The Alpha hesitated. That was all Aren needed. The hunter became the hunted. The Alpha had sensed the violet rings in his eyes. It had sensed the cores he carried. It was no longer facing a wounded gravekeeper. It was facing something it could not name. The dark magic in its throat faded into harmless mist. The beast let out a low whine. It tucked its tail and ran into the darkness. Aren let the moment stretch. His breath was slow. His Predator's Instinct anchored him. He walked toward where the beast had fled. He crouched low. His fingers touched the glowing blood on the ground. He used shadow vision. The Alpha's blood radiated. It marked its path through the woods. "You can run from me," Aren said quietly. "But you can't hide." His voice was steady. None of the uncertainty that had haunted him when he first entered the wasteland. He followed the trail. He moved so lightly that no branches snapped beneath his feet. He watched how the lesser monsters reacted to him. The Crawler

The ambush came from above. Aren barely processed the revelations from the memory. The image of the entity tearing the sky apart still filled his mind. The Shadow Wolf Alpha had circled back. Mad with terror. It lashed out at the only thing it could kill in the forest. Aren's Predator's Instinct rang like a shattered bell. He threw his body forward. He triggered shadow burst at the last moment. He was not fast enough. The jaws snapped shut. The sound was a powder keg. They closed on the space where his head had been. He launched himself backward. The Alpha's claws swept down. The claws grazed his left shoulder. The strike shredded his leather tunic like parchment. It carved into his muscles. If not for his bone hardening, the swat would have torn his arm from his body. The claws scraped his calcified collarbone. A screech echoed through the clearing. It jarred his teeth. Warm blood sprayed. Aren cried out. He hit the mud and rolled. He put distance between himself and the Alpha.

The ground was tearing apart. It resonated with the sound of grinding stone. Aren had little time to react. The floor of the cave disintegrated under him. The stone walls caved inward. The ceiling collapsed. Gravity pulled him in. He was swallowed by an enormous sinkhole. Air rushed past him with a roar. Chunks of the cavern, some the size of carriages, fell alongside him. His receptors drove him. He did not panic. His mind slowed the fall into calculated trajectories. He twisted his body mid-air. He dodged falling debris that would have crushed him. He drove a dagger into the falling walls to slow his descent. Sparks flew in the darkness. The blade scratched against stone. Heat built along the edge. His strength and hardened skeleton held. His arm acted as a shock absorber. It halted his fall. He hung there by one arm. Debris rained down into the depths below. It took several long moments for the last of it to hit bottom. When the echoes subsided, silence filled the void. Aren

Two eyes, each the size of a transport cart, opened within the void. They did not glow with the feral light of the wasteland monsters. They carried malevolence. A cosmic hatred that had festered in the dark for years. The entity pressed itself against the other side of the doors. The mass of the creature caused the environs to groan. The chains on the door did not snap. They disintegrated. Crushed to gold dust. Through the crack in the doors, the gaze scanned the ruins. It fixed on Aren. His body betrayed him. His knees buckled. He crashed onto the dais. His hands flew to his head. Psychic pressure slammed into him. He heard something. It was not a sound. It was an intrusion. A voice pierced the center of his mind. Glass shattering. A billion dying souls. Layered into one frequency. "Bearer..." The word sent pain through his body. Blood dripped from his nose and both ears. "You carry the spark of the betrayers." The voice rumbled. It threatened to cut his consciousness in hal

He walked past the wealthy inner districts. He had no business among the nobles in their mansions. He relied on his memory of the city's layout. He navigated the winding, narrow cobblestone paths that led steeply down into the outer ring of Asteria. He crossed the threshold into the slums. The atmosphere shifted. The air did not smell like the wasteland. It smelled of rot. Cheap burning coal. Generations of desperation. Thousands of crooked shacks crowded together. Rusted sheets. Splintered wood. The narrow streets were rivers of brown dirt. Despite the rain, the slum was busy. Merchants huddled under patched canvas awnings. They tried to sell scraps of tin and moldy bread. Emaciated men and women hurried through the mud. Their heads bowed. As Aren walked the main thoroughfare, the slum went silent. The silence rippled outward like a wave. People stopped. Conversations died. The slum dwellers parted. They pressed their thin bodies against the shacks to give him a wide berth. Mothe