When the humenes first encountered the miasma deep beneath the jagged caverns of Ethernia, they could scarcely believe their eyes. They were captivated by its uncanny allure—a slick, glimmering liquid that oozed from the fractures in the excavated stones like some ancient secret finally unearthed. Its iridescent hues shimmered unnaturally under the faint lamplight of the chamber, a hypnotic blend of crimson and radiant gold that seemed to pulse with life itself, almost purposeful.

  To the miners, the substance was nothing short of divine providence—a fortuitous treasure that would elevate their miserable existence beyond wealth and renown. They clutched their rusting tools and battered helmets after weeks of backbreaking labor, their tired faces split into jubilant grins. Cheers erupted, cigarettes of Sollenia were lit with clasping hands, and their raucous laughter and off-key songs reverberated through the stone walls. But beneath the exultation, something felt wrong. The miasma’s surface rippled in hastily filled buckets and jars, as if it was responding to their noise, their movement, and their presence. It was intent. Its glow didn’t fade like firelight. It pounded. Steady. Methodically. Almost as if it were breathing. The miasma was watching them. And it was waiting.

  Its discoverers reveled in their ignorance, were blind to the truth, their slaps on each other’s back a flimsy veil that concealed the peril before them. What they had unearthed was not an unfathomable gift coaxed from the earth by their perseverance. It was a snare laid by the cunning Irah, a force as ancient as it was malevolent, the Envious Son, Desphoras, those bitter spirits bound by their thirst for retribution, seeking vengeance. He sought destruction—a venomous reprisal for his exclusion from the world Prospera had so carefully harmonized.

  The liquid’s beauty masked its true nature, for it was not wealth; it was a weapon, a will incarnate that offered but corruption. When the men exposed it to the embrace of daylight, the crepuscular rays induced a change in its very chemical structure. Electrons within its strange compounds altered their state, refracting sunlight into haunting hues of violet and amethyst, colors that seemed not of this world. The change was more than visual. It was deeply influential. Slowly, imperceptibly, it began its work, weaving its tendrils into the minds of those who lingered near it. They didn’t know what they were looking at. It wasn’t like anything they’d seen before, and it wasn’t like anything they were supposed to see, either. It preyed on their desires, their ambitions, and their weaknesses, clouding their thoughts, twisted into shapes that no longer resembled their own.

  Worst of all, when exposed to open air, the substance underwent a grotesque transformation, morphing into a viscous, dark-purple molasses—a phenomenon detailed in obscure tomes and whispered among scholars who gave their lives studying its nature. The change was as mysterious as it was terrifying. External stimuli—temperature, light, even the faint vibrations of humene presence—triggered alterations in its molecular structure. Subatomic particles leapt unpredictably to new states, some observed in modern times and many theorized. Among the most feared was the form known simply as the “blight.” To common folk, it became a tale of dread, its thermochromism fueling their unease. When induced, it behaved like molten lava disgorged from the mouth of a primordial volcano, churning with a malevolent energy that poisoned everything in its wake. The once-pure atmosphere became saturated with an invisible, choking mist—a silken veil of illusion that danced like spectral waves, undulating with hypnotic grace. This was no ordinary fog. It was an enchantment wrought of decay and deceit.

  By the time the humenes grasped the blight’s true nature, it was too late. The air was dense with a sinister haze that warped reality itself, casting strange shapes and shadows that whispered promises of untold power. Irah had claimed them, body and soul, and the world they knew—its simple joys, its fleeting hopes—began to vanish, swallowed whole by the blight’s relentless hunger.

  Centuries dragged on, marked by the doggasted winters of death, gruesome seasons of despair blending into endless nights of hopelessness. Ivazmil bore witness to the blight’s inevitable march until the mist finally reached Alternno, a chapter in Irah’s vindictive masterpiece. The trade post, once vibrant, had long since been evacuated, abandoned to its fate. Empty streets echoed with the howling of the mist as it rolled in, claiming the hollow shells of homes and monuments.

  The corridor stretched before Frank like a jagged scar carved into the soul of the house, its walls pressing in with the weight of a tomb. The dim, flickering light from a single dying bulb cast shapes along the peeling wallpaper, their edges shifting like grasping fingers. Shadows pooled in the corners, alive, watching. The air was thick with the faint metallic tang of something wrong, terribly wrong.

  Halfway down, a single photograph hung crookedly on the peeling wall—a captured moment of Declan and his father, their smiles now hauntingly out of place. The image felt like an intrusion here, a mocking reminder of what was lost or destroyed. Beneath it, the chaos of the floor told a different story—a hurricane of crumpled underwear, discarded pants, and shirts flung carelessly, as though the corridor had been upended in haste or fury.

