"Finally… we've reached the Tenth-Floor City."
Alina bent forward, hands braced against her knees as she stared at the gray walls rising in the distance. Her pink ponytails drooped tiredly with the dust of the road.
"Don't relax yet," Elara said, her voice low but urgent. "That ghost will catch up again soon. Move!"
Without waiting for a reply, she grabbed Alina's arm and tugged her toward the city gates.
The two of them had been fleeing since leaving the Star Tribe, hunted across deserts and ravines by a strange ghost that refused to die. If not for their survival training—and a few strokes of sheer luck—they'd have become part of the wilderness long ago.
Twice they'd fought it off. Once, they'd even been trapped inside a cave, its distorted shadow crawling along the rock walls. Each encounter had left them more exhausted, more wary.
And now, before them, the fabled Tenth-Floor City loomed like salvation—or a bad joke.
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