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Chapter 109: Southbound Shadows

Author: Anala
last update Last Updated: 2025-04-13 00:39:42

The road south wasn’t a road at all — only a piece of broken earth knotted with dying grass and the corpse of an old rail line that hadn’t passed a train in decades. The sky above appeared to be holding its breath. The wind brought the scent of ash, though nothing proximate burned.

Maxwell walked next to me in silence, and for the first time, I didn’t spend that time filling it. There was too much baggage between us, too much left unspoken. The ground here felt wrong. Not just war-torn—tainted.

We passed a mangled statue half immersed in mud, its face crumbled, arms absent. I couldn’t remember who it used to be. Maybe no one did. Another relic consumed by whatever storm lay ahead.

Max broke the silence. “You feel that?”

“Yeah,” I said, stopping. The pull wasn’t physical, but it was real. A kind of pressure, low and steady, something humming below the soil.

“It’s much stronger here,” he said.

“Closer.”

“Or hungrier.”

I glanced sideways at him. “You can stop pretending that you’re not s
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