The descent to the salt flats was a journey into another world.

  The trail dropped steeply from the high ledges, switchbacking down through rock that grew progressively bleached and brittle. The pines thinned, then vanished altogether, replaced by scrub that looked half-dead even in the best of times. The air changed too—thinner, drier, carrying the first faint taste of the white expanse below.

  Dorn's Lead-Sight eye flickered constantly now. The wireframe visions came and went without warning—the world rendered in glowing lines, the survivors reduced to schematics, the box pulsing like a second heart. He'd learned to blink them away, to focus on the real, to trust his natural senses over the glitching cybernetic.

  But the visions were getting harder to ignore.

  The raccoon walked beside him, his branded shoulder aching with every step. He'd grown almost talkative since the attack—not cheerful, never that, but present. Aware. The fear hadn't left him, but it had settled into something manageable.

  "The brands," he said quietly, as they descended. "They're warmer here. Closer to the salt."

  Dorn looked at him. "The salt affects them?"

  "Everything affects them. The Preacher designed them to resonate with the box's signal. To pull us toward it, or maybe to pull it toward us." He touched his shoulder, winced. "Down there, on the white... I don't know what they'll do."

  Dorn nodded. Filed the information away.

  Below, the flats stretched to the horizon—a white expanse that shimmered and shifted in the heat, creating lakes that weren't there, mountains that dissolved as you watched. The salt crust was thick enough to walk on in most places, thin enough to break through in others. Dorn had learned the hard way which was which.

  They reached the edge at noon.

  The survivors gathered at the last scrap of solid rock, staring out at the white.

  It was beautiful in a way that made the heart ache. The salt caught the sun and threw it back in a million fragments, turning the world into a bowl of light. But beneath the beauty was something else. Something hungry. The flats didn't just reflect light—they absorbed heat, radiated it back, created an environment that cooked anything foolish enough to cross them.

  Vex stood at the edge, the box at her feet. "How far?"

  "Three days." Dorn's voice was flat. "Maybe four, with the wounded. Depends on how fast the heat takes us."

  "And the Preacher? His Iron-Willed?"

  Dorn looked back at the mountains. The fires still burned, but no shapes moved on the ridges. The Purists were waiting. Watching. Letting the salt do their work.

  "They'll follow," he said. "Not immediately. They'll wait to see if the salt kills us first. Then they'll come for the box."

  "Will the salt stop them?"

  Dorn thought about the Iron-Willed. Their iron legs, their magnetic blades, their dependence on the tech the Preacher had given them.

  "I don't know," he admitted. "The salt disrupts metal. Corrodes it. Eats through anything that isn't pure. If their legs are iron, they'll fail. If they're something else..." He shrugged. "We'll find out."

  The raccoon spoke up. "The brands. They pulse with the box's signal. On the salt, that pulse might get louder. Or it might get lost." He looked at Dorn. "Either way, they'll be able to follow us by the brand alone. We're beacons."

  Vex stared at him. "You're saying we should have left you behind?"

  "I'm saying you should know the truth." The raccoon met her gaze without flinching. "I'm a liability. We all are, with these marks. If it comes to it—"

  "It won't." Vex's voice was iron. "We don't leave people behind. Not anymore."

  The raccoon said nothing. But something in his eyes shifted—a flicker of something that might have been hope, quickly suppressed.

  Dorn turned to face the flats. The white stretched ahead, empty and endless.

  "We go at dusk," he said. "Travel at night, rest during the day. The heat is worse than the dark. Stay close, stay quiet, and don't wander off the path I set."

  He looked at the yearling. At Cricket. At the squirrels, huddled together. At Flint, clutching the box.

  "Anyone steps off the crust, they're dead. Anyone falls behind, they're dead. Anyone drinks the water they see shimmering out there—" He pointed at a mirage, dancing on the horizon. "That's salt. Poison. It'll kill you faster than thirst."

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  Cricket swallowed. "Comforting."

  "Survival isn't comfortable." Dorn started walking. "Stay close."

  They followed.

  The first night was the hardest.

  The salt crunched beneath their paws, a sound that carried for miles in the flat expanse. The stars were impossibly bright above, undimmed by smoke or haze, but they offered no warmth. The cold seeped up through the crust, through fur and flesh, into bone.

  Dorn led them along the hardpan—the places where the salt was thick enough to hold their weight. He remembered this terrain from his crawl, remembered the feel of it, the look of it, the way the crust changed color where it thinned.

  Behind him, the survivors moved in a line. Vex and Flint carried the box between them, its weight a constant burden. The squirrels took turns helping the raccoon, whose branded shoulder had begun to glow faintly in the dark.

  "It's the box," he whispered. "Getting closer to it makes the brand burn."

  Dorn filed that away too.

  By midnight, they'd covered perhaps a third of the first day's distance. Dorn called a halt on a patch of thick crust, let them rest, let them drink from the meager supplies they carried.

  Cricket sat beside him, her missing ear cocked toward the mountains behind them.

  "Anything?"