  The stench hit next—cloying, sour, unmistakably human. Sweat. Sex. Fear. The odor of body fluids clung to the air. Thick enough to slither into his nostrils, a violation, forcing him to taste the intimacy of violence. Among the wreckage of wigs and handmade clothing—a mother’s things, torn and scattered like discarded skin—a faint trail of blood streaked the worn wooden planks, leading further down the corridor to a door left ajar, the light of a candle beyond it beckoning like an open grave.

  Then it came—a faint, guttural grunt, almost inaudible, carried through the corridor like a ghostly echo, real enough to chill.

  Frank froze. His muscles tightened as his ears strained, desperate to unhear what they had already absorbed.

  It came again.

  Sharper. More visceral.

  This time, there was no mistaking it—a wet, splintering crack that sent a shock through his spine. The sound was primal: a response to something being broken—no, snapped. Bone. His stomach twisted, dread blooming cold and heavy in his chest as his mind raced to reject the realization even as his senses insisted on its truth. His head jerked toward the door, its frame crooked and trembling faintly as though it had just been pushed or pulled. Beyond it, the sliver of blackness yawned, darker than the night itself. It didn’t still—it pulsed, undulating like the throb of a festering wound, carrying with it an intangible sense of malice so strong it seemed to seep into his mind.

  Another sound pierced—a scream. It was loud and raw, a jagged cry of terror that turned Frank’s blood to ice. The scream rose in pitch, then abruptly choked off, as if a fist had closed around a windpipe, crushing the cry into a wet gurgle. A sharp clash followed, the sound of furniture toppling in a violent scuffle, and then… silence. The door to his left cracked open, the faintest groan of wood against hinges slicing through the corridor, a knife dragged along his nerves. Frank spun toward it, his pulse hammering in his ears.

  In the dim, jaundiced glow of the hallway, a child’s face appeared—half-lit, pale as bone. Wide, fearful eyes stared up at him, shimmering with tears yet unshed. It was his stepson. The boy’s trembling lips didn’t form words, but his gaze spoke volumes—a silent, desperate plea that passed between them in an instant, unspoken but painfully clear.

  He lunged forward, gripping Declan’s shoulders, his fingers digging into the boy’s pajama shirt. “Hide,” he ordered, his voice a sharp whisper that cracked under the weight of his fear. Declan hesitated at first, his figure a frozen frame against the room’s threshold. The air grew heavier still, charged with an unseen force that seemed to thrum in the very walls.

  Then—a crack shattered the air, followed by the sickening thud of a body collapsing to the ground. The hairs on his neck rose, and every instinct screamed at him to act.

  Move. Move now.

  But his limbs were lead, his muscles locked in the paralysis of pure terror.

  “Dad.” Declan’s whimper snapped him back.

  “Now!” Frank hissed, shoving Declan backward into the room with a force born of desperation. The boy stumbled, his arms flailing out of sight, into the shadows beyond the door.

  Frank’s forehead dropped against the rough grain. He strained to hear anything beyond his own ragged breathing. It came in short, panicked gasps, a cacophony of frantic thoughts and prayers tangling in his mind. His words pleaded for protection, that the darkness of the corridor would swallow him whole. Worthless.

  The light from the couple’s suit spilled out, cutting through the shadows and throwing long, jagged shapes onto the walls. It reached Frank, illuminating his face as he stood paralyzed in its glare. His heart thundered against his ribs like waves against a doomed shore.

  Then, from the doorway, he emerged.

  Cal Cassidy.

  The man moved with the slow, deliberate menace of a predator who knows his prey cannot escape. His silhouette was an angular contradiction—broad-shouldered and thick-necked, yet unrefined power. There was no elegance in his form, only the promise of violence coiled beneath sinew and scarred flesh. His arms hung slightly too long, ending in hands that looked more like tools of blunt force than human appendages—knuckles gnarled, fingers permanently half-curled, as if already imagining the act of crushing something fragile.

  His face was a landscape carved by hardship and time. A great, crooked nose dominated his features, its bridge sloping downward like the crest of a jagged cliff. Beneath it, his beard flared in unruly defiance—a shock of wiry, fiery red hair that seemed to burn against his pale, weatherworn skin. His lips were thin, chapped, and forever twisted in the ghost of a smirk, as if privy to some private joke at the world’s expense.

  But it was his eyes that made Frank’s breath seize.

  A pair of swollen orbs that bulged oddly, as though straining under the pressure of some unseen burden, unfathomable rage. Their dull green irises were almost reptilian in their cold detachment.

  His chest rose and fell in slow, deliberate rhythms, the fabric of his stained duster coat clinging to the dense musculature beneath. The scent of him hit Frank like a physical blow—sour whiskey, old leather, and something deeper, fouler: the ripe, metallic stench of violence freshly committed.

  Cal’s head tilted, just slightly, the tendons in his neck creaking like old rope.

