The two of them had been moving without stopping for longer than Ashfall could count. The air was heavy with the metallic scent of frozen dust and the faint echo of laughter that did not belong to anything human. Somewhere in the far distance, the Core Mythborne still prowled, its distorted voice echoing like a nightmare caught between two worlds.
The loud one, the bigger of the two guys beside Ryn and him, finally stumbled and leaned against a cracked wall. His chest heaving from the freezing air. His uneven and shaky breath spilled out in white clouds.
"Give me a minute," he muttered, dropping onto the half-collapsed step of an abandoned house. "If we keep running like this, I'll collapse before the monsters even catch me."
Ashfall slowed and stopped as well. He didn't want to waste time. His path should have been toward the Metropole, not further away from it, but something in his body agreed with the man. His legs ached from the cold, his throat burned from the dry air, and every shadow around them felt like it was closing in.
He leaned against a rusted pole and glanced toward the ruins, his voice flat. "Fine. A pause won't kill us."
The loud one gave a short laugh that didn't carry much strength. "Not yet, anyway." He rubbed at the faint glow of his eye where the clock-tattoo lingered, then shook his head. "Name's Daryl. My brother's Uka. You probably noticed that we're brothers. Or… were."
Ashfall remained silent. He had noticed. He had also seen exactly what had happened to Uka when Ryn decided to cut their weight loose, but that was not a truth worth sharing. Sometimes silence was a stronger weapon than honesty.
Daryl stretched his arms out with a groan, trying to force warmth into his frozen muscles. "We used to run cargo in Sector 6-4. Smuggling cheap food into the outer blocks, mostly. Not exactly legal, but it kept us alive. When the Clocks toll came… well, I guess fate decided we'd be useful for something else." He let out a bitter laugh. "Uka used to say the twelve worlds were probably beautiful once. You think so too?"
Ashfall's gaze drifted toward the gray sky, where the blurred outline of the Clock of Apocalypse loomed, silent and patient, framed by stars that did not belong to any natural night. They seemed to shimmer as if alive, as if each faint spark was an eye waiting to blink.
His thoughts ran dark. Beautiful? Maybe. Before the stars came, before they bled madness into everything they touched. Before people turned into crawling pieces of flesh with crying faces. Now all I see is rot dressed as destiny.
He did not share that aloud. Instead, he muttered, "Doesn't matter what they were. All that matters is what's left... and how to survive it."
Daryl gave him a long look, maybe sensing the wall Ashfall kept around himself, then sighed and leaned back against the wall. "Fair enough. Still, I keep wondering where Uka and Ryn went. Can't shake the feeling they're not far. Maybe they'll catch up."
Ashfall's lips twitched at the name. He saw the image again; the begging hand, the desperate eyes, and Ryn's pistol answering instead of mercy. He shoved it down, burying the memory where it couldn't show on his face. "Maybe," he said flatly.
The silence after that was broken only by the wind.
Around them, the Minor Mythbornes had started to crawl back into sight. Their shapes were inconsistent: some were only the size of cats, others no larger than a fist, all of them twisted, hunched clumps of quivering flesh dragging themselves forward on malformed limbs. Faces appeared where no faces should be, mouths carved into their bodies, tiny eyes leaking tears that froze against the snow.
Ashfall gripped the combat knife strapped to his thigh. The handle was cold against his palm, but grounding. He stepped away from Daryl and toward the nearest Mythborne. It hissed with a wet sound like air escaping a broken lung, before it dragged itself toward him.
One clean motion. The blade pierced down, silencing it with a wet crunch.
Another crawled closer, larger, its small arms flailing as if begging for something. Ashfall struck again, wiping the black ichor from his blade on the edge of his sleeve.
Keep moving. Keep killing. Each one pushes the clock forward... with abilities like Ryn I could survive better in this hell.
In the reflection of the knife, faint but undeniable, the clock on his left pupil seemed to twitch. The hour hand remained at twelve, but the minute hand moved. Each kill was a step, however small, toward something more. Toward survival or corruption. He wasn't sure yet which it would be.
Daryl watched him with unease in his eyes. "You make it look easy."
"It isn't," Ashfall replied, crouching to slit another Mythborne that had gotten too close. "It's just necessary."
The hours dragged. The sky grew darker, though time itself meant nothing under the eternal gaze of the Clock above. Ashfall kept killing the stragglers, each one different, each one somehow worse than the last. Daryl tried to help with his pistol, but his shots were shaky, wasted, ane barely hitting.
And then, as if the world wanted to mock them, a voice cut through the silence.
"Looks like you've been busy."
Ashfall spun, blade ready, only to see Ryn approaching casually from between two ruined houses. He wore the same crooked smile as always, one that seemed friendly until you looked too closely.
Daryl jumped to his feet, relief flooding his face. "Ryn! Thank god, man. Where's Uka? Did you—"
Ryn shook his head slowly, lips curving as if savoring the taste of his lie. "I tried. I really did. But the Mythbornes overwhelmed him. He fought well, but… they dragged him under. He's one of them now."
The words hung in the air like a blade. Ashfall's jaw tightened, but he said nothing. He had already seen the truth, and the truth was far uglier than Ryn's polished lie. But to speak it aloud would change nothing.
Daryl's shoulders sagged. He looked down, muttering something Ashfall didn't catch, then forced himself to straighten. "Then it's just us three now. Fine. We'll make it work."
Ryn spread his hands, ever the actor. "Exactly. Which means we need a plan if we're going to reach that city before we freeze or get eaten alive."
Ashfall sheathed his knife, though his eyes never left Ryn. A plan. Or another chance for you to pick who lives and who dies, snake.
They huddled together in the ruins, drawing rough paths in the frost on the ground. Daryl suggested sticking to the main road; Ryn argued the side streets would be safer. Ashfall listened, saying little, his thoughts elsewhere. Each moment wasted here felt like another invitation for the monsters lurking in the dark.
Then, without warning, the sky above them cracked with a bright flare of red; a signal flare.
It burst high over the rooftops in the distance, bleeding color into the gray sky, then faded into smoke. For a moment, the ruins were painted in its glow, shadows stretching like claws.
Daryl's head snapped up. "A signal? That means others are alive out there!"
Ryn's smile widened, eyes glittering with something Ashfall didn't trust. "Or it means someone wants us to think so. Either way, it's worth investigating."
Ashfall's thoughts were colder. Or it's bait. A trap set by desperate hands. But sitting here waiting to die isn't an option either.
Daryl looked between them. "Then what? Do we go?"
Ashfall's voice was low, steady. "We move. Now."
They ran through broken alleys, over collapsed walls, past shadows that reached for them with too many fingers. The ruins blurred together as they followed the dying smoke of the flare. The sound of their boots echoed through the silence, chased by whispers that could have been the wind or could have been something else.
At last, they climbed onto the roof of a collapsed gas station, the metal groaning under their weight. From there, they could see across the ruins, toward where the flare had risen. The horizon was dark, but something—someone—waited there.
Ashfall narrowed his eyes, his hand tightening on the knife at his belt.
Whoever fired that signal… they'd better be worth the risk.