The brittle light of false dawn seeped into the ruined warehouse, cold and thin, barely enough to carve shapes out of the dark.

  Ren stirred where he sat slumped against the far wall, rebar still clutched loosely in one hand, the other resting on the scavenged crowbar laid across his lap. His neck ached from the angle he'd slept in, a grinding stiffness that spoke of hours spent half-awake, half-listening.

  The city beyond the broken windows moaned quietly — the sound of settling ruins, of distant things moving through the ash.

  Ren blinked grit from his eyes and listened.

  Something was wrong.

  It wasn’t just the cold or the way the light struggled to pierce the heavy mist curling around the wreckage outside.

  It was the silence.

  Too deep. Too complete.

  Carefully, he shifted to his feet, joints popping. His traps — the crude alarms made from broken glass and rusted wire — still lay across the entrance. Untouched.

  But the layer of ash coating them was disturbed.

  Not shattered.

  Disturbed.

  As if something had passed close, sensed the trap, and veered away.

  The hair along the back of his neck prickled.

  Slowly, silently, he moved toward the doorway, keeping low, hugging the broken wall.

  The city outside looked different in the weak light — smaller, huddled, twisted in on itself like a wounded animal.

  He crouched behind a collapsed beam and scanned the street.

  Movement.

  Two figures, maybe three, slipping through the ruins across the way. They moved with jerky, uneven strides, hunched low, their outlines ragged and distorted by the swirling ash.

  Not Nightkind.

  Not yet.

  He watched them pick over the ruins of a burnt-out car, their hands — elongated, claw-like — scraping through the wreckage.

  Scavengers.

  Twisted. Ruinbound, perhaps. Or just broken by this place.

  They didn’t see him.

  Not yet.

  Ren stayed absolutely still, barely breathing.

  Patience. Silence.

  After long minutes, they moved on, disappearing into the ruins, swallowed by mist and distance.

  He waited even longer.

  Long enough for the ache to settle deep into his crouching muscles.

  Only then did he straighten slowly, muscles protesting.

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  He couldn’t stay here.

  Every day brought new dangers, new predators, human or otherwise.

  Every shelter became a trap the longer he lingered.

  The city was alive, in its way — not just a graveyard but a predator of its own, shifting, reshaping, consuming anything that stayed still too long.

  He shouldered his battered pack and crept into the street.

  The day was colder than the one before. The burning weight of the sun was dulled, hidden behind layers of sickly cloud, but Ren knew better than to trust it. The sun might be weaker, but the ruin was thicker — a pulse he could feel through the soles of his boots, through the air he breathed.

  Ash drifted sideways in invisible currents, spiraling around him in lazy, mocking dances.

  He moved quickly but carefully, sticking to broken alleyways and collapsed storefronts, avoiding the wide open streets where the mist pooled deepest.

  Supplies were the first priority.

  The second was finding better shelter before night fell again.

  Something underground.

  Something that could hold against the Nightkind.

  The surface was death.

  It was only a matter of time before they caught his scent again.

  He scavenged as he moved, sharp eyes scanning for anything useful.

  A leather jacket, heavier than the torn one he wore, hanging from a wire fence, half-burned but still intact enough to use. He stripped it free, wincing at the cold wetness clinging to it, and shrugged it on over his ruined clothes.

  An old metal toolbox cracked open in the shell of a service station. Inside, a handful of rusted nails, a small coil of wire, and — miracle of miracles — a roll of duct tape still half-full.

  He stuffed it all into his pack.

  Every small victory mattered.

  Each one another breath, another heartbeat, another inch between him and the inevitable.

  In the ruins of a collapsed apartment building, he found an old, broken-down water purifier rigged to a scavenged solar panel.

  Dead now.

  But the purifier still had an intact filter.

  He tore it free with shaking fingers and jammed it into his pack.

  The hunger pressed at the edges of his mind, restless, hungry, whispering of easier ways to survive.

  Take. Break. Ruin.

  He pushed it down, grinding his teeth against the gnawing urge.

  Not yet.

  Not unless he had to.

  Midday — or what passed for it under the sick sky — found him near the heart of the old city, where the buildings leaned together like drunkards and the streets narrowed into twisting, cluttered alleys.

  The threads of ruin were thicker here.

  He could see them more clearly — fine, trembling strands connecting the broken structures, forming webs that pulsed faintly with unseen energy.

  They shivered as he passed, recoiling from him, or maybe reaching for him. He couldn’t tell.

  He avoided the densest clusters.

  He wasn’t ready for whatever had made them.

  A half-collapsed parking garage loomed ahead, its upper floors canted at dangerous angles.

  The bottom levels looked stable enough.

  And more importantly, it led down.

  A ramp — cracked but intact — spiraled into the earth, disappearing into shadow.

  Underground.

  Shelter.

  Maybe.

  Ren approached cautiously, senses straining.

  No movement. No sounds but the distant, constant groan of the city.

  He moved into the garage, boots crunching on scattered gravel and broken glass.

  The air grew colder immediately, the faint smell of mold and damp concrete rising from below.

  He descended carefully, keeping to the shadows, weapons ready.

  The second level was mostly collapsed.

  The third was worse — a twisted wreckage of rebar and cracked asphalt.

  But the fourth...

  The fourth was intact.

  Mostly.

  A wide, low-ceilinged space stretching deep into the earth, pillars crumbling but still standing.

  Abandoned cars littered the space like corpses, stripped and rusting.

  Ren slipped between them, eyes sharp, muscles tense.

  Here and there, he saw old signs of life — melted campfires, scattered bones, scraps of clothing.

  Nothing fresh.

  He found a corner wedged between two collapsed vehicles and set up a quick camp — no fire, no lights. Just darkness and the heavy, damp silence pressing against his skin.

  He ate sparingly from his supplies — a few bites of tasteless canned meat, a swallow of brackish water.

  It settled in his stomach like stones.

  The hunger inside him roared its disapproval.

  He ignored it.

  Again.

  Barely.

  Night fell again while he sat there, back against cold steel, listening to the ruin sing its endless, maddening lullaby.

  He didn’t light the lighter.

  Didn’t dare.

  The darkness was safer than the light.

  For now.

  He pulled the heavier jacket tighter around himself and rested, one hand on the rebar, one on the crowbar, both ready.

  Sleep was impossible.

  Not here.

  Not with the knowledge that something — many somethings — hunted the night above and below.

  Instead, he sat in the dark and waited.

  Waited for the sun.

  Waited for the ruin to whisper its secrets.

  Waited for the inevitable moment when he wouldn’t be able to resist anymore.

  When survival and ruin would become the same thing.

  And there would be no going back.