The ground hit like a punch to the knees. Hot, hard, and dry enough that the impact kicked dust into his mouth. Victor gagged on the grit before he even pulled in a full breath. The air burned his lungs, every inhale rough as sandpaper, carrying a metallic tang that reminded him of blood left too long in the sun.

He staggered upright, shaking the dizziness from his head.

A heartbeat ago, he'd been on the bridge in Prague. Cold air. Smoke from burning buildings. The stink of Moloch's power. Max's voice somewhere to his left. Then the pull — the kind that got under your skin, into your bones, dragging you toward nothing.

Now… this.

The sky was a strange, washed-out yellow, not the clean gold of dawn but the colour of bone that had been buried and dug up again. Heat shimmered over a landscape that looked more like a scar than land — broken ridges, gullies clawed out of the earth, rock fissures deep enough to swallow a man whole. It didn't feel like any desert he knew. This one felt worked-over, tamed, made mean on purpose.

And there it was.

The wall.

Las Vegas sat penned in like an animal. The barrier wrapped the city in steel and stone stitched together from whatever had been left after the world fell apart — slabs of concrete, rusted shipping containers, the armour plating from gutted trucks. Whole chunks of it leaned out at bad angles, like the city inside had tried to push through and failed.

But what caught him were the skulls.

They weren't human. Too big in the jaw, horned in ways no animal he knew had ever been. Some tusks curled into spirals; others had been drilled clean through so lanterns could hang inside the hollow bone. The heat had yellowed them, the wind worried at their edges until they seemed ready to crumble. And in the breeze, the empty eye sockets hummed — not loud, but low and constant, like a crowd holding its breath.

Victor turned in place, every muscle coiled.

Movement drew his eye. A line of people trudged toward the nearest gate, chained wrist to wrist. Dust clung to them until they all looked the same shade of defeat. Most kept their heads down. The guards flanking them didn't bother shouting or striking; the short, sharp jerk of the chain was enough to keep anyone moving.

The gate opened without a sound.

Victor's mouth was dry. He'd fought in a lot of arenas — real and makeshift — but something about the way those gates yawned was too… rehearsed. Like the city had been built around this exact ritual. Inside, beyond the shade of the wall, he caught glimpses: tiered seating, dark stains on the sand, the faint restless shift of bodies watching. Not cheering, not yet. Just waiting.

The smell hit him then. Not rot, not fresh kill. Boiled blood. A scent you couldn't mistake once you'd stood in enough slaughterhouses.

He felt the prickle at the back of his neck before he saw it.

The thing in the shadow where wall met ground was not a man. Shoulders too broad, head canted at a wrong angle, as if the bones had been carved to bend differently. Eyes caught the light in a pale, flat gleam — reptile eyes. One hand rested on a hooked pole, long enough to pull something struggling out of a pit.

Or drag it in.

It didn't move. Just watched him.

Victor stared back, letting his posture loosen just enough to hide the fact that his claws were starting to shift beneath his nails. This wasn't the kind of fight you rushed. He could almost hear Max in the back of his head — that low, steady voice telling him to keep his temper, keep his place, not burn himself out before it mattered.

Except Max wasn't here.

Max wasn't anywhere.

The thought landed like a weight in his gut. The last time he'd lost Max, it had been to Moloch's chains — five years of wondering if the man was dead or just wishing he was. Now, barely minutes after dragging him back into the light, he'd been ripped away again. No warning. No chance to anchor him. And this time Victor had no idea if any of the others had made it through.

His throat tightened. He'd been alone before, but this was different. This was wrong. They were supposed to be together now, to have each other's backs, to make sure none of them got swallowed by the dark without a fight.

The heat pressed in harder, thick as the smell of boiled blood. The pale eyes in the shadow didn't blink. Somewhere beyond the wall, that low animal murmur deepened — the sound of something deciding whether you were prey or entertainment.

A memory rose uninvited — Max's hand on his shoulder outside a different fight, voice steady: pick your moment, don't let the crowd choose it for you. The panic bit down anyway, copper in his mouth. He swallowed it.

Above the gate, a torn banner hung — black cloth stiff with heat, a pale bull's skull painted at its centre, the horns ringed in iron. The wind worried it without moving it, as if the city itself were holding it still.

Victor rolled his shoulders once, trying to bleed off the tension coiling through him. The panic was still there, raw and metallic in the back of his mouth. But until he found Max — until he found any of them — he'd have to keep moving.

He'd failed once before. It had taken five years to put that right. He wasn't going to let the clock start again.

***

Cold stone under his cheek.

