He didn't have time to ponder it. More Obsidian Shades were surging from the reflections, drawn by his presence, by his guilt, by whatever made him different from the other survivors.
One Shade sliced his leg, a fresh cut across his calf that sent blood welling. Pain lanced through him, sharp and immediate. He shattered its core with a desperate swing, splinters grazing his face, more blood dripping down his jaw.
Another slashed his back, opening a wound parallel to the first. He stabbed its core, black shards nicking his already-injured arm, adding to the collection of cuts there.
Blade appeared at his side, pointing through the maze of streets. "There!" he shouted, his voice hoarse, his face covered in cuts from the fighting. "Molten river! It's the only way out of this district! Cross it and you'll reach the far side of the city!"
Bullet could see it now, a river of actual lava flowing through a channel cut in the obsidian. The heat radiating from it was intense even at a distance, making the air shimmer and warp.
"Are you crazy?" Bullet gasped. "How can I cross molten..."
"Glass bridge!" Blade pointed to a narrow span of obsidian that looked impossibly fragile. "It'll hold if you're fast! Maybe!"
Not exactly reassuring, but Bullet didn't have better options. The Shades were closing in, their clicking growing louder, their ember-veins pulsing with hunger.
He ran...or tried to. His injured leg made it more of a limping sprint. His ribs ground against each other with every movement. His broken arm swung uselessly at his side.
He leaped onto the glass bridge, and immediately the heat from below seared his soles through the bandages Blade had wrapped. His leg buckled, threatening to give out completely. His thigh wound wept fresh blood, running down to his calf.
The Shades followed, their blade-limbs slashing. One cut his leg again, opening a gash along his shin. Another grazed his arm, leaving a burning line. A third sliced his back, crossing the previous wound.
The pain was overwhelming, a symphony of agony that threatened to shut his mind down entirely.
The bridge began to crack beneath him, fissures spreading with sharp pops. Shards started falling into the lava below, hissing as they hit the molten surface.
The heat was blistering, unbearable. Bullet could feel his skin beginning to burn just from proximity to the flow beneath him.
He sprinted with everything he had left, using the pipe to anchor himself for one final leap as the bridge collapsed completely behind him.
He landed on the far side in a shower of obsidian splinters, his scorched soles barely able to support his weight. A Shade materialized in front of him, its blade slashing across his chest. The pain seared through his broken ribs, making him yelp.
He drove the pipe into its core with desperate force. Glass splashed outward as the Shade dissolved. The river roared below, its heat still reaching him even on solid ground.
All his wounds throbbed in one unified pulse of agony: leg, arm, back, chest, shoulder, thigh, ribs, face. Every part of him was damaged, bleeding, barely functional.
But he was still moving. Still alive.
A testament to survival in a world designed to kill him.
The etched shard pulsed against his thigh, its warmth spreading through his body. Spark's shard remained cool beside it...a constant, unchanging presence.
The riddles remained unanswered. Who had made the etched shard? What did the circle and jagged line mean? Why did it heal him?
His scar beat faintly but steadily over his heart, driving him forward despite the pain.
The obsidian city began to fade around him, the glass towers giving way to something else. The heat remained, but the character of it changed. Less radiant from below, more ambient in the air itself.
Province 108 materialized out of the haze ahead.
A rusted swamp of warped metal spires rising from toxic bogs. The water bubbled with chemical reactions, releasing noxious fumes. Metallic predators glinted in the murky depths, their scales catching what little light penetrated the thick air. Everything smelled of decay and rust and things rotting in stagnant water.
Rusted vines snared his cloak as he stumbled forward, pulling at the fabric. The bogs hissed when his blood dripped into them, creating small clouds of acrid steam. Shadowy shapes slithered beneath the surface. Things that were neither fully mechanical nor fully organic, but some terrible fusion of both.
The swamp was a new crucible, a fresh trial in an endless series of provinces designed to break him.
Bullet staggered forward, blood dripping from too many wounds to count. The pipe dragged in his good hand, scraping against rust-covered metal. His broken arm hung limp and useless. His wounded leg could barely support his weight. His back bled from multiple slashes. His chest bore fresh cuts across his broken ribs. His shoulder continued seeping. His thigh wept. His face was covered in small cuts that stung with each breath of toxic air.
Each step defied the collapse his body demanded. Each movement was an act of pure will against overwhelming pain.
The obsidian city faded behind him into the smog. Province 108's rust became the new reality. A trial reborn in a different form.
But his scar still pulsed. The pull still guided him through the haze. And the etched shard still warmed against his thigh, keeping him alive for reasons he didn't understand.
He was a fire burning in the dark, refusing to be snuffed out.
And somewhere ahead, whatever he was being driven toward waited.
