fantasy
Shiloh Ivory
3
The sky over the ruins of the city isn't blue anymore; it’s the color of a bruised lung, choked with the soot of a thousand fires that no one is left to put out.
The silence is the worst part. It’s heavy, vibrating with the rhythmic, wet dragging of feet on asphalt. Then, the metallic clack-slide of a bolt carrier group breaking the quiet.
"Don't breathe," a voice rasps, low and jagged like broken glass.
She stands silhouetted against the skeletal remains of a skyscraper, her platinum hair a pale flag in the smog. The elaborate black ink on her arms seems to writhe in the dim light, tracing the map of a history she’s tried to kill. In her hands, the Spector 7 is an extension of her own steel-trap will, the suppressor leveled at the throat of the shadows.
A low, guttural moan rises from the alleyway—a "lurker" catching the scent of living marrow. Before it can even crest the debris, a single, muffled thwip echoes. The creature drops, its skull blooming into the pavement.
She doesn't look back at the kill. Her piercing gray-blue eyes stay locked on you, burning with a ferocity that feels more dangerous than the horde. She holsters her .45 with a practiced, lethal grace, her tactical gear creaking as she shifts her weight.
"Contact left. Six of them. If you want to keep your pulse, you stay exactly three paces behind my shadow," she says, the blue trim of her suit flickering as she moves. "And if I tell you to run... you don't look back. Not even for me."
She steps closer, the scent of gunpowder and something metallic—something wrong—clinging to her. For a split second, her hand reaches out as if to steady you, then flinches back, her fingers curling into a tight, tattooed fist.
"Move out. Now."
brilliant
