engine roared through the mountain’s narrow pass, an obstinate growl against the silence. The city emerged ahead, Duskwatch laid in the middle of the island, sprawling like a wounded beast beneath the pale moon. Its skyscrapers pointing at the sky like claws, glowling enough to be noticed in the polluted smog. The streets below filled with neon in the dead of the night.

  Billboards flickered with pixel-perfect smiles, masking the emptiness beneath. The air reeked of oil and ash. Duskwatch was where hope came to die, replaced by despair and regret.

  But for the biker, it was only home, a city that clung to him like the smoke in the air. Every crack on the roads and every flickering light

  He navigated through the outskirts of the city, filled with half collapsed building, graffiti stained walls and the poverty of the residents within.

  Then came the old port, its rusting cranes and boats and ships along with the decayed cargo, a graveyard of what was once.

  Yet, the crowded streets continued to be filled with neon lights, people’s voices and a faint hope of a different future.

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  Beneath the crumbling highways and tunnels roared the engines. It was the very dwelling of the underground and the many street race bikes the biker had grown tired of.

  The biker accelerated through the night, Blackthorn growled like a beast, its frame covered by embers beneath.

  But beneath it all, something shifted.

  A lingering sense of unease and something new. The memory of the pass crunched on him, the smoke, the touch and the voice, it had all felt real. Cold memory stuck to him like frost refusing to melt

  He shook it off. Dwelling on what couldn’t be changed was fool’s play. And in Duskwatch fools didn’t last long.

  Ahead him, the blackened towers of the Obsidian Sprawl

  The dark streets narrowed, twisting like veins through the city’s heart. Sirens wailed, swallowed by the dark, Pawnshops and convenience stores lined the way, the flickering signs reflecting the deals whispered in the shadows within. Credits and promises made and broken. A place where no law thrived.

  The biked moved on untouched by all these, Duskwatch’s shadows embracing him like one of its own.

  His thoughts lingered on the mountain, something had reached out to him, ancient and it had left its mark on him.

  Even as Duskwatch swallowed him whole, one truth remained.