Chapter 2 — The Wrong Man Walking
The settlement was a field of broken stone and grey ash.
Smoke rose in thick plumes from the eastern district, the oily vapor staining the pale dawn sky. The air carried the scent of pulverized masonry and the cold, metallic tang of ozone. Shattered roof tiles lay in piles across the intersections, the terracotta red buried under a layer of slate-colored soot. Adrian stepped over a pile of scorched timber. The wood was black and brittle, the charcoal surface crumbling under his boots with a dry, snapping sound. He moved toward the center of the plaza, his shadow sliding over the debris in a single movement.
The shadow's form flickered at the edges. It was a silhouette of shifting smoke, its density fluctuating as the light hit the matte-black surface. To his left, the remains of a tailor's shop stood open to the street. Charred silk hung from a fallen rack, the fabric turning to black powder where the wind hit it. A glass-smith's furnace had melted into a single, jagged lump of translucent slag that sat in the middle of the sidewalk, the edges sharp and cold.
[System Start]
[Soul Force: 79/100]
[Maintaining Shadow: F-rank Hollowed]
[System End]
Adrian felt a hollow pressure behind his sternum. The drain was a constant physical weight that forced his breathing into a deep, repeating pattern of inhalation and exhaust. He adjusted the shredded black robe, pulling the charred fabric across his chest. The wind moved through the gaps in the ruined walls, carrying a fine grit that stung his eyes. The temperature in the street was falling, the moisture on the broken glass turning to frost.
Further down the street, a medic team worked near a collapsed storefront. The two figures wore dark tactical gear, their red-marked supply packs stained with dirt. They were hunched over a fallen hunter whose right arm was bound in a makeshift pressure wrap. The medics moved with repeating motions. One held a vial of blue mana-stabilizer. The glass clicked against the hunter's teeth as they administered the fluid. The smell of antiseptic and burnt leather was heavy.
The medic pulled a length of adhesive gauze from a sterile pack. The plastic crinkled, the sound sharp in the quiet of the street. He pressed the tape over the hunter's arm, his fingers stained with a mixture of dirt and dried plasma. The wounded hunter's chest rose and fell in shallow hitches. His gear was scuffed, the ceramic plates of his chest-piece cracked into three sections. The medics did not look at the smoke rising three blocks away. They kept their hands on the wound until the white fabric turned a dark crimson. Adrian stood ten meters from the team. He was a silhouette moving through the dust.
He kept moving.
The street opened into a plaza blocked by a barricade of overturned transport vehicles. The vehicles were rusted, the tires melted into black pools on the asphalt. The scent of leaking coolant and old gasoline was thick. A group of five hunters sat behind the metal, their gear cracked and covered in a layer of grey soot. They held their weapons at low angles, the muzzles pointed toward the ground.
As Adrian approached, a man in a torn Iron Veil jacket dropped his rifle. The metal hit the pavement with a loud clang. The man's eyes went wide, his pupils contracting as he tracked the scar on Adrian's left arm. He did not speak. He gripped the edge of a bent car door, his knuckles turning white as he leaned back. One hunter leaned against the rusted fender of a transport truck. His fingers were locked around the barrel of a G-rank rifle, the knuckles raw and bleeding from the cold. He exhaled a cloud of vapor that smelled of metal and old rations.
The barricade was a mass of twisted steel. One transport truck had been flipped onto its side, the undercarriage exposed and dripping a dark, viscous fluid onto the concrete. The smell of burnt rubber from the melted tires mixed with the scent of the wet ash. The hunters did not move as Adrian passed. They watched the black robe, their eyes fixed on the way the fabric trailed in the dust.
"Is that him?" a hunter whispered.
"Aison dead another said. His voice was a rasp. "I saw him go down. Garek Sol killed him."
Adrian did not look at them. He did not answer to the name Aison, but the weight of their attention followed him across the plaza. He could hear the sound of their breathing—fast and irregular. The hunters did not raise their weapons. They remained behind the rusted steel, their eyes fixed on the black robe as he passed through the gap in the barricade. The metal plates of their armor clinked as they shifted their weight, a series of small, sharp sounds in the silence.
He turned into a collapsed doorway.
The building had once been a small shop. Shattered tiles covered the floor, the white ceramic buried under an inch of dust. A broken wooden counter sat in the center of the room, the surface holding the remains of a glass display case. The grooves in the wood were filled with grey grit. The smell of old grain and cold ash was trapped in the stagnant air. Adrian leaned his back against a stone pillar. The stone was cold, pulling the heat from his shoulders through the fabric of the robe. He reached for the silver necklace at his throat.
His fingers were cold as he clicked the latch. The metal moved with a small, sharp pop.
