Perdition looked exactly the same.
That was the first thing Sera noticed as the truck crested the final rise through the forest and the town came into view.
There was the same low buildings pressed together along a single main road. The same false fronts and weathered wood, paint faded to the color of old dust. Even the same boardwalks running along the storefronts like they were afraid of the ground beneath them.
It felt like stepping sideways instead of forward, like time had folded in on itself and decided to wait here. And it always gave Sera the creeps.
The road stopped smoothing itself out at the boundary.
Not abruptly. Not violently. It simply returned to what it had always been—cracked, uneven, worn down by decades of use and neglect.
The truck began to vibrate again as the suspension worked the way it was supposed to.
