The Big Evil Beast howled like a living thing as it surged through the wet night, wheels thundering against blackened stone. The roads were old here—rutted deep into the hills by countless forgotten wheels. Fog clung to the earth like mold to bread, thick and sour-sweet, and the lamps lining the road had long since guttered out.

Somewhere beyond the tree line, shapes moved—pale, too tall, wrong-footed. They didn’t follow the road. They didn’t have to.

The captain said nothing. He simply jerked the throttle twice and the Beast shuddered forward, engines roaring hot as the caravan leaned into the next incline. The outer hull groaned with the strain, steam venting high overhead, fangs of iron glowing faint red in the dark.

This wasn’t panic. Not yet. This was a test.

The captain had said as much back in Brinehold. “No better check than the dark roads,” he’d muttered, arms crossed, squinting at the terrain map. “If it’s going to break, better it breaks early. While we’ve still got warm rations and room to fix it.”

So when the specters stirred in the woods, he didn’t flinch. He opened the throttle and let the Beast show her teeth. Better to know now—while the rivets still held and the seals still steamed clean.

Tarris felt the shift before the alarm klaxon chimed. He was already halfway to the gun bay, one hand clutching the guardrail, the other tightening his scarf against the chill. No one had to say it—they’d seen something. Everyone had.

From the narrow viewport inside the gun pod, Tarris could see them clearly now: phantoms gliding through the woods, trailing mist behind like cloaks of drowned silk. They weren’t running—they were simply… gaining.

He didn’t fire. He knew better than that. Specters like these weren’t made of anything bullets could offend. All shooting would do was get their attention.

Instead, he placed his gloved palm against the newly etched warding runes inside the pod’s hatch—fresh ink from the last city, blessed and sealed. They were simple things, charmed by a half-mad priest and a copper flask of sacramental gin, but they’d held so far. The runes hummed faintly under his touch, a warmth that pushed back against the crawling cold in his bones.

The pod shuddered. Something scraped along the outer hull.

Then the Beast surged forward again—a brutal leap in speed, the engines pushed to a roar that made the walls tremble and the gauges flirt with the red. The road tilted upward.

They were headed toward Hodda’s Hollow, but they wouldn’t stop. Not really. Not unless they had to. It was too close to Uld Imbus.

The captain had already made the call. Handle the job. Scrabble the undead. Then veer northeast, skimming the edge of the ridge toward the old fortress and whatever passed for safety there.

Hodda’s Hollow lay just beyond the next bend, its half-buried buildings rising out of the mist like gravestones in a flooded field. Tarris caught sight of a sunken chimney, a wet flicker of firelight, and something else—a figure standing still, not watching, just… waiting.

He sealed the gun bay and climbed down.

They weren’t going to outrun everything forever.

But tonight, at least, the Big Evil Beast was still young, still strong.

And the phantoms weren’t fast enough. Not yet.