The cold's been creeping in for hours now, working its way through Ember's layers and settling deep. Her fingers are stiff, her face numb, and the wind keeps finding every gap in her gear. She's still got a few hours of daylight left, but hypothermia doesn't wait for nightfall.

Then she catches the smell of smoke.

Wood fire, close by. She slows her approach, scanning the area as she moves toward the source. The camp comes into view tucked between some rocks—small, sheltered from the wind, with a fire burning steady in a stone ring. There's gear scattered around it, the kind of setup that says someone's planning to stay for a while.

No one's visible.

Ember stops at the perimeter, watching and listening. No movement. No sounds except the wind and the fire crackling. Whoever owns this camp is either out gathering supplies or deliberately staying hidden to see what she'll do.

Smart, if it's the latter.

"Anyone here?" she calls out, keeping her voice level and non-threatening.

Nothing. The fire keeps burning, heat radiating outward in waves she can feel even from this distance.

She weighs her options. Keep moving and risk the cold getting worse, or take advantage of the fire and deal with whoever comes back. The fire's already built, the camp's already here. Walking away from free heat because someone might object seems stupid.

"I'm coming in," she announces to the empty camp. "Just warming up. If you've got a problem with that, speak up now or handle it when you get back."

Still no response. Ember approaches the fire, keeping her movements casual but her awareness sharp. She settles down close enough to feel the heat properly, angling herself so she's got a clear view of the approaches. Her handgun stays holstered but accessible.

The warmth is immediate and welcome. She holds her hands out toward the flames, watching her surroundings while her fingers slowly stop being numb.

Whoever owns this camp will be back eventually. When they show up, she'll deal with it. Maybe they'll be reasonable and share the fire. Maybe they'll pull a weapon and tell her to fuck off. Maybe they'll try something stupid and she'll have to handle that.

For now, though, she's warm, and that's what matters. She can handle whatever comes next when it comes.

The stew tastes like shit, but Ember's eating it anyway because it's hot and free and she's been running on dried meat for three days. She's working on her second bowl when the air changes—metallic taste cutting through the bland food, static electricity lifting the hair on her arms.

She's up and moving before her brain finishes processing. Rift opening, close, maybe within the settlement itself. She drops the bowl and heads for the tent exit just as reality tears open right in the fucking center of camp.

Thirty feet across, maybe more. Positioned perfectly between the supply depot and the main sleeping area. The distortion spreads outward in visible waves, and people start panicking immediately. Some run, some freeze, a few idiots try to grab their belongings first.

Settlement's dead. Rift that size, that stable, it'll attract more. This location is compromised.

Something pushes through the rift. Listener, looks like. Big one. It emerges fully and goes still, processing all the noise from the panicking survivors. Then it picks a target and charges.

Ember's already got her handgun out. She doesn't shoot—not yet, too much chaos, too many people in potential crossfire. She moves toward the perimeter instead, calculating. The settlement's lost, but some of these people might make it out if the entity stays distracted long enough.

The Listener takes down someone too slow to move, and the screaming gets worse. More people bolt for the edges of camp. Good. Better. Ember keeps moving, putting distance between herself and the mess.

Then the rift flares again and another entity starts pushing through. Smaller, looks like a Skitter. Now there are two, and the rift's not shrinking.

Time to go. These people are on their own.

She's almost to the treeline when she spots someone struggling with gear near one of the outer tents, too weighed down to move fast. Young, maybe early twenties. Civilian, clearly, not a survivor who knows better. The Skitter's orientation suggests it might head that direction.

Ember stops walking. Stands there for three seconds, weighing options. Leaving is smarter. Safer. That person's probably dead anyway. Helping means risk, means delay, means potential complications.

Fuck.

She changes direction and heads toward the struggling survivor, gun raised, already tracking the Skitter's movement pattern. If she's quick, she can drop it before it gets close, grab the idiot, and both of them can get clear before more entities come through.