  "Well," he rasped, his voice a blade dragged over gravel. "Ain’t this a fuckin’ reunion?"

  Frank’s mouth went dry.

  Behind him, inside the room, Declan let out a whimper.

  Cal’s grin widened.

  His gloved hands moved methodically, as if rehearsed, wiping the blood away with a crumpled tissue before discarding it with a flick of disdain. When he adjusted the brim of his cowboy hat, the movement was quick and practiced, the shadow falling perfectly to obscure the deep scars that etched his jawline.

  And then—

  He took his first step forward.

  Cassidy approached with unhurried certainty, his long coat swinging with the heavy grace of a predator’s tail. The leather creaked softly, whispering of hidden weapons. His spurred boots stomped against the wooden floor with a weight that carried an air of finality, a grim countdown.

  Terror had rooted Frank in place.

  Cassidy passed him without so much as a glance, his stride unwavering, his purpose clear. He halted outside Declan’s room, his broad back straight and menacing, blocking the light like a storm cloud swallowing the sun.

  In a voice roughened by years of barked orders and unsmiling truths, he commanded,

  “Stay here.”

  Frank avoided looking at him. His sidelong glance was that of prey watching a predator—cowardly, instinctive. To meet those bulging eyes, set against the backdrop of his scarred face, was to invite a confrontation no sane man would dare provoke.

  “It won’t be long,” he warned.

  Then, without hesitation, he pushed the door open and stepped inside Declan’s room.

  Frank barely had a moment to process before Cipher appeared, his small form materializing out of the gloom like a specter. The child’s eyes were wide and unblinking, his tiny hand raised with precision, one finger extending to point back toward the unseen scene of horror.

  His voice was calm, almost dispassionate.

  “It was your fault.”

  The words landed like a punch, knocking the breath from Frank’s lungs. His gaze followed the line of that accusing finger, and he wished he hadn’t. The dread in his stomach churned violently, threatening to drag him under.

  The walls of the corridor seemed to ripple, their once-solid boundaries now quivering like a living thing. They stretched abnormally, elongating into a grotesque tunnel as if the house itself recoiled from what lay ahead. The floral wallpaper peeled away in slow, sticky strips, revealing glistening muscle beneath. The ceiling sagged like a dying lung, each labored breath of the house making the light fixtures sway like hanged men.

  Each step forward was an ordeal. The floorboards groaned beneath his feet, every sound amplified, echoing like bones breaking. His legs felt as though they had turned to stone, his breath shallow, his chest tightening with every inch gained. A single bulb above Cipher’s head flickered erratically, casting taunting shadows that warped with cruel intent.

  He knew—deep in his bones, in the marrow of his very soul—what he would find beyond that door.

  Regina.

  Tears stung his eyes, threatening to spill as he fought against his instincts to turn, to scoop Cipher up and run, to abandon whatever duty or guilt held him to this path. But the walls closed in, the corridor narrowing and breathing around him, the dim light swinging in time with his racing heart, as if mocking his resolve.

  And then, the sound.

  Declan.

  A gunshot rang out behind him—an axe through rotted wood—the blast so sudden, so violently final that it ripped Frank instantly from the suffocating nightmare.

  He gasped awake, his spine arching off the sweat-slick cot as if yanked by a wire. His heart was a piston slamming against his ribs, his breath ragged as a dying locomotive. Reality snapped back into him with jarring clarity. The roar of an engine rumbled quietly in the distance, its growl coiled low in his gut carrying with it an ominous weight.

  Cipher.

  Somewhere out there, he was running.

  Or something was running him.

  The boy’s name tore through his thoughts like a spark igniting dry tinder. Frank moved before his mind caught up, muscles twitching with the raw urgency of a man who’d spent too many years running toward disaster. His boots hit the floorboards hard enough to send a jolt up his knees, his hands already clawing for the lantern on the windowsill. The device was cold under his fingers, the etched brass biting into his palm as he wrenched it up.

  Light flared—the manufactured gem, an Ethernite core at its base, humming to life with the sound of a struck tuning fork. Its glow was the color of drowned things, a slickly blue-white that cut through the dark like a scalpel. The illumination caught the dust motes swirling in the air, turning them into a slow, malignant snowfall.

  Frank’s throat tightened. The scent hit him then—ozone, thick and metallic, clinging to the back of his tongue like the taste of a storm about to break.

  For a moment, he faltered, his mind filled with the ghost of a boy’s laughter, the way Cipher used to smile before this cruel world had stolen such joy from him. The archway loomed ahead, its curved ribs offering no sanctuary, the jaws of some great beast offering only the cold promise of passage. Beyond it, the ruined corridor yawned open to the heavens, its vaulted ceiling long since surrendered to time.

