The capital's sky had always been sick with light, a bloated halo that never slept, bleeding neon and Dominion propaganda across the clouds. It painted the heavens in false gold and humming violet, choking out the stars like they were mistakes trying to whisper back.
But the farther Lucian rode, the more the sky peeled away. Streetlamps flickered and died. Billboards advertising things that no longer existed, blinked to static. Even the satellites overhead, ever-watching, ever-judging, retreated behind black clouds.
Out here, past the reach of Dominion gridlines and surveillance clouds, the night grew quiet. Like being honest, starless.
And still, he rode. Lucian's bike didn't scream like the newer magitech cruisers. It glided.
A low, almost reverent hum buzzed beneath its frame, a sound that vibrated in the ribs, not the ears. It was fat-bodied, armored in patchwork plating that had once been black, now mottled by ash and time. Viktor had called it "a corpse with pride." It still moved like a ghost.
He had never given it a name.
But it had one. Not spoken, not known, just… understood.
It had been with him through everything after his brother left, leaving him for dead. It was with him through raids and bloodscapes. Through betrayals and through silence. It has seen him at every state, being broken and reformed, being heartless and then through feelings, it has seen his every shape.
And if the world burned, it would be the last thing he'd trust to carry him through the fire.
Most telling of all were the two curved antlers mounted above its front wheels reaching all the way up to the handles—slender, sweeping, and made from forged bone-steel, designed and welded by Sierra herself. They looked like the antlers of a long-dead forest god, crowned with veins of glowing blue maglight, pulsing gently as if alive.
The same stormlight shimmer that haunted Lucian's own eyes.
Some said the antlers were for intimidation. Others believed they were arcane antennae for directional flow through necrofields. But Lucian never explained them. He didn't have to.
It was his silence, made mechanical.
The bike hated loud roads, refused to function if rushed, wouldn't move for anyone trying to start it aggressively.
Sierra had once called it "half-spirit, half-stubborn bastard." Lucian called it his.
Its dashboard blinked with ancient glyphwork. The interface was cracked, its mag-wires exposed beneath the leather grips, but everything still ran because Lucian knew how to listen. He didn't press it. He asked.
And in return, it obeyed. Always.
Now, as they surged across the dying outskirts of civilization, it pulsed in tandem with the hourglass relic, or more like a lantern, Lucian carried in his satchel. Ashlan, Breaker of Fog, Viktor's final gift. It was not lit with fire or fuel, but with a shard of Remembrance, a rare mineral that absorbed light from living memory. The lantern shimmered in pulses, dimming when Lucian's thoughts scattered, flaring brighter when he focused.
"Think clearly," Viktor had warned. "If your mind wanders in the Shroud, so will the road."
It glimmered faintly through the cloth like a heartbeat, and the bike responded, its antlers glowing brighter, cutting through the dust like twin crescent moons.
The people he passed, if they could even be called that anymore, watched with sunken eyes from the cracks of ruined homes and collapsed tenements. They didn't speak. They didn't reach.
They only stared at the gliding beast with its glowing horns and its rider, who didn't stop.
Civilization didn't end here. It simply rotted from the inside out. The road became more bones than street. Shattered Dominion sigils etched into the concrete, now buried under broken glass and forgotten prayers.
He passed the last broken fence.
The wind changed.
The hum of his bike dipped, low and purring now, as if it sensed what was ahead, the curve of the world, the mouth of the Shroud.
Lucian slowed.
He let his gloved hand rest gently on the bone-steel handlebars, his gloved fingers brushing the hidden trigger glyph Sierra had inscribed there long ago.
The bike vibrated in response, not in warning, but in understanding.
Yes, it seemed to say. We remember this road.
Then, without a word, Lucian drove into the dark.
The horns lit the way, and the dead followed.
The road soon stopped pretending it was a road. Sand and ash and crushed glass took its place. Metal skeletons of cars lay like devoured beasts. The remains of warning signs rusted in the wind:
⚠ DO NOT PROCEED
⚠ DOMINION ORDER: NO PASSAGE BEYOND THIS POINT
⚠ THE SHROUD REMEMBERS
Lucian passed them in silence.
And then he saw it.
The Grayscale Shroud.
It stood at the edge of the world like a wound that had never closed. Not fog, not smoke. Something older.
A curtain of twitching ashlight and moving shadow, pulsing as if it breathed. It didn't howl, but something in the air around it vibrated at a pitch only bone could hear. The sound of forgotten things chewing on names.
Lucian Vance sat astride his bike at the shroud's border, one boot grounded in the shattered obsidian dust.
He took a slow breath. The veil in front of him swayed. Most called it fog. Lucian knew better. It was a membrane. A skin stretched over something hollow and starving.
Lucian unhinged the satchel to take out its contents.
One was the Ashlan, the lantern that looked like an hourglass.
Second was The death-map, bound in skin-woven leather, its seams lined with stitch-ink that pulsed faintly against his palm. It didn't show directions like a normal map. It remembered them. Lucian had tested it once. When held by someone living, it pulsed cold. When held by someone marked by the dead, it turned pages on its own.
Right now, it throbbed like it knew what was coming. Like it wanted to scream but couldn't remember how.
Third was the blue dazzling, bone charm, threaded with thin black string. Lucian wore it on his wrist. The Mourner's Name. Viktor had whispered that name once, just once, and the candle beside him had gone out instantly. He had then whispered Lucian's name to it for it to protect him through the shroud.
"The dead will protect you," he'd said.
The dead souls and spirits followed it and protected whoever owned it. Not from humans, but from other dead or transformed souls, souls that were dangerous and monstrous, just like those in the shroud.
"So long as the name stays bound to your breath. Don't lose it. Don't speak it twice."
Lucian hadn't asked what would happen if he did.
"Think clearly," Viktor had warned. "If your mind wanders in the Shroud, so will the road."