For three nights Vera Cogsworth had not slept, and the revolver on her workbench sat half-built. She had traveled into the petrified burn to finish it. The gun needed a captured lightning core to fire itself, and the burn's stone-dead trees hummed with old current she could harvest. But she could not solder a single wire with shaking hands. Something walked the ash fields after dark, and it walked toward her. She crouched behind a fallen trunk turned to gray rock. Her tools lay scattered where she had dropped them the night before. The lightning core pulsed faint blue in its brass cage beside her boot. Each pulse lit the ground for a moment, then died. Vera watched the dark between pulses. Something big moved out there, dragging weight across the crusted ash. Her unicorn stood guard behind her. Crystalline Gearwhisper was small, white, and fitted with brass gears at her ears and hooves. Her rainbow horn threw off a thin light. The unicorn had carried Vera into this burn without complaint, but now she stamped and pinned her ears flat. "Easy," Vera whispered. "I see it too." The unicorn tossed her head toward a shape on the ridge. A tall barn loft stood there on crooked stilts, its planks half-rotted, its roof caved on one side. Vera had passed it twice and ignored it. Now the dragging sound grew louder, and she understood. She could not fight what she couldn't see. She could get off the ground. "The loft," Vera said. "Move." She grabbed the caged core and her tools. Crystalline Gearwhisper knelt so Vera could climb her back. They crossed the ash at a run. The dragging thing changed course behind them. Vera did not look back. She fixed her eyes on the loft's ladder and counted the rungs. The stilts had rotted, but the platform held six feet off the ground. Vera scrambled up first, then hauled the unicorn's tack line taut so Crystalline Gearwhisper could lunge up the sloped ramp. The old wood groaned and held. Below them, the dragging stopped. A low shape circled the stilts, testing them, then scraped one with something hard. The stilt cracked but did not fall. Vera lay flat and breathed. The thing below could not climb. She had shelter now, and height, and walls at her back. She set the lightning core in the loft's far corner, where its blue pulse would not show through the gaps. "We rest here," she told the unicorn. "I finish the gun tomorrow." But when she laid her tools out on the plank floor, she saw the problem she had traded for. The soldering iron needed a steady flame, and the loft was dry rotted wood. One spark in here would burn the whole platform down around them. She had won a roof. Now she had to build a lightning gun inside a tinderbox, with the thing below waiting for her to come down.

By dawn Vera had the lightning gun almost whole. She had soldered the last wire without burning the loft down. But when she moved to seat the core in its cradle, the brass ring would not close. She needed a clamp pin, one small strip of metal to hold the cage tight. Without it, the core would rattle loose and the gun would never fire. Vera dug through her tools. Nothing fit. She lay flat on the planks and peered down through a gap. Her scattered gear still sat on the ash below, where she had dropped it the night before. A broken cylinder rod lay among it, the right size, the right metal. It was six feet down, near the stilts. And the creature waited there. It had not left. Its low shape pressed against a rotted post, scraping the wood with something hard. Crystalline Gearwhisper stamped and swung her horn toward the ladder. The rainbow light off her horn shook. Vera set a hand on the unicorn's neck. "I have to go down for it," she said. "There's no other way." Then a voice came from the ash below. "Stay up there." A man stood clear of the stilts. His beard was white, his coat black and belted with worn leather. He held a bundle of red dynamite sticks in one fist, a short fuse already lit. He did not look up at Vera when he spoke. He watched the creature. "You're Vera," he said. It was not a question. "It wants your blood. Opens a door with it. I've tracked this thing for weeks." "Who are you?" Vera called. "Ashwood. Demon hunter." He stepped sideways, drawing the creature off the post. "Get your part now. While it looks at me." Vera swung onto the ladder and dropped fast. Her boots hit ash. The broken rod lay three steps away. She snatched it up. The creature turned toward her, dragging its weight around. Ashwood threw the dynamite under it and stepped back. "Down!" he barked. Vera flattened against the stilts. The blast tore the air. Ash and stone rained on her back. When she looked up, the creature was gone from the post, thrown clear and smoking, but already crawling to right itself. Not dead. "Best case, that bought a minute," Ashwood said flatly. "Up. Both of you." Vera scrambled back to the loft with the rod in her teeth. Her hands moved fast now. She filed the metal, bent it, and seated it against the brass ring. The clamp closed. The core locked tight and pulsed blue, steady. The gun was whole. It could hold the core at last. Below, the creature dragged itself upright. Ashwood backed toward the ladder, out of dynamite, one man against a thing that would not die. Vera lifted her finished gun. It had never been fired. She did not know if it would fire now. But it was the only weapon left between them and the thing on the ground.