Almitad hung suspended in the grey sky, a silent observer above the thinning mist.

  She looked North, toward the river, toward the path that led to the Dam. A Giant Moth was flying over the forest, its pink and yellow fur visible through the thinning mist.

  She shook her skull slowly.

  The undead flower was spent.

  Flying North meant delivering a withered stalk. The heirloom was a spent battery, useless to a people starving for power. Returning home, even as a victorious avenger, was illogical.

  The Exorcists of the Dam would need to make a pilgrimage to the Mana Forest and collect a new bloom, regardless.

  Her empty sockets turned toward the rubble sealing the cliff.

  Trenn. Mara. Ezy. Zeen.

  Logic dictated a search for a vent, a fissure, confirmation of survival. But the impulse was mute.

  What’s the point?

  Vengeance was spent. Without it, camaraderie felt like a fading dream. She searched her emotions for worry, for hope, for a reason to look for her team. She searched for a desire to go home, for a spark of nostalgia or relief. She found nothing.

  The void returned, cold and familiar.

  "Hollow," she murmured.

  The victory against the One-Eye, the survival of the team, her own un-life. It had all been necessary—and it was all over.

  She looked down into the horizon, through the dwindling fog.

  Dust hung heavy in the air, obscuring the streets where fires flickered.

  The Twin Cities were wounded. The Red God’s awakening had shaken the mountain to its roots. The cliff face of the Quarry was marred by cracks where masonry had shaken loose, raining debris onto the rafters and streets below.

  She drifted towards the cracked city.

  A spectral haze born of sudden trauma was thickening. Something subtle to most, but a foghorn to an exorcist.

  Ghosts were already manifesting. If left alone, they would sour into wraiths.

  The living were scrambling, shouting. The dead were confused, crying, cursed to haunt the site of their deaths. The choir of undead whispers rose from the rubble like steam.

  “Mommy? My leg is stuck. Why is it so dark?”

  Almitad looked at the empty pantleg, where her foot used to be.

  "I am not a courier," she said to the smoke. "I am a Shepherd."

  She descended into a market square littered with fallen masonry and shattered timber. The earthquake had buckled the pavement, toppling stalls and scattering wares, but the buildings around the perimeter held.

  A Goat Kin spirit stood by a crushed cart. He was staring at his own hands, flickering in and out of existence. He looked up as Almitad approached, his eyes hollow pits of confusion.

  "I can't lift my hammer," he whispered. "I have a shift. I can't be late."

  Almitad raised her hand, pulling a thread of necrotic power from the dying flower in her chest. Green-black light cast long shadows across the ruins.

  "Your shift is over."

  Her fingers traced the rune of Release, snapping the tether binding the spirit to its remains.

  Light washed over the ghost. Confusion melted into peace. He dissolved into motes of white light, drifting upward into the World Between Worlds.

  Almitad watched him go. Within her ribcage, the Mana Bloom dimmed.

  When the last petal falls, so do I.

  She did not fear death. She welcomed it. Much like the Goat Kin sculptor who could not take his tools, her shift was over; almost over.

  She would spend every last mote of this borrowed light to clear the ruins. She would fade with the last ghost, leaving nothing behind but clean bones and a ghost-free city.

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  She turned her empty sockets toward the next whisper—a Rabbitling mother searching through a pile of bricks for the child sleeping in her spectral arms.

  Almitad floated toward her. There was a lot to do before moving to the Other Side of the World Between Worlds.

  "Grip check," came Ezy’s voice from the Crusher’s cockpit.

  "Green," answered Zeen, who was circling the mechanical suit.

  "Actuators."

  "Cycling. They're sluggish on the left."

  "It’ll hold; at least until we find the others."

  Steam hissed from the Crusher’s ruptured cooling lines, a white plume venting into the thinning Morning Mist.

  "They're gone, Ezy," Zeen whispered, his voice trembling. He stared at the wall of fresh rubble sealing the cliff face.

  "Stop it," Ezy snapped.

  She dragged herself up, face smeared with grease.

  "Trenn survived a fall from the sky. He survived possession by a god and the One-Eye. He’s a gold-plated cockroach now. He’s not dead."

  Zeen turned on her, grief furious on his face. "That was before! Before I blasted a crater in his side. Before Mara tore his back open. Before Almitad's necrosis started eating him alive!"

