Sour Table

Across the battlefield, the Boss Minotaur responded with a low, rumbling growl, its breath steaming from its nostrils like a bull ready to kill.

To the Boss Minotaur, that smear of red across Bob's chest was not just bravado. It was a challenge. It was not a regular bull, but instinct took over at the sight of that bright, defiant mark.

The Minotaur reared its head and activated one of its innate skills. Charge.

This was no normal dash. The beast surged forward with enhanced momentum, its speed far beyond a typical sprint, power channeled into its hooves and horns as the ground quaked beneath it.

Bob braced. He tensed his muscles and planted his feet, grounding himself for impact. As the Minotaur's charge struck, a force-triggered fog shield flared to life across his chest, a defensive instinct built into his Goliath form.

CRASH.

The shield absorbed most of the impact, reducing the full force of the charge. Bob caught one of the Minotaur's horns with his left hand, locking it in place and anchoring the beast right in front of him. The force still reverberated through his body, but he held firm, refusing to let the monster move an inch.

Then something shifted.

A fog weapon bloomed in his free hand. A pointed mace, its spike glowing.

With a grunt, he drove it upward, straight beneath the Minotaur's chin.

SCHLUNK.

The mace pierced clean through. Blood geysered into the air, steam curling off the weapon.

The Minotaur twitched, then collapsed.

Bob let go of the horn and stood over it, breathing hard. He wiped the blood from his brow.

It was not about pride. It was about winning. And sometimes, winning meant taking the hit, then hitting back harder.

The battlefield had gone quiet.

The shock of the kill still echoed across the battlefield. The Phantom Battalion stood frozen for a moment, processing what they had just witnessed.

Vance watched from a distance, chest heaving. Even in his Glint form, he was still catching his breath.

It had taken Bob only minutes.

Where their battalion would have lost dozens pushing back a stampede and trying to isolate the Boss, Bob had shut it down before the enemy could regroup. A few more minutes of coordinated cleanup, and the field would be theirs.

Vance approached, stepping over crushed weapons and twitching Fade corpses.

"I will not lie," he said, lowering his axe. "That was fast. You saved us a lot of time. And a lot of bodies."

Bob did not say anything. He rolled his shoulder, wiped the last streak of blood from his face, and looked back down the road.

"Everything is handled here. I am heading to Greystone," Bob said casually, offering Vance a brief nod. His friends were already ahead, and he needed to catch up.

Vance nodded. "Let me return the favor. We have a mobile safe zone jeep. We can get you there in under twenty minutes."

Bob considered it. Time was already slipping. Minutes mattered.

He gave a small grunt. "Alright. Faster than walking."

Minutes later, Bob climbed into the armored jeep, its interior pulsing with the low hum of an embedded meteor fragment. As the vehicle pulled away from the battlefield, he glanced back one last time at the fallen Boss Minotaur.

Then he turned his eyes forward.

His friends were waiting.

-----

The road felt longer without Bob.

After he jumped from the truck to face the Boss Minotaur, Gabe slid behind the wheel without a word. The silence inside the Last Bite food truck was heavy. No jokes. No chatter. Only the sound of the tires humming against the cracked road and the distant moan of the Pink Fog scraping along the edges.

It took them a few more minutes to reach Greystone City.

As soon as they arrived, Gabe and Iris jumped out of the truck and disappeared into the Pink Fog without hesitation. Their Glint forms would trigger soon, and they could not afford to waste time.

Sly stayed behind to park the vehicle properly inside the city's barrier. His transformation always took longer, thirty minutes at best, so it made sense. Someone had to handle the final checks, make sure the food truck was secure. Not everyone needed to be there right away.

He glanced at the fog curling beyond the city's edge.

"I will catch up," he said, more to himself than to anyone else.

And he would.

Gabe and Iris did not have the luxury of waiting. Their forms would trigger within fifteen minutes. That was just enough time to risk a straight push toward Minawa.

The terrain between Greystone and Minawa was nothing like the clear road they had used before. Cracked pavement gave way to collapsed overpasses and broken barricades. Rubble littered the path, forcing them to climb over twisted metal beams and leap across fractured streets. Every few minutes, they had to slow down to crawl beneath wreckage or carefully skirt the edge of sinkholes.

