Two days later, a pinion-juniper forest spat us out at the remains of an eroded highway. The street was overrun with shrubs, wild grasses, fallen trees, and gnarled tree roots, and I might have mistaken the pass for a streambed if it weren't for the husks of rusty vehicles stippling the roadside.

I didn't need to touch the pavement to date this place; the area hadn't been touched in centuries. And, if my intuition could be trusted, it wasn't simply because of the drought.

"We're here," Beckett said, pulling up beside me on his muscular steed. "The Gritz, in all its glory."

My gaze slid across the vast landscape. To my right, the mountainous Rim spanned the earth like a cresting wave, and to my left, an endless meadow replaced an ancient crop field. On either side of the overgrown highway, I could spot a handful of human-made structures: barns, ranch houses, homes, storefronts. Evidence of inhabitants. Proof of a time before recorded history.

Excitement and trepidation hatched in my gut, and I urged Frank forward, pretending I didn't hear his petulant huff.

The mustang wasn't too keen on our trajectory. He and the other horses moved slowly across plates of asphalt, wary of our surroundings, almost like they could sense the wrongness in the air, the scars of civilization. And among their riders, no one spoke a word.

From the safety of the highway, I noticed the structures we passed were either reduced to heaps of rotten wood and concrete, burned to a crisp by wildfire, or infested by nature herself. Trees, shrubs, and ivy grew through broken windows and chimneys, while open doorways coughed up mud and sand. Every once in a while, though, I was welcomed by the sight of a residence that had withstood the apocalypse, and its resilience left me both awed and uneasy.

"I don't like it here," Mason said, the first to break our silent streak. He clutched his bow in his dominant hand as he glared at the cluster of buildings on the horizon.

"Me neither," Valerie whispered. "It's way too quiet."

"It's a good thing we've got you two, then," Will muttered.

I glanced back at him, grateful for his sense of humor in this moment, but the concern in his eyes made my stomach flop.

An anxious Will was never a good sign.

"Should we head back into the tree line?" I asked Beckett.

The soldier shook his head. "We're breaking away from the Rim now. Our destination is southeast."

"So, straight through the ghost town, then?"

He tilted his head at me, and I didn't appreciate his wry, twitching grin. "You wouldn't be afraid now, would you, Kingsley? After all you've been through?"

I frowned. If anything, my experiences had chipped away at my brazen recklessness, leaving behind a statue of paranoia. "I always wanted to learn more about our history, about the Crash. To see the world as it existed before. But this...isn't what I expected," I confessed. "I feel like a trespasser, not a time traveler."

He squinted at the southern horizon. "I felt the same, my first time cutting through this territory. All those theories and conspiracies feel moot when you're standing on the bones of your ancestors." He nodded at a field of rusty car parts and concrete pillars. "One moment they were filling their engines with gasoline, hoping to make it home before the evening rush. And the next, life as they knew it ceased to exist." He wet his windburned lips. "The reality is, it could happen to any of us—and that's a concept humanity has never been able to cope with."

My eyes found the deteriorating buildings again, and I wondered how many pockets of humanity had collapsed before the Crash. Kingdoms and empires expected to prevail for eternity all turned to dust, their records erased, their triumphs forgotten. Islands flooded in seawater or lava, civilizations wiped out again and again. Even our closest relatives were likely eradicated by Homo sapiens, cleansed from the earth. And now here we were, the last of us, battling our greatest enemy yet.

If we won this war once and for all...would the cycle finally end?

Could it?

Eventually, we reached the little town named after a spring, and like the surrounding rural areas, the structures here were also in ruins. That being said, it was evident a battle had taken place on city soil. Buildings had been blown to bits or burned to the ground. Cars had piled up at certain intersections, as if people had tried to flee all at once. And at several city corners, piles of rusty bullet shells littered the asphalt.

Perhaps there had been a skirmish over local resources, or a turf war after the Crash — it was impossible to tell. But whatever happened here, it was clear the Patrons had robbed the area of any useful supplies in the aftermath. There was nothing left in this place that signaled human life. Just ashes.

Flag poles, and what I imagined to be ancient streetlights, stood erect, like corroded palisades warning us not to proceed, and I nervously ran my fingers through Frank's mane. Maybe if I offered him enough treats and friendly pats on this journey, he wouldn't ditch me at the first sign of danger.

We moved soundlessly down a street overgrown with wild plants, skirting the remnants of a church, a shopping center, and a school. A thousand questions swirled in my brain, and I knew I could spend weeks here gathering information and documenting new memories of the Ancients.

This town was a library of intel, a world of secrets. And in many ways, my own personalized playground.

