Kade shifted her weight, boots grinding against cracked concrete as she watched Briggs' squad advance up the street. The ruins behind them swallowed sound, only the faint metallic clink of gear and the occasional squawk of gulls above breaking the quiet. The gate to the Ebonwake Conclave stood ajar, a rust-stained relic of better days, and the marines flanked it in a loose semicircle.

  Briggs led the approach, his silhouette unmistakable even in the dim afternoon haze. Tall, square-shouldered, with that infuriatingly confident walk like he’d already scouted the path ten steps ahead. Beside him walked a shorter figure in armor marked with faded solar iconography. Maria Stone, the sun cleric. Smart addition. Kade didn't want a repeat of the Warehouse Seventeen operation. That plus, if she was remembering a conversation with Lawson back in Newport correctly, Sun Clerics were more effective against undead.

  Kade didn’t wave. Didn’t smile. Just waited.

  “Briggs! Good to see you. Glad you could catch up," Lawson said. "Have any problems on the way over?"

  "Couple of small engagements, Lieutenant, but nothing we couldn't handle." Briggs said, "Courier was light on details. What's the situation?"

  "We’re moving south. Investigate two cemetery sites and determine what we're dealing with. We check both. Clean up what we can.”

  Briggs gave a curt nod, already scanning the terrain behind them. “Sneak and peek, then smash? We bringing tourists?”

  Kade jerked her chin toward the gate. Mireya stood beside Elara, gesturing animatedly with one hand while her floating crystal bobbed beside her like a smug pet. Across from them stood the Ebonwake administrator, her hair pulled into a severe bun and her expression marked by tired eyes, nodding with polite disinterest.

  “The one on the left is some type of fire mage, Elara,” Kade said, keeping her voice low. “The one with the mouth is Mireya. Researcher.”

  “Sounds like this is going to be fun,” Briggs asked.

  Lawson’s tone cooled. "The excitement never stops."

  Kade let that sit. Mireya’s presence wasn’t helpful, no matter how the Conclave wanted to frame it. She watched everything with the cool precision of someone who didn’t expect to get her hands dirty and didn’t seem concerned if anyone else did. The way she tracked people always felt just a step outside of human. Like a quartermaster counting supplies, reducing lives to inventory. It made Kade’s skin itch.

  “We’ll keep our leash short, then,” Briggs muttered.

  Maria stepped forward, tapping the edge of her mace lightly against her leg. “Captain Voss sent me along, Ma'am. I'm pleased to be working with you again.”

  “It's great to have you aboard, Maria,” Kade said, smiling. "Alright, the party is all here. Briggs, let's move out while we still have some light."

  Briggs gave a low whistle and motioned his squad forward. They slipped into place behind Lawson’s marines without a word, boots moving in rhythm. In total, they had twelve fighters, two officers, one sergeant, one cleric, and a pair of researchers. It was quite a cadre. Though their gear was worn and stained, and their armor dulled by combat and hard use, they had a solid presence. Not parade-ground polished, but proven, Kade mused to herself.

  Together, the formation pushed through the gate, a unified force fanning out in careful lanes as they left the Ebonwake Conclave behind. The contrast was immediate. Inside the walls, order still clung to the stone and steel. Outside, there was nothing but ruin.

  The land south of the gate unraveled fast. Suburbia had turned feral. Asphalt lay cracked and buckled beneath creeping roots. Patches of fungal bloom burst from drainage grates and open sewer lines, feeding on the rot. Trees leaned low over the road, branches clawing into the sagging roofs of houses that had already collapsed under whatever abuse they had seen over the last couple of weeks. Vines knotted around broken fences and rusted playgrounds, growing fat off the damp.

  The air felt wrong too as a fog rolled in. Thicker. Heavy with the weight of places left unwatched for too long.

  Street signs tilted at odd angles, some half-swallowed by ivy, others dangling from rusted bolts like snapped bones. And the windows gave the sense of something watching. Not eyes exactly, just a presence. Kade couldn't say for sure, but it felt like there was a gloom component to the world event because she had noticed none of this when she had taken Myer's squad to Warehouse Seventeen. Sure, there was the destruction and general post-cataclysm feel to everything, but this felt different. Almost oppressive.

  They kept tight formation, Briggs and Lawson alternating point while Kade drifted near the rear to monitor the pair of researchers. They passed an overturned school bus, its roof collapsed inward. Mireya stopped briefly, her orb humming with a pale blue glow as it captured something only she could see. Kade didn’t ask what. Didn’t care. Her job was keeping everyone breathing, not deciphering academic mysteries.

  It wasn’t just the silence that pressed in. It was the wrongness beneath it, the sense that something had been peeled away. A few blocks back, they could still hear the distant cries of gulls, the occasional bark from feral dogs running loose through the ruins. Now, nothing. No wind through the streets, no creak of shifting metal or birdsong. Just nothing.

