Some hunts end when the prey is dead. Others end when something takes the body.
The ash-shapes moved without sound, their robes trailing across the grit without leaving marks. Where the bodies they carried brushed the air, the dust seemed to burn away.
One turned its head toward Kade. No face—just the hollow curve of a mask that wasn't there.
[NEW ENTITY DETECTED — "ASH COLLECTOR"]Behavior: Reclaims corpses. Strength increases per reclaimed unit.Priority: High.
The Mist Horse's neck arched, ears—if it had them—pinning back. Vapor boiled off its flanks in ragged bursts.
"They want you," Kade said.
The nearest Collector stepped forward, lowering its burden—Vox's kill from the last game, if the armor was anything to go by. Ash hissed off the corpse into the Collector's hands, sinking into whatever lay beneath the robes.
It straightened. Taller now. The air around it heavier.
Kade moved first. Daggers in, threads snapping toward its midsection. They met something like resistance—ash hardening in the air, deflecting the pull. The Collector didn't even turn its head.
The second one did.
It crossed the plaza in three long glides, ignoring the distance. A skeletal hand slipped from its robe, fingers like carved onyx. It reached for the Mist Horse.
The horse bolted sideways. Kade followed the angle, cutting across the Collector's path. Duskveil lashed at its wrist—stone cracked under the pressure, but no sound came.
He caught motion at the edge—another Collector, watching. This one had something clutched in its free hand: not a body. A shard. Dark metal, edges irregular.
[PORTAL COORDINATE FRAGMENT — 1/3]Source: Ash Collector Alpha.
"That's mine," Kade said.
The Alpha tilted its head, as if considering the claim. Then it sank into the ash, vanishing like it had never been there.
The others followed, dissolving one by one. The plaza emptied in seconds, the dust falling still.
The Ledger pane pulsed once. New note: "Ash Collector activity correlated with Ledger kills. Anticipate interference."
Kade slid the daggers back into place. The Mist Horse shook itself, vapor scattering.
"Three fragments," Kade murmured. "Looks like we've got competition."
Far down the market's spine, another silhouette emerged—slimmer, blade in hand, moving with deliberate grace.
Euthymia.
She stopped just outside reach. "You're after the fragments too," she said. "Maybe we should… not kill each other. Yet."
They didn't steal bodies. They repossessed them.
Euthymia stopped one blade-length away, chin tipped as if she could balance a coin on it. "You're after the fragments too. Temporary ceasefire?"
Kade watched the ash stir around her boots and not touch them. "Temporary is generous."
"Honesty. Good. Then try this—" She angled her sword to the market's spine, where the haze thickened into something with angles. "They're coming back."
The ash reassembled without wind. Robes, hollow faces, spare hands made of not-quite-stone. One held a dangling arm in its grip and poured it into itself like grain. It grew. The others followed suit.
[ENTITY: ASH COLLECTOR]Strength scaling: +1 tier per corpse reclaimedBehavioral note: Prioritizes "Residuals" (non-living summons, bound constructs).Advisory: Protect bound construct.
The Mist Horse's skin twitched in slow waves, ribcage showing and hiding under fog. It stared at the Collectors the way a starving dog stares at a butcher—want and hurt welded together.
"They're here for it," Euthy said.
Kade flexed his fingers. "They can try."
The first wave didn't rush. They slid. The Alpha—taller, robe edges feathered with glassy grit—spread both hands and the market's dust lifted into a sheet. Not air magic. Not only. The sheet moved like a tide under the Mist Horse, trying to float it free.
"Anchor," Kade said.
Duskveil answered. Threads shot out, spiking through collapsed stall beams and broken mosaics, webbing the Horse's legs to stone. The ash sheet lifted—met tension—and crumpled like a wave hitting pilings. The Alpha tilted its head once, curious.
Euthy moved. Clean, minimal. Her blade drew a thin line through a Collector's robe; it bled nothing, but the robe's silhouette distorted as if losing weight. Kade met another head-on. Dagger in, threads on wrists, pull. A crack. The arm came off, turning to powder midair.
The Collector didn't flinch. It grabbed its own ash, compressed it, and grew a new limb.
"So they don't care about parts," Kade said. "Good."