  "Nothing yet." She squinted into the darkness. "But they're there. I can feel them."

  Dorn could too. Not with his senses—the salt played tricks on those. But with something deeper. Instinct. The knowledge of a hunter that it was being hunted.

  "They'll come at dawn," he said. "When the light's behind them, blinding us. That's how they'll do it."

  Cricket nodded slowly. "What do we do?"

  "Keep moving. Make them work for it." He looked at the survivors, resting in the cold. "We can't fight them here. Not on the salt. We just have to outrun them to the other side."

  "And if we can't?"

  Dorn didn't answer.

  Dawn came like a hammer.

  The sun cleared the mountains and the salt exploded into light. There was no shadow, no shade, no relief—just white in every direction, burning into eyes that had known only darkness for hours.

  Dorn blinked, forced his vision to adjust. His Lead-Sight eye flickered, showed him wireframe shapes against the glare. The survivors. The box. And behind them, moving onto the salt—

  The Iron-Willed.

  They came in a line, five of them, their iron legs clicking against the crust. They moved with a mechanical precision that was horrifying to watch—each step measured, each body balanced, each face empty of expression.

  "They're following," Cricket breathed.

  Dorn counted. Five. Plus whatever waited at the shore. Plus the Preacher.

  "We move," he said. "Now."

  They moved.

  The chase across the salt was a thing of nightmare.

  The Iron-Willed didn't run—they glided, their iron legs eating up the distance with a speed that shouldn't have been possible. But the salt was doing its work. Even from this distance, Dorn could see the corrosion eating at their limbs, the way their steps grew less certain, the way one of them stumbled and nearly fell.

  "They're failing," Vex gasped. "The salt is killing their legs."

  "Not fast enough."

  He was right. The Iron-Willed were slowing, but they were still gaining. The gap closed with every mile.

  The survivors pushed harder. The squirrels were fading, their breath coming in thin gasps. The raccoon's brand was glowing bright enough to see in daylight, pulsing with the box's rhythm. The yearling ran with his head down, his small hooves finding purchase on crust that wouldn't hold.

  The box hummed louder, faster, more insistent.

  And the Iron-Willed kept coming.

  The first one fell a mile later.

  Its legs gave way without warning—one moment it was running, the next it was on its face, the iron limbs corroded through, snapping under its own weight. It didn't get up.

  The second one lasted another half mile. Then the third.

  The fourth and fifth kept coming.

  Dorn looked at the shore. Still so far. Still out of reach.

  "We're not going to make it," Flint gasped.

  "We'll make it." Vex's voice was iron. "We'll make it."

  The box pulsed. The raccoon's brand flared. And the Iron-Willed closed in.

  The fourth one caught them at noon.

  It came out of the glare without warning—a shape of iron and fur, its eyes blank, its blade raised. Dorn turned to meet it, knowing he was too slow, too wounded, too tired—

  The yearling hit it first.

  The small pronghorn launched himself at the Iron-Willed with a speed that defied belief, his horns catching it in the chest, driving it back. The creature stumbled, recovered, swung its blade—

  And the crust broke beneath them.

  They fell together, yearling and Iron-Willed, into the sinkhole that had been waiting. The salt swallowed them without a sound. One moment they were there. The next, they were gone.

  Dorn stared at the hole. At the place where the yearling had been.

  "Move," he said. His voice didn't sound like his own. "Move now."

  They moved.

  The fifth Iron-Willed stopped at the edge of the sinkhole.

  It stood there, watching them flee, its iron legs already corroding, its empty eyes fixed on the box. It didn't follow. Couldn't follow. The salt had claimed it as surely as it had claimed the yearling.

  Dorn ran. They all ran.

  Behind them, the Iron-Willed stood motionless until its legs gave way and it toppled into the white.

  They reached the far shore at dusk.

  The salt gave way to gravel, then to scrub, then to the first stunted trees of the western foothills. The survivors collapsed at the edge of life, their bodies broken, their lungs burning, their eyes wild.

  Dorn stood at the shore, looking back.

  The salt flats stretched behind them, empty and white. No shapes moved on the crust. No Iron-Willed followed. The yearling was gone, swallowed by the same hell that had almost taken Dorn weeks ago.

  Vex appeared beside him. Her scarred face was streaked with salt and tears.

  "He saved us," she said.

  Dorn nodded. Couldn't speak.

  "The box—"

  "Is still here." He looked at it. At the lock, still glowing. At the seeds inside, waiting to be planted. "He knew what he was doing. He chose."

  Vex was quiet for a long moment. Then: "What now?"

  Dorn looked west, toward the Dry Settlements, toward the high country, toward whatever waited.

  "We find the mountain herds," he said. "We tell them what happened. We ask for help." He looked at the survivors, collapsed in the dirt. "We plant the seeds."

  Vex nodded slowly. Then she turned away from the salt and followed him into the dusk.

  Behind them, the flats gleamed white under the stars, holding their secrets, holding their dead.

  The yearling was gone. But the future he'd died for was still alive.