The train car reeked of rust, sweat, and the quiet dread of travelers who didn't dare meet each other's eyes.
Ezra sat hunched in the corner, cloak drawn up over his head. Kael lounged opposite him, her shotgun leaning against her leg like a lazy predator.
Between them sat a box.
Unmarked. Steel-reinforced. Glowing faintly with locked glyphs.
Inside? A shard of SpireCorp's legacy—stolen data, black-bagged tech, and the coordinates to a zone no sane person entered without a death wish:
Zone 13.Wraithfall.Once known as Philadelphia.
Now? A dead city. One of the first to fall during the Surge.
Rumors said it was cursed—trapped halfway between reality and death, home to ghost-type entities and twisted spirits. Only a few had ever entered. Fewer came back. None were whole.
Ezra was going anyway.
Because somewhere in Wraithfall was the first real lead on his past—before the orphanage, before the Surge.
A facility buried beneath the city. One tied to the phrase that haunted him since the shrine:
Hollowborn Lineage Identified.
The train screeched to a halt.
"Next stop—Ashgate Border," the speaker croaked, barely audible through the static.
Kael looked up. "Time to blend in."
Ezra nodded.
They stepped off into a border town thick with smog and silence. Ashgate was a checkpoint between "safe" zones and the red zones beyond. Barriers shimmered in the distance—massive arcane constructs powered by the World Federation to keep high-tier threats contained.
Behind those barriers? Chaos.
Wraithfall lay just beyond the eastern barricade.
They made their way through the checkpoint with forged IDs and a bribe in the form of a single C-Rank mana core. The guards didn't look twice. They rarely did. No one sane wanted into the dead zones.
The two slipped into a decaying supply truck bound for a salvager outpost just short of the city's edge. Kael rode shotgun, rifle now openly cradled. Ezra sat in the back, meditating, feeling the slow burn of the Hollow Core inside him.
Something in Wraithfall called to it. A resonance like bone on steel.
By nightfall, they reached the outskirts of the city.
Wraithfall's skyline still looked like a city... if you squinted and ignored the floating chunks of asphalt, the purple lightning arcing between half-collapsed skyscrapers, and the void shadows that skittered across the skyline.
Ezra stood before the shimmering veil of the red-zone border.
One step forward, and they'd be cut off from the rest of the world.
Kael stood beside him. "You sure you want to do this?"
"No." He stepped forward anyway.
The instant his foot crossed the barrier, the world shifted.
A crushing cold bit into his skin—not physical, but spiritual. His HUD flickered, unreadable for several seconds.
[Entering Zone 13 – Wraithfall][Warning: Mana field is corrupted. Visibility reduced. Communication disabled.][Passive Affliction: Soul Pressure][Effect: Decreased stamina regen. Nightmares may manifest.]
Ezra sucked in a sharp breath as the pressure built in his lungs. Kael stepped through behind him, groaning softly.
"Feels like drowning," she hissed.
Ezra activated a necrotic aura just to stabilize his mind.
Even the undead felt it.
Galen, summoned with a burst of cold fog, dropped to one knee before steadying. His armor steamed with ethereal frost, his glowing eyes dimmer than usual.
Wraithfall wasn't just dangerous. It hated the living.
And the dead.
They moved fast, cutting across ruined alleyways and broken train tracks. Once, this had been a vibrant district—old art murals now defaced by claw marks and dried blood. Traffic lights blinked nonsense codes. Windows whispered as they passed.
Kael paused beside a corpse—mummified, face twisted in a silent scream.
"No wounds," she murmured. "What the hell happened here?"
Ezra closed his eyes and extended his death sense.
A wave of something wrong rolled over him.
Not undead. Not even corrupted mana.
Ghosts.
[Wraith Signature Detected – Variant Class: Echo Wraith]Threat Level: BTraits: Phasewalker / Possession / Sanity DrainNotes: Wraiths are intangible remnants of souls too broken to pass on. Immune to most physical attacks. Vulnerable to spectral magic or purification.
Ezra cursed under his breath. His magic wasn't designed to purify. It was death magic—reanimation, not release.
"New enemy type," he muttered. "They don't bleed."
Kael sighed. "Of course they don't. I just cleaned my rifle."
A low moan echoed from the shattered windows above.
They froze.
Then it came—rolling out of the fog in a ripple of distorted air.
It looked vaguely human. A man in a tattered suit, his body flickering like bad reception, face melting into a hundred screaming expressions.
Galen moved to intercept—but his blade passed through harmlessly.
The Wraith surged past him, toward Ezra.
"Shit—"
Ezra raised both hands, forcing necrotic energy into a barrier—
The Wraith phased through it.
And through him.
A scream not his own burst from Ezra's throat. For an instant, he saw everything—its memories, its last moments, the family it couldn't protect, the daughter it failed to save.
Then it vanished.
Ezra dropped to his knees, vomiting.
[Soul Affliction Gained: Echo Burn – Mild][Effect: Nightmares intensified. Sanity resistance decreased for 24 hours.]
Kael yanked him up by the collar. "We need to move. Fast."
He nodded weakly. The Wraith hadn't been a fight—it had been a message.
Welcome to Wraithfall. You're not alone.
They made it to an old underground tram station by midnight, barricading the entrance with collapsed ticket booths and rusted turnstiles. Ezra set up a sigil barrier—temporary, but enough to deter weak spirits.
Galen kept watch.
Kael paced, chewing on dried rations. "So what's the plan?"
Ezra opened the steel box. Inside: a holo-map of Wraithfall's lower zones.
Red dots marked breach zones. One pulsed bright blue.
"This." He pointed to the blinking light. "SpireCorp had a research facility here. According to the stolen data, they used it to monitor Hollowborn anomalies. My guess is… me."
Kael crossed her arms. "If they were experimenting on Hollowborn types, how many more like you are out there?"
Ezra didn't answer.
Because the answer he feared was:
None.
He was the only one.
And the only reason he'd survived was because someone buried the evidence.
The next day was worse.
The deeper they moved into the city, the stronger the Wraiths became. They didn't just attack—they whispered. Tried to confuse, separate, isolate.
At one point, Ezra nearly followed a vision of his old orphanage down a dead alley before Kael slapped him back to reality.
They found another survivor that afternoon—a salvager wrapped in blessed charms and half out of his mind.
He raved about a "silver-haired woman who walks with the dead" and "a child that sings to shadows."
Ezra's blood froze.
Because he knew those images.
His mother.And the little girl from his dreams.
Neither should be here.
But Wraithfall didn't care about rules.
That night, camped out in a shattered hospital, Ezra couldn't sleep.
Not because of the cold. Not even because of the Wraiths.
But because his dreams showed a child again.
Dark hair. Pale eyes. Skin like porcelain.
She stood in a hallway of bones and whispered:
"They killed us all, Ezra. You were the only one who woke up right."
He jolted upright, sweat cold on his back.
Kael stirred. "Nightmare?"
He nodded.
Then checked his interface.
[Alignment: Hollow – 12%][New Trait Unlocked: Wraithbound]You are tethered to Zone 13. Echo spirits no longer attempt to possess you. Some may even follow you.
He felt them, now.
Eyes watching.
Wraiths in the corners, whispering.
But they weren't attacking anymore.
They were waiting.