The fortress at the mountain pass did not feel like a sanctuary. It felt like a pressure cooker, a stone-walled vessel designed to contain the concentrated misery of a dying world. As the sun began its descent behind the jagged peaks, casting long, bruised shadows across the valley, the air grew thick with the scent of unwashed bodies, the metallic tang of the purple-tinted soil, and the low, constant thrum of human desperation.

  I didn't wait for Lord Vance to finish his grim calculations. I didn't wait for Barnaby to count the coin. I ran.

  My lungs burned, the cold, thin mountain air scratching at my throat as I scrambled up the spiraling stone stairs of the central watchtower. My boots clattered against the masonry, a frantic, uneven rhythm that echoed the pounding of my heart. I reached the battlements alone, the wind howling through the crenellations, carrying with it the distant, jagged edge of that unearthly scream.

  Below, the valley was a sea of gray-purple mist. And through it, they came.

  The refugees were no longer a tide; they were a frantic, breaking wave. They stumbled over the cobbles of the pass, their silhouettes thin and skeletal. And behind them, emerging from the thickening gloom like a nightmare made of necrotic flesh, was the source of the terror.

  It was a skittering, low-slung horror. Four-legged and lizard-like, but its skin was a jagged armor of obsidian-black scales that seemed to pulse with a sickly, violet light. Its eyes were twin embers of blood-red rage, and thick, viscous saliva trailed from its maw, sizzling as it hit the stones.

  Eren appeared at the bottom of the tower, her face pale, her cat ears pinned flat against her head. She didn't speak. She didn't have to. She reached into the shimmering rift of her storage and hauled out the heavy, cold weight of the .50 caliber rifle. She slid it across the stone toward me.

  I caught it, the matte metal feeling like a leaden anchor in my hands. I dropped into a prone position, the cold stone of the tower floor biting into my skin. I didn't feel the power of the weapon. I only felt the crushing responsibility of it.

  I adjusted the optics. The world narrowed.

  Eight times zoom. The mist cleared, replaced by the high-definition reality of a slaughter. The creature had caught up to the stragglers. In the center of the crosshairs, I saw him. A young man, his face a mask of gaunt, final terror. He was struggling, his thin arms pushing against the massive, scaly head of the lizard as its jaws unhinged. Beside him, a little girl in a tattered red coat stood frozen, her blue eyes wide, her hands clutching at the air where her father’s hand had been just a second before.

  The creature’s mouth opened wide, a cavern of rotting teeth and violet fire. It bit the man’s torso in a single, wet crunch.

  My finger tightened on the trigger. Steady.

  BOOM.

  The rifle kicked like a mule, the shockwave rattling my teeth. I watched through the scope as the supersonic round shrieked across the valley. It hit the creature’s flank, and skipped. The black armor was too dense, the angle too shallow. The bullet ricocheted into the mud, leaving nothing but a spark against the obsidian scales.

  "Fuuuck," I hissed, the word a jagged rasp in the wind.

  Below me, on the lower ramparts, the fortress guards were frantic. They were hauling a massive ballista into position, their movements agonizingly slow. I watched them chanting over a heavy, iron-tipped bolt, the magic glowing a faint, useless blue. They were minutes away from a shot. The girl didn't have minutes. She had seconds.

  The creature moved, the lower half of the young man still dangling from its jaws like a discarded rag. It didn't care about the meat it had already caught. It wanted the movement. It began to trample forward, its massive, clawed feet heading straight for the girl in the red coat. She didn't run. She didn't even scream. She just stood there, staring at the thing that was eating her father.

  I cringed. I cringed so hard I felt my own skin crawl. There was only one soft spot on that monster not covered by the black sheen. The open, unhinged maw.

  I shifted the aim. The crosshairs settled on the young man’s back, the only path to the creature’s throat.

  I’m sorry, I thought, a cold, hollow void opening in my chest. I’m so sorry.

  I've not learned my mistakes from the previous war...

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  I pulled the trigger.

  The world vanished in a flash of muzzle roar. The .50 cal round, designed to punch through engine blocks and light armor, hit the man’s body. At that velocity, there was no "penetration." There was only disintegration. Through the scope, I saw the father’s remains erupt into a red mist, a cloud of bone and silk that existed for a fraction of a second before the bullet continued its path.

  The round hit true. It hammered into the back of the lizard’s throat, deep into the soft, unarmored tissues of its gullet.

  The explosion of the micro-explosive tip happened inside the creature’s skull. The lizard didn't even have time to shriek. Its head snapped back, the obsidian scales of its neck bursting outward as the internal pressure reached its limit. The massive body skittered forward another three feet on pure inertia before collapsing into a heap of twitching, black meat.