  The naked sky glared down, its vastness punctuated by the jewel of the Orbital Security Station—that ever-watching eye of the new world, winking in the thermospheric dark. Moonlight fell in a cascade, its silvery glow tinted by a faint amethyst haze that painted everything in an eerie palette. It was the color of a fresh bruise, of veins beneath too-pale skin.

  Frank's boots ground against the debris-littered floor, each step sending up little puffs of dust that hung suspended. The sound was obscenely loud in the cathedral silence—the crunch of bone-dry plaster, the skitter of loose stone, the faint squeal of rusted rebar protesting his weight.

  Then—movement.

  A figure detached itself from the opposite end, moving with the liquid grace of something only pretending to be human. It seemed to float rather than walk, its edges blurring where the moonlight caught the contours of its form. Frank's breath hitched in his chest, his fingers convulsing around the lantern's handle as he forced the light upward.

  The beam caught Mirra full in the face, carving her features into sharp relief. Her caramel eyes reflected the Ethernite's glow like polished coins, and her lips parted around some unspoken warning. The shadows pooled in the hollow of her throat, dark as old blood.

  "Mirra," he breathed, and the word left him like a prayer—like a curse. The lantern trembled in his grip, casting quivering patterns across the broken walls. Somewhere far off, the desert wind began to keen through the ruins, a sound like a child's distant crying.

  She moved as if caught in the dregs of a dream, her steps soundless over the broken concrete. Her eyelids were heavy, and her gaze was glassy and unfocused. She paused as the moonlight bathed her face, illuminating the warm undertones of her skin and making those flint-chip eyes blink hard, sharpening.

  Her gauntlet scraped against the wall, the Ethernia stone set into its casing flickering like a dying star. The spitted erratic sparks caught the cheap kohl smudged around her lashes and the faint blush dusted over her cheekbones—small vanities carefully applied, as if defiance could be painted on. Bracelets shivered at her left wrist, their chime too delicate for this corpse of a city. For a moment, she looked unbearably young and vulnerable.

  Then Frank saw the blood.

  A single rivulet, black as oil in the strange light, traced from her hairline down to her jaw. It cracked the illusion of softness, revealing what lay beneath—the grit that had carried her across the desert, the steel that had made her leave a lover and drag Cipher’s limp body through the killing heat. She had primped and preened in the ruins because survival wasn’t just bones and breath; it was remembering you were human.

  The engine’s final charge thrummed through Mirra’s palms as she slammed the compartment shut. “We’re green,” she said, wiping grease across her thighs. The words carried the ease of a woman who’d rebuilt this machine bolt by bolt—who knew its sighs and tremors better than her own heartbeat.

  She turned to Liora.

  “If you can’t fix it, make it beautiful.”

  This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version.

  Her father’s rule slipped out, half-mocking, half-true. Liora didn’t laugh. Instead, she bent forward, her lips brushing Mirra’s forehead in a kiss that tasted like salt and the faint incense of Puthna’s shrine. “She knows your heart,” Liora murmured against her skin.

  Mirra caught Liora’s wrist before she could pull away. “Prayers don’t fix guns.” Her thumb pressed into the pulse point beneath her holy beads. “This does.”

  Then she yanked Liora into an embrace so tight it hurt. Liora’s bracelets bit into Mirra’s back, the charms—tiny effigies of Prospera’s daughter—digging crescent moons into her shoulder blades. Mirra didn’t care. Let the goddess take her tithe in bruises.

  When she finally let go, Mirra lingered just a heartbeat longer—fingers trailing down her lover’s wrist, memorizing the pulse beneath the white skin. Frank’s gaze weighed on them from the shadows, his expression carved from stone.

  Mirra stepped back. Her smile stayed, soft at the edges, knowing it might be some time before they would meet again.

  But her eyes—

  Her eyes were already measuring the horizon, holding the resolve of someone ready to face the desert.

  Mirra surged forward, her sleep-stiff muscles coiling into alertness. The last remnants of grogginess burned away like morning fog under a scalding sun. "What happened?" The question came out razor-edged, already accusing. Already knowing.

  Frank's throat worked silently before the words clawed free. "Are you okay?"

  "Yeah." The admission slipped out unbidden. Her head gave a slight shake—the raven feathers woven into her hair shivered like startled birds taking flight. "I mean… I had this... dream." Her fingers rose to her temple, pressing against an ache that wasn't entirely physical. "Like something was—"

  “Was haunting you.” Frank's interruption landed like a coffin lid slamming shut.

  A beat. The distant wail of wind through crumbling masonry.

  "Exactly." Her voice shrank to a whisper. "I hit my head. Saw the light and—"

  “It is here.”

  Frank’s warning came a half-second before the scent hit her—that metallic tang laced with something sweetly rotten. Mirra's nose burned as if she'd inhaled ground glass. Her gaze snapped upward.

