POV: Street-Level Hunters
The smoke tasted like oil and ash.
Beneath the mountain's shadow, the city's southern slope was already burning—buildings cracked open like rotten teeth, walls buckled from internal blasts. Orange light flickered through alleyways that hadn't seen sun in days. Every structure leaned wrong. Some had collapsed mid-ritual—stone and blood fused together by the heat of sacrificial runes.
A squad of six B-rank hunters moved through the haze—shields raised, spears tight to their backs. Their formation held for five seconds.
Then the ground moved.
Not an earthquake.
A reordering.
The street beneath them shifted sideways, becoming a slope, then a drop, then a hallway that hadn't been there a breath ago.
"Split!" someone shouted.
Too late.
The lead scout stepped onto what he thought was solid road. It turned liquid beneath his boot—ink black, rune-lined—and swallowed him whole.
