It had been three days since the sands, and Ashe felt lost, even though he knew where he was and where he was going. His clothes were tattered, and the smell of black tar on his back burned his nose. The torn hoodie left his right arm and chest exposed to the heat.

  Like a dog with no owner, he wandered the streets, but he wasn’t aimless. He had a goal. The portals.

  Ashe had felt the change in people, the same kinds of bystanders who used to whisper when he stepped into a portal, curiosity clinging to his presence. Now even strangers on the street sidestepped him, gagging as he walked past.

  He was homeless. No place to go. No door that would open.

  But it was strange. Despite everything, he felt strong, stronger than ever before. He moved with a fluidity that shouldn’t have been possible after three days on barely any food or water. The memories of the heralds pressing against his mind had turned less abrasive, more informative.

  Ashe had always known life was a seesaw. What goes up has to come down. Maybe this was the good that followed the bad, the strength in his limbs, the way the heralds’ memories finally gave instead of clawing.

  The portal found him before he found it, that familiar stench catching in his throat and pulling him in. He didn’t hesitate.

  He stepped inside. The street vanished, the tarmac replaced by knee-high grass. The smell of new rain was thick in the air. A pulse at the base of his throat made him flinch, and then a memory pressed in. Kenji. Gone before it could overwhelm him. Better with each one.

  Ashe let his muscles loosen. Let his fear drift into the distance as he walked deeper into the grass. It grew thicker, harder to push through. He clicked the button on his walking stick, transforming it into a sword, and used it to cut a path.

  He didn’t know why, but warmth hit him all at once, a steady sense that he could do this. He would have once been paralyzed by choice, by his senses, but now he moved instead of freezing.

  Ashe froze anyway when he heard grass shifting, not the sound of his cutting, but something else. Left. Right.

  His pain-sense shot up from his left. He reacted, sword swinging before his thoughts could catch up.

  It met something and barely slowed, cutting clean through flesh.

  A pulse from a bead on the deathring around his neck. His hand moved to the bead’s pulse, clenching around silky-smooth scales. Snake, he thought. He pressed harder, interest overriding disgust.

  Then pop, like a balloon. Blood splattered from within and covered him.

  Something else slumped into the grass with it. The warmth of each death rose within him, muscles twitching as Ashe stood there.

  He squared his shoulders and pushed on.

  The grass kept making sounds as he moved, and each new kill sent the same sensation washing over him. A light tremble ran through his body. Warmth. Power flowed through him. Like a lightning bolt, it drove his movement.

  “100,000 points awarded.”

  Ejected.

  The streets snapped back beneath his feet. C-tier portals, once something to be applauded, were nothing more than another portal now.

  A feeling of despair returned as he realized that lightning-bolt warmth, that rush of power, wouldn’t stay out here.

  He breathed in. The smell of another portal, stronger. A B-tier portal?

  It didn’t take long for the stench to thicken. Ashe followed it, turning into it until it overwhelmed him, until it burned his nose. He didn’t slow.

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  Hands pressed against his chest. “Stop there.”

  A quarantine had started. The authorities had locked down the area, and higher-rank portals were a no-go. Portal Control had only attempted them at the beginning, without success. But Ashe didn’t have time for it. He slipped under their arms and touched the officer in the back as he passed, meant as a tap.

  He felt sick as he heard it. Bone cracking on impact as the officer hit the floor.

  He could help. He could risk being detained. But getting inside that portal, reaching whatever came next, had to justify the means now.

  He pushed forward, disappearing into the portal as people rushed to the officer’s side.

  “Are you ok?”

  The words vanished, along with everything else. This time the world was different. Like sleeping without dreams, sound was gone, pulled back until it was only a distant memory.

  Ashe grabbed for something, for anything, arms flailing through the air as he searched. His senses were further limited, blind and deaf, the world cut off like someone had packed it in cotton.

  He dropped to the ground and let his hands rest on the gravel beneath him. His stomach stilled. He felt more grounded. The ground thrummed under his palms, alive with vibration, and it gave him something to read when everything else was gone. It was strange.

  Then his beads began to warm.

  It was a small thing, but it landed like a hand on his shoulder. A reminder that he wasn’t completely alone, even when it felt like he was.

  Ashe pushed himself off the ground, palms scraping gravel, and shoved the pity down before it could root. Not good for the walking stick.

  He got to his feet and stood there, as still as he could manage, waiting for anything to reach him. A thread of sound. The brush of a breeze across his skin. Something to follow.

  Nothing came.

  No air shift. No distant echo. Only that low hum from the deathring, felt through bone and muscle, steady and insistent.

  He turned toward it anyway. Toward the direction it guided him.

  Slow. Steady. Confident, even if he had to force it.

  The hum shifted. Not louder, not softer, just different, like the beads had turned their face toward something.

  Ashe slowed. He lifted a foot and set it down carefully, testing the ground with the edge of his boot, then with the flat. Still no crunch. No answer. The silence swallowed even his own movement, and for a moment it felt like he wasn’t walking through a place so much as being carried through it.

  Warmth gathered at his throat. A pulse. Two, quick, like a warning.

  He stopped breathing without meaning to. Forced it back in. Air tasted wet. Metallic. Coarse.

  His hand slid up his chest to the deathring, and his fingers found the bead that throbbed hardest. The pull was to the right, only a fraction, but he knew what it meant. He followed it, turning like he trusted its direction.

  The ground changed under him. Gravel to something smoother. Packed. Damp. The vibration under his soles sharpened, cleaner, like a line he could follow. Like a path meant to be walked.

  Then it hit him, not as sound, but as pressure, a faint thump through the earth. A second thump. Closer.

  His pain-sense rose, prickling up his spine. Left.

  He turned, but not fast enough. A weight crashed into his chest, forcing the air out of his lungs.

  Ashe bit down, but a smile crept up anyway. Something about this was what a fight was supposed to be. He wrapped his hands around its neck, fur heavy and thick in his grip.

  Warm breath hit his face as it seethed, trying to bite him. Trying to tear.

  Normally Ashe would have struggled, would have begun to panic. But now he felt in control, the weight on him nothing to fear. He shoved it off to the side and into the ground. A thud vibrated up through the earth as it hit.

  Ashe mounted the creature. One hand pinned it down while he pummeled it from above. His knuckles met the strength of its skin, its fur, and yet the pain never reached him.

  Another pulse behind him. His pain-sense flared. Then another.

  Before Ashe could react, all ten beads around the deathring lit at once, and the pain-sense tore through his whole body as if he’d been set alight.