HECTOR BAYES

The silence, as I stood, hunched on the gritty stone balustrade of the mountain city’s front gates was deafening.

”Hector! Do you see them?” Kalden’s voice shouted from the front line of the armored foot soldiers positioned inside the gates below me as I squinted at the dark cluster of trees until my eyes had all but turned to razor-sharp slits.

Nothing. Fucking crickets!

“No, eyes peeled soldiers! Something fishy is going on here.” I murmured, realizing that the green of the trees had stopped shifting, as though more of whatever was on the other side of the wall was squeezing through the rift between to pound through...