The Ashroad narrowed into a corridor of heat.
Mirage-pillars rose on either side like glass trees, their trunks bending and unbending with each breath of wind. Reid kept them on the rope line, one gloved hand on the cord, the other resting near his Rifle sling.
The further they walked, the more the world developed a memory; the echoes arrived late, shadows lagged, and even the sky seemed to forget where the sun should sit. The changes were getting to their nerves.
"It’s a loop," Holt said quietly.
He had crouched to study the way heat crawled over the glass, the direction of the anomalies, and the tilt of warped reflections. "The sun’s sliding left without traveling, we’re circling."
Reid’s jaw ticked. "Confirm."
Mira tipped her face up and closed her eyes. When she breathed out, the air responded as a faint ribbon of wind threaded the air, then curved in front of them like a river hitting a bank.
"It’s pushing us around," she said. "Like a current."
Ethan felt the Wheel warm under his skin. The road wanted them lost. He let the spin take him.
[Improvised Gear: Vector Nails – F Rank]
>A triad of micro-beacons that pin a straight path through distortion for 40 meters. Hold formation while passing.
He flicked three dull coins across the glass. Each landed with a tiny magnetic tck and bled a hairline of white across the road. The line didn’t waver when the air did; it ignored the mirage and asked the world to behave.
"It will show us the path forward if we stay in formation," Ethan said and Reid took over from there.
"Single file on the seam," Reid ordered. "No wandering."
They moved along the thin white stitch.
For forty meters the corridor obeyed them, then the last nail cooled and went dark, and the world tried to fold them again. It did fold them in, but not back to the beginning of the cycle.
This time, they finally escaped. They slipped out of the loop’s mouth like fish.
"Nice trick," Travis muttered to Ethan, breath thin. "Please tell me you’ve got a million of those."
"I’ve got six points and bad luck," Ethan said. "We’ll make it work."
Their footsteps lagged a beat behind them but they no longer paid attention to it even as the road responded with a soft hiss.
And then, they found the first carcasses an hour later. They found cars slumped together in a melted pile, including a strange sculpture of open hoods and fused doors.
Staring at that sculpture, Ethan felt his innards churn. ’What the hell is that...?’
For a moment the heat made the heap look like a sleeping beast. Then the mirage blinked and the beast had eyes.
Holt lifted a hand for silence. The rope line went taut.
Beneath the hiss of heat was a sound like dry leaves rubbed together. It came in little clicks, all out of sync, edging closer.
And then, panels flickered across their vision.
[Hostiles Approaching: Glass Jackals – F Rank Predators!]
"More scavengers," Reid said. "Holt, Mira, rear and high. Kara, skirmish left. Jonas..."
"Vanguard," Jonas finished, rolling his shoulders. The rope creaked as his bulk set like a brace.
The first jackals slunk out of the shimmer, low and long, ribs like blades under clear skin. Four, then six, then eight. Their black-glass eyes reflected nothing.
Ethan felt the temperature spike as heat ripples tightened like muscles flexing. The jackals blurred on their edges, their paws hardly touching the road.
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[Improvised Gear: Heat-Sink Spike – F Rank]
>Magnetized stake that drains thermal distortion in a 4m radius for 30 seconds, collapsing mirages and forcing F Rank predators into stable form. Single-use.
The same improvisation.
Ethan quickly hammered the spike through glass with the heel of his palm. A thin frost-bloom pushed outward. The jackals hit that ring and snapped into crisp focus, their tricks stripped.
"Take them," Reid said, and the team became teeth.
Kara was a vector of motion, her enhanced agility making the tight space into a playground. Having fought them before, she was less hesitant in attack this time.
She slid under a snapping jaw, planted, and the spearhead rang once; a jackal’s neck separated like a bottle cracked at the stem.
Another leapt and she met it midair, bone-dense limbs absorbing the collision before she spun and drove the shaft home.
Jonas waded in next like a moving wall.
A jackal’s muzzle latched his bicep but he retaliated and slammed it to the glass and the muscle-density in his forearm did the rest as it applied more force.
Something broke, jackal, not Jonas.
Another jackal raked his ribs. Jonas grunted, his blood slick and dark, but then the cut stopped bleeding as the superhuman regeneration of his ability took hold.
Holt’s rifle fired twice, then the third time in short, patient punctuation.
Two jackals cartwheeled away, glass spitting from shattered eye-sockets. He was already shifting angles, reading the way heat ran along the lane, aiming not where they were but where the road’s flow would spit them next.
At the center of the rope, Travis kept low, knife tight, breathing in little counts. He did not run, he kept the line unbroken.
The spike ticked, thirty seconds going fast.
"On the clock," Ethan said.
At that moment, a new sound cut through, a high and clean sound, like a knife being drawn slowly out of silk.
Then, the heap of cars lifted its hood.
The something inside unfolded with insulted grace.
It was angular with limbs like bent scissor-arms and plates of obsidian glass clicking together in a mantis geometry. Where the face should be was a sheet of hot air that refused to show anything at all.
The system tagged it as if relieved to have a name.
[New Hostile Entity Identified: Ashroad Warden]
[WARNING! You have encountered an E Rank Construct Predator!]