  The mist hung above them like a living bruise, its amethyst tendrils pulsing in time with some unseen heartbeat. It had thickened while they spoke, now dripping from exposed rebar in viscous strands. One particularly dense coil drifted downward, curling around Frank's outstretched lantern with possessive familiarity.

  Mirra's next breath stuck in her throat. The mist had been passive before.

  Now it was watching.

  Frank didn’t answer. He shouldered past her, his teeth clenched so tight his jaw pulsed. The lantern’s light shuddered with each hurried step, throwing jagged shadows against the walls as they closed in on Cipher’s room. The air grew thicker, each breath laced with the acrid bite of Ethernite discharge—and beneath it, something warmer. Metallic.

  Blood.

  The door groaned as Frank pushed inside, its protest too loud in the suffocating quiet.

  The room yawned before them, a hollow shell of itself. Every detail of its emptiness magnifying the dread pooling in Frank’s chest. The faint scent lingered, mixing with the traces of Cipher’s presence—an abandoned book lying face down, its spine cracked, and a blanket tangled at the edge of the makeshift bed like a ghost of movement left behind.

  Frank’s boot nudged something. A syringe, empty. Its needle gleamed in the lamplight, still trembling from the force of being flung aside.

  He fed.

  Mirra’s voice came from far away: “He woke up fighting.”

  The breastplate lay where Cipher had torn it off, the remnant of a stone dark as a dead man’s eye. Mirra’s fingers hovered over it, close enough to feel the residual heat. The kind that lingered after a fever broke. Or a fire burned out.

  Frank was already moving toward the window—where the mist coiled against the sill in eager tendrils.

  Where it parted just enough to show footprints in the dust outside.

  Heading east.

  Za’ayd’s boots carved through the dunes, each step spraying sand like blackened snow. His pulse hammered—not from exertion, but from the vision still searing his mind. The mist had shown him things. Things that would turn Cipher’s heart into something heavier. More calculated.

  He found his partner where he’d left him: slumped against a spire of wind-scoured rock, his body wracked with tremors. The boy’s skin had taken on a sickly pallor, his lips cracked and bleeding. Every breath was a battle, shuddering through his ribs like a trapped bird.

  Za’ayd crouched, his shadow swallowing Cipher whole, his leather in hand. The jacket—heavy with the stink of gasoline and old violence—smothered the boy’s shoulders. "Hold on," he growled, the command fraying at the edges.

  Cipher’s head snapped up. His eyes, glassy with fever, burned with pure hatred.

  Za’ayd’s hand clamped over Cipher’s mouth. Not to silence him. To feel the heat of his breath, the proof he was still fighting.

  "You dragged me here." The words were a raw scrape of sound. "You made me see—"

  Beyond them, the mist thickened. The blight was reaching.

  The desert night stretched time like taffy—four hours had passed for Cipher. For Za'ayd in the mist, it might have been minutes.

  Za’ayd’s voice cut through the dark, brittle as deadwood: "What did you see?"

  Cipher didn't answer immediately. The motorcycle's chrome gleamed under the bloated moon as Za’ayd yanked a water can from its saddlebag. The sloshing liquid sounded obscenely loud in the silence.

  "Everything," he said. The word came out wrong, distorted, as if something behind his teeth was reshaping his voice. "And nothing that matters now."

  When Za’ayd finally turned back, the water can dangling from his fingers, Cipher’s eyes had taken on a sickly amethyst sheen—Might residue clinging to his corneas like oil.

  “You lie.” His lips barely moved.

  Za’ayd tossed the can. It landed between them with a thud, kicking up a small plume of dust. A test.

  Cipher didn’t move to catch it. The moonlight carved his face into a skull's parody, all sharp angles and shadowed hollows.

  "It showed you him, didn't it? Boruk."

  The name hit the air between them like a struck gong. Somewhere in the distance, the mist rippled—a shiver of recognition.

  “The Ashen Communion desert,” Mirra said, her voice too steady. A hunter’s calm.

  Frank didn’t move. His fingers tightened around the lantern’s groove hard enough to leave crescent marks in the metal. “Where?”

  She turned just enough for him to see the pulse jumping in her throat.

  “Past the dunes. There’s a city there.”

  “He wouldn’t go so far.” Frank dismissed it in disbelief.

  “The Alloy’s End.”

  The name hit Frank like a bullet.

  Eli’s voice, twelve years dead: “They’re making something in the foundries. Something that breathes.”

  “He had… an imagination.” Frank flicked his wrist dismissively, the gesture too sharp to be casual.

  Cipher’s mother didn’t wince. Her chin remained high. Defiant. “I want to see my son now.”

  “That’s impossible.” The words left Mirra’s mouth before she could stop them.

  The last sliver of an Ethernia stone at the Cipher’s breastplate core split clean down the middle.

  Mirra’s breath caught. “How?”

