Dawn tasted like ash.
Captain Keller hadn’t really slept. He yawned as he walked toward the front of the camp, boots crunching over soot and broken glass. The attacks were getting worse, not fewer. It felt like the Starspawn were being drawn in, pulled toward the encampment like moths to a flame. As if the entire wave for the day had already spent itself here.
A soldier spotted him and hurried over.
“Report.”
“Team Three hasn’t checked in, sir. It’s been over two hours. They were supposed to be back by now.”
Keller’s jaw tightened. “How many in the unit?”
“Eight, sir. All Illuminated.”
He exhaled slowly. “Send two runners to their last known position. Have them Report back once the unit’s located. Hopefully they’re just delayed hauling supplies. We can’t have people going missing right now.”
“I’ll go too.”
Keller turned as Dorian approached, both saber-tooth blades hanging loosely at his sides.
“How’s the arm?” Keller asked, eyeing the way Dorian rolled his shoulder.
“Spent most of the night healing it,” Dorian said. “Still feels a little weaker, but it’s not broken anymore.”
He grinned, but Keller caught the strain beneath it.
Dorian though back to the night, He’d joined one fight just to quiet the hunger, then spent the rest of it pushing his Will as far as his body would allow. Over and over. Slow, deliberate work.
Something had changed.
The constant use hadn’t just healed him. It had strengthened him in a way Remnants never had. It felt like veins inside his body, channels of Will, expanding with every use. The wider they grew, the easier it was to draw on them. Less resistance. Less backlash.
Remnants forced those channels open. This felt like training them.
He hadn’t absorbed a single Remnant, yet he was stronger than he’d been yesterday.
Keller rubbed his jaw. “You sure you’re good to go? No sense Dragging you out there just to carry you back.”
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Is he teasing me?
“Try me,” Dorian said. His grin faded. “If they’re in trouble, I’m not staying behind.”
Keller sighed. “They’re probably fine. Could’ve lost comms, could’ve taken shelter. Still, I want eyes on it.
He glanced toward the tree line. “Go with the runners. Stay sharp. Don’t play hero.”
Dorian nodded. “Understood.”
Minutes later, they were moving.
The smoke hung low and stale, refusing to lift. The light felt thin, washed out, like sunlight filtered through bone dust. Streets stretched ahead like old wounds that never healed.
They moved in silence, boots crunching over ash and debris. Every shadow felt wrong. Every corner too quiet.
Dorian felt it first.
A ripple beneath his skin. A distortion in the air, like heat shimmer but colder.
He raised a fist. The runners froze.
Something shifted in the collapsed alley. Low. Fast. Limbs scraping through rubble.
Then it lunged.
The Starspawn burst from the wreckage, elongated pig skull flashing, glowing claws scraping asphalt as it scuttled forward like a fusion of spider and man.
The runners raised their weapons.
Dorian was already moving.
His blades flashed once, then dipped low.
The creature pounced. Dorian didn’t dodge. He stepped in and split it open, one blade carving down through collarbone and chest, the other ripping upward through ribs and spine. Ash-flesh and ichor sprayed across the ruin.
The Starspawn collapsed in two twitching halves.
Dorian barely looked winded.
Heat flickered in the air. A crystal fell from the corpse.
He took it.
The burn hit instantly.
He hadn’t absorbed one in days. The pain slammed through him like a hammer. Bones aching. Muscles locking. Then the surge followed, clean and powerful.
The Remnant finished what he’d started overnight. When the pain faded, clarity took its place.
“You ready?” one runner asked.
Dorian nodded “Yeah.”
They moved on.
The last known position came into view.
A cul-de-sac, burned hollow.
Collapsed houses leaning inward, beams charred and broken. Power lines drooped across the road. Smoke clung to everything like damp skin.
Dorian stepped in first.
A car sat caved in near the entrance, hood crushed, windshield spiderwebbed. Dried blood coated the front. A melted railgun lay nearby, still steaming faintly.
“Someone got thrown,” a runner said.
Dorian didn’t answer.
The next body was embedded in a crack in the road spine bent wrong, throat torn open. Blood had soaked into the asphalt beneath him.
Another corpse leaned against a toppled mailbox, chest split wide. A broken spear lay nearby.
“That’s three,” someone muttered.
“They never spread out,” Dorian said quietly.
Another lay flat on his back, chest plate carved in, helmet tossed aside.
“That one flew.”
A fourth slumped against a fence, a jagged burn carved from thigh to ribs. Ash crusted the wound.
Another sat upright, barely. Jaw split open from below. Blood sprayed across the fence behind him.
Six.
They found the seventh near a collapsed wall, chest perforated by long, blackened spikes. One hand was missing.
“Spines,” one runner whispered.
Dorian nodded.
The last wasn’t really a body. Just scraps. Burned armor. A helmet split clean in half beside a shallow crater.
“Eight,” Dorian said.
The smoke shifted.
Then it began to recoil.
It wasn’t a normal drift in the wind. It was curling.
Wrapping around a single shape at the far end of the cul-de-sac.
Tall.
Still.
Waiting.
The Gauntleted Fiend.