Dan's eyes opened to the grain of it — smooth from centuries of footsteps, slick with a thin layer of frost that shouldn't have been there. His breath clouded in the air, curling up past the edges of an impossibly tall cathedral spire that cut the sky into narrow slices.

For a moment he lay still, just letting the shock run its course. The last thing he remembered was the bridge in Prague, the team at his back, Alyssa's presence like a steady flame in the corner of his awareness, Max just ahead, already bracing for whatever came through Moloch's rift. Then the pull had come, and all the noise in the world had folded in on itself.

He pushed himself upright, joints stiff from cold.

New York.

It was New York — not the skeletal ruin he'd seen in the war's early years, but whole. The skyline stood untouched, every window unbroken, every streetlamp lit. There were even cars parked along the curbs, dustless, their chrome gleaming in the pale morning light. On the surface, it looked like a city spared.

But the air… the air was wrong.

It smelled of candle wax and incense, the heavy kind used in cathedrals, thick enough to coat the inside of your throat. And beneath that, something sour — like flowers left too long in stagnant water.

The crucifix was the first thing that truly hit him.

It stood across the street from the cathedral steps, taller than the streetlamps, the wood so dark it looked wet. The figure nailed to it wasn't a statue. Bare feet twitched once. The head lolled, hair matted with blood.

Dan's gut clenched. He turned his head and saw another crucifix on the next block. And another beyond that. Some empty, some not. They rose from sidewalks, from the medians, from the grassy squares at intersections. Every direction he looked, the long beams split the skyline, casting crosses over clean streets.

A hush lived here, but it wasn't peace.

The sound came from far off at first — a murmur that rolled over the rooftops. Chanting. A slow procession moved into view from around the cathedral's corner, figures robed in white and gold, hoods drawn low over their faces. Glowing brands were carved into their skin — not painted, carved, each line raw and red, but glowing as if lit from within.

They carried censers, smoke trailing behind them in thick ropes. The hymn they sang was familiar in its cadence, the rise and fall of old church music — but the harmony was wrong. Twisted minor chords dragged the melody into something that felt like hunger disguised as worship.

Dan's heartbeat picked up. Alyssa could be anywhere. Max could be anywhere. He swallowed hard, trying to push down the thought that he might already be standing in one of their graves.

Alyssa's laugh flickered through his head — that quick, embarrassed huff she made when he overdid the chivalry. He clung to it like a handhold. If she was here, he'd find her. If she wasn't, he'd make the people who did this tell him why.

The brand on the nearest priest's brow was a circle of thorns set around a descending stroke — not a cross, not quite. It pulsed as if it had a heartbeat of its own.

The procession slowed as it reached the base of the cathedral steps. One of the robed figures turned its head toward him. Beneath the shadow of the hood, teeth flashed in a smile far too wide for the face that held it.

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"Welcome home, angel."

The hymn did not pause. The scent of incense swelled until it blotted out the cold. Dan found himself stepping back, the stone under his boots suddenly slicker, as if the frost were spreading from the church itself. The spire loomed higher above him, cutting the sun into thin, sharp beams.

He could still feel the others in his memory — the press of Alyssa's shoulder at his side, Max's voice giving orders in the chaos. But in the air here, in the quiet that wasn't quiet, they felt impossibly far away.

The smiling figure tilted its head, and the brand across its brow flared brighter.

The hymn deepened.

His hand twitched toward the hilt at his side. If the doors were an invitation, he couldn't tell whether it was meant for him… or for what they were keeping inside.

And the doors of the cathedral began to open.

***

Mud took him to his knees. Cold sucked up through it, biting into bone, and for a moment Max just stayed there, palms sunk deep enough that the waterlogged earth oozed between his fingers. His arms shook from the effort of catching himself. Breathing hurt — not from injury, but from the sheer drag of pulling air into lungs that had forgotten what clean felt like.

Liz was up first. She moved stiffly, her halo guttering around her head like a lamp running out of oil. He watched her brush mud from her palms, scan the perimeter — not because he couldn't do it himself, but because right now he couldn't keep up with her eyes.

The air was thick with woodsmoke and the reek of unwashed bodies. It pressed in as he tried to stand, his legs slow to answer.

They were in a sprawl of tents stitched from whatever scraps people could salvage — tarp roofs patched with billboard vinyl, poles lashed together from scavenged timber. Barrel fires burned low in rusted drums, throwing a thin light that made every shadow look deeper. Somewhere a baby cried, high and thin, before the sound was smothered by a mother's whisper.

Max managed a step forward. The mud clung, threatening to pull him down again.

Eyes followed them from tent flaps and narrow alleys between shelters — dull, ringed with shadow. He knew that look. The same one he'd worn in Moloch's pits when someone new arrived: weighing the odds they were predator or prey.

