Swift crouched low in the tall, brittle grass as a dry wind brushed past him. The stalks rasped against each other like bones clicking together. He’d been out here in Sector D’s outer plains for a few days, and the signs of civilization had vanished miles back. The only thing ahead was the corrosion—silent, creeping, and wrong.

  His flight suit was caked in dust, boots cracked with pale lines where moisture had long since been sucked out by the sun. The outer shell of his pack was stained with dirt. Swift carried Excalibur, ready for any threats to appear. Still as unwieldy as ever, but far deadlier than when he first named it.

  Swift chuckled at the memory of him pulling the musket from the stone base of the statue and shouting: Excalibur!

  The air had changed.

  It stank of mildew—like old rotting books. The landscape here was distorted: dead trees hunched like figures frozen in anguish, roots pulled from the soil like broken fingers. Some trees had peeled back layers of bark as if trying to crawl out of their own skin.

  He moved with care, eyes constantly scanning. His notebook was already packed with hand-sketched maps and target notes from the past week. A few lone corroded patrols, easily dispatched.

  But this northern zone?

  Swift dropped to a knee near a collapsed fence, spotting something ahead. A small cart lay rusted and half-consumed by thorny vines. Nearby, he found bones — shattered, gnawed down to the marrow. A half-melted canteen. Civilian clothes torn and ground into the dirt.

  Screeches echoed from the western ridge.

  Faint. Rhythmic. They weren’t cries of pain — they were calls. Swift flattened his posture and kept moving, climbing a slope for a better view.

  At the crest, he saw it: movement. A figure limping along the edge of a dry streambed. It was tall and sickly-thin, with arms that hung lower than they should and legs that moved in sharp, mechanical tics. Its skin was tight and greenish-gray, and the mouth hung too wide, like it had forgotten how to breathe through its nose.

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  Swift steadied his breath, raising Excalibur.

  He didn’t have optics or a scope—just trained eyes and a practiced sense of range. He guessed it at 80 steps. The wind was slight, right to left. He waited until the creature turned broadside.

  Boom.

  The shot cracked across the plain. The skinny’s head snapped back, and it dropped like a marionette with its strings cut. Clean kill. Swift slid down the hill, careful to avoid silhouetting himself against the skyline.

  Up close, the creature was more grotesque than he expected. The skin was semi-translucent in some places, stretched over bones like plastic. Its fingers were long with too many joints. The toes were splayed with small claws, and the feet were bare.

  Swift studied the ground and found tracks. Not just one set — multiple. All similar. Some old.

  Some… fresh.

  He kept moving west and found what he was technically sent to find: a half-collapsed watchtower stump with a rusted metallic rune embedded in the rock. He stepped up to the marker and scanned the area. The decay was everywhere — black veins had crept over the stone, and the surrounding area was devoid of color. A few more notes in his journal and the mission would be complete.

  Swift wasn’t satisfied.

  This was just a snapshot — the edge of something far worse. The footprints he found didn’t lead here; they led beyond. And the way they overlapped and wove together suggested coordination. A real recon mission wasn’t just about checking a box. It was about understanding the enemy.

  He climbed a low ridgeline nearby and found a perfect vantage point—a broken cluster of rocks with just enough cover to stay low. Swift got to work. He rigged a tarp to break his silhouette, tied loose bits of wire to stones for noise traps, and dug out a little firing perch.

  As night fell, he slipped his helmet from the pack and let it rest beside him. The visor remained up for now. He ate a few cold rations in silence, chewing slowly, eyes never straying from the trench network spreading into the west.

  Swift walked into his kill zone for one last check, and spotted footprints.

  Faint, scattered tracks in the dirt below. Bare, human-shaped, but stretched. Matching the “skinny.” At least six separate trails, maybe more. They didn’t just wander. The Skinnies had moved with a purpose.

  Swift made his way up to his perch.

  He climbed back to his perch, narrowed his eyes, then scribbled into his journal: “Multiple hostiles. Moving with pattern. Potential scouts. Site far more active than reported.”

  The wind shifted. A brittle breeze rolled across the hill and with it came a sound. Not a screech this time.

  A breath.

  Wet, low, and clicking.

  Another.

  And another.

  Swift didn’t move. His hand rested near Excalibur.

  So it begins.