  Kade marked the details. An empty stroller stood in the middle of a cracked sidewalk, tilted as if it had been dropped mid-step. A bike remained chained to a stop sign, untouched, the front wheel half-turned like the rider had stopped to listen and never moved again. Someone's briefcase sitting against the wall as if put down while someone went to tie their shoes.

  “If a haunted construction site had a hangover, it’d look like this,” one marine whispered.

  None of it felt abandoned. It felt paused.

  As the road curved east, the fog thickened. Low clouds pressed in, turning the daylight flat and gray. Ahead, the remains of I-295 rose in a slow, skeletal arc. The steel girders caught what little light there was. The bridge stretched across the bay in a long, exposed run with no cover and a twenty-five foot drop to the water. From a tactical perspective, it was a poor route, but unless they wanted to waste hours swinging farther up the bay, it was the only option that kept them on any sort of schedule.

  The north end of the bridge was mostly intact. One of the northbound lanes had broken away near the midpoint and fallen into the bay, the concrete snapped clean through like something had punched it from beneath. There were no scorch marks or signs of impact. It just ended. Whatever did it wasn’t obvious, and that bothered Kade more than she liked. The remaining lanes looked stable enough, but the surface was uneven and cracked. Farther ahead, a few cars sat at awkward angles near the far guardrail, some half-submerged, others abandoned mid-turn.

  Lawson raised a hand, and the entire column halted.

  “Hold position,” he said.

  Briggs moved up beside him. “Bridge?”

  “Looks stable enough,” he replied. “Problem is everything else.”

  Kade stepped forward. “Set perimeter. Five-minute break. We scan, then cross.”

  She didn’t wait for confirmation. Her gaze followed the curve of the bridge to the far end, where the fog thickened and the light took on a darker cast. Trying to pick up on whatever Lawson had seen. The wind shifted just enough to carry the smell of salt and wet metal, but it wasn’t enough to clear the sense that something ahead was watching. She tried zooming in with her eyepatch, but if there was something watching, it stayed out of reach.

  Briggs gave a soft whistle and gestured toward his squad. The marines shifted positions, tightening formation along the sides. His unit fanned out along the western and eastern edges of the embankment, weapons loose but ready. Lawson’s squad kept their eyes north, backs to the ruins they’d just marched through.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” Lawson said quietly.

  Kade didn’t answer immediately. She let her eyepatch enhance what it could, but the magnification only brought back blur and movement that might have been tricks of light or something worse.

  “No carrion birds,” she muttered. “No, nothing, actually.”

  Briggs gave a low grunt. “Road’s clear for the first thirty meters, then we’ve got a mess. Wrecked cars, maybe two layers deep.”

  “Yeah,” Kade replied. “But we don’t have a better option.”

  "Where is a JTAC when you need one on the team?" Lawson deadpanned.

  Kade gave a soft chuckle before responding, "I too would love an airstrike, but unless you've got a dragon or workable airframe in your pocket, we're out of luck."

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  They traded glances. It was a terrible choice, but the only one available.

  In the middle of the column, Mireya gestured toward the bridge with visible impatience.

  “This delay is unnecessary,” she said, tone sharp with frustration. “It’s a bridge. You cross it. Instead, we’re wasting time staring at nothing when there are actual anomalies worth investigating. If we’d just move forward, I could start pulling preliminary data on the world event.”

  Elara looked as if she were going to say something but changed her mind as her jaw opened and closed several times.

  Kade stood from her crouch. “You’ll get your data, Doctor. However, for the moment, I'm more concerned with getting there in one piece.”

  Mireya opened her mouth again, but Kade raised a hand before she could say more. Then she looked back at Briggs and Lawson.

  “Let’s move. Two columns. We take it slow. Everyone has a head on a swivel. Call out anything that even twitches wrong.”

  Kade raised her hand and gave the signal to move.

  Lawson relayed it down the line, two fingers slicing forward in tight arcs. The squads broke from their hold at the top of the northern embankment and moved in formation, boots striking pavement in measured cadence. The group flowed into two staggered columns, one hugging each side of the broken roadway. No one spoke.

  The I-295 bridge stretched ahead, flanked by fog and water. Burned-out vehicles choked both southbound lanes, the burnt skeletons of sedans and cargo vans leaning against each other like drunks at closing hour. The far side remained a blur in the gray, swallowed by low cloud and distance.

  Kade took the rear third, her cutlass at the ready, gaze sweeping the wreckage. Mireya, Elara, and Maria Stone walked behind Briggs’ marines. The researcher’s orb drifted at shoulder height, casting intermittent pulses of blue light. She muttered to herself, eyes bouncing from corpse to concrete, cataloging some invisible checklist.