  Frank didn’t look up. “It was fading. A child could’ve snapped it.” His thumb rubbed the crack—a nervous tell Mirra didn’t miss.

  She didn’t need awakening to spot the lie. “He needs this,” she hissed, kicking the empty injector at their feet—the one Frank hadn’t mentioned finding.

  “He’s mad at me.” Frank replied. Too fast. Erratically.

  “We’ll find him,” Mirra’s voice tried to sound confident. But Frank’s eyes were on the horizon, where the first skeletal towers of the dead city pierced the sky.

  “You think I’m cruel?” Frank’s voice cracked like dry timber.

  Regina’s fingers cool against his cheek, then slide down to grip his hand. The scent of her lavender soap cut through the ozone stench. “You knew it’d come to this,” she whispered, her breath warm despite being a few days dead.

  Frank’s knees buckled. “Wait until you see what happens… if he loses control,” The plea tore from him like a confession.

  Cipher’s small body convulsing on sweat-soaked sheets. Waiting for their judgment.

  The mist curled around their ankles like a living thing.

  Regina’s death. Declan’s escape. Cipher. Gone.

  The arithmetic of his failures stacked in his chest.

  I am responsible for all this.

  Mirra seized Frank’s leather collar, her mechanist’s gauntlet buzzing against his stubble. “We gotta go.” The static made Frank’s teeth ache.

  Am I dreaming?

  “Be strong.” She growled, wrenching him upright.

  “It all hurts so much now.”

  “You don’t know the half.” Regina’s laugh—rich and throaty, the way it sounded when she’d drunk too much rye.

  “Where you said you going?” Frank latched onto her bracelet, his grip desperate.

  Her pupils were dilated—not with fear, but fury. “Workin’ on my shit means keeping you alive.”

  “He can’t fuck you like I can.” He growled, heat rising in his throat and twisting his mouth.

  Regina grinned. Slow. Sultry. Her hips swayed as she stepped away.

  You seek destruction, baby.

  Frank fell to the ground. “I don’t even wanna live anymore.” He whispered. The mist thickened in his mouth, tasting of Regina’s perfume and burnt copper.

  A slap cracked across his face. His glasses skittered into the rubble.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Frank stared up at her. His eyes—deep navy, sinkholes—reflected nothing.

  Mirra thrust the mask at him—a breather unit, the kind scavengers used in the blight zones. Rusted. Functional. "I care about that redhead," she said, each word a nail in a coffin. "I hope it is not too late."

  Frank grabbed it. The burr bit into his palm.

  “I saved his life.” His thumb smeared blood across the visor. “And I’d burn the world to do it again.”

  Mirra knelt beside him, her hand resting firmly on his thigh. “Only you know what you’ve been through. It wasn’t easy. Don’t give up now. Besides, I’m sure Liora will pray to the Mother to keep your soul. Think better. Cipher needs us.”

  Above them, something massive stirred.

  A slow, approving heartbeat consumed their image.

  “You’re full of shit.” Cipher’s voice was raw, stripped down to the bone. “You. Frank. Boruk—” The name dissolved into the desert wind, carried away like ash.

  Za’ayd bent to retrieve the water can with a lazy flick of his wrist. Sand hissed against his boots as he settled beside Cipher, draping a heavy arm around his shoulders. It seemed like they were just two kids sharing smoke behind the auto shop.

  The casual touch made Cipher’s stomach lurch. That’s not his arm. That’s part of me.

  “It is not what you thinking, m’boy.” Za’ayd murmured, tilting the can to Cipher’s lips.

  Water spilled down his chin as he jerked away. “Where the fuck you really been?” His green eyes—wide as a spooked horse’s—locked onto Za’ayd’s face. The contrast between them was stark: Za’ayd’s sunbaked skin against Cipher’s pallor, as if a parasite’s violence coiled beneath both their surfaces.

  Za’ayd’s hand tightened on Cipher’s thigh. “I’m here. You’re gonna be okay. I ain’t ditching you any—”

  “What else you hiding?” Cipher shoved him, his nails biting into Za’ayd’s wrist.

  A beat. The desert held its breath.

  Za’ayd leaned forward with an exaggerated sigh, elbows on knees, the cig from behind his ear catching flame with a flick of his thumbnail. He inhaled deeply, the ember flaring like a tiny hellfire. "Nothin’ worth your lil’ freakout." Smoke curled from his lips, obscuring his expression.

  Cipher struggled upright, his muscles trembling. "You dragged me here!" His voice was a strained whisper, confusion and anger seeping through.

  "Whoops?" Za’ayd muttered, tapping ash onto the sand. It blackened where it landed. “My bad.”

  Cipher’s body was shaking not just from the cold but from the terror that gripped him. “You’re a goddamn menace.”

  Za’ayd rolled his eyes, scratching his temple with the burning cigarette between his fingers. "Yawn." The burnished glow reflected in his eyes.