  He took a shaky breath, gesturing wildly at the sealed mountain. "Maybe Mara survived. She's a warrior. But Trenn? A fall like that…”

  "Then we look for Mara!" Ezy retorted. Her voice cracked, rejecting his logic. She pointed an oversized skeletal finger at the sealed tunnel.

  "Look for what? Paste?" Zeen’s voice broke. "The mountain fell on them!"

  "I don't care if the sky fell on them,” she retorted, her eye burning with tears. "I can’t leave assuming they’re dead. I’d always wonder...”

  Zeen turned away from the wall of rubble and ran a hand through his face. He touched the clockwork musket’s stock. Gil’s spirit reached out and pressed his hand against his.

  “Would you abandon me down there?”

  He looked at Ezy. Broken, maimed, vibrating with manic refusal. She was loud. She was alive. She was the only barrier between him and the weight of loneliness.

  "The tunnel is gone, Ezy," he said, his voice softer than before. He scanned the horizon, eyes darting for movement.

  He stepped closer, his hand leaving the musket to rest on the rim of the Crusher’s cockpit.

  "I’m not leaving you behind, Ezy."

  "Then help me save them," she implored, gripping his sleeve with her skeletal fingers.

  Zeen let out a long, shuddering breath. He looked at her desperation and nodded, the decision settling in his gut like lead.

  He would follow her into the fire, because the alternative was freezing alone in the cold.

  "We can't walk it," Zeen stated, his tone shifting from grief to a smuggler’s hard pragmatism. He kicked the dirt, looking at Ezy’s prosthetic leg and the miles of rough terrain between them and the city.

  "You can't hike that distance, and I can't carry you." He looked at the smoking, ruined machine.

  He grabbed the canvas bag of supplies and threw it into the cockpit.

  Ezy looked down at her prosthetic leg. She looked at the massive skeletal hand grafted to her arm. Then she looked at the field of pulverized stone between them and the broken Quarry.

  Dawn’s screams had sanded the valley floor flat, turning the approach into a smooth, featureless ramp of white dust.

  "I can't hike it," she said, her voice flat and hard. "My leg will sink in the dust. Without this machine, I am luggage. And I refuse to be luggage."

  She tossed a heavy wrench from the cockpit.

  "Get under the chassis. Smash the intake valve. Bypass the cooling system."

  Zeen reached for the wrench. "Feeding boiling fluid back into the core? You’ll melt the block in an hour!"

  Ezy overrode the safety cut-offs. "We’ll fix it in the Assembly. We need a guide. Velo. A foreman. Someone who knows the Red Mine. Someone who can get us in."

  "The Assembly is underground," Zeen grunted, the sound of metal violently striking metal clanging from beneath the machine. "If the Red God woke up down there, the factories would likely be destroyed."

  "Then the survivors will have fled up," Ezy corrected. "To the surface. To the Quarry."

  Underneath the machine, Zeen dragged himself out, wiping hot coolant from his cheek. "It’s cycling hot. The manifold is vibrating like it wants to explode.”

  Ezy primed the pump. She slammed the ignition.

  The Crusher roared to life. It lurched, listing slightly to the left where the pressure was lower, but it stood.

  "Get in," Ezy commanded, her voice tight with strain as she fought the vibrating controls.

  He looked at the shuddering machine as he wiped grease from his clothes. Strapping himself to the back of the overheating mechanical suit seemed like a bad idea.

  He slapped the stock of his soul-bound musket. "I'm not riding piggyback when I can just walk.”

  Ezy didn't argue. She swung the heavy machine around, turning its back on the sealed tomb of their friends.

  Zeen took point, walking past the limping Crusher.

  His hand brushed his chest pocket. He paused, his fingers curling around the cold, hard lump of the hollowed sphere.

  He pulled it out. The obsidian was dull in the grey light, a spiderweb of fractures marring its surface. He ran a calloused thumb along the smooth glass.

  He held the concave sphere up to his eye, peering through the black amulet. The opaque shell became transparent.

  The world beyond was sharp, illuminated by an invisible light source.

  He lowered the glass. His gaze drifted to Ezy.

  He looked back at the sphere. He weighed it in his palm, then held it up against the light again, making sure he hadn’t imagined it.

  Even dead, it remains an eye?

  He wiped the dust from the black surface with his thumb and tucked it deep into his vest, patting it once to ensure it was secure.

  The One-Eye was dead. The rooster was gone. The spell that held the morning hostage had finally fallen silent.

  He had his revenge. Now, it was time to build what came next.

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