  They reached the first wreck cluster, where a jackknifed delivery truck blocked the left lane. The squads split, working around both sides. Lawson paused to scan the cars ahead with a narrowed gaze, then moved on without a word.

  The fog felt heavier now. Thick enough that Kade couldn’t see the water on either side. Just outlines, motionless and flat, pressing in like the world had narrowed to a single corridor.

  A few meters ahead, she spotted the remains. Bone piles scattered between abandoned vehicles and shattered glass. There humanoid skeletons still tangled in decayed scraps of uniform or torn clothing. Those weren't the only remains, however. Intermixed with the piles of skeleton bones were half a dozen rodentia corpses. Their bodies were intact, fur matted with blood, wounds still sharp-edged and recent.

  Kade crouched beside one of the rodentia corpses. A deep cut ran along its side. Not a work of a scavenger accident. This had been a fight, and it hadn’t happened long ago. The blood on the rodentia hadn’t fully dried. Dark and tacky, it clung to fur and metal like the fight had ended hours ago, not days.

  Behind her, Mireya let out a quiet sound of interest.

  “This wasn’t random. These kills are recent and concentrated near the wreckage. That pattern suggests a deliberate engagement.” Her orb rose slightly, casting pale blue light across the scene.

  "Elara, watch your charge. This feels off," Kade said. "Everyone else fan out."

  The mage gave a curt nod and moved back into formation. Stone stepped forward, eyes narrowing at the bone piles. Her hand hovered near her belt.

  "These bones weren't scavenged," she said. “It almost looks as if they walked here on their own with the way they're scattered.”

  Kade didn’t like that. She didn’t like any of it. They pushed forward.

  The bridge narrowed again near the midpoint. A transit bus leaned at an angle across both lanes, front wheels up on the concrete siderail. Its windows were blackened with soot, and the rear door hung half open, swinging gently in the still air.

  Movement flickered behind the glass.

  Kade stopped.

  A beat passed. Two. Then, the windows exploded outward.

  Bone and steel tore free in a blur of motion. Skeletons burst from the bus interior in waves, some clambering down the sides, others diving straight through glass and metal. Ribs scraped along twisted seats, blades catching the fog as they rushed the column.

  “Front contact!” Briggs bellowed, already surging forward with his axe raised.

  There were more than a dozen skeletons, but three stood out to Kade.

  [Analyze] Skeletal Stalker | Level: 7 Elite | Status: Hostile | Class: Dark Ranger

  [Analyze] Skeletal Bonechanter | Level: 7 Elite | Status: Hostile | Class: Death Mage

  [Analyze] Skeletal Deadeye | Level: 8 Elite | Status: Hostile | Class: Gunslinger

  Elite types. These weren’t just bones with better gear. They had roles, coordination, and threat coverage. While Kade didn't have enough data to go on, it looked like the world event might be building better encounters instead of just spawning random monsters.

  Marines shifted into position, blades clearing scabbards in a single motion. The front line met the charge head-on, axes swinging and cutlasses striking low. Lawson moved to anchor the left flank while Briggs’ squad pushed to the right, covering angles and plugging gaps. A few crossbows snapped off shots from the second line, bolts thudding into bone just before the lines collided.

  Kade closed with the nearest threat and ducked under a wild spear thrust. She caught the skeleton’s arm with one hand, twisted, and drove her cutlass into its jaw, splitting the skull clean through. Bone fragments scattered across the pavement.

  To her left, Elara raised a hand and let fly a bolt of flame. It tore through the air and struck the Skeletal Bonechanter mid-charge, blasting it apart in a burst of heat and cracked ribs.

  The Skeletal Stalker stepped out from behind the bus, wrapped in strips of rotted leather and with its crossbow raised. The bolt it loosed flew faster than it should have. It caught Elara high in the thigh and drove deep.

  She went down hard, one hand clutching the wound, the other still trying to summon fire.

  Mireya made no move to help. She crouched behind a car, orb spinning as she recorded the chaos, voice low and analytical as if she were observing weather patterns, not a live ambush.

  Stone moved next. The cleric lifted her hand and shouted a word that rang with a resonance deeper than her voice. A bolt of radiant energy exploded from her palm and vaporized three skeletons in a flash of holy light. The force sent the rest staggering.

  Then Kade saw it.

  [Analyze] Skeletal Tideburner | Level: 12 Rare | Status: Hostile | Class: War Mage

  A taller skeleton, bones blackened and cracked, emerged from the other side of the wrecked bus. A jagged circlet of coral wrapped its skull like a crown, strands of kelp trailing from its spine. It raised both hands, fingers curled into fists.

  The spell came fast, a black bolt that hissed through the air with a sound like boiling oil. It hissed past Kade, striking metal and spreading rot in its wake. Whatever this thing was, it wasn’t just another corpse.

