Fate was a bitch.

  That was the first thought that always came to Elias’ mind, not like a mantra but like a parasite. If he had the strength, he might have screamed it at the ceiling of the world, torn his throat raw trying to make the sky care. But the world wouldn't listen. So for now, he settled for thinking it. Over and over, like a prayer meant for no god in particular.

  He didn’t know how long he'd been doing this. Running, hiding, surviving in the kind of way that rotted people slowly, from the inside out. Years, maybe. Time no longer mattered when all the days felt like the same dying breath, and since he couldn’t remember anything else, it must have been a long time.

  He exhaled, his breath barely audible in the damp, suffocating darkness of the cave.

  His body ached from exhaustion, but that wasn’t new. He was of average build and quite thin. A walking contradiction of someone too stubborn to die yet too weak to truly fight back. His long silver hair hung in uneven strands, most of it tucked beneath the crude mask he wore to conceal his face. It wasn’t for anonymity—it was just common sense. Some creatures hunted by scent, others by sight, and Elias had no plans of making himself more of a target than he already was.

  He was part of a scavenging party. Again. His third run today, he thought—though he couldn’t say for sure. And not because he was particularly skilled, but because he was perfect.

  Perfect at being bait.

  They called him a forerunner—which sounded noble until you realized it was just a cleaner way to say expendable. The first one in. The first one to see what horrors lay ahead. And, if things went south, the first one to die.

  The two others with him were about as scrawny as he was, though Elias could swear he was the shortest among them. One wore spectacles and had the complexion of unburied bone—though considering how rough life was in the Dead Zone, that wasn’t much of a surprise. Elias’ own skin was unnaturally light, often described as “moon-kissed,” but even he had to admit the glasses-wearing forerunner made him look healthy in comparison.

  The other wasn’t a person anymore—just bones with skin pulled over, like a mistake someone tried to hide. Elias figured neither of them had eaten in days. Or weeks, in fact. Not that it mattered. None of them were expected to live long enough for that to be an issue.

  They weren’t even given simple luminous objects. Apparently, light might attract monsters too early—or worse, scare off the truly dangerous ones before the scavengers got a good look at them. Not that Elias would be able to do much even if he could see. He was barely strong enough to climb the rocky structure that led them into the fissure of this cave in the first place. He was barely fast enough to outrun most men. And intelligence? Well, he never received any formal education. He highly doubted he could screw in a lightbulb without electrocuting himself to death.

  So yeah. He was absolutely perfect at being cannon fodder. Amazing potential, really, all things considered.

  “Move faster, we’re almost there,” someone called from behind them.

  One of the real scavengers. A man who actually mattered. Unlike Elias, he had an actual weapon—a sword that was bigger than Elias himself yet didn’t seem to weigh much in his grip. If there was a leader among the group, it was probably him.

  The forerunners increased their pace. Might as well get it over with.

  Then Elias felt it.

  A wrongness that hummed through his bones like a warning from whatever god watched people like him and chose, now and then, to blink.

  It was hard to describe, but it made his entire body go stiff. It wasn’t fear—not really. Rather, it was an instinct, a deep, unsettling certainty that things were about to go horribly, horribly wrong.

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  Not hesitating for even a moment, Elias quickly dropped to the ground and played dead.

  An instant later, something pierced the glasses-wearing forerunner through the chest.

  The man shrieked—a strangled cry that barely had time to echo before he was yanked into the darkness. No struggle—just silence. Then, the slow, wet sound of chewing.

  The skeletal forerunner reacted just a second too late.

  He had seen what happened and had tried to copy Elias. But that fraction of a second cost him dearly. The moment he bent his body, something lunged from the shadows.

  A crunch.

  Blood hit Elias’ face, hot and thick. Something landed beside him with a wet slap. The bottom half of a body. The creature hadn’t missed its mark. It had aimed for the torso but, due to the forerunner’s last-second movement, had only managed to eat the upper half of him instead.

