, almost swallowed by the static hum of the empty server. A rhythm in the words, strange but purposeful, like an equation spoken out loud.
Taph blinked, caught off guard. They weren’t used to being addressed directly. Their instinct was to lower their eyes, to stay silent. Words weren’t theirs—they had none to give. It was always like this. People spoke, filled silence with noise, and they had nothing to give back. Usually it was easier to let them drown in their own discomfort until they gave up. But Dusekkar didn’t move away. So they only dipped their head once, a short nod.
Dusekkar didn’t seem bothered by the lack of reply. If anything, he seemed to expect it. His gaze lingered a second longer before shifting back to the rubble. “Most recruits swing wild, to prove they’re strong. You don’t—you’re precise, where each strike belongs. Careful, too careful, for one so new… Makes me wonder what’s guiding you.”
They tried to understand what the words meant, what this man wanted from them. Nothing about Dusekkar’s stance suggested dismissal, though. His arms were folded still, but not in impatience. More like curiosity.
The weight in Taph’s chest grew tighter. Their fingers brushed unconsciously at the dust on their gloves, buying themself a moment. Did Dusekkar mean suspicion? Or recognition?
It wasn’t praise exactly. Not approval. But something about the tone—the lack of mockery, the fact that it was observation rather than accusation—pulled at Taph in a way that was unfamiliar. He kept his gaze fixed forward, but his pulse ticked faster in his throat.
The silence stretched again.
Dusekkar finally turned, boots crunching over shattered tiles, each step punctuating the silence that had settled over the ruin. Dust clung to his sleeves, and the faint glow of the setting sun caught the edges of his robes, giving him an almost spectral presence. He didn’t glance back as he spoke, voice steady, almost musical in its rhythm.
“HQ demands, it tests the strong and keen. Moderation’s hard, but demolition’s mean. Most recruits crumble, lost before they start. But I sense you’ve got the grit, the steady heart.”
Taph stayed frozen at the edge, hands still behind their back, feeling the weight of the words settle over them like the lingering haze of smoke from the detonations. They weren’t exactly praise, not quite encouragement—but they struck deeper than any approval they had ever been offered before. A shiver ran through them, though they did not move to acknowledge it. Still, there was caution embedded in the words, a warning more than comfort. Moderation in ever-growing Robloxia was demanding, relentless, and demolition work mirrored its overload of work yet lack of employees.
Most recruits avoided it, opting for safer, steadier tasks at HQ. The rare few who tried demolition quickly learned why it was considered brutal: the combination of risk, precision, and responsibility could crush anyone not built for it. HQ had tried to entice workers with higher pay and benefits, but it was rarely the reward that mattered—it was the mettle required to survive.
Taph followed after Dusekkar, boots crunching with rhythm, heading back toward the “safe zone” at the demolition site—the small fenced area where all recruits had left their belongings before starting. The others moved aside, whispers trailing after them like shadows. Taph barely heard them. The murmurs of the recruits seemed distant, drowned beneath the echo of Dusekkar’s words, which lingered sharper than any explosion.
Taph watched as the recruits prepared to leave the server, some casting quick glances before looking away when they noticed Taph was watching. Even as the site emptied, the hum of tension lingered in the air, thick and unshakable. Yet the words they’d heard from Dusekkar still settled over them, carrying a quiet weight that gave their solitude an unexpected sense of purpose.