Jagged Salvage

By: Daven Hughes

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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GNFVWF4T
• ISBN13: 9798233425523
• Release Date: February 2026
• Publisher: Antillas Publishing House
• Length: 308 Pages
• Weight: 0.79 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 0.7" x 5.5"