  Cipher’s control snapped as the fear continued to claw at him. "Fuck you." He scrambled backward like the sand was boiling.

  “The hell you think you’re goin?” Za’ayd moved faster than pain. His hands seized Cipher’s shoulders, fingers pressing into the juncture of neck and collarbone—where the parasite’s veins branched darkest.

  “Away from you.” Cipher's scream echoed across the Ashen Communion dunes.

  Za’ayd’s grin turned feral. “Run back to Uncle Frank then. See how that works out, you don’t need my help to go through hell.”

  “You narcissistic prick—”

  "Spineless. Traitor." Za’ayd crowded closer. His breath reeked of stale nicotine and something deeper, chemical. "You wanna hear his lies?"

  Cipher’s laugh came out broken. “I rather be at his side than with—”

  Za’ayds pupils dilated unnaturally, swallowing the light. “Damm Godak,” his voice dropped to a growl. “He played you, set me up. What makes him so special?”

  Cipher’s chest heaved. His small hands clutched at his own shirt collar, twisting the fabric like he wanted to strangle his own guilt. “He knew! What my uncle did—” His voice caught. “He tried to tell me. I just… I couldn’t believe him.” A sob wrenched free. “I was soo angry at—Declan.”

  Za'ayd's entire body stiffened, his hands curling into white-knuckled fists at the mention of Declan's name. The veins in his neck stood out like cords as he ground out through clenched teeth, “Declan didn’t even—” His voice broke with the force of restrained emotion, his shoulders shaking. “He didn’t deserve what happened.” The words came out half-growl, half-moan, his usual composure shattered.

  Cipher’s fingers dug into his scalp, pulling at his own hair. “I hurt ‘em.” The admission seemed to collapse something vital inside him.

  Za'ayd's posture shifted suddenly—all that coiled anger melting into something devastatingly tender. He sank to his knees beside Cipher with the gravity of a man performing a sacred rite. “You were never satisfied,” he murmured, voice low, curling around the words like smoke from a funeral pyre. “Or maybe they just never let you go.” His work-roughened thumb brushed Cipher’s cheekbone, smearing the dampness there in a gesture that was both absolution and shared mourning.

  “Would things be easier?” His voice cracked at the countless might-have-beens. Za’ayd’s hand came up to cradle Cipher's face with trembling reverence, as if holding the answer to whether Godak's explanations or Declan's attempted warnings could have changed their damned trajectory.

  Za’ayd exhaled through his nose. “You were tired of givin’ pieces of yourself away.” His fingers tightened, just shy of painful. “Ain’t that right?”

  Cipher’s chest ached. Memories flickered—Boruk’s dissecting problems with surgical precision, Declan’s rare, unintentional smiles that lit up his whole face, the way they used to sit shoulder-to-shoulder under the old steel awning back in Calico.

  “I’ve seen them loving,” he whispered.

  Za’ayd grin turned sharp. “Then sacrifice the env’y.”

  Cipher’s fingers dug into the sand beneath him, grains biting into his skin, anchoring him to the present. “I confess the longing—”

  “Everything is recent. It all made you blind to our purpose.” Za’ayd cut in, leaning in so close his breath ghosted over Cipher’s lips.

  “I’ve seen the darkness I have own from you.”

  “It justifies me,” Za’ayd murmured, his fingers sliding down to grip the back of Cipher’s neck, possessive, claiming. “I’d burn with you.”

  Cipher’s lips twisted into something too bitter to be a real smile. “What an unfortunate slight.”

  Za’ayd huffed, amused. With his free hand, he dragged his fingers through the sand, letting the grains fall slowly between his fingers like an hourglass counting down. “Trust me,” he said, voice low. “See the things I’m able to see.”

  Cipher’s laugh was brittle. “All these words—they even make no sense.”

  Za’ayd grabbed his chin, forcing their eyes to meet. “Less I hear, the less you’ll feel.”

  Cipher’s throat worked, his breath coming uneven. “So, that’s it,” he managed. “Then take me—internally.”

  “I did everything for you,” he said, dangerously close to devotion. Amused. “Feel a better love.”

  The words punched through Cipher’s body. His vision blurred, tears spilling over—hot, shameful. “Mine is gone.”

  The desert air hummed between them, thick with unsaid things. The mist curled around Za’ayd’s shoulders like a second skin, whispering, Yours, yours, yours.

  And Cipher—

  Cipher wasn’t sure who he was anymore.

  His hands trembled, fingers twitching toward the knife at his belt out of habit. The words clawed their way up his throat, bitter and raw, tearing flesh on their way out.

  “I want him dead.”

  The confession hung between them, ripe as a corpse in the heat. The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by the distant growl of an engine approaching, kicking up spirals of dust like a vulture circling carrion.

