The ghost caravan moved without sound or dust. Inside the lead wagon, Cherina lay on a cot of woven fiber-optic cable that pulsed like a heartbeat. Her skin flickered between flesh and code, veins glowing faint violet. Sable curled around her, the lynx's cyber-spines dimmed to embers, purring static that synced with her faltering pulse.
Mara Dead-Eyes stood at the wagon's bar—a slab of pre-Rift steel etched with coyote runes. Half her face was polished skull, the other a flickering hologram of a younger woman, cruel and smiling. She poured a shot of liquid starlight into a glass made of bone.
"Your sister is a resonator," she said, voice layered with static and wind. "The Choir plans to make her the final bell—a weapon to shatter the Rift wide open. Blood moon. Nine days."
Farren sat opposite, cleaning his plasma sword. Its edge glitched, runes crawling like living code: VENGEANCE. The revolver on the table had three rune-bullets left; each shot drained lynx-soul.
"How do we stop it?"
Mara's bone fingers tapped the bar. "First, you pay the toll to leave the arroyo. Then, we talk about the Serpent-Coil."
Farren's jaw clenched. "Name it."
"A soul-shard from the Coil's heart."
He nodded. "Done."
The caravan surged into a data-storm—a Rift anomaly where reality became code. The wagon's walls turned translucent; outside, the desert dissolved into scrolling glyphs. Choir hunters attacked: scarab-drones with human torsos, shells reflecting infinite Farren's, infinite Sables. Their wings hummed like chainsaws.
Farren kicked the door. "Drive!"
Mara grinned. The caravan accelerated. Farren fired; bullets became packets of light, deleting drones. Sable leapt through firewalls, claws shredding corrupted souls. A drone's stinger grazed the lynx's flank—Rift-mark spreading. Farren cauterized it with the plasma sword's edge. Pain shared.
They escaped into the Glass Flats, a plain of mirrored sand where the sky reflected the ground. Mara demanded another memory. Farren refused. The caravan ejected them into the night.
Cherina woke screaming. "The song… it's starting." Her eyes were black glass.
Farren etched FAMILY on his last rune-bullet. They walked into the mirrored waste. Sable's wound glowed—Rift-mark spreading.