  The scavenging party behind them froze, weapons drawn, ready for battle.

  Elias remained motionless on the ground and sighed internally.

  “Dammit,” he muttered under his breath. “So I’m the only forerunner left.”

  Another sigh.

  “Of course I am.”

  Elias lay still, every muscle locked in place. The silence stretched on. The scavengers stood frozen in their defensive stances, their blades drawn. Whatever had taken the other two forerunners had slunk back into the depths, but Elias wasn’t stupid enough to believe it was gone. He had been a forerunner long enough—if you could call surviving this long experience—to know that the second someone got bold enough to take a step forward, they’d be ripped apart in an instant.

  “Hey. Stand up!” The man with the massive sword barked.

  Elias hoped, for once, that someone else in the cave matched his exact body shape and position. Maybe, just maybe, they weren’t talking to him.

  “Stand up, dammit!”

  Yeah, no such luck.

  Lying there meant death. Standing up also meant death—just... in a different flavor. Either way, the scavengers wouldn’t let their ‘perfect bait’ go to waste.

  With a reluctant sigh, Elias pushed himself off the cold, damp ground. The cave was pitch black, and without so much as a luminous shard to light the way, he was basically stumbling blind. He held out a hand, testing the space around him, only to fumble.

  “I can’t see a damn thing. I’ll just fumble around at this rate,” Elias called out. He didn’t care if he was making noise. If that thing had still been here, it would’ve torn him apart the second he moved.

  “Just boost your vision with Arcite and stop wasting our time,” the swordsman snapped.

  Oh great, why not yell louder? Maybe the monsters are having trouble hearing.

  Elias coughed, rubbing the back of his neck. “Yeah, slight problem with that. I can’t use Arcite.”

  “Depleted your reserves?” Another voice chimed in, this one belonging to a man clad in reinforced armor, gripping what looked like a map. Probably the navigator.

  Elias shook his head. “Kinda hard to deplete what you never had in the first place.”

  A pause. Then, “Stop mincing words and tell us—”

  “I can’t use Arcite,” Elias cut him off. “My body naturally rejects it.”

  Silence. Not the eerie, stalking kind from before. This was different—an almost offended silence. Like he had just spat on their boots.

  “You’re kidding,” a woman’s voice scoffed. She sounded older, experienced. More importantly, she didn’t sound amused.

  Elias could practically feel the suspicion rolling off them. Not that he blamed them. Arcite was the fuel of the world. From birth, every human absorbed it naturally, their bodies adapting to its power in varying degrees. The higher your compatibility, the stronger you were. And if you were lucky enough to be born with compatibility above fifty, rumors said you could gain supernatural abilities. That was probably just a myth, though. In this part of the Dead Zone, the strongest fighters barely reached a compatibility of fifteen.

  But zero? That was unheard of.

  Elias had learned to live with it, but in moments like this, he really had to marvel at fate’s sense of humor. In a world where everything relied on Arcite, his body treated it like poison. It was like being the only fish in the ocean that couldn’t breathe water.

  The ‘leader’ stepped forward, moving cautiously, and before Elias could react, grabbed his arm and pricked his skin with a needle. A sharp sting, and then the bastard clamped a hand over the lower half of his mask, pressing it tight enough to muffle the sound he almost made. The man scooped up a vial of his blood and stepped back, handing it to the woman, who pulled out a small, portable device—one Elias recognized all too well.

  An Arcite compatibility scanner.

  She inserted the vial. The device hummed, and after a second, a single number glowed bright in the dark.

  ‘0’

  Even from where he stood, Elias could see it. The others certainly could. The three scavengers exchanged stunned looks. Elias stared at them—at least, he thought he was staring at them. Hard to tell in the pitch black. But he didn’t need to see their faces to know what was running through their minds.

  Three forerunners. Two killed in an instant. And the last? Completely useless.

  Conclusion? They were as good as dead.

  As if to reassure him that he was right, a low growl rumbled from behind him.