He slid under a robe's reach and put steel through its spine anyway.
The Alpha shifted strategy. Ash rose in columns and hardened into ribs, trying to pen Kade away from the Horse. Euthy cut the bars; they reformed behind her, clicking back into a cage around nothing. The Horse bared its broken grin and blew cold vapor that slicked the bars—ice on ash—long enough for Kade to step through.
"Left," he said.
The Horse obeyed without command, hopping sidewise with an ugly grace. A talon-hand swiped where its head had been; Duskveil punished the wrist for the idea.
Kade spotted it then—the shard clenched in the Alpha's palm. Not stone. Metal, dark as a drowned coin.
[PORTAL COORDINATE FRAGMENT]Triangulation progress: 2/3 → 3/3 (pending acquisition)
"You have something of mine," Kade told it. "Come here."
He took two steps as if he meant to engage, then whistled—short, flat. The Horse ripped right, drawing three Collectors with it like iron filings to a lodestone. The Alpha tracked the Horse, not him.
Kade ran left.
Euthy saw the angle and cut into the gap, her blade sweeping low to trip ash legs that didn't have joints. It worked anyway. The Alpha reoriented; Kade was already there. Threads stapled its forearms to two different pillars. His dagger hit the hand.
There was no scream. There was a buckling, like pressure leaving a sealed space. The shard came free.
[ACQUIRED: COORDINATE FRAGMENT 3/3]Triangulation… complete.Local transitions: unstable.Portal Locus: approx. "Market Basin" (central depression).Activation status: LOCKED.Required: Activation Sigils (3).— Downwell Sigil— Bearer Sigil— Censer Sigil
The Alpha tried to swallow itself into powder. Kade pinned it with a heel and cut horizontal. Ash flew. The robe collapsed like a tent with the pole kicked out.
Across the plaza, the remaining Collectors read the change. They lifted their reaped bodies high—an indecent benediction—then sank into their own shadows and were gone. As if a bell had rung and lunch break was over.
Silence settled. Dust hung where breath should have.
"Activation Sigils," Euthy repeated softly. "Of course it couldn't be coordinates alone."
Kade turned the shard in his fingers. It gave off nothing—no heat, no vibration—like it was lying about existing. "Downwell, Bearer, Censer," he said. "Which do you want to pretend you've never heard of?"
She smiled without teeth. "Let's find 'Downwell' first. The market sinks toward the Basin. Old cities hide altars at their lowest points."
"And 'Bearer'?"
"Sounds like a person," she said. "Or something that thinks it is."
He slid the fragment into a bandolier pocket. The Mist Horse stepped beside him, pressing skull to his shoulder, vapor dampening the fabric. "You did well," he told it. Then: "… please."
It stilled, as if satisfied with the syntax.
Euthy rolled her wrist, shedding ash from the blade. "We have a direction. Try not to die between here and there."
"Not dying is the only thing I'm good at," Kade said.
They went toward the market's hollow.
The Basin didn't so much appear as admit it'd been there the whole time. Stalls and arches sloped toward a bowl where the sand moved like a breath. Broken statues leaned inward as if eavesdropping.
A ring of bells—small, hand-sized—hung from a frame over the lowest point. No clappers. No wind.
"Censer," Euthy said under her breath.
"Or bait," Kade said.
He stepped until the sand tugged at his boots. It tried to take his weight the way shallow water takes a dropped coin. Duskveil bit into a fallen column. The threads held him like a dog on a leash.
The bells stayed still.
"Downwell's below," Euthy said. "There was water once. Drain it, you get sand."
"Then we go down."
"Bold plan."
Kade tipped his chin at the frame. "You go first."
"I'm lighter," she said. "And I want to live." She tied a line from her belt to the frame, tested it, then slid over the lip. Sand welcomed her like an old friend trying to keep her too long. The line cut in. She dropped a meter, boots vanishing, legs vanishing, torso—
She caught the frame with one gloved hand and laughed once, short. "I hate this."
"Me too," Kade said, and clipped in.
They went under.
As the sand closed over his head, a new pane flickered in the dark—[ENVIRONMENTAL HAZARD — SUBSIDENCE FIELD]Breathing: restrictedExertion: triple costNote: Something moves down there that isn't sand.