Frankie dropped her pack beside the concrete pillar with a dull, bone-deep thud.
Luca glanced at the bag and shook his head, face streaked with dust.
"You've been hauling that since first light. Give it here."
He reached for the strap, braced his feet, and pulled.
Nothing.
He adjusted his grip and tried again, muscles locking, jaw clenched until his teeth creaked. The pack didn't shift a fraction.
He let go slowly, rubbing his palms.
"Gods… what did you put in there? The foundation stones?"
Frankie watched him. Then, without a word, she hooked the strap with one hand and swung the weight onto her shoulder.
No strain.
No breath change.
No effort at all.
Luca didn't step back. He just looked at her. Really looked.
Something unspoken settled between them. Heavy. Permanent.
The fortress vanished behind them as they left at sunrise.
The sky was the color of a bruised lung. Clouds stretched thin like scars across the throat of heaven. Ahead, Novara Prime glimmered in the distance arrogant, holy, untouchable.
Rafe walked point, already spending imaginary riches. Tomas talked about soft beds. Yara listened, eyes fixed on shadows. Luca stayed beside Frankie, close but never touching.
Frankie kept her pace slow. Human. Measured. Every instinct screamed to release the coiled tension in her bones and blur the world again.
She didn't.
Power hidden was power that lived.
By midday they reached the broken highway. Ancient cars lay scattered like fossil ribs. A billboard leaned sideways, advertising a life no one remembered.
Rafe signaled.
"Highway west. Outer gate by tomorrow."
Frankie heard them before anyone else did.
Claws beneath asphalt.
Dry clicking.
Hunger.
The first rat-class skittered from beneath a rusted tanker. Then another. Then more, spilling into the open like pale insects from a cracked nest.
Yara hissed. Tomas froze.
"I'll handle it," Frankie said.
She walked forward alone.
The swarm rushed her.
She lifted her hand.
The air split.
Not loudly. Not visibly. Just a sudden, violent pressure that reality itself failed to hold together.
One creature froze mid-leap and parted.
Another shattered as it hit the ground.
A third simply ceased to exist, erased along a seam the world never meant to have.
Ash scattered across the highway.
Warmth flooded Frankie's chest. Familiar. Addictive. Hungry.
She turned back.
Rafe's grin had changed. Sharper now. Measuring.
Yara looked ill but whispered. "How....how did you do that?"
Tomas couldn't speak.
Only Luca watched her hands. The stillness of them. The absence of tremor.
They rested in a skeletal roadside café. Biscuits like sawdust. Jokes about hot baths. Laughter too thin to hide fear.
Frankie sat apart, thinking of Sofia. The jacket in her pack. A future bought with ash.
When they moved again, the clouds thickened. Light thinned.
Luca leaned in.
"You feel it again."
She didn't pretend.
"Yes."
"What is it?"
The amulet burned against her ribs.
"Something calling. Deep in the ruins."
Luca studied her.
"And it's calling you."
Frankie huffed a quiet breath of amusement.
"I'm terrible at lying."
"You are," Luca murmured. "And I'm terrible at running away. So here we are."
They camped in a parking structure that night. Fire in a rusted barrel. Shadows stretching long and warped.
"You're not normal anymore," Luca said softly.
Frankie stared into the flames.
"I was never normal. I was just small."
"Is it killing you?"
"No. I don't think so..."
"Then it's a blessing," he said. But his eyes betrayed him.
Later, when the others slept, Frankie stood at the ledge overlooking Milan's corpse-city. Wind howled through broken windows like mourning.
She closed her eyes.
Inside her, the hunger had grown thick and near-complete. One more feast. One more threshold.
Then she heard it.
Not clicking.
Not crawling.
A vast, slow displacement of air. Something heavy passing through the sky.
Frankie opened her eyes.
A silhouette crossed the moon.
Wings.
Jagged.
Searching.
The amulet pulsed in perfect rhythm with the thing overhead.
The hunt wasn't coming.
It had already found her.