Bridge lighting on the Specter had two moods: blue-white for full alert, and what they called “ghost mode,” a low indigo haze meant to keep you awake and half-mad at once. Tonight, the indigo was worse than usual, shadows stacked in every corner, everything static except the pulsing line across Zara’s main monitor.

A week later, Erik was more myth than man—at least that’s how the villagers acted. He stalked the muddy streets, every set of eyes tracking him like a loose wolf in the sheepfold. Mothers snatched children out of his path, pressing them to their thighs and whispering urgent, snot-streaked warnings. Old men, hardened by decades of coastal misery, straightened up behind fences, knuckles white on rakes and spears and whatever else passed for a weapon in this frozen shithole. If anyone dared look...

Erik Bjornsson’s first breath was a clawed thing, scraping up the back of his throat like a hand full of gravel. The air stank of rust and old blood. He jerked upright, ears ringing, heart jackhammering in his chest. The world crashed back in: blackness, bitter cold, the weight of something dead and heavy mummifying his legs. Ice clattered down, pelting his scalp, sliding in greasy clumps off his cheek and beard. He hacked up a gobbet of red-tinged phlegm and spat it on the cave floor, where...