Summer, 2446.

The sun blazed like it meant to burn the world clean.

Out across the endless Gobi, the ground was baked white-hot, heat rolling up in waves. From a distance, even the air looked twisted, like the whole wasteland was warping under the weight of the light.

Then came a roar.

From a stretch of land choked by gray fog, a heavy armored off-road vehicle burst out hard, savage and fast, tearing through the haze and kicking up a long tail of dust.

Right behind it, seven or eight aberrants came charging out in pursuit.

Those things stood two to three meters tall, wrapped head to toe in black vapor. Thick slime ran off their bodies and splattered onto the earth with a sharp sizzle, raising curls of corrosive white smoke.

The moment they were dragged into the harsh sunlight, they grew even more frenzied. They bared their fangs at the vehicle pulling away, snarling and snapping, every inch of them reeking of rage and unwillingness.

“Good chance. Rabbit, drop them!” a rough male voice bellowed.

“Got it!”

Inside the vehicle, a woman with short hair cut to her jaw rose from her seat. She had a heavy sniper rifle in hand. Clean motion, no wasted breath—she chambered a round and set herself.

The armored vehicle suddenly lurched backward, then swung through a sharp, beautiful drift, turning its nose around in one fierce move.

At the same time, the roof hatch snapped open.

The female sniper, callsign Rabbit, rose through the hatch and braced the rifle in one smooth motion. She found her support point fast and locked onto the target.

Bang—

Amid the flying yellow sand, one aberrant let out a shriek and crashed down the instant the shot rang out.

The brutal recoil kicked her upper body back, but she steadied at once, jaw tight, and shifted to the next target.

Sentinels were born with monstrous senses. To them, an aberrant’s movement path was clear as daylight.

“Beautiful! Kill the bastards!”

The big man driving let out a sharp whistle and kept the armored vehicle circling wide, drawing the monsters’ attention and keeping them chasing.

There were five people in the vehicle in all.

The man in the front passenger seat braced one arm against the window. His face was all hard lines and sharp edges, and under his brow sat a pair of deep-set eyes, cold and cutting as a blade.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

A few more shots cracked through the air.

Rowan Thorne turned his head and looked out the window.

The aberrants were all down.

In the back seat, the crew-cut young man sat steady, an old box hugged in both arms. “Captain, we got the thing. We heading back to base now?”

Rowan didn’t answer at once. He raised his left wrist and checked the terminal.

A long moment passed.

Then his expression tightened. His eyes narrowed a little, like a wolf catching a scent.

“We’re going near Contamination Zone Six.”

Contamination Zone Six?

The air inside the vehicle went stiff.

Rabbit snapped the roof hatch shut and dropped back into her seat with the rifle in her arms. “Captain, we’re low on supplies.”

“Yeah,” the big man driving muttered, hands locked on the wheel. “What are we going to Zone Six for?”

Another mission?

Rowan cut them a look. “Picking someone up.”

Everyone: “?”

...

After the twenty-second century, darkness fell without warning.

Power grids died across the world.

Strange contamination zones appeared. Aberrants came crawling out with them.

From that day on, the planet was dragged into a dark apocalypse that lasted two full centuries.

No light. No electricity. Monsters everywhere.

Humanity was driven to the brink more than once. Countless underground shelters fell.

Then, when things were at their worst, a small number of humans awakened special powers.

People gave them a name—

Sentinels.

Sentinels had bodies tougher than steel and senses sharp enough to peel the skin off the world.

But every time they used that power, they took one more step toward mutation. At the end of that road, dark matter would swallow them whole, and they would turn into the same man-eating monsters roaming the wasteland.

Once a sentinel mutated, it was far more dangerous than any ordinary aberrant.

Maybe that was why another kind of soldier had appeared.

People with immense spiritual power. People who could soothe a sentinel’s frayed mindscape, straighten out the chaos in a sentinel’s spirit, and calm them down.

Guides.

They were the backbone born for the dark age. But it was not until the tenth year after sentinels first appeared that the world saw its first guide.

Guides were precious. Rare.

Guides were fragile.

That was what everyone believed.

So when Rowan Thorne told his squad that the one they were going to pick up was a high-level guide, the whole team blew up on the spot.

