The Wastelands never truly slept.
They only quieted, as though holding their breath.
Vince felt it as they walked—how the wind thinned, how even the ever-present hum of distant Spire interference dulled into something watchful. The ground beneath his boots was brittle, layered with ash and fractured stone, crunching softly with each step. Too loud. Everything felt too loud when the world went still like this.
He slowed without realizing it.
Lyra noticed immediately.
She always did.
"You're thinking again," she said, not looking at him, her voice barely carrying over the wind. "Your stride shortens when you do."
Vince exhaled through his nose, a ghost of a smile tugging at his lips. "And you count my steps."
"I listen," she corrected. "There's a difference."
Ahead of them, Flumen walked with restless energy, his staff balanced across his shoulders like a yoke. Sparks jumped faintly between the twin blades, not enough to be dangerous—just enough to remind the world that he was armed. He didn't like the silence either. Silence gave his thoughts too much room.
None of them said Varik's name.
They didn't have to.
The tent smelled of rust, sweat, and old oil.
Varik hated that it still bothered him.
He sat on a crate reinforced with welded scrap, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely as voices murmured around him. The scavengers who'd brought the news lingered nearby—not kneeling, not standing at ease either. They hovered in that uncertain space reserved for people who didn't trust power but feared it too much to leave.
They were watching him.
Not with loyalty.
With calculation.
A thin man with soot-streaked cheeks cleared his throat. "So… city folk, yeah? Light Crest and elemental fire. That's what Kesh saw."
Kesh—still breathing, still shaking, still alive. Varik considered that a small mercy.
"Evolved," another added quietly. A woman this time, scar cutting through one eyebrow, fingers worrying the edge of her sleeve. "That kind of power doesn't just wander."
"No," Varik agreed.
His voice was calm. Too calm. He heard it himself and adjusted—let a hint of irritation slip in. People trusted emotion more than reason.
"They're hunters," Varik continued. "Which means someone pointed them."
That stirred the tent.
Someone spat into the dirt. "City dogs finally remembered we exist."
Varik's pale eyes flicked toward the sound. Not sharply. Just enough.
"Careful," he said. "Anger makes noise. Noise gets you killed."
Silence fell again, heavier this time.
He leaned back, letting the shadows curl closer to his armor, the Crest on his forearm pulsing faintly beneath the grime. Darkness answered him easily here. It always had.
But his thoughts weren't in the canyon.
They were years back—cold floors, thinner walls, the smell of boiled grain and disinfectant.
The orphanage.
He remembered Vince first.
Always watching. Always listening. Even as a boy, Vince had learned when not to speak.
Lyra came next—quiet, observant, eyes following patterns no one else noticed. She used to trace shapes in the dust with her finger and smile when they aligned.
Flumen had been loud. Reckless. Burning too bright even then.
And Varik?
Varik had been the one who stayed awake at night wondering which of them would be left behind.
He clenched his jaw.
A scavenger shifted closer, emboldened by his silence. "Boss… if these hunters are really coming for you—"
"They are," Varik said.
The certainty in his tone made the woman flinch.
"What do we do?" she asked.
Varik stood.
The tent seemed smaller when he did.
"We prepare," he said. "And we don't panic."
Because panic led to mistakes.
And mistakes had already cost him enough.
The moon was wrong tonight.
Not in phase—never that simple. The light bent strangely, diffused through ash and high cloud, casting shadows that stretched farther than they should have. Lyra felt it in the slow pulse of her Crest, a quiet dissonance beneath the familiar rhythm.
Something was unfolding.
She walked with her hands folded behind her back, boots barely disturbing the dust. Each step carried her forward—and backward.
She remembered the orphanage courtyard. The way rain pooled unevenly in the cracked stone. How Varik used to stand at the edge of it, staring at his reflection like he expected it to move without him.
"You sense it too," Vince said softly.
She nodded. "He's close. Not physically. But… active."
Flumen snorted. "That's one way to put it."
Lyra didn't smile.
Varik had never been cruel as a child. That was the part that unsettled her. He'd shared his food. Taken blame when others couldn't afford it. He'd smiled less as they grew older, but he never stopped watching them.
People didn't turn into monsters overnight.
They eroded.
"What if we're wrong?" she asked quietly.
Flumen stopped walking.
Vince didn't—but his shoulders tensed.
"Wrong how?" Flumen asked.
"About why he did it," she said. "Not what. Why."
Flumen's jaw tightened. "Does it matter?"
Lyra looked at him then. Really looked.
"It will," she said. "When we find him."
Flumen hated memories.
They dulled the edge.
Still—Varik's face kept intruding, superimposed over the battlefield from earlier. The way Varik used to spar. Precise. Economical. Never wasted movement.
Never wasted anything.
He remembered the day Varik vanished. The silence afterward. The way their mentor hadn't shouted.
That had scared him more.
"Don't hesitate," Flumen muttered, more to himself than the others. "Hesitation's how people die."
Vince glanced at him. "You hesitating?"
"No," Flumen said immediately.
But the word echoed.
......................................
The path narrowed ahead.
Vince raised a hand, signaling a halt. The gesture was instinctive—old training, old habits. They stopped without question.
He closed his eyes.
