"Something's wrong with the ground up ahead. Don't step past that cracked line."Wren said it low, one hand raised, the whole group stopping behind her without needing further explanation. Three days of walking had taught Dax to trust her Warden senses the same way he used to trust a scout's read on unfamiliar terrain, fast and without argument."How wrong," he asked."Gravity's doing something there. Feels heavier than it should, like standing too close pulls at you." She squinted into the dark ahead, the road curving out of sight around a collapsed overpass. "I think it's a Zone boundary. We must be closer to the Zone 3 edge than the map said."Priya checked her tablet, frowning at the screen. "Should still be a mile off. Boundaries have been drifting though. Not supposed to happen, but nothing about the Grid does what it's supposed to do anymore."They'd left the pharmacy two nights back, moving mostly after dark to avoid Vanguard patrol schedules, resting in short stretches during

"You never told me why you left the Vanguard's reach in the first place. Everyone else who knew Reyes personally either joined him or ran to the far edges of the Grid. You just... stayed close enough to keep bumping into him."Priya asked it quietly, the small fire between them throwing weak orange light against the ruined building they'd holed up in for the night. Wren had dozed off against a pile of collapsed drywall an hour back, exhaustion finally catching up to her after the day's collapse and the run that followed it.Dax turned a strip of scavenged jerky over in his hands without eating it, thinking about how to answer."Didn't leave anything," he said finally. "There wasn't a Vanguard to leave when the Reset happened. Just a war that stopped mattering the second the sky cracked open. Marcus and I got separated in the chaos. Took me two months to even hear he was alive.""And when you did?""Didn't go looking for him. Didn't need to. His name showed up on every survivor's HUD e

"Hold still. This is going to sting worse than the actual bite did.""Everything you say before treating a wound starts with hold still. I'm starting to notice a pattern.""Pattern's there because it's always true." Priya finished wrapping Cutter's arm, tying the bandage off tight enough to make him hiss. "You're lucky that graze didn't go deeper. Another inch and we'd be having a very different conversation.""Noted. Try to bleed less next time."Morning light filtered weak through the clouds hanging permanently over this stretch of the Grid, the four of them moving again after a short, uneasy rest following the night's fight. Dax's shoulder still ached where the graze had caught him, though the Attrition Tank's slow healing had already closed most of the surface damage, leaving only a dull soreness underneath."We're crossing into Zone 4 territory soon," Priya said, checking her tablet. "Supposed to be mostly unclaimed. Fewer factions, fewer patrols. Might give us a quieter stretch

"We can't just walk in there and announce what she's carrying. Coral warned us, remember?""I remember. I also don't have a way to hide a Class flag from anyone who knows how to read one." Dax kept his voice low, the four of them crouched behind a ridge overlooking the strange spires rising out of Zone 6's cracked earth. "If they can see it, they'll see it whether we announce it or not.""Then we go in quiet," Priya said. "Observe first. Figure out what we're actually walking into before anyone knows we're there at all."The spires themselves defied easy explanation, angular structures that seemed to have grown rather than been built, dark material catching what little light filtered through the permanent cloud cover, arranged in a rough circle around what looked like a central gathering space. Figures moved between them at a distance, robed, deliberate in their movements, nothing about the scene reading as hostile so much as unsettling in a way Dax couldn't quite name."I count maybe

"Everyone inside the warding circle, now! Don't step past the marked stones no matter what you see!"Osei's voice carried sharp authority across the compound's central gathering space, robed figures moving fast and practiced into a wide ring marked by dark stones set into the cracked earth. Dax pulled Wren with him toward the circle's edge, Priya and Cutter close behind, the whole compound's earlier calm replaced by tight, controlled urgency."What's the circle actually do?" Dax asked, watching Choir members take positions around its perimeter."Slows it. Doesn't stop it." Osei's jaw was tight, eyes fixed on the darkening sky past the compound's outer edge. "We've never had it approach directly before. Always the same pattern, watching from a distance, never crossing into inhabited ground.""Until now," Cutter said grimly.The air beyond the compound had begun to change, a subtle wrongness spreading outward from a single point on the horizon, the same low pressure Dax remembered from