Liz edged closer, brushing his shoulder. He could feel the faint pressure of her shield, like wading into water just above the knees.

"How bad?" he asked. His voice was low, hoarse — not from caution, but because speaking felt like lifting something heavy.

Her gaze skimmed the camp, her brow tightening. "Bad enough. Too much pain here. Too many minds trying to hide it. If I drop the shield, it'll take me under."

He nodded, though the motion sent a small flare of dizziness through him. He was still rebuilding — still living in the strange gap between surviving and actually being alive. And this place… it didn't make the climb any easier.

A group of children crouched around a barrel fire as they passed. None spoke. Their clothes hung loose, their eyes fixed on the strangers. One clutched a stick with a charred tip — whatever had been skewered on it was long gone.

An old woman sat closest to the flames, palms open to the heat. Her hair was a grey knot, her face a map of deep lines. She didn't look at the fire, only at them.

"Stay near the fires," she said, voice dry as paper. "The night takes the slow ones."

Max caught Liz's eye. Her face stayed neutral, but he saw the small, subtle shift — that tightening in her jaw when she understood a threat they couldn't see.

He glanced beyond the circle of fires. No wall. No fence. Just blackness, unbroken, except for the occasional twitch of movement at the edge — too far to be certain of shape, too deliberate to be nothing.

His voice came out quieter than he meant. "Another warzone."

Liz's nod was short, sharp. "Yeah. Just a quieter one."

His hands wouldn't warm. Even this close to the barrel fires, the cold lived in the joints, a debt his body hadn't paid off. Out beyond the firelight, something padded past on quiet feet and didn't break stride when a child whimpered.

He kept moving because stopping meant his legs might decide not to start again. But every step in the sucking mud reminded him of how far from whole he was — and how quickly this place could finish what the last five years had started.

***

The cold hit like a slap. One heartbeat ago, Prague's smoke was in Alyssa's lungs; now the air was knife-sharp, biting deep with every breath. She stumbled forward into snow, boots crunching over ice-crusted ground, the shock of it pulling a curse from her lips.

The wind drove against her, carrying a smell that didn't belong to winter — old stone, wet fur, and something metallic beneath it, like the tang of a blade left to frost.

She turned, scanning for Chloe.

A ripple of air to her left, then Chloe stepped out of half-form, breath fogging the air. Her coat was already dusted white, dark hair snapping around her face in the wind. She didn't speak right away — her eyes were fixed on the horizon.

Alyssa followed her gaze.

Far off, a black castle jutted up from the earth like a fang. No lights in its windows, no smoke from its chimneys, just a stark silhouette against the swollen red moon hanging above it. The land around it looked wrong, too — hills warped into unnatural shapes, treelines bent away from its walls as if the forest itself had flinched.

Alyssa swallowed against the dryness in her throat. "Dan…" The name came out quiet, almost stolen by the wind.

Chloe's eyes flicked to her. "We'll find him."

"All of them," Alyssa said. "Max. Liz. Victor. Ying."

Chloe gave a single nod, but her gaze slid back toward the horizon. "Yeah. All of them." Her voice was steady, but Alyssa could hear the strain underneath.

They stepped toward each other without thinking, arms wrapping in a quick, tight embrace that neither broke right away. It wasn't something they did often — not because they didn't want to, but because in this life, time spent holding still usually meant time wasted.

For a moment, the cold was just background noise. Two people standing in the snow, holding on because there was no one else here to do it for them.

Alyssa kept her arms around Chloe a breath longer than she needed, pretending the warmth was for Chloe's sake. Dan would tell her to breathe, to count, to plant her feet. She did.

When they finally stepped apart, Alyssa gave a shaky exhale. "Where the hell are we?"

Chloe's mouth quirked in something that wasn't quite a smile. "No idea. But it doesn't look good."

Then the music came.

It was faint at first, almost part of the wind, low and lilting. The kind of melody you might hear through a wall at night, half asleep, warm under blankets. It should have been beautiful. It wasn't. Something in the rhythm pulled at Alyssa's chest, too slow, too deliberate, like it was measuring her heartbeat.

"Don't listen too hard," Chloe murmured. "It's looking for gaps."

The wind shifted, carrying the music closer. The snow hissed against Alyssa's skin now, finer and sharper, as if the air itself had teeth. She adjusted her stance without thinking, grounding her weight.

That was when she saw it — a figure at the treeline, motionless despite the wind. The fur cloak around its shoulders shifted once, but the rest of it stayed still. The pale oval of a face caught the moonlight, eyes glinting in a way that wasn't reflection.

