The screaming reached them before the storage facility's door had fully swung open, thin and distant, the particular pitch of people who'd run out of better options.Kade froze in the doorway, and felt something cold drop through his chest, recognition arriving a full second before he could name it."That's close," Reyna said, already reaching for her bow, the seven arrows she'd managed to recover the day before rattling faintly in her quiver. "Half a mile, maybe less.""I know that scream," Kade said, and heard, in his own voice, an odd flatness he hadn't expected to find there.They moved fast, Reyna's leg holding better after a night's rest than either of them had expected, and the sound grew clearer with every block, close enough now that Kade could pick out individual voices inside the general chaos of it. Priscilla's voice, sharp with terror. Oduya's voice, lower, cursing steadily. And underneath both of them, Halden's voice, still trying, even now, to sound like a man in contro

They saw the wall two days later, rising out of a landscape that had, by then, stopped surprising anyone in the group, a barrier of stacked cars and scavenged sheet metal running in a rough perimeter around what used to be the city's downtown core, high enough to need ladders, patrolled, from what Kade could see even at a distance, by figures moving with the specific, unhurried confidence of people who had stopped being afraid of this particular stretch of ground."That's not nothing," Halden said, shading his eyes against the gray light. "Somebody's organized. Actually organized, not just surviving day to day like us.""District Gate," Reyna said, and when Kade glanced at her, surprised, she shrugged. "Heard some of the others mention it, back before I lost my old group. Word was there's a real settlement forming downtown. Whoever built that wall, they're not just holding a building. They're holding territory."The closer they got, the more the wall resolved into something almost imp

The request came through Corrine three days into Kade's provisional status, passed along with the particular efficiency of someone who'd learned exactly how the Compact's chain of information worked."Scouting team's short a body for tomorrow's supply run," Corrine said, finding Kade midway through sorting a fresh haul of scavenge. "Voss requested you specifically. Said something about wanting backup she trusts on contested ground."Kade felt something warm at that, quiet and unshowy, the specific satisfaction of being asked for by name rather than assigned by default. "Contested ground?""There's a supply depot two miles east, edge of what used to be the retail district," Corrine said. "Good stock, from what the last scouting pass reported. Problem is a second faction's been working the same territory. Nothing official between us and them, no open conflict, but it's the kind of overlap that gets tense fast if both groups show up at the same depot on the same day.""And Marion's sendi

The dungeon sat three blocks past the Compact's eastern perimeter, a place the scouting teams had taken to calling the Underdrift, a subway station whose platforms had folded downward into something that no longer resembled a subway station at all, tunnels branching off into a darkness that seemed to swallow light rather than simply absorb it."First confirmed dungeon this close to the walls," Marion said, addressing the assembled team in the gray morning light outside the station entrance, six of them total, Kade and Reyna among them, along with Halden, Terrence, Beck, and a Compact veteran named Wren who'd apparently run two smaller delves already and survived both. "Scouts confirmed activity three days ago, energy readings consistent with what the tech team's instruments pick up around confirmed dungeon sites. We need eyes inside, an assessment of what's down there, and if it's viable, a sense of whether it's worth committing real resources to clearing.""And if it's not viable?" W

The second delve into the Underdrift was supposed to be simple, a confirmation run, six people going back down to verify the platform had stayed clear since the Crystal Wraiths fell, and to push further into the tunnels branching off from where the first team had turned back.It did not stay simple."Deeper section's got a different signature," Wren said, studying the readout on the handheld device the tech team had loaned the delve, its screen throwing pale light across her face in the tunnel's crystalline dark. "Stronger. Whatever's down here, it's not more Wraiths. Something bigger.""How much bigger?" Terrence asked, already tightening his grip on his blade."No way to know until we see it," Wren admitted.They found out twenty minutes later, in a section of tunnel that had collapsed into something resembling a cavern, the crystalline growth thick enough here to cast its own faint, sickly light without need of Wren's lantern, and at the cavern's center, coiled around what looked l