They moved in a loose crescent through the fractured ruins, the fog hanging low and swollen with silence. The Shroud always felt like it was listening—each breath swallowed, each step absorbed by the dead stone. Night here wasn't a time of day; it was an old, permanent bruise over the world.
Bright tightened his grip on his sword with his good hand. His sprained wrist throbbed with every shift of weight, wrapped in dirty bandages that did nothing to stop the ache. The blade felt heavier than normal, not because of its design, but because of how much could go wrong with a single mistake.
Duncan walked ahead, shoulders squared, the front-line by default. Link flanked right, quiet and alert, checking corners with instinctive, hawk-eyed precision. Adam trailed only a step behind Bright, his gaze occasionally scanning the cracked ground and crumbling walls like he was counting potential corpses and rations. Two other soldiers assigned by Roegan—Hale and Morren—took up the rear, their nerves a constant presence.
They had been tracking signs of crawler movement for half an hour. Link had spotted broken stones disturbed by something not human, and Duncan had followed with grim intent. No one wanted to return empty-handed—and more importantly, without crystal cores, Roegan wouldn't let them stay in the safe zone without taxation.
"Anyone else feel like this place wants to spit us out or swallow us whole, it's been like the running theme of this place the whole time?" Bright muttered.
"Does it matter which?" Link said quietly. His voice barely rose above the air.
"If it swallows us, at least we'll be somewhere," Adam offered, tone flat but not entirely humorless.
Morren snorted. "Speak for yourself. I'd rather not get chewed on by something with too many arms."
Duncan didn't join the banter. His eyes were forward, expression set in stone. He didn't fear what was ahead—he feared failing before he had the strength to stay alive.
A low chitter echoed through a collapsed alleyway ahead—sharp, then gone.
Link raised a hand, signaling halt.
They froze.
Hale tensed, swallowing. "You hear that?"
"No," Adam said. "The air just sneezed."
Bright shot him a look. Adam shrugged.
Duncan gestured for them to move forward in silence. No shouting. No wasted sound. Crawlers didn't hunt by sight alone.
They crept around the corner, boots pressing on shattered gravel. The fog thinned enough for them to see the fractured courtyard ahead—roofless, columns leaning like broken teeth.
And in the center of it, hunched over old bones, was a crawler.
Not the smallest kind, nor massive—somewhere in between. Its skin was the mottled charcoal-grey of burnt wood, limbs too long for its torso, head slightly bulbous with ridged edges where ears should be. A faint shimmer pulsed along its back—unnatural, like breath under glass. That marked it: a possible ability core carrier.
Duncan's jaw tightened. "That one's different."
"We take it?" Link asked.
"Why else are we here?" Duncan said.
Morren whispered, "We should flank."
"No," Link said, eyes narrowing. "It'll sense approach from both ends. Single direction. We hit it hard and don't let it latch."
Bright felt it before he heard it: a hum—low, at the back of his mind. Like the air bent wrong.
He hesitated, heartbeat twitching.
He knew what that sensation was now.
He cleared his throat quietly. "Before we start—there's something you should know."
Duncan glanced back, irritated. "Is now the time?"
"You'd rather I mention it when we're dead?"
That gave Duncan pause.
Adam's eyes flicked to Bright, reading him. Link stayed focused, half-listening while tracking the crawler's stance.
Bright kept his voice low. "Back when those two groups were fighting over a core… there was a small crawler, barely the size of a dog. It didn't see me as a threat. I… killed it. Pulled something from it. I think it was an ability core. I absorbed it."
Silence rippled.
Morren blinked.
Hale exhaled sharply. "You've been sitting on a core this whole time?"
Bright didn't flinch. "Didn't know if I could trust anyone. Or if it would even work. But I feel things now before they happen. I think—its ability was danger sense."
Duncan's eyes sharpened. "That true?"
Bright nodded once. "I can't control it well yet. But if something's aimed at me, or nearby… I'll feel it first."
Link actually gave a quiet hum of acknowledgement. "Could be useful."
Morren muttered something, but held his tongue. Hale just looked annoyed but accepted it.
Adam kept his expression blank, but inside, thoughts spun. So Bright was holding cards. That made him both irritating… and valuable. His gaze flicked to the crawler. The meat from that one could feed them at least a day. Maybe two, if dehydrated.
Duncan exhaled slowly. "Fine. But don't freeze up if your 'sense' starts buzzing."
"Wouldn't dream of it," Bright said, though his wrist throbbed in agreement.
Duncan raised his hand. "Positions."
They moved like they'd discussed the plan days ago instead of seconds.
Duncan approached front and left. Link split to the right, slipping behind a slanted column. Bright shadowed Duncan, sword in one hand, other cradling his bad wrist close. Hale and Morren stayed near Adam, ready to provide distraction or cover.