As we approached what resembled a residential neighborhood, I saw a flash of movement in the corner of my eye, and I sucked in a startled breath.

I tugged on the reins, halting Frank in place. But as I scanned the stretch of yellow grass, all I detected was an old swing set in someone's yard. The ancient seats swayed in the breeze, squeaking on their hinges. Seemingly untouched.

"Need to stretch my legs," I announced quietly, sliding off Frank, who loosed a relieved sigh.

"Here?" Mason complained.

"Just for a sec."

Disregarding my party's objections, I made my way over to the swing set, compelled by curiosity and a nugget of apprehension. The equipment wasn't nearly as rusty and weather-worn as I'd expected—the chains were still intact, and the metal seats hadn't deteriorated yet. Even the grass beneath the swings didn't appear as overgrown as the rest of the yard.

Odd...

"Water break," Beckett told the others, dismounting his horse to follow me. "Refuel. Don't wander."

My gut told me there was something wrong about this town, this graveyard with empty graves. And perhaps it was just winter in the Gritz, just nerves eating away at my confidence. But when I'd ignored my intuition in the past, I'd almost died.

I refused to bury my suspicions this time.

After unzipping the leather patch on my glove, I grasped one of the frigid chains with my bare palm and embraced the burst of white light that followed.

As soon as my corneas recovered, a deluge of strange images bombarded my brain. Sparks and machinery. A middle-aged man assembling parts on a lawn. Days of blue sky and sunshine, and nights beneath the stars. A young girl clasping the chains and propelling herself higher and higher in the air. Later, a toddler screaming in delight as his parents pushed him back and forth.

After a thousand snippets of of joy and laughter, the toddler was grown. At ten years old, he sat on the swing in silence, clasping the chains like a life raft. I couldn't see what he was looking at, but columns of smoke and fire danced in his eyes, and his heartbeat shuddered through the swing set. In the distance, women screamed for help while men barked desperate orders. Then something exploded in a burst of heat, and the boy dashed away.

After that, I expected reels of weather patterns and animal visitors. Perhaps a curious Patron or two. But instead, the cycle continued with random children stumbling upon the swing set—some physically deformed, some malnourished, and every single one of them haunted and unsmiling.

The realization hit me in the chest, and I was about to release my hold on the memories when I saw it: a pale child dressed in animal leathers and ratty clothes.

She sat silently on her swing, her bored eyes watching a group of strangers approach. Waiting for us to arrive, observing us from afar, and scrambling away before any of us spotted her.

I swore and yanked my hand back, glaring at the red crescent on my palm.

Beckett reached out to steady me. "What is it? What'd you see?"

My gaze fell to the small footprints in the mud. Footprints leading straight to the house behind us.

"Beckett...someone's still living here," I breathed.

I expected astonishment, but he just nodded, already three steps ahead of me. "I spotted several shadows a few blocks ago." He turned to the others. "Time to split."

Valerie froze, and her horse craned its neck to feast on the remaining grains in her outstretched hand. "Come again?"

"We're being stalked, and I'm going to investigate," he replied calmly. "The rest of you need to make yourselves scarce, or they'll think we're here to cause trouble. Keep your beasts quiet. We'll rendezvous at the other end of town by sundown."

"Why don't we just fight them off together?" Mason suggested. "We can take a couple of uncivilized hermits. Kingsley can fry them all in seconds anyway."

"We still don't know their numbers. And fighting humans with no military training is a last resort." He didn't have to voice the, "Do as you're told," we all heard at the end of his sentence.

"I'm coming with you," I decided, and Will and Mason scowled in unison.

Beckett snorted. "I figured you would. Just wait for my signal before you do anything rash."

"Fine."

As Beckett tied his horse to an old street sign, I handed Frank's reins over to Will, deciding we'd better stick to one getaway horse, and preferably, one who actually minded his rider.

Will stared at me for a moment, those dark, knowing eyes swimming with distress. But he didn't doubt my ability to handle it alone, and he didn't protest.

"See you in a bit," I whispered.

He hesitated. Then he leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek—right at the edge of my mouth.

"In a bit," he repeated.

The gesture left me breathless, and a little too warm in my layers, but I managed another reassuring smile. Satisfied, he mounted his black stallion and wandered off into the ghost town with Frank and Richard at his side.

Valerie and Torian reluctantly followed, and Mason was the last to leave, glaring at me over his shoulder like a mother dropping off a child with behavioral issues.

I shooed him along, and he flipped me off.

Once they were out of sight, Beckett and I turned to analyze the old house behind the swing set. It was a single-story home, the paint completely stripped from the wooden paneling. A section of the roof had collapsed, burying one end of the house in rubble, and the other half housed a variety of weeds, vermin, and mushrooms.

