Ashfall’s wind screamed in Thorn's ears as he flew across the basalt ridgeline.

  Thorn landed behind a jagged outcrop of volcanic rock and forced himself to stay still.

  His heart hammered in his chest.

  Ben isn’t moving.

  The thought clawed at him, but he crushed it down.

  Right now there was only one task: Find the shooter and kill them. It was good to have a goal.

  Thorn crept forward and peered over the ridge.

  Below, the valley had become chaos—stone erupting from the ground, invisible blasts of force hammering the basalt flats while Vaeris reshaped the battlefield itself.

  But Thorn wasn’t watching the valley.

  He was watching the ridge.

  Then he saw it.

  A human figure slid between slabs of rock with careful, practiced efficiency.

  The rifle was slung across his back now.

  Not aiming.

  Relocating.

  Thorn’s lips curled back from his needle teeth. A soldier. A hunter.

  I'm a demon of the Seventh Hollow, human, he thought to himself.

  I was born a hunter.

  The demon rose from the stone and glided silently across the broken ridge.

  Ash and sulfur drifted over the black stone, borne on winds that whispered secrets and stung the nostrils.

  Perfect.

  His body slipped through the air and simply… wasn’t there anymore.

  Invisible again.

  Across the ridge, the human stopped moving.

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  Even at this distance Thorn saw the man’s posture shift.

  The hunter had noticed.

  “Interesting,” the man murmured.

  “Let’s see how clever you really are.”

  A wave shimmered across the man’s armor.

  The distortion spread across his body until the human dissolved into the landscape.

  Adaptive camouflage.

  The ridge looked empty.

  But Thorn could still smell him.

  Gun oil and metal.

  Human sweat and excitement.

  Not an ounce of fear.

  He's fought demons before.

  Thorn lowered himself to the rock and inhaled slowly.

  There.

  The scent moved left along the ridge.

  Thorn silently followed, a plan starting to form in his mind.

  From his new vantage point, Pike’s visor flickered to life with quiet diagnostic whispers.

  Thermal scans were useless here since everything on Ashfall was bloody hot.

  Instead the visor tracked a different signal.

  Mana disturbance. Every living thing carried a faint magical signature.

  The display painted the ridge in shifting layers of color as it searched for anomalies.

  Nothing.

  Pike frowned slightly.

  “Either you’re very good,” he whispered to himself.

  “Or very patient.”

  He unslung a compact weapon from his lower back.

  The long sniper rifle remained secured.

  This was a drum-fed full auto shotgun loaded with blood crystal buckshot. Guanteed to pierce demon skin. Every time.

  Pike moved again, drifting across the ridge like a ghost.

  The visor continued scanning.

  To the north—

  A flicker.

  Barely there.

  A faint distortion in the mana field behind him.

  Pike spun.

  The shotgun roared.

  The blast shredded the rock where Thorn had been.

  The demon's form rippled ten meters away, wings flaring as he launched into the air.

  The shotgun thundered again.

  Pellets peppered Thorn’s side and he came crashing down. Hard.

  Pain exploded through his ribs.

  Thorn rolled behind a slab of rock as the next blast obliterated the stone edge.

  Pike stepped forward calmly.

  The camouflage dissolved.

  Oren Pike studied the demon through the visor.

  “Much larger than a grimp should be.”

  He pumped the shotgun.

  The action snapped sharply and ejected a sizzling cartridge.

  “You’re just as much an anomaly as the other one.”

  Thorn spat blood onto the rock and rose slowly.

  His wings spread.

  “You shot Ben.”

  Pike shrugged his shoulders.

  “Don't take it personally, mate, just doing a job.”

  The shotgun lifted.

  Thorn vanished again.

  Basalt exploded where he had stood.

  Pike’s visor swept the ridge as he moved, turning his cloaking on once more.

  Softly, heel to toe, heel to toe, Pike advanced till he found a verticle crevice and put his back to it.

  Mana signatures flickered across the display.

  The distant storm of magic in the valley below was bright in his peripheral vision.

  A scraping sound behind him.

  Pike spun.

  Too slow.

  Something small landed softly on his shoulder.

  Warm breath brushed the back of his neck.

  A voice whispered beside his ear.

  “Found you.”

  Then Thorn's tail struck like a spear and punched cleanly through Pike’s throat.

  The shotgun slipped from the man’s hands.

  Blood poured between Pike’s fingers as he staggered backward.

  He collapsed to his knees.

  The visor dimmed.

  Pike looked up at the demon.

  “…can shrink… back…not bad…”

  Then the lights behind the visor faded.

  Thorn spared the corpse no further thought.

  Ben was still out there.

  And he needs me.

  The demon launched himself into the air and streaked back toward the battlefield.