Riley saw them before he crested the hill.The column had stopped on the A23 just south of Croydon, compressing into a tight ring across both lanes. Miko held the outer edge with her Soul Blade throwing light in quick arcs. Craig swung beside her, and every time the sledgehammer connected with tarmac, a shockwave rippled outward and bodies bounced. Small bodies. Hundreds of them.Mice. Mutated and frantic, each one the size of a terrier, pouring from storm drains and garden walls and the shattered windows of a dental surgery. They came in waves, scrambling over their own dead, teeth like thorns catching the grey afternoon light. The column's defenders had formed a circle three deep around the centre where children and elderly huddled behind shopping trolleys and car doors dragged into makeshift barriers.Riley slammed the vehicle to a halt and was out before it stopped rocking. His reservoir flared and a blade of compressed moonlight snapped into his fist. He hit the swarm from behind

The council building's interior had changed since Riley's last visit. Crystalline pillars now branched along the ceiling in fractal patterns, and holographic displays floated above desks manned by Fenrathi technicians whose clawed fingers moved through data streams with fluid precision. The safe zone was growing, and its infrastructure was growing with it.Vorath stood behind a broad table that hadn't existed two days ago. A topographic projection of Caterham and the surrounding terrain hovered above its surface, with three dungeon markers pulsing in amber, green, and a deep, angry red. The commander's scarred muzzle lifted when Riley entered, and something that might have been approval settled across his wolfen features."Lunamancer." Vorath gestured to the chair opposite. "Sit."Riley sat. The two escort soldiers positioned themselves by the door and went still.Vorath tapped the projection. The safe zone boundary expanded slightly, new residence markers blinking into existence as t

The Hive barely put up a fight.Riley carved through the first chamber in under four minutes, moonlight blade splitting ant carapaces like they were made of wet paper. The second chamber fell faster. By the third, he stopped counting kills and started counting seconds between them. Behind him, five civilians—including a plumber named Darren who swung a System-purchased hatchet like he'd been born with it—mopped up stragglers without breaking formation."Too easy," Miko said over the System comms from her parallel run. Her group had already reached the centipede tunnels.Riley agreed. He pulled the four team leads into a brief conference at the Hive entrance after the first clear and restructured the rotation. Four groups of five, running simultaneously through the instance. The dungeon could handle parallel parties—they'd proven that during the queen run with Miko and Arianna. No reason to bottleneck when the clock was burning.The system obliged. Four groups descended, four entry shi

Riley woke to warmth on both sides and a ceiling he didn't recognise for three full seconds. Then the details arrived: Olivia's dark curls pressed into the hollow of his shoulder, Sylvia's long freckled arm draped across his chest, bare skin against bare skin in a tangle that would have taken an engineering degree to untangle. His reservoir hummed full behind his ribs. Moonlight still filtered through the curtain gap, pale and generous.He smiled. Not the sharp, tactical expression he wore in dungeons or negotiations. A real one, wide and stupid and entirely involuntary.Olivia murmured something into his collarbone. Sylvia shifted, her knee sliding across his thigh, and he decided that the quarry dungeon and everything else in the world could wait another five minutes.It waited ten.He extracted himself with the care of a man defusing ordnance, easing limbs aside and sliding free without waking either of them. He found his trousers on the landing, his shirt draped over the banister

Harlan waited with his arms loose at his sides, the heavy sword catching light along its edge. Behind him, the column of two hundred shifted like a living thing, weapons glinting, murmurs rising and falling. Riley kept his breathing even and his reservoir close to the surface."I'm here because there's room behind those walls for your people," Riley said. "All of them. Residences, regeneration, dungeon rotations that pay credits and build levels. Nobody gets turned away."Harlan's jaw worked sideways. He looked at the two Fenrathi soldiers flanking Riley's group, and when he spoke again, his voice carried enough to reach the first rows of his column."Room behind alien walls." He let the words hang. "You hear that? The Lunamancer wants us to crawl behind alien walls and lick alien boots. Same walls built by creatures that don't belong on our soil. Same creatures that turned our world into a cage."The woman with the scoped rifle shifted her weight. The young man with crackling fingers