The figure on the ridge hadn’t moved in four minutes.
Eloy pulled Deviation Sense open. The HUD’s classification engine spun. Hostility tag: cycling. Faction ID: cycling. Intent projection: cycling. Each field flickered through its database. Each one ca back the sa.
[ UNKNOWN — FACTION: NULL ]
[ HOSTILITY: UNREADABLE ]
[ INTENT: UNREADABLE ]
But the approach vector. That wasn’t cycling. It had locked the mont Deviation Sense engaged, a clean red line drawn from the figure’s position to Eloy’s chest with the focus of a crosshair. It wasn’t in the station. It wasn’t in the party.
Him.
Maya’s fan snapped open. A wall of compressed air shimred between them and the ridge, morning light refracting through it in a faint prismatic haze. A barrier, buying seconds they didn’t have yet.
Isolde’s weight shifted forward. Purple-white sparks jumped between her knuckles. Her eyes tracked the descending figure. Nothing to classify. Nothing to aim at.
"Sa pace." Maya’s voice was flat, precise. "Closing at two ters per second. Air displacent reads humanoid mass. Doesn’t match any Inquisition pattern I’ve known." Her fan didn’t waver. Her other hand had slipped inside her satchel, fingers curled around the ledger bindings. "Classification. Now. Are we standing or sprinting?"
"Nothing. No hostility reading. No faction... Can’t get a read on it." Eloy’s hand stayed at his side. No weapon in his inventory would matter against sothing the system couldn’t classify. "But it’s locked onto ."
He didn’t take his eyes off the figure.
He was the beacon. The Hunter had crossed the salt line for him. Everyone else was collateral. System logic. Clean. Easier than the alternative.
Isolde moved.
Twenty ters from the entrance to the station, she held out her palm toward the ground. A pale purple bolt of lightning arced across the stone and the undergrowth. Left a deep mark in the earth.
The Hunter stepped over it without breaking stride.
The purple arcs did not move toward the figure. They did not reach it. They did not recognize it as a target. It was as though nothing in the current affinity matrix had been programd to identify who it was.
Then the Hunter spoke.
A single sentence. The syllables echoed through the air like stones thrown into calm water, and the translation chanism in Eloy’s HUD crashed, froze, and rebooted.
[ LANGUAGE NOT FOUND ]
[ CORPUS PREDATES SYSTEM DICTIONARY ]
[ OBSERVATION: NULL signature correlates with salt line breach at 3:00:00. Tracking chanism: pre-war network. ]
Untranslatable...?
Isolde’s voice ca after.
"That language... I don’t recognize it. It’s not in any field cipher I know." Her knuckles were white around the sparks she still held. Her shoulders had dropped a fraction. "This predates the war... Predates the kingdom."
"South." Eloy’s voice dropped into the flat register. "First marked trail on the Caldera map. Go."
No debate. No vote.
Isolde snapped her lightning line into a flash-blind burst. Purple-white nova across the ridge line. Not an attack. A screen. The party broke south into the foothills, the Hunter’s untranslatable statent still ringing in the cold air behind them.
[coldfront44]: so we’re just running from sothing the ga can’t even tag. aweso
[LMAO_cat]: THE GA LITERALLY SAID ???????
[noob_slayer88]: this is fine everything is fine
[IsoldeSimp47]: SHE BLINDED IT. DID THAT WORK
[speedGoblin_]: didn’t even slow down chat
[crispyfry99]: bro we are SO underleveled for this zone
Eloy’s legs pumped against the slope. The foothills rose in long, uneven folds. Old stone covered in scrub grass and the kind of quiet that only showed up after sothing stopped burning.
Deviation Sense threaded stable ground through the amber patches of loose rock. The partial Caldera map rendered contour lines and elevation markers in his peripheral vision. 34% coverage. 7 of 22 trail markers identified. The remaining 15 still dark.
The Hunter didn’t pursue from behind.
It was at the cliff edge. Fifty ters of ravine, crossed in one arc. No impact sound. No dust cloud. The engine hadn’t logged it landing.
They stopped.
Ahead: the Hunter. Behind: two hundred feet of open air.
Maya scanned the cliff face. Her eyes moved over the stone with the sa precision she applied to ledgers. She found nothing. Her fan stayed closed. She didn’t look down.
Eloy’s ankle sent a damage feedback signal. He overrode it. Non-critical.
Then his HUD registered the pre-war aqueduct bridge spanning the ravine to their left. Weathered stone. Eighteen inches wide. Two hundred feet above the river. It flickered on his partial map as one of the 7 identified trail markers. The remaining 15 still dark.
He pointed.
Isolde’s eyes tracked to the span. Her posture shifted, barely. Childhood courier maps. Her father’s routes. She stepped toward the bridge before he’d lowered his hand.
The Hunter didn’t move. Not attacking. Not advancing.
"Bridge." Eloy’s hand was already moving toward the span, his body committing before his mouth finished. "Only way."
Isolde stepped onto the bridge without testing it first. Lightning coiled at her fingertips in case the structure rejected their presence.
"Matches." Three words. Flat fact. No surprise. "Courier maps. Age seven."
Maya secured the satchel of blue ledgers against her hip and stepped onto the bridge behind Eloy. Her fan stayed closed. Her eyes tracked Isolde’s footing.
Single file. Eloy leading. Maya in the center. Isolde at the rear. The ancient stone groaned under their weight but held.
Eloy prepared to overload the far support with a mana pulse once they crossed. 60% MP. Enough for one shot.
A chat poll materialized in his HUD.
[ POLL: NEXT MOVE? ]
[ A) Stand and fight. Burn remaining MP on direct engagent. ]
[ B) Commit to crossing. Collapse the bridge from the far side. ]
[ TIR: 3 SECONDS ]
The poll tir hit zero. Eloy committed.
His weight shifted onto the ancient stone. One step. Then another.
The Hunter appeared at the far end of the bridge.
Eloy reached the center of the span. Two hundred feet below, the river carved a white line through black rock. The wind up here had teeth.
The Hunter’s weight hit the far end. Stone cracked like glass under a boot heel. The structural integrity warning flared red across his HUD.
Isolde shoved Maya toward safety.
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