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“Shadow, get your damn furry ass back here!”

He skitters between rusted trailers and sagging power lines like the world hasn’t learned to bite yet. Nails clicking on broken asphalt, tongue lolling, tail loose and happy in a place that hasn’t earned the right to that word in years.

Every chase makes me picture it—the way it could really end for me. Getting dragged screaming into the ash because of a dog too stubborn to heel. Teeth in my skin, hands in my hair, the sky going black around the edges while I think, I should’ve stayed on the porch.

Cass’s voice lives in my skull, sharp as barbed wire. “Don’t cross the property line.”

If we don’t get moving, the Hollowborn will.

I’ve seen what they do. Flesh splitting like overripe fruit. Spines bending until bones forget which way is right. The stench hits first—sweet rot and sour blood. Then the sound: that dry, rasping hymn that rattles your ribs before their hands even touch you. One bite and you’re gone. Whatever’s left doesn’t know your name.

Before the Reckoning, the world still pretended to have rules. Now all we have is hunger.

The zealots call it Sovereignty—the will of some forgotten God. But those of us left know better. It isn’t salvation. It’s rot wearing a crown. Name it plague, curse, rapture—truth doesn’t care. The world ended, and we’re what’s left beneath its shadow. Every crown needs a counterweight. Even a rotten one.

The Hollowborn are monsters. But people? People are worse.

I’ve watched neighbors cut each other down for a cracked jar of beans. Fathers sell daughters to warlords for a place near a fire. It’s not food they’re starving for anymore. It’s power. Worship soured.

Shadow darts through a gap in the fence, ears pricked, nose working overtime. He doesn’t remember the before times. He doesn’t understand that out here a dog is both an alarm and invitation.

“Shadow,” I hiss, ducking after him. “If you get me killed, I’m haunting you, you little bastard.”

A twig snaps to my left—sharp, close.

My pulse spikes. Shadow’s name sticks in my throat. I love that damn dog, but I’m not about to die for him.

I ease a step back, fingers finding the worn wood of my hatchet handle. The silence goes thin and tense, stretched like wire.

Then I hear it.

A dragging shuffle. A guttural rasp, breath scraped up from the bottom of the lungs. Nails—or what’s left of them—catching on exposed roots.

She steps out from between the trees.

Ms. Cooper.

For a second, all I see are the faded slippers she used to wear every morning to check her garden. The blue ones with the worn soles and the little fraying bow. My brain latches onto that like it can’t handle the rest.

Then the rest hits.

Her housecoat is soaked dark, torn open across the chest. Her skin’s gone waxy gray, lips pulled back from teeth slick with old blood. Her head jerks in those wrong, puppet-snapped angles. One eye’s milky, the other bright and empty.

The scream lodges behind my teeth.

Ms. Cooper, who used to usher me into her kitchen, the one that always smelled like sugar and summer. I’d mash more berries onto my shirt than into the pot, and she’d just laugh, wiping my cheek with her apron. Her smile was worn thin, but it made me believe—just for a second—that I wasn’t as useless as I felt.

She slams into me before thought catches up.

My back hits the ground hard enough to blast the air out of my lungs and my hatchet skids out of reach. Her weight pins me, heavier than she ever was in life, her fingers digging into my shoulders like talons.

Her mouth snaps inches from my face, teeth gnashing, breath hot and sour and wrong. Sweet rot. Old jam. Decay.

I claw for the hatchet; she snarls, jerking my arm back with impossible strength. Her skin is cold as grave dirt, slick and unyielding. My muscles scream. My vision blurs at the edges.

This is it, I think, half-hysterical. Pinned under the neighbor who taught me to make jam. Scarlett and Cass are gonna be so damn pissed.

Her jaw drops wide, teeth coming for my throat.