A strip of dark cloth fluttered against a broken birch — a banner no wind could tear down — stitched with a narrow red mouth full of needle teeth. The sight made Alyssa's skin crawl, though she couldn't have said why.

Chloe's voice was barely above the wind. "We're being hunted."

The figure tilted its head, and Alyssa had the sudden, unshakable sense that the thing wasn't deciding whether to come closer — it was deciding whether to let them run first.

She flexed her fingers, feeling the density shift in her bones, the cold no longer quite touching her skin. Chloe stayed at her side, one foot already edging toward the shadowed snow where she could vanish if she needed to.

The music swelled.

The figure didn't move.

Not yet.

***

The air changed first.

It was wet, heavy, clinging to her skin like she'd stepped into a fever dream. One blink ago, Ying had been on the bridge in Prague, voidlight tearing the air apart around her. Now, salt stung her lips, and the sharp stink of rotting kelp filled her nose.

She was standing on a crumbling dock, the timbers warped and slick beneath her boots. The sea lapped lazily against the pilings, but it wasn't the sea she remembered. The water had a green-black sheen, as though oil floated just beneath the surface, distorting the light into sickly ribbons.

Her breath fogged — not from cold, but from the contrast between the clammy air and the heat running through her veins. She forced her shoulders square, scanning the skyline.

Cape Town.

Or what was left of it.

Half the city was gone, swallowed by the ocean. The waterline had crept up into the streets, turning the lower districts into a series of shallow bays and flooded avenues. Above the tide, the buildings still stood, but they glowed faintly from within — a hive-light shimmer, pulsing in slow, deliberate rhythm.

She knew that pattern. It was too ordered to be natural. Something owned this place.

A ripple passed through the water just off the dock. Not small — the shadow of it stretched long, too broad for any shark. She caught the flash of something barnacled breaking the surface for an instant before it slid back under, the swell rolling toward the shore.

She took a step back, boot heel knocking against a loose plank. The sound carried farther than it should have, bouncing off the dead stillness of the street behind her.

A scream cut through the air.

Not from the water — inland. It started high, almost a shout for help, before climbing into something shrill and wordless. Then it stopped.

The silence after was worse.

Ying's hand went to her sword without thinking, the familiar weight of it anchoring her even as the hair at the back of her neck prickled. Her mind was already running through the calculus: Max gone, the others scattered, no one here to guard her back. This wasn't a fight she could run from — whatever ruled here wouldn't let her.

"Guess I'm not sleeping tonight," she muttered, low, just to keep her own voice in the air.

From the water, another ripple. Closer this time.

The glow from the hive-lit skyline seemed to pulse in time with the movement under the surface.

Far along the seawall, a shape clung to a streetlamp — not a bird, not a bat, a slick chrysalis threaded with pale veins. The light inside it pulsed once, twice, like something remembering how to hatch.

Ying marked exits automatically: ladders down to drowned streets, a stair up toward higher ground, a line of rusted bollards she could use to funnel anything that rushed her. She breathed in for four, out for six, and let the blade's weight settle her spine.

Ying tightened her grip on the hilt. Whatever this place was, it was watching her. And the first move, she knew, wouldn't be hers.

***

The world broke into flashes.

Victor — dust in his teeth, heat searing his skin — straining against the pull of chains he hadn't yet seen but could already feel closing around him. The pale eyes in the shadow fixed on him like a hook set deep in meat.

Dan — cold stone underfoot, the cathedral doors yawning open, light spilling out in colours that didn't belong to any sun. The hymn swelled, wrong and hungry, as the smiling priest stepped forward.

Max and Liz — ringed by barrel fires, shadows pressing in. The old woman's voice in his ears, warning about the night. Shapes moved just beyond the glow, slow and certain. Liz's shield hummed faintly against his skin, her hand gripping his arm as if to anchor them both.

Alyssa and Chloe — snow stinging their cheeks, the red moon bleeding over the horizon. The black castle loomed, and the figure in the treeline watched without blinking. The music slid under their skin, pulling at the spaces between heartbeats.

Ying — salt and rot thick in the air, the hive-lit skyline pulsing. Another ripple from beneath the dark water, closer now, too large to be anything harmless.

The visions came faster. A step, a breath, a tightening of hands on weapons — each one cut off before it could become action.

They had been one line across a bridge. Now they were compass points torn apart — north to bone-bleached heat, east to holy hunger, west to smoke and mud, south to ice and old blood, and somewhere between, the sea.

Then darkness.

A darkness packed with the weight of a presence leaning close enough to feel its smile.

Moloch's voice threaded through the black like a whisper through cloth.

"Let's see how bright you burn… without each other."

The dark didn't fade.

It swallowed them whole.

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