Granite didn't stop running until they reached the ridge's shoulder.
The ironwood forest thickened here, ancient trees with trunks wider than Alex's arm span, their roots digging deep into volcanic stone. The unnatural darkness had frayed to nothing at their edges, defeated not by light but by something older—the simple, patient presence of things that had grown here for centuries before the shadow had any name.
But the shadow's voice followed.
[The little thing has more substance than I anticipated.] A pause, almost thoughtful. [If it wasn't for your headquarter sending multiple machines to condemn me, I wouldn't have ended up in this world.]
Alex's blood went cold.
The words didn't make sense. They couldn't make sense. System was—System had always been—a guide. An assistant. A tool, maybe, but a benevolent one. Something that had been given to him when he fell into this world, to help him survive, to help him find the artifacts, to help him—