Yet strangely, the fog was quiet. No Fades. No Nightmares. Just silence.

They both noticed, but neither said it aloud. Maybe it was luck. Maybe it was not. Either way, they kept moving.

Their Glint forms activated midway through the journey, fog energy wrapping around them as their bodies shifted into their empowered states. The transformation gave them a surge of strength and clarity, making the final stretch of the difficult terrain more manageable.

With their abilities awakened, they moved more swiftly, scaling debris with ease and leaping across broken rooftops. They could have flown, but conserving energy mattered. They had no idea what waited ahead.

They pushed forward, their pace faster, their silence heavier.

They did not speak.

They just moved, heading for Minawa City, not knowing if they could handle whatever was waiting for them.

But they had to keep moving forward.

-----

Sly waited just outside the edge of Greystone City, standing still in the curling Pink Fog.

After a few minutes, his transformation struck like a cold snap. His skin rippled, shadows crawling up his arms as his body shifted into his Specter form.

He did not wait a second longer.

In his Glint form, Sly moved like a phantom. He phase-shifted through crumbled barricades and blinked across broken rooftops, slipping through narrow gaps that others would have had to climb over. While Gabe and Iris had to crawl and leap, Sly wove between obstacles like the fog itself. No wasted movement. No sound.

With precise, ghostlike momentum, he reached Minawa City in just a few minutes.

When he did, his breath caught.

His entire body locked up. Every hair on his arms stood on end.

The city was gone.

Collapsed buildings. Streets split down the middle. The safe zone meteor fragment had shattered into pieces, scattered like cracked gemstones across the ruins. Pink Fog rolled in thick, suffocating waves. Everything was choked by it.

Then he heard it.

"WAAAAA!"

Iris.

Her voice cut through the fog like a knife. Sly bolted forward, teleporting in short bursts through alleys and debris, chasing the sound.

-----

Iris and Gabe had arrived only minutes earlier.

As soon as they stepped past the broken barricades, their pace slowed. Gabe's sharp eyes scanned the surroundings, but there was no movement. No resistance. No Fades. Just ruin.

They froze for a moment, taking in the collapsed buildings and shattered streets. The safe zone meteor fragment lay in fractured pieces, its faint glow extinguished. Pink Fog drifted lazily across the ground, as if mourning the city's fall.

Gabe clenched his jaw. "Damn..."

Minawa had fallen.

Even knowing what could have happened, the sight still hit harder than expected. It was different from hearing a report or seeing a map. This was real. Ashes. Silence. Collapse.

Neither of them said anything.

They just kept walking, heavy with disbelief.

Eventually, their steps brought them to what remained of Iris' old neighborhood. She slowed.

There was the cracked sidewalk where she used to draw with chalk. There, the corner wall she and her brother had painted with clumsy graffiti, the one her dad had pretended to scold them for while hiding his smile. The playground was gone, but the rusted swing poles still stood, half-melted and crooked. She passed the alley where she once raced the neighbor kids, scraped knees and all. One wall still bore the faded colors of a mural she painted during a community clean-up, now streaked by fog and time.

Each ruined landmark struck her like a memory coming undone.

Iris did not say anything, but her steps faltered. Her breath hitched. She was not just walking through rubble. She was walking through pieces of her life.

And then, she saw what used to be her home.

It was still standing, but barely. The building had been split nearly in half by something massive. One side sagged inward, the second floor caved in, the walls scorched black. But the door was still there. So was the number plate. Familiar, battered pieces of a life long gone.

Iris stood at the threshold, frozen.

She stepped inside.

And the weight of it all crashed down at once. The hallway, the walls, the floorboards. Even shattered, she remembered everything.

Her breath hitched hard. Her hands shook. She clenched them into fists.

"No. No. It is fine. It is just broken. They are fine."

The words came out choked and desperate, a lie she could not even believe herself.

Then she saw the empty living room. The broken remains of family photos scattered across the floor.

The last thread holding her together snapped.

"WAAAAA!"

The scream tore from her throat before she could stop it, raw and heavy, echoing off the shattered walls.

She stumbled forward, fell to her knees, and cried.

Not quiet tears. Not controlled grief.

Heavy, shaking sobs that wracked her body, spilling everything she had tried to hold in.