The ghost town felt like a memory that never belonged to anyone.

  Cracked foundations lined the road like broken teeth. Buildings slumped into themselves—wood gray with time, roofs half-collapsed, windows like hollow eyes. Vines threaded through split timbers and rusted nails. No voices echoed. Not even birds.

  Swift stood near the edge of the convoy circle, scanning what remained of the town as wagons parked and guards rotated out to set perimeters. Smoke from small cookfires curled into the air, dissolving into the blue-grey haze of a quiet afternoon.

  Carlos approached, rifle slung across his back, twirling that ever-present bullet between his fingers.

  “Next convoy’s due tomorrow,” he said, tone casual, like it didn’t matter.

  Swift nodded, then looked toward a caved-in bell tower near the center of town. “What happened to the people who lived here?”

  Carlos let the bullet drop into his palm. “Don’t know. This place was empty long before my time.” He hesitated, then added, “I like to think they packed up and moved on. Found something better. Some place bigger. Built new homes.”

  Swift considered that. The silence didn’t feel peaceful—it felt abandoned. Like something had come through and taken the noise with it.

  Carlos nudged him with an elbow. “C’mon. Got something to show you.”

  They left the others behind, walking eastward into the woods beyond the town’s edge.

  The slope was gradual, the trail carved more by animals and patrols than by intention. Fallen leaves clung to mossy stones, and the air smelled faintly of iron and tree rot. Carlos moved with practiced pace—slow but sure-footed, though his right leg dragged slightly behind the left with every step.

  Swift kept pace, glancing at the rifle on Carlos’s back.

  “I’ve been doing everything I can to improve,” Swift said finally. “Gear, training, teaching, but the more I do, the less I understand what it’s all for.”

  Carlos didn’t answer at first. Just listened, letting the trees filter their thoughts.

  Swift pressed on. “At first, I thought I was sent here to stop the corrosion. You know, the big noble mission.”

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  Carlos chuckled—not mean, just dry. “You really think you're gonna take it all down yourself?”

  “I don’t know.” Swift frowned. “But I have to believe there's a reason I was brought here. If I don’t believe that, then what’s the point?”

  Carlos gave a small nod. “Used to think the same. But time has a way of kicking that out of you.”

  They reached a clearing near the top of the ridge. The view stretched for miles—rolling woods, the burnt shell of an old barn down below, the trail cutting through like a scar. Carlos pointed to a stump.

  “We’ll shoot from there. Targets go along that slope.”

  They spent the next hour setting up makeshift targets: pieces of rusted cookware, broken ceramic plates, dented armor chunks. Carlos laid prone first, checking angles, wind, and elevation. He took a couple shots, each hitting their target, and got up.

  Now it’s my turn.

  Carlos adjusted his posture, corrected his cheek weld, showed him how to squeeze—not pull—the trigger. These were things Swift knew but he appreciated the lesson.

  “Sniping’s about more than hitting the mark,” Carlos said. “It’s patience. Knowing when not to fire. You shoot too early, someone dies. Too late, someone else does.”

  Swift nodded, focused.

  His first few shots missed wide. Then he found the rhythm: breathe, settle, squeeze. The fourth shot cracked a plate in half. The fifth split a rusted tin down the center.

  Carlos grunted approval. “Could make a marksman outta you yet.”

  A sound shattered the calm.

  Metal dragging on stone. Then something low and fast, padding through the underbrush.

  Carlos dropped into prone without a word. “Eyes up.”

  Swift ducked behind a half-rotted log. An animal came into view—Corrosion, canine-shaped, its limbs stretched and wrong. More followed, jaws lined with bone spikes, eyes like glass shards.

  Carlos fired once—clean hit. A second dropped with a twitch.

  One broke past them.

  Carlos shifted too late.

  Swift surged forward, Excalibur forgotten, body moving like instinct had taken the wheel. The first beast lunged, and Swift met it with a rising elbow to its muzzle.

  “Sit!”

  A moment. An airborne canine. A brutal knee into its ribcage that cracked like dry wood.

  The others charged.

  He didn’t hesitate.

  He slammed the buttstock of his musket into one’s skull, bayonet drove into another’s throat.

  “Heel!”

  He pivoted, struck, spun, shouted—an echo of something primal roaring behind his eyes. Not rage without control, but worse: controlled wrath.

  When it ended, five bodies lay broken around him.

  The forest was still again.

  They didn’t speak on the walk back.

  The fire Carlos built crackled low, just enough to push back the cold.

  Swift sat on a split log, quiet, cleaning blood from his gloves.

  Carlos fed dry wood into the flames. The glow lit his face, casting sharp shadows beneath his brow.

  “That thing in you,” he said, watching the flame. “You keep it on a leash, yeah?”

  Swift didn’t answer right away.

  “It’s not something I call. It just… shows up.”

  “Right.” Carlos nodded. “Well. Make sure it only answers to you. Things like that don’t always go away when you're done.”

  The silence settled between them.

  After a long moment, Swift asked, “Why do you always spin that bullet?”

  Carlos looked down. Rolled the round between his fingers. Then he held it up, letting the firelight dance across the casing.

  “It’s the one I was supposed to use,” he said quietly.

  His eyes didn’t leave the flame.

  “For myself.”