The image inside was a young woman. She had dark hair that fell to her shoulders and eyes that were fixed and wide. The photo was small, the edges yellowed by time. A pressure built behind his eyes, a physical weight that pressed against his sinuses.
He saw a convenience store. The floor was white, polished with a wax that smelled of lemons. A girl was laughing, her hand resting on a shelf of canned goods. Then the sound changed. The high-pitched screech of the Hollowing tore through the room. The light left her eyes, replaced by a vacant stare.
Adrian gasped. He slammed his hand against the stone pillar to stay upright. His temples throbbed with a repeating heat. He looked at the photo one more time before closing the latch. He stepped back into the street. The ash was falling faster now, coating the rubble in a fresh layer of grey.
Thirty meters ahead, a woman was crawling away from a pile of shattered masonry. She was a civilian, her clothes torn and her face masked in dust. A standard hollowed lunged from a shop window, its limbs propelling it toward her. Its joints clicked with every movement.
The shadow surged forward. It was a blur of smoke that intercepted the hollowed mid-air. They hit the pavement with a heavy thud. The shadow pinned the hollowed to the stone, its fingers crushing the creature's throat. The hollowed shrieked, its limbs thrashing against the asphalt until the shadow increased the pressure. The sound of the hollowed's ribs snapping was a series of dry, muffled cracks.
Adrian reached the woman. He reached down and offered his hand.
"Can you stand?" he asked.
The woman looked at his hand. Then she looked up, meeting his eyes. Her facial muscles contorted. Her eyes widened, the pupils shrinking as she looked at his face.
"Don't," she said. Her voice was a thin whisper.
She did not take his hand. She scrambled backward on her elbows, her heels dragging through the ash. She turned and ran, her boots striking the concrete in a fast, irregular pattern until she disappeared around the corner of a ruined apartment block.
Adrian stood in the center of the street.
A man watching from a second-story window spat into the dust. The fluid hit a piece of broken glass with a soft splat. "Aison wouldn't help a civilian for free," the man called out. His voice was bitter. "What's the play, Sovereign? You waiting for the ZCG to write the check?"
Adrian looked at his open palm. He slowly curled his fingers into a fist and let his arm drop to his side. He did not look at the window.
He walked toward the edge of the settlement where the warehouse district began. The fires were dying, the orange light fading into the grey of the afternoon. The smell of cold ash was the only thing left in the wind. He passed an overturned cargo crate. The interior was empty, the wood splintered and grey. The warehouse district was a sequence of low, metal-roofed buildings, most of which had partially collapsed under the weight of the ash and the age of the structure.
He found an empty warehouse near the perimeter wall. The building was a cavern of rusted machinery and long shadows. The windows were gone, the frames holding only jagged shards of glass that rattled in the wind. The floor was cold, concrete covered in a layer of grease and dust. A massive iron gear sat in the center of the room, its teeth rusted into a solid block of oxidized metal. The smell of old grease and stagnant water was thick.
The gear was six feet in diameter, the central hub filled with a dark, viscous fluid that had pooled on the concrete. Adrian touched the metal; it was pitted with corrosion, the surface rough under his palm. Piles of scrap iron were stacked in the corners, the metal sheets leaning against the walls in precarious stacks. The wind whistled through the gaps in the corrugated steel roof, a high-pitched sound that was the only noise in the warehouse.
Adrian sat on a wooden crate in the corner. The wood creaked under his weight. He placed his hands on his knees, his fingers still stained with the grey dust of the plaza. His shadow stood in the doorway. Its head was tilted, its featureless face turned toward the empty street. The shadow did not move, its form as motionless as the iron gear.
He looked at his hands. He did not know the history of the man Aison. He did not know why the residents looked at his face with the same expression they gave the hollowed.
All he knew was that the face in the necklace was someone he needs to find.
Adrian stood up and began to walk toward the settlement wall. The concrete stairs were steep, the edges worn smooth by years of patrol. The stairs were reinforced with rusted steel rods that were visible where the concrete had chipped away. He reached the top of the ramparts. The wall was ten meters high and four meters wide, the surface a flat expanse of grey masonry.
The wind hit his face, carrying the scent of cedar and cold iron from the valley below. He looked out at the treeline. The mist was rising from the valley floor, a white vapor that swallowed the base of the black trunks. The trees were interlaced, their branches forming a canopy that blocked the ground. To the south, a column of smoke rose from a small campfire, the orange light a pinprick in the dark.
He stood on the stone, his hand resting on the necklace. The first day was moving toward dusk. He watched the shadows in the valley. His breathing was fixed in an even pattern as the first stars appeared in the dark blue of the sky. The temperature of the wall was dropping. He turned and began to walk along the parapet, his boots striking the concrete with a repeating thud. The stone was cold beneath the soles of his boots. He watched the treeline until the light failed.