  Memories flooded him—a twisted spring of images he could not unsee.

  “This will make you strong.” Frank’s hands, steady as a surgeon’s, pressed the syringe container to his chest.

  Boruk Godak presenting a fragile desert bloom, its petals the color of sunset. "They call it 'widow's heart,'" he'd murmured, tucking it over Cipher's hand with unexpected tenderness. "Only grows where something's died."

  The flower's perfume had smelled like forgiveness—something Cipher hadn't earned then and didn't deserve now.

  Back to that fateful night, replaying the chaos and confusion that had engulfed them all. He could see clearly the desperation in Declan’s eyes, the raw urgency in his voice as he pulled him from the barn’s wet earth. There had been blood—too much blood. It stained Declan’s hands, soaked into the fibers of his sweater until the cream-colored wool turned rust-brown. In the frenzy, Cipher could not tell if Declan was bruised or wounded.

  “Your sweater,” he murmured, his voice barely above a whisper as he reached out toward the fabric. It was Declan’s mother’s final gift, the last tangible piece of her love. The wool was frayed, stitched with sorrow and nostalgia no thread could mend.

  “It doesn’t matter.” Declan’s voice offered a strangely comforting reassurance. His warmth melted the pervasive chill that had haunted their recent days. It could have been the physical closeness, or perhaps it was the rare surge of happiness that swept over him, a fleeting reprieve from the fear of losing Declan to a thief’s hands. He didn’t ask for forgiveness. And wouldn’t even have the chance. His master plan had delivered Boruk into the Rattlesnake Marauders' hands. Cipher clung to the desperate hope that his motives might be understood—that beneath the blood and betrayal, Declan would see the truth. He just had to sit and say what he wanted to say.

  Declan’s voice was raw—not with anger, but with exhaustion. Fear. Of what he witnessed. His hands, usually so steady, shook as he pressed them against Cipher’s ribs, trying to assess the damage. “Don’t move.”

  The Ethernia containment device pulsed weakly against Cipher's sternum, its intricate copper filaments now blackened and frayed. At its center, the stone chip flickered like a dying star, casting sickly green shadows across Declan's face with each faltering beat. The breastplate wasn't just failing—it was keeping him alive. Every shallow breath sent jagged fractures spider-webbing through the crystal matrix.

  Cipher twisted weakly. His ribs screamed where Cal’s boots had cracked them. “He fled,” he rasped, the words tearing free like shrapnel. Blood trickled from his split lip, painting his teeth pink.

  Declan exhaled, his shoulders sagging. “It 's over.”

  Cipher’s fingers twitched against the hay-strewn floor, nails digging into the dirt. Every breath was a knife between his ribs.

  Declan’s voice was quiet, almost reverent. "He told me everything."

  Cipher’s stomach dropped.

  What could be worse than the truth?

  The engine’s roar grew furious in the dunes. Frank spotted a motorcycle light on. A figure knelt in the sand, head bowed—Cipher. His fingers buried in the earth as if trying to claw his way into hell itself.

  It was all my fault.

  The wind howled, carrying whispers of the dead.

  Some debts could never be repaid.

  But he would burn the world trying.

  Za’ayd rose. Slowly. Wrongly. His spine straightened in jagged increments, his shadow stretching too long, too thin. “You’re just like me, boy.” His voice was no longer human—it slithered, multi-layered, a chorus of something ancient. His form twisted. Shoulders bulged. Skin darkened to obsidian, veins glowing like embers beneath the surface.

  Cipher’s fingers found Declan’s, interlacing with the same fierceness as their shared grief.

  “You came for me.” Declan brushed his wrist—gently, like he was afraid he might break him further.

  The surroundings seemed to close in around Cipher, the shadows growing longer and more oppressive. A blood-red light erupted from his chest, invisible to the naked eye. The shockwave rippled outward, kicking up dust devils that spiraled toward the distant caravan. Inside, Mirra wrenched the steering wheel.

  “Grab your seat!” She barked.

  Frank braced against the dashboard, his jaw clenched. “Be prepared.”

  Mirra’s sidelong glance was sharp. For what, man?

  Above them the mist coalesced, swirling into a vortex centered on Cipher. His head snapped back, veins in his eyes igniting crimson. Blood seeped from his hairline and his pores, a sacrificial offering to something hungry.

  Za’ayd floated, his body now a silhouette of living shadow. Where his hazel eyes had been, there were only two voids, yawning and infinite.

  "This is us," he growled—no, the thing inside him growled.

  Cipher screamed.

  Not from pain.

  From recognition.

  Something aching in his chest made him release a scream.

  The hurricane of mist collapsed into him, and for one terrible second, the world went still.

  Then—

  Za’ayd’s void-eyes locked onto Frank and Mirra running down the dunes.

  “GET ME BLOODY!”