---
Far behind Bullet's current struggle, the Seeker stood on one of Province 512's floating islands, his black cloak rippling in the wind that swept between the suspended landmasses.
The mist swirled around him, thick with its violet and amber hues. Vines dangled into the void below, swaying like pendulums counting down to something inevitable.
The Dreadwraith coiled beside him, its form adapted to this place... less solid, more smoke and shadow that matched the mist itself. Its star-like eyes flared, cutting through the haze, bound completely to the bone-tech whistle at the Seeker's belt.
Duty to the leader drove him with absolute certainty. It was everything. His purpose. His existence.
And right now, his duty had led him here, to these floating islands, following the trail of the anomaly.
A figure cowered on the mossy ground nearby...Thorn, the man who'd believed the vortex would lead him home. The Seeker had found him in Province 713's frozen tundra, wandering the ice with hollow eyes and frozen tears on his cheeks.
The Seeker had dragged him back. Back through the vortex, back to Province 512 where he belonged, back to these islands that had been his prison all along.
Thorn's eyes were empty now, completely lost. The false promise of home had broken something fundamental inside him, something that could never be repaired.
"The anomaly." the Seeker said, his voice flat and cold as steel. His blade traced a line along Thorn's throat, not cutting yet, just promising. "The scarred man who climbed through these islands. What did he say? Where was he going?"
Thorn's lips trembled. Words came out broken, disjointed. "I. I don't know. He never said. He just climbed. Following something inside him. A pull, he called it. Something in his chest that wouldn't let him stop."
"Did he mention his destination? His purpose?"
"No! Nothing!" Thorn's voice cracked. "He was just like the rest of us...lost, scarred, following something he didn't understand. But he was different somehow. Stronger. Faster. Like he was made for this." His hollow eyes found the Seeker's. "Please, I've told you everything. I don't know anything else. I just wanted to go home."
The Seeker studied him for a moment, reading the truth in that broken gaze. This man had nothing more to offer. He was useless for the hunt now. Just another survivor who'd outlived his purpose.
The Seeker thrust backward with no ceremony.
The man didn't even scream. Just fell silently into the abyss between the islands, disappearing into the mist and the endless drop below. Gone. Forgotten.
The Seeker turned toward the vortex that pulsed above the highest island, its light cutting through the haze. He knew what it did, knew it was a passage, a doorway between provinces. The leader had explained the network, the connections, the ways the realm was bound together.
The vortex led through to Province 713. The frozen tundra. And beyond that, the tundra.
The Ice Hound.
The Seeker's cold expression shifted slightly. Not quite a smile, but close. Satisfaction. Certainty.
The anomaly had survived the Mirrorheart. Had escaped the Hive-Warden's dreams. Had somehow passed the Cragmother's beasts. Each time, improbably, impossibly, he'd continued forward.
But the Ice Hound was different.
Three heads. Ancient. Bound to the ice wall itself, part of the fundamental structure of Province 713.
No one passed the Ice Hound.
The bones that decorated Frosthawk's throne were proof enough of that.
The anomaly was already wounded. The Seeker had seen the blood trail, heard the reports from survivors. Shoulder torn. Arm fractured. Leg damaged. Ribs broken. A dozen other injuries that should have stopped him provinces ago. He could never survive the Ice Hound in that condition.
"Province 713." the Seeker said to the sentinel that hovered nearby, its red eyes recording everything for transmission back to the castle. "That's where we'll find him. Dead or alive...broken on the cave floor, or frozen in the Hound's jaws."
The sentinel's eyes pulsed in acknowledgment, relaying the information across provinces to the robed man, to the leader himself.
The Seeker adjusted his cloak, his hand resting on the bone-tech whistle. There was no need to rush. No need to push through the vortex immediately and risk arriving before the inevitable conclusion.
The Ice Hound would do the work for him.
Would end the anomaly's impossible journey. Would finally stop this walking corpse that refused to die. And then the Seeker would simply walk into Province 713, through the cave, and retrieve what remained. A body to bring back to the castle. Proof that even anomalies had limits. Evidence that the realm's guardians still served their purpose.
"We wait," the Seeker said quietly, not to the sentinel, not to the Dreadwraith, to himself. "Let the tundra and the Hound finish what we started. There's no need to waste effort on a dead man walking."
The Dreadwraith coiled beside him, patient as its master. They would give it time...hours, perhaps a day. Long enough for the anomaly to reach the cave. Long enough for the Ice Hound to tear him apart. Then they would follow. Collect the pieces. Return to the castle with the hunt completed.
The Seeker settled onto the mossy ground of the floating island, his eyes fixed on the vortex above. Waiting. Patient. Duty made him patient. Made him sure.
The Hound of Ice had never failed. Not once, in all the years the realm had existed. It wouldn't fail now. The anomaly's impossible luck had finally run out.
---