  Kade used her Boots of the Gale Rider to propel her forward and closed the distance without a word.

  The crowned skeleton raised its arms again, weaving another spell with fingers that crackled with dark intent. Kade didn’t give it a chance. She shifted low, boots sliding across broken pavement, and drove her shoulder into its hip. The caster staggered sideways, balance disrupted. Before it could recover, she hooked her leg behind its knee and kicked outward.

  She followed it down to the ground. One hand clamped around the thing’s forearm as it flailed. She slammed her elbow into the joint, once, twice, until the bone cracked and snapped free. The limb dangled in her grip like a club. She didn’t hesitate.

  Kade shoved it back and rose with a pivot, cutlass swinging clean through the exposed vertebrae as the creature tried to rise. The skull hit the ground a heartbeat later, still wearing its kelp-wrapped crown.

  To her right, Briggs was locked in a brutal exchange, his axe carving deep into the ribcage of a spear-wielding skeleton. One of his marines went down nearby, leg caught by a blade, but another dragged him back without breaking formation.

  Lawson barked a command to pivot the flank, and his squad answered with steel. Axes hacked through ribs. Cutlasses punched past rusted weapons. Bone splintered against armor. It was fast, brutal, and ugly. Marine fighting.

  Elara had pulled herself upright, bracing against a car door, blood pouring from her thigh. Her jaw clenched tight, but her casting hand stayed steady. A firebolt flew from her palm and slammed into the archer skeleton, finally reducing it to scorched ash.

  Mireya didn’t flinch. She adjusted her position slightly, eyes locked on the aftermath of the explosion, her orb spinning faster now, documenting every frame of the carnage like it was a controlled experiment.

  Kade didn’t care. She’d deal with Mireya’s moral compass later, assuming she had one.

  A sharp crack of gunfire split the air a fraction of a second before something slammed into her left pauldron, jolting her off balance. The round skipped off the armor and whined past her head, close enough to scrape air. Her tricorn hat flew off, spun once, and disappeared into the fog.

  She didn’t stop to watch where it went. Hopefully, she'd be able to recover it once the fight was over.

  The Skeletal Deadeye stood at the far edge of the nearby pickup truck. It held its pistol steady, tracking her with cold precision as it chambered the next shot. Kade surged forward, boots finding grip on shattered pavement. She dropped low and closed the distance before the skeleton could fire again. At the last step, she triggered Blade Whirl.

  Her cutlass became a blur in her hands, the strikes landing faster than the creature could recover. The first slash tore across its chest. The next took the gun hand clean at the wrist, sending the weapon tumbling. Bone hit steel, fingers still curled around the grip.

  She didn’t let up. The third strike tore into its ribs, the fourth crushed its shoulder and knocked it sideways into the wreckage. The skeleton sprawled across the rusted fender of a pickup, already falling apart. Kade stepped in and drove the spiked pommel of her cutlass into its skull, shattering bone and ending the threat.

  A second wave of undead charged in from the sides of the bus. These were sloppier, with less armor and more missing limbs, but they were fast.

  Stone stepped forward, hand raised again. Her voice rang out, and a wave of radiant energy burst forward, catching five skeletons mid-stride. They crumbled instantly, bones turned to dust under the weight of divine fire.

  Kade turned to meet the last one still standing. It came in swinging, the sword wide and off-balance. She stepped into the arc and caught its arm mid-swing, twisting hard. Her cutlass locked against the skeleton’s weapon, and as she torqued the joint, the blades tangled. Her cutlass wrenched free from her grip and clattered to the pavement.

  She didn’t stop.

  Kade drove a fist into the side of its skull, bone splintering under the impact. The skeleton staggered, but she stayed close. Her elbow crashed into the exposed joint of its neck, and with a sharp crack, the head dropped loose and tilted back at an unnatural angle. The body twitched once before folding in on itself.

  On the far right, a pair of marines teamed up on a shield-bearing undead, baiting it into overextending. One caught its weapon with the hook of a boarding axe while the other stepped in and crushed the skull with a downward swing.

  Briggs let out a sharp whistle as the last of them fell. “Clear your zones. Make sure there are no surprises left!”

  The squads spread out to check the bus, cars, and other ambush spots. With weapons still ready, eyes scanned the fog-choked bridge.

  Nothing moved as a chorus of all clear messages came from the Marines.

  The noise of battle had faded, replaced by the sound of boots on broken pavement and the low groan of someone applying pressure to a wound.

  Kade stood in the middle of it all, catching her breath and waiting for another penny to drop. She turned her head slowly, taking in the spread of bones, scorched steel, and holy residue that still shimmered faintly in the air.

  "Stone, triage the wounded. Briggs, get some men and gather up any useful loot," Kade said. "I want to be off this bridge in no more than five minutes."

  "And someone find my hat!"

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