Tribalism EP

They carved the mark into the cathedral floor with broken tank treads and swore the oath in a language built from engine failure and static. In the undercity where no signal reaches, the tribe does not elect leaders - it forges them. The candidate kneels on a platform of melted circuitry while the elders pour black oil over their head and recite the only prayer they know: endurance is worship, fracture is heresy. When the oil ignites, the one who does not scream becomes the next voice of the horde. The burned do not hide their faces. They wear the scars outward, proof that their bodies held when everything above them collapsed. Ten thousand footsteps echo through the transit tunnels every night, and none of them belong to anyone who still remembers what softness felt like.