The silence of Hervey Bay had become unbearable.

  Even death left echoes, and now those echoes had faded.

  Malachai stood on the edge of the broken road, overlooking the charred bones of the coast. His breath fogged in the morning air—not from cold, but from the Veil pulsing against his skin. The Hungering Veil whispered with longing, pressing gently against his back like a second spine, begging for motion, for slaughter, for the rhythm of pursuit.

  But there was nothing left to hunt.

  He needed to move. He needed to plan. He needed to evolve.

  And so, he chose Brisbane.

  One of the last twelve fortified cities in Australia.

  It was said to be home to a rare technological relic—the Manascope Array, a device capable of reading class density and mana saturation in any living being. Rumor held it was built from reverse-engineered dungeon tech, fused with old world satellite components and bits of core-crystal. More importantly, Brisbane was the domain of a powerful S-rank Hollowed, a survivor of more than a dozen dungeon ruptures.

  That S-rank commanded the only guild in the city.

  Most Hollowed of such level ruled or operated guilds now, and Brisbane’s singular guild had risen to prominence for its brutal, effective containment of any Gates appearing in the area. With one guild, one S-rank, and a city clinging to survival beneath that protection, Brisbane was more fortress than sanctuary.

  His vehicle was simple.

  A matte-black dirt bike, stripped from a corpse half-buried under a collapsed servo. He fixed it with scavenged parts, reinforced it with makeshift armor panels, and bound the saddle with rope and spare cloth. A crude mount for a crude world. It rumbled beneath him like a caged beast as he took to the ruined highways.

  The journey south took five days.

  Five days of horror.

  The roads were littered with corpses, burned-out buses, and half-eaten emergency vehicles. Entire towns were just names now, etched on road signs that no longer meant anything.

  He passed through a place called Tiaro.

  There, the Khan Worms had burrowed deep. One erupted from a ditch as he passed, a pale, screaming tunnel of flesh covered in spiraling bone plates and thrashing mandibles. He sped past it, dodging its snapping jaws, the Hungering Veil screaming joy as he narrowly avoided death.

  Later, near Gympie, he encountered the Penanggalan.

  It floated above a house, intestines dangling, entrails trailing like oily tendrils. Its woman’s face was serene, blood dripping from its eyelids, its fanged mouth cooing lullabies to the dead. He watched from a distance as it fed on a stranded couple, heads bowed in silent surrender. He didn’t intervene. He wasn’t ready for that thing. Not yet.

  South of Caboolture, a Skin-Stag stalked the fog-line—a skeletal deer-like creature, humanoid hands for hooves, its antlers filled with twitching faces. It watched him for hours, walking parallel to the road, its neck too long and its shadow too short.

  By the time he reached the outskirts of Brisbane, the sky had changed.

  The fog began as a haze.

  Then it became something else.

  Dense. Wet. Wrong. It clung to everything, eating sound and light. It moved unnaturally, not drifting, but crawling, like a sentient thing dragging itself across the landscape.

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  ? Fog Detected: Mana-Saturated Miasma

  Prolonged exposure may result in mana poisoning or hallucination. Origins: First Gate. Classification: Living Environment.

  Malachai stopped at the edge of the highway, staring into the endless grey.

  Silhouettes shifted in the fog.

  Not people. Not anymore.

  He saw long-legged beasts with twisting necks and masks made of bark. Tall, emaciated women with arms that scraped the pavement. Hollow children laughing in a language made entirely of shrieks.

  He gripped the throttle and pressed on.

  The Veil kept the worst of the hallucinations at bay. It pulsed with hunger, feeding on the fear thick in the air, sharpening his senses.

  And then he saw it.

  Brisbane.

  The outer edge of the city had been lost. Streets choked with overgrowth and mangled bodies, homes now nests for the dead. But at its heart, wrapped in concrete and desperation, stood the wall.

  It rose over thirty meters, reinforced with rebar, plated steel, and the bones of fallen vehicles. Watchtowers dotted its perimeter, built from scrap and salvaged weaponry. The wall didn’t scream security.

  It screamed last chance.

  Every high-rise within the circle had been repurposed.

  Hotels. Motels. Skyscrapers. All hollowed out, windows dark, balconies cluttered with clotheslines and makeshift gardens. The world hadn’t rebuilt.

  It had stacked itself like rotting meat.

  He parked the bike behind a fallen bus and approached on foot. The checkpoint was silent, but he felt eyes on him.

  They stepped out of the shadows.

  Guards. Survivors. Armed with rifles, rebar spears, and scavenged armor.

  They saw the Veil.

  They almost opened fire.

  But Malachai raised his hands slowly and let the system do the talking.

  ---

  ? Class Detected: Reaperborn

  Mana Signature: Human-Origin, Fused Core – Singular

  Verified via Manascope Array

  Rank Classification: D

  ---

  A lie born of limitation.

  The Manascope Array could only read current state—raw mana output, active abilities, surface class weight. But Malachai’s class was progressive. Reaperborn wasn’t built on flat potential. It evolved. It consumed. It became.

  The device read only what he was now.

  Not what he would become.

  And so, to them, he was a D-rank anomaly with eerie gear and a dangerous aura. Not worth killing. Not worth trusting.

  The door creaked open.

  They didn’t ask questions.

  They didn’t speak.

  They watched.

  Inside, the city was chaos barely hidden under concrete.

  Children screamed from balconies. Smoke poured from rooftops where food was boiled in metal drums. Gunshots echoed in the distance—not war, just warnings. People lived in stacked motel

  rooms, entire families crammed into one-bedroom suites. Elevators no longer worked. Stairs smelled like urine and desperation.

  He took the first room offered.

  One bedroom. Tenth floor. A former executive suite in a high-rise hotel that once hosted businessmen and bored tourists.

  Now it was his.

  A tomb in the sky.

  He sat on the bed, blood still dried to his neck, staring out the cracked glass at the sea of fog that covered the city like a slow, choking death.

  More Gates would come.

  More horrors would bleed through.

  And Malachai—Reaperborn, cloaked in shadow and carved in blood—would be ready for them.