“You serious? I didn’t hear that wrong, did I? There’s a new guide?”

“What, did the captain’s last threat to the base actually work?”

Nineteen years had passed since the dark age began.

Light had returned to the world.

But the two hundred years of black apocalypse had wiped out more than eighty percent of all plants and animals. Most of what remained had twisted into new forms.

Food was scarce. Civilization had fallen backward.

Outside, the land had weathered into sand as far as the eye could see.

The world was already full of holes, rotten to the bone.

The scraps of resources left behind could not keep everyone alive. For many ordinary people, even filling their stomachs was a hard thing to manage.

After communications came back, the only four large shelters left on Earth finally got in touch with each other and joined hands to launch the Salvation Plan.

The goal was simple on paper: enter the Pollution Zones and dig out the truth behind the disaster.

But paper was one thing. Reality was another.

Inside the Pollution Zones, the concentration of dark matter was too damn high. Once a Sentinel pushed their abilities too far on a mission, mutation could hit fast and hard.

That was why Sentinel casualty rates had always been brutal.

Rowan Thorne had always believed one thing plainly: since Guides were also a special combat branch, they ought to go to the front lines and fight alongside the Sentinels.

Not be shut away in the base and pampered like some rare protected beast just because their numbers were low.

“A high-level Guide, confirmed?”

The buzz-cut young man in the back seat was Grant Holden. He glanced at the two people who had been the most excited, then swept a look over the person beside him, still sleeping under a cover with their head tucked in.

He could not help throwing cold water on the mood. “We’re just picking someone up. Don’t you think you lot are imagining a bit too much?”

Bruno Colt, who was driving, burst out laughing. “You still don’t know our captain? If it were really just a pickup job, who the hell would dare make him run errands?”

Grant turned his head and fixed Rowan with a dark, steady look, waiting for an explanation from his own captain.

Rowan sat with his long legs crossed, one hand braced against the window. He smiled too, easy and loose, but there was something sharp under it.

“Not a base assignment,” he said. “Word came from an informant.”

“According to the intel, Pollution Zone No. 6 suddenly started spreading. There’s a small base nearby moving north.”

Rowan paused, then said flatly, “They recently had a Guide awaken. Supposedly very high-level.”

Rabbit frowned. She had not caught the point at all.

“What’s that got to do with us if they’re relocating?”

Grant shot her a look. “There are aberrants everywhere outside. If they’re migrating, they need somewhere to go. They need a large base to take them in.” He spoke calmly, each word clear. “The Guide among them is their ticket in.”

And not just any Guide.

A Guide who had never been registered with the four major bases.

Which meant one thing.

Whoever got there first, got them.

Rabbit’s face stiffened for half a second, then she straightened her back and tried to save face with a solemn expression.

“I get it now. Captain said we’re going to snatch someone, and all of you half-deaf idiots heard it wrong.”

The moment Bruno Colt heard that, he stomped the pedal to the floor. “Then we take her. No matter what.”

…

At the same time.

A border town outside Pollution Zone No. 6.

The sky was choked with rolling gray haze. It spread out from the heart of the zone in all directions, layer after layer, like countless writhing tentacles dragging across the heavens.

Hideous aberrants howled inside the thick fog, their cries sharp and wild, full of ugly hunger.

By now, swarms of monsters had already stepped out of the pollution zone and were pressing straight toward the town.

The little town, ringed on all sides by high walls, lay in dead silence.

Like a grave.

Everyone had evacuated two hours ago.

“Twenty years ago, Pollution Zone No. 6 was still a hundred kilometers from us…”

A middle-aged man sat on a bus, staring through the window at the distant sea of tumbling gray mist. His lips moved as he muttered, voice dry with despair.

It was spreading too fast.

At this rate… where would humanity have left to stand?

Their only home was gone. The road ahead was all fog. No one knew where to go, or whether there was even a way back.

Inside the bus, the crowd sat with that same lost look on their faces. No destination. No plan. No one knew what to do.

Beside the man, a little girl of seven or eight climbed up onto the seat and dropped to her knees. She wrapped her arms around his neck and said softly, “Dad, don’t be sad. Sister Elara Wyndham will think of something.”