The Wastelands pressed back.
Somewhere out there, a shadow moved that shouldn't have existed. Watching. Measuring.
Varik.
Vince remembered a boy offering him half a piece of bread and saying, "Eat. You'll need it more than me."
He opened his eyes.
"Stay sharp," he said. "He knows we're coming."
Behind them, the wind picked up again, carrying ash, whispers, and the weight of unfinished history.
And far away, in a canyon that reeked of rust and regret, Varik waited—surrounded by people who believed in him for reasons they barely understood, holding onto a purpose that had already damned him.
The hunt had begun long before tonight.
They were only just catching up.
.....................................
Eris stumbled into the hollow of a derelict building, its jagged walls leaning like drunken sentinels against the horizon. The distant howls of beasts echoed through the Wastelands, but here, within this fragile sanctuary, he allowed himself a moment to breathe. His chest heaved with exertion, his limbs trembling from the day's events. The crude makeshift bandages wrapped around his wounds had begun to bleed through, the dull ache a constant reminder of his brush with death. Yet, for all the pain, it was the memories that clawed at him the hardest—the twisted faces of the cannibals, the swirling monstrosity that had torn them apart, and the unholy orchestra of screams and cracking bones. Eris slumped against the crumbling wall, the cold stone leeching the warmth from his skin. He clenched his fists, staring down at the blood and dirt caked on his fingers. "Survived another day," he muttered, his voice barely audible over the sigh of the night wind. "That's worth something, isn't it?" He reached into his scavenged pack, pulling out a half-rotted blanket. Its foul stench was a small price to pay for the illusion of safety it provided. Wrapping it around himself, he let his head fall back against the wall, his eyes drifting upward to the jagged remnants of the ceiling. The sky beyond was a smear of black and grey, with faint pinpricks of light struggling against the choking darkness. He hated the nights in the Wastelands. They were too quiet, too vast, like the world itself was holding its breath before devouring him. As his body relaxed into the numbness of exhaustion, his mind wandered, unbidden, to the past. To the faces he could barely remember. To the fleeting warmth of voices that had long since gone silent. The Wastelands, for all their cruelty, had taught him one thing above all else: there was no such thing as salvation. There was only survival. Eris pulled the blanket tighter around himself, trying to ignore the gnawing emptiness in his stomach and the cold that seeped into his bones. His eyes fluttered closed, but sleep did not come easily. Every sound outside—every scrape, every distant growl—set his nerves on edge. "Tomorrow," he murmured, his voice a fragile thread. "I'll find more scraps. Something better. Just... one more day." And yet, as his consciousness began to waver, a dark part of him whispered that the Wastelands wouldn't let him live to see many more. Eris found himself in a place that was neither here nor there—a space suspended between memory and dream. The air smelled of wood smoke and old leather, warm and comforting, so unlike the acrid stench of the Wastelands. He was sitting cross-legged on the ground, a boy again, his hands clasped around his knees as he stared up at the old man before him. The man's face was a tapestry of deep lines and scars, his eyes clouded but still alive with a flicker of mischief. His beard was long and scraggly, peppered with grey, and his voice carried the weight of ages, rich and deep like the hum of distant thunder. "The old world," the man said, leaning forward, his gnarled fingers tracing shapes in the dirt, "was nothing like this cursed land. There were cities as tall as mountains, their lights brighter than the stars themselves. The people didn't scavenge or hide. They thrived." Eris remembered the way the firelight danced in the man's eyes, casting shadows that made his features seem larger than life. He had always spoken with such conviction, painting pictures so vivid that even the desolation of the Wastelands seemed to fade away. "What happened to it all?" young Eris had asked, his voice soft, hesitant. He knew the answer but wanted to hear it again, as if repetition could make sense of it. The old man's smile faltered, his expression growing heavy. "The Awakening," he said, his voice tinged with sorrow. "A pillar of light that touched the heavens and cracked the earth. It gave us power but cursed us in the same breath. The Spire brought ruin, boy. Its energy... it twisted the world, broke it apart piece by piece." He paused, his hand hovering over the dirt. "And now, we live in its shadow, its corruption. The beasts, the abominations—they're just fragments of what was unleashed that day." "But there were heroes, weren't there?" Eris's younger self had asked, his eyes wide with hope. "People who fought back?" The old man chuckled, a sound both warm and bitter. "Heroes? Maybe. Saints and gods, they called them, wielding powers beyond mortal reckoning. But where are they now, boy? Where were they when the Wastelands swallowed the world?" Eris felt a strange ache in his chest as he listened to the words echo in his dream. He had heard this story a hundred times, but now, older and hardened, it felt different. The hope he once clung to felt naïve, a relic of a childhood that never truly existed. The old man leaned back, his gaze distant. "Remember this, Eris," he said, his tone softer now, almost tender. "The world owes you nothing. It's a cruel, uncaring thing. But sometimes... sometimes, even in the darkest night, a spark can light a fire." Eris stirred, his eyes fluttering as the dream began to fade. The old man's face blurred, his words slipping away like smoke in the wind. And as Eris opened his eyes to the cold, desolate reality of the Wastelands, he couldn't help but wonder if that spark the old man spoke of would ever find him—or if it had long since burned out