Anna runs through Duskport with monsters at her heels and one prayer left: let the coal mine whistle sound. The whistle is supposed to weaken the Rust, strip the blood from the walls, and make the town survivable again.

It does.

Then the man in the iron cage breaks through her barricade.

He is eight feet of scarred muscle, rusted metal, and appetite. He cannot speak, but Anna knows the cruelty of his hands. Each time the whistle calls him back, her body recognizes what her mind has spent years burying: the lover who died on her kitchen floor, and the choice she made not to save him.

The Rust has returned him without a face and without restraint. Anna should want the whistle to take him away.

Instead, she wraps her legs around him and begs him to stay.