The crawler's head twitched, nostrils opening across its jawline like slits.
Bright felt it then. A ripple down his spine—like cold fingers tracing bone.
"Now," Duncan whispered.
He lunged first, blade sliding across the ground before he rose and slashed upward at one of the crawler's arms. The creature shrieked, teeth jagged and too many.
Link darted behind it, slamming a short spear into its thigh. Blood—dark and thick—spattered across broken stone.
Morren hurled a shard of broken rebar at its face to distract it. The crawler pivoted, unnervingly quick, and swung. The air vibrated.
Bright's danger sense flared.
He shouted—"Down!"—before the creature's limb scythed overhead. Hale ducked late and got clipped, shoulder splitting open.
Adam grabbed him by the back of the collar and dragged him away from the follow-up strike.
Duncan roared and slammed his shoulder into the crawler's torso, knocking it sideways into a wall. Bones cracked—not sure whose.
Link swept low, trying to hamstring it again, but the crawler leaped up with freakish strength, clinging to the side of a leaning pillar before launching off it like a spring.
That's when Bright moved without thinking.
He dove to the side, sword coming up in a clumsy one-handed swing meant for distraction, not damage. The blade scratched across the crawler's abdomen, barely drawing a line of blood—but it made the creature spin mid-air.
Duncan seized the moment. He grabbed a fragment of metal and drove it like a stake into the thing's side.
Link followed up with the spear again, this time under the arm, where the flesh was thin. The creature spasmed, claws slamming into the ground, tail lashing.
Morren and Hale flanked, one injured but still cursing.
Adam had moved behind a slab of concrete, watching for openings, saving the limited amount of bullets he had. When he saw the beast's back arch in pain, he hurled a chunk of broken white stone at its head. The rock cracked against its temple, disorienting it.
Bright's spine tingled again—another pulse of danger. "Left!"
Duncan twisted just in time as the crawler's tail whipped around, scraping his ribs instead of snapping them.
Then Link drove the spear down through the creature's throat.
It thrashed, limbs scraping furrows in the dirt, before finally going still.
Silence fell hard.
Everyone panted. Blood slicked the ground—some theirs, most not.
Hale sat down abruptly, clutching his wound. "Fuck… that thing moved like it knew what we'd do."
"Maybe it did," Link said, wiping his spear.
Duncan leaned over the corpse, catching his breath. Then he saw it—the faint crystalized shimmer along the spine. "There."
He tore back the flesh with his hands, ignoring the wet sound of tendons ripping. The core was small, lodged against bone like a parasite. Hints of cloudy white and grey pulsed beneath its surface.
Bright stared. "Adam. Check if there's any meat you can cut later."
Adam nodded, pretending it was duty, not foresight. "Already on it."
While they harvested, Hale hissed as the bandage Adam tied around his arm pulled tight. Morren muttered curses at everything. Link kept watch.
Duncan held the crystal core in his palm. It felt heavier than it should.
Hale asked, "Who gets it?"
Link didn't answer.
Bright waited.
Adam glanced at Duncan, then elsewhere—outwardly indifferent.
Morren just grunted.
Duncan realized it before anyone spoke. He had been leading this small hunt, bleeding for it, risking first.
Bright gave a faint smirk. "Well? Don't stare it to death."
Duncan grunted once. "If I die after taking this, bury me with my boots on."
He pressed the core to his chest.
It didn't sink in like water. It burned—like molten metal driven through bone.
Duncan ground his teeth, hand curling into a fist as the crystal dissolved into his skin, veins darkening up his arm and across his shoulder. He dropped to a knee.
Bright stepped back on instinct. Adam watched closely, committing every twitch to memory.
Link crouched nearby, ready to intervene if something went wrong.
Duncan's breathing slowed. The veins receded. When he looked up, there was something new in his eyes.
"Bone… guard," he said, voice low, as though the name had been whispered into his skull.
Hale blinked. "What does it do?"
Duncan flexed his arm. The faintest ripple of pale reinforcement flickered beneath his flesh, like bone had risen closer to the surface. "Makes sure I don't break before I kill."
Link nodded once. "Useful."
Adam wiped core residue off his hands. And harder to kill in his sleep, he thought.
Bright let out a quiet sigh. "One down. A few dozen more to go."
Duncan rose, steadier than before. "We move. Before others hear that scream."
They gathered what they could—Adam discreetly pocketing strips of flesh into his crystal core when backs turned—and slipped into the fog once more.
Far across the ruins, in a different quarter of the Shroud, Silas Drey's group moved like shadows through broken archways, unaware that another squad had just stepped closer to survival.
Or to something worse.