Beckett motioned for me to stay put as he approached the front door, and I busied myself with the swings, acting like I didn't just see the soldier vanish into the building with his sword in hand.

Ten seconds passed in unbearable silence.

Then twenty seconds. Thirty.

Forty.

Fifty seconds in, a loud bang pierced the air. A harsh, resounding bang I'd only ever heard in my nightmares.

Gunshot!

I sprinted for the house before I could even process my horror.

A wrecking ball of adrenaline, I barged through the open door into a tarnished kitchen covered in dead grass and fallen bricks. Scat and rat droppings littered the ground, and cobwebs adorned the ceiling. But I could barely absorb the details. My heart was beating too loud, too hard, too fast.

Someone has a gun, Al. Someone's been shot.

Beckett.

Where's Beckett?

Panicking, I sped around a pile of rubble to the living room, and my tongue turned to sand.

I found Beckett face-down on the floor, covered in blood. He wasn't moving, and his sword lay abandoned at his feet. I couldn't tell if he was breathing from here, and I was almost too scared to check.

At the other end of the room, a bearded man dressed in deer skins—over six feet tall and thin as bones—stood with a shotgun in his arms. His eyes were blown wide, and there was an instability there I didn't trust. A wildness I couldn't.

Refusing to die by gunpowder, I slapped my exposed palm to the wall beside me, and the man immediately dropped to the ground unconscious.

Somewhere in the shadows, a child screamed for her guardian, and I moved for Beckett. But before I could tend to him, a heavy weight flew from the kitchen and tackled me to the ground.

We hit the floor with a crunch, wrestling one another in a tangle of limbs. For a moment, my whole world was cold hands, sharp nails, and raging brown eyes.

"Witch!" the force shrieked, climbing on top of me.

A gangly woman garbed in animal hides and furs pinned me to the floorboards. Her gray hair fell in matted clumps around her gaunt, grimy face, and she reeked of spoiled meat.

"Demon!" she spat between yellow teeth, practically frothing at the mouth. Her nails cut into my skin like broken glass. "He told us they'd send you!"

My throat swelled with terror.

I'd never met a human so unhinged, so rabid. Even Pans proved they could rationalize and converse with me when my life was on the line. But this woman was out to murder me with her bare hands, no questions asked.

I tried to twist my palm over in hopes of using the floor as a channel, but she was too fast. Seizing a knife from the folds of her pelt, she stabbed the meat of my hand with her entire weight, staking the center of my palm and slicing through the juncture of nerves, tendons, and muscle there. Straight through my hand into the decaying wood.

Griiiiitz!

I howled in pain as dark spots flooded my vision, then an ocean of tears.

Okay.

That one hurt.

Flailing, I drew my hand to my lips, attempting to unzip the other glove with my teeth. But the woman slammed that arm to the floor too, crushing my wrist. Then, with her free hand, she fumbled with my belt and removed a combat knife from its sheath — the same one I'd won off Koji in a backgammon game.

Saltwater rolled down my cheeks as I frantically shook my head from side to side. Searching for words. For reason. "No! Stop, please! I didn't kill him. He's—"

She drove the knife through the middle of my left hand, and I almost blacked out from the wave of agony shooting up my arm.

It had been weeks since I'd tasted the sting of frozen metal. The fiery pulse of damaged nerves.

I hadn't missed it.

My body trembled with pain, and I ground my teeth to prevent myself from screaming again. I didn't want to alert the others yet. Not when we'd brought swords and arrows to a gun fight.

For all I knew, my friends would be running straight into an ambush, and I wasn't about to play a part in that plan.

Blood pooled around either blade hilt, and I couldn't feel my fingers. I was pinned to the ground like an insect, like a butterfly tacked to a board. And worst of all, I couldn't sense my power — the pain was too intense, my inner strength too subtle. Finding the link between spirits was impossible right now, and with my mind so frazzled, there was absolutely zero chance of me pulling the same stunt I had back in Havenbrooke. Not with the slightest degree of accuracy, anyway.

I was stuck.

I was trapped.

Panting, I glanced over at Beckett's body, begging for a sign of life. If I focused hard enough, I could just make out the rise and fall of his torso, and I gasped out in relief.

Alive. For now...

"The Bishop's okay," the young girl whispered, crouching beside the sleeping gunman. "Just knocked out."

The woman held my helpless gaze, unwilling to take her eyes off me, but a feral grin spread across her face at the news. "Good," she said. "Then he'll get to watch her burn."

**************************************************************

A few days late, but I blame it on the Rona. Finally got me after two years. T_T

Hope you guys enjoyed! <3