By midday, the forest had stripped them of everything but the mechanics of putting one foot in front of the other.

  The snow was thigh-deep in the drifts, a brilliant, blinding white that offered no warmth. The only sounds were the crunch of frozen crust yielding to heavy boots and the ragged, wet breathing of exhausted lungs.

  Arjun marched in the center of the formation. His summer-issue Vanguard armor was practically a tomb of ice. His lips were cracked and bleeding, the rusted iron chain freezing to the bare skin of his wrists. Elena walked three paces behind him, her eyes burning holes into the back of his neck, waiting for a single misstep.

  He didn't give her one. He placed his boots exactly into the deep footprints Greta left at the front of the line, minimizing their physical trail.

  Then, the forest shifted.

  It wasn't a sound at first. It was a vibration. A low, resonant hum that rattled the frozen pine needles and settled deep into the cavity of Arjun’s chest.

  Two seconds later, the horn blew.

  BVRRRR-UMMM. It was a deep, guttural blast of heavy brass, echoing up from the valley they had just climbed out of. It didn't sound like a call to arms. It sounded like a starving animal catching a scent.

  Greta threw up her fist. The squad froze.

  "Movement in the tree line, three miles back," Frederick hissed, his veteran eyes squinting against the snow glare. "They're moving fast."

  Before Arjun could turn his head, a heavy boot slammed into the back of his knee.

  He hit the freezing snow hard. In a fraction of a second, Elena was on top of him, pulling his head back by the hair. The jagged edge of her rusted combat knife pressed directly against his carotid artery. A thin line of hot blood welled up, instantly freezing against the steel.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  "You led them right to us," Elena snarled, her breath pluming in the freezing air. "I warned you, bloodhound."

  "Elena, hold!" Greta barked, drawing her own weapon.

  "Look at the snow, Greta!" Elena screamed, pressing the blade a millimeter deeper. "We haven't snapped a twig! We walked on ice! There is no physical trail. He has a tracker on him. A lodestone, a kinetic beacon, something!"

  Arjun didn't struggle. He felt the cold steel biting his throat, but his mind was already ripping apart the tactical data of the horn blast. He bypassed the panic. He fell back into the cold, ruthless mathematics of war.

  "It's a linear pursuit pattern," Arjun rasped, his voice barely working through his frozen throat.

  "Shut up," Elena hissed.

  "Let him speak," Isabella said quietly. She had stepped to Elena’s side, her good hand resting lightly on Elena’s trembling shoulder.

  Arjun kept his eyes locked on Greta. "If I had a beacon on me, Commander Vane would have ordered a pincer movement to flank us. That horn was a single, sustained blast. That is the signal for a scent-lock."

  "Vanguard hounds?" Frederick asked, his face draining of color.

  "Worse," Arjun said. "Ash-Crawlers. They don't track sweat or footprints. They track kinetic decay. When Isabella shattered the armory wall, she saturated this squad in residual ozone and ruptured atomic energy. To an Ash-Crawler, you are glowing in the dark."

  Elena hesitated, the knife wavering just a fraction of an inch. "You're lying to save your neck."

  "If I wanted you dead, I would let you keep walking," Arjun said, his voice dropping to a dead, mechanical calm. "They are three miles back. At their current pace, they will overtake us in twenty minutes. You cannot outrun them, and you cannot fight them."

  "Then what is the counter-measure, General?" Greta demanded.

  "Water," Arjun said. "Kinetic decay is grounded out by running water. It wipes the radiation from the cloth and the skin."

  Greta looked at the map in her mind. "The Whitewater Ridge is half a mile east. But it’s an active glacial runoff."

  "It's freezing," Frederick argued. "If we submerge in that, we wipe the scent, but we die of hypothermia in an hour."

  Another horn blast echoed through the valley. This one was louder. Two miles.

  Arjun finally looked up at Elena, the knife still biting into his neck. He offered her no comfort, no plea for mercy. Just the brutal arithmetic of their reality.

  "You can bleed me out right here and die fighting the Crawlers," Arjun whispered. "Or you can unbind my legs, walk into the ice, and take your chances with the cold. Calculate your variables, rebel."

  Greta didn't hesitate. "Elena. Off him. Now."

  Elena swore viciously, shoving Arjun's head into the snow before stepping back.

  "Frederick, take the point!" Greta roared. "To the river! We drown the scent, or we drown ourselves!"