  The silence that followed was louder than the shot.

  I stayed down, my forehead resting against the cold metal of the barrel. The heat of the rifle was a mockery of the life that had just been snuffed out. I had saved the girl from being trampled, but I had been the one to erase the last of her father. I had turned a man into a tactical opening.

  I forced myself to look through the scope one more time.

  The girl in the red coat was still standing. She was covered in a fine, dark spray. She didn't look at the monster. She knelt in the mud, her small, trembling hand reaching down to scoop something up, a small trinket, a piece of wood or metal that had survived the blast. I couldn't see her face. I couldn't see if she was crying. I only saw her small, lonely silhouette against the purple mist.

  A female stranger, another refugee running with the last of her strength, reached out and scooped the girl up. She didn't stop to look at the dead. She just ran, carrying the child toward the open gates of the fortress. They disappeared into the throng of bodies, and I lost them.

  "FUUUUUCCK!"

  I rolled onto my back, the scream tearing out of me, raw and ugly. I threw the rifle aside, the heavy weapon clattering against the stone. I crumpled into a ball, my knees pulled to my chest, my hands clawing at my hair.

  I had killed starving fathers in the valley. I had killed brats who deserved it in the mansion. But this... this felt like a different kind of stain. This was a clinical, chosen cruelty.

  "Taylor?"

  Eren ran up the stairs, her footsteps soft. She saw me there, a broken thing on the floor of the tower, and she didn't try to make me stand up. She knelt beside me, her small hand resting on my shoulder.

  "You did what you had to," she whispered, her voice thick with a forced, fragile strength. "The lizard would have killed everyone in that line. You saved the girl. You saved the others."

  "I killed him, Eren," I gasped, the words catching in my throat. "I didn't just kill him. I... I destroyed him. To get a better shot."

  "He was already gone," Eren said, though her ears were drooping so low they touched her hair. "He was dead the moment it caught him. You know that."

  I didn't know that. I only knew the image in the scope.

  A dissonant shout rose from the ramparts below. One of the fortress guards, a man in a dented helm, leaned over the wall and spat into the valley. "Damn..." he muttered, loud enough for the wind to carry it to us. "Now we got more alive refugees to feed. Just what we needed."

  I sat up, a flickering in my gut, but it quickly died out, replaced by a soul-deep exhaustion. The guard wasn't a monster; he was just a man who had seen too much hunger. That was the real horror. The world had turned us all into accountants of misery.

  I looked at Eren. "I want to go back," I whispered.

  "Back to the valley?"

  "No. Back to the first day. Back to that inn near the start. We were sitting there, drinking that terrible ale, and we were talking about what we’d do when we found a city. We were planning a guild. We were happy, Eren. We were so goddamn stupid and happy."

  I looked at my hands. They were clean, but they felt heavy. "Why is life so punishing? We didn't ask for this. We just wanted a game."

  Eren didn't have an answer. She just pulled me into a hug, her small frame shaking with a silent sob of her own. We sat there on the tower, two orphans of another world, while the sun finally died and the first fires of the refugee camp began to flicker in the Twin Towns below.

  "Can we find her?" I asked after a long time. "The girl in the red coat."

  I felt a motherly tenderness I had never felt before, a sharp, protective ache that made my heart feel like it was being squeezed by wire. I wanted to find her. I wanted to tell her... I didn't even know what I wanted to tell her. That I was sorry? That the world didn't hate her? Both would be lies.

  Eren sighed. She stood up and helped me to my feet. My legs felt like lead, every step a conscious effort. She led me to the inner edge of the watchtower, pointing down into the fortress courtyard.

  A group of orphans stood in a crowded, fenced-off area near the stables. They were being processed by a tired-looking soldier with a clipboard, his face illuminated by a single torch. I scanned the crowd. There were several red coats. There were dozens of blue eyes. They all looked the same from here, small, shivering, and vacant.

  What…

  Eren looked at me. The usually joyful, mischievous sparkle in her eyes was gone, replaced by a flat, ancient sadness.

  "We can't save everybody, Taylor," she said, her voice a hollow echo of the wind. "We just do what we can."

  I looked down at the children. We were the strongest people in this valley, and yet we were completely powerless against the math of reality.

  I turned away from the wall, the empty feeling in my chest finally settling into a cold, permanent weight.

  "Let's go find Alan and Joshua," I said. "We have grain to distribute. We have to make sure they at least die with full stomachs."