If she's not quick, well. At least she tried. Sort of.

The air changes first—static electricity that makes Ember's hair stand on end and a metallic taste that coats her tongue. She's already moving when the sound hits, a deep groan that reverberates through her bones and makes her teeth ache.

She knows what's coming.

The rift tears open about two miles out toward the Scar zone, and this one's massive. Easily a quarter mile across, bleeding colors that shouldn't exist and warping the landscape into impossible geometry. The sound of reality tearing open rattles through the abandoned buildings around her, and Ember's already running flat out before her conscious mind finishes processing what she's seeing.

Then something steps through the rift, and her stomach drops.

The leg alone is as thick as an office building, and when it comes down on the old overpass, the concrete crumbles like wet paper. Another leg follows, then the body emerges, and Ember's brain struggles with the scale. Three hundred feet tall at minimum, shaped in ways that don't make sense, moving with a grace that something that size shouldn't have.

Fuck. Mega entity. Kaiju-scale.

She doesn't slow down. The entity's footfalls send shockwaves rippling through the ground, and Ember staggers but catches herself without breaking stride. Behind the thing, buildings are collapsing like dominoes. Secondary rifts crack open in its wake, smaller tears spilling god knows what into the ruins.

She runs the math without thinking about it. Three miles minimum to be clear of immediate danger, five would be better. The entity's moving roughly perpendicular to her current path, which means if it keeps that heading she should be fine. If it turns, she'll adjust. Nothing else she can do about it.

The entity makes a sound—not a roar, something worse, something that hits her like a physical force.

Ember goes down hard. Her vision whites out, ears ringing so loud she can't hear anything else. There's blood on her lips, copper taste mixing with the metallic wrongness in the air. She shoves herself back to her feet, legs trembling, and forces them to move.

The handgun on her hip might as well be a toy for all the good it would do against that thing. This isn't a fight, it's just survival stripped down to its most basic form. Run until she physically can't anymore or until that thing moves in a different direction or collapses from reality degradation. Those are the only options that matter.

Keep moving. Don't stop. Don't look back.

She angles away from the entity's path, heading for open ground where she won't trip over rubble. Her pack bounces against her spine with each step, the familiar weight almost comforting despite everything.

Behind her, the kaiju takes another step, and somewhere in the distance, something else breaks.

Stupid. Fucking stupid.

Ember stares at her leg trapped under the concrete slab that gave way when she stepped wrong. The office building's third floor wasn't supposed to be compromised—structural assessment said it was stable enough for a quick sweep. Clearly, she missed something.

She tests the weight. The ankle is pinned, but probably not shattered. Doesn't matter if she can't get free. She tries shifting the slab. Too heavy. Wrong angle for leverage. She could cut herself free, but that's a last resort that ends with her bleeding out or crippled.

Options. She runs through them clinically. Wait it out—concrete might shift naturally, but could take hours or days. Entities could show up before then. Rift could open. She could die of dehydration. None of those works.

The flare gun sits in her pack. One shot. She's been saving it for an actual emergency, and apparently, this qualifies. Firing it means announcing her position to everything in a five-mile radius. Survivors, raiders, anything that sees bright colors or heat signatures. But staying here means dying alone in some dead office building, and that's just wasteful.

She pulls the flare gun, checks the load, and aims through the broken window.

The flare punches into the sky with a sharp crack, arcing high before bursting into red smoke. There. Done. Now she waits to see what shows up first—help or something that wants to kill her.

She settles against the wall, handgun drawn and resting on her thigh. Crossbow's pinned under the slab with her leg—figures. She watches the doorway and listens. Footsteps, breathing, clicking, anything that says she's about to have company.

If it's raiders, I'll handle it. If it's an entity, I'll handle it. If it's someone stupid enough to help, I'll owe them. The ID tag around her neck feels cold against her skin. She touches it once, briefly, then focuses on the entrance.

Come on then. Let's see what the universe sends.