The first night in the Grey Wastes was never silent.
Daniel had hoped the fog might muffle sound, but it didn't. It carried things. The drip of water from shattered pipes. The groan of broken metal swaying in the wind. The brittle crunch of something moving across glass.
He sat with his back against the shell of a collapsed truck, his makeshift weapon a length of rusted rebar resting across his knees. He told himself he wouldn't sleep, but exhaustion had other plans. His eyelids kept drooping, only to snap open every time the fog shifted.
That was when he heard it.
Not footsteps. Too irregular. Too soft. A scrape, then silence. A shuffle, then nothing. Something was pacing him.
His Echo Mark burned faintly beneath his ribs, a heat that wasn't painful but impossible to ignore. The first time it had flared like that, he thought he was dying. Now he was beginning to realize it was warning him.
Daniel rose slowly, tightening his grip on the rebar. He moved from behind the truck, careful not to make a sound. The street stretched ahead, fractured asphalt lined with broken storefronts, glass like frost glittering under a sickly moon.
The fog thickened, and for a moment, he thought he imagined it an outline standing too still. Thin. Long-armed. Its head tilted, as if listening to something Daniel couldn't hear.
The burn in his chest sharpened.
"Alright," he muttered under his breath, voice hoarse, "let's see what you are."
He stepped deliberately on a shard of glass. The sharp crack echoed through the street.
The thing's head snapped toward him.
It moved. Not ran, not lunged moved, like water spilling forward, silent and fast. Daniel barely had time to lift his weapon before it was on him. A blur of limbs, too many joints bending the wrong way, eyes sunk too deep in a pale face.
Instinct said run. His body didn't listen.
The Echo Mark flared. The world slowed. He saw the arc of its claw in impossible detail the ripple of fog around its swing, the smear of dark fluid on its jagged nails. His muscles tightened with speed that wasn't his own. He ducked, shoved the rebar upward, and felt it tear through flesh.
The creature shrieked, sound like tearing metal.
Daniel yanked the bar free, stumbling back, his chest burning like fire. The thing staggered, then dissolved not into a body, but into dust, scattering like ash caught in the wind.
And hanging in the air, faint and wavering, was a shimmer. Like smoke trying to remember being solid.
He knew what it was. He'd seen it when the others died in the prologue chaos. The shimmer drifted closer, drawn to him as though the Mark beneath his ribs was a magnet.
"No." His voice cracked, desperate. He backed away. "No, I don't want "
The echo sank into him.
He hit the ground with a choked gasp, clutching at his chest. His heart hammered too fast. Images pressed against his mind, not his own. A dark alley. The taste of blood. The sound of someone screaming.
He shook his head violently until the visions blurred and broke. His skin felt too tight. His fingers twitched with strength that didn't belong to him.
When he could breathe again, he realized he was laughing ragged, hollow laughter in the fog.
He didn't feel victorious. He felt sick.
But he was alive.
And the Mark… it had grown. The faint glow beneath his skin now stretched further, threads spreading like veins of light across his torso.
He forced himself to stand, gripping the rebar until his knuckles whitened. He glanced at the ash scattered across the street, then at the fog that swallowed the city beyond.
How many of them were out there?
His stomach turned. He needed shelter. He needed food. He needed God, he needed answers.
The world wasn't going back. Whatever the Collapse had done, however the Grey Wastes worked, this was life now. And life, Daniel realized, had a new rule:
If you don't kill them, they'll kill you.
And if you do kill them…
He pressed a hand against his chest, feeling the faint, alien pulse of the Mark.
…you risk becoming them.
Daniel turned away from the street, eyes scanning the ruined buildings. Somewhere in this city, others had to be alive. Somewhere, someone had figured out more than he had.
But first, he had to make it through the night.
The fog shifted again. This time, the scrape came from more than one direction.
Daniel's grip tightened.
"Alright," he whispered to himself, a grim smile tugging at his lips despite the fear curling in his gut. "Round two."
And the Grey Wastes answered.