The city beyond Helios was dead.

  Not ruined—emptied.

  Kael felt it the moment they crossed the shattered transit bridge. No drones. No patrol lights. No distant hum of Ascendant engines. Just wind cutting through steel bones and the soft crackle of fires burning where no one remained to put them out.

  Lyra kept moving, rifle low, eyes scanning. She had survived too many ambushes to trust silence.

  “People don’t just vanish,” she muttered.

  Kael said nothing. The energy under his skin hadn’t stopped screaming since the Halo fractured the sky. Every step felt like walking closer to something watching him.

  They never saw the first body until they stepped over it.

  A soldier—Ascendant armor split cleanly down the chest, like something had peeled it open. The inside was bckened, scorched from the inside out.

  Kael swallowed. “That wasn’t me.”

  Lyra knelt, fingers brushing the burn marks. “No. This was… personal.”

  A sound echoed above them.

  Cng.

  Heavy. Deliberate.

  Kael looked up just as something dropped from the overpass.

  The ground exploded.

  Concrete shattered outward as a massive figure nded between them, crouched low, one fist buried in the street. Dust rolled like fog. When it cleared, Kael saw the mask.

  Smooth. Bone-white. No mouth. No eyes—just a single vertical slit glowing dull red.

  The man rose slowly, towering, wrapped in scorched armor stitched with trophies: broken helmets, dog tags, scraps of rebel banners.

  Lyra’s breath caught.

  “…No way.”

  The figure tilted his head, studying them.

  Then he spoke.

  “Target confirmed.”

  His voice sounded wrong—yered, distorted, like multiple throats speaking at once.

  Kael felt his knees weaken.

  Lyra whispered the name like a curse.

  “Gravehound.”

  They ran.

  They didn’t pn it. Didn’t signal. Survival took over.

  The moment Kael turned, something smashed into his back and sent him skidding across the street. He hit hard, breath gone, vision fshing white.

  Gravehound didn’t chase.

  He walked.

  Each step cracked the ground beneath his boots.

  Lyra fired. Psma rounds smmed into his chest and died there, absorbed, bleeding into the armor like water into sand.

  Gravehound backhanded her.

  The hit lifted her off the ground and threw her through a storefront wall. Gss rained. Metal screamed.

  Kael forced himself up, rage surging, energy exploding from his hands in a blinding arc.

  The bst hit Gravehound square in the mask.

  For a heartbeat—nothing.

  Then the hunter slid back half a step.

  Kael’s hope died instantly.

  Gravehound lunged.

  They collided in the street, Kael’s power screaming against the hunter’s strength. The mask was inches from Kael’s face now. He could feel heat pouring from the slit like a furnace.

  “Asset unstable,” Gravehound intoned.

  “Correction required.”

  His fist drove into Kael’s ribs.

  Something cracked.

  Kael screamed.

  Lyra staggered from the rubble, bleeding, and fired point-bnk at Gravehound’s neck. The shot detonated—throwing both men apart.

  Gravehound recovered first.

  He raised his arm. The weapon built into it unfolded with a mechanical shriek.

  Lyra grabbed Kael.

  “MOVE!”

  She dragged him into a colpsing alley just as the street behind them vanished in fire.

  They ran blind, bleeding, broken—through smoke, through falling debris, through a city that seemed to fold in on itself.

  A miracle saved them.

  Not mercy.

  The ground gave way beneath their feet, dropping them into darkness as Gravehound’s bst tore overhead.

  They fell hard—into ancient tunnels beneath the city, concrete sealing shut above them.

  Silence returned.

  Lyra y gasping, her arm bent wrong. Kael couldn’t feel his left side.

  Above them, muffled through stone, something heavy paced.

  Gravehound’s voice echoed faintly, distorted.

  “Run,” he said calmly.

  “I enjoy the chase.”

  Then he was gone.

  Lyra ughed weakly—half hysteria, half relief.

  “We just survived the Ascendant’s favorite monster.”

  Kael stared into the dark, shaking.

  “Why is he after me?”

  Lyra met his eyes.

  “Because you’re not just connected to the Halo, Kael.”

  She hesitated.

  “You’re a weapon… that everyone wants first.”

  And somewhere above, the man called Gravehound carved their names into his hunt.