Lysander had a feeling this place wasn't meant to be stayed in for long.
He sat on one of the larger boulders, overlooking the woods. The scenery was beautiful, sure—but eerie, like the calm that hangs in the air before a storm. Trees loomed tall, some of them twisted in ways nature hadn't intended, and at times, he could swear they whispered among themselves.
Since the Trial began, visibility hadn't been much of an issue for him. But even now, he couldn't see past a few dozen meters in any direction. Mist and shadow moved like living things.
To an outsider, he might've looked calm. Collected. But inside, something was off. There was a pressure in the air, not quite definable, but growing heavier by the second. When he brought it up to the others, they brushed it off, some even snapping at him without cause. That alone made his suspicion spike.
Something was working on them.
He didn't linger. The guilt of leaving the group behind was there, faint, but overridden by instinct. That group had been built out of necessity—not trust. So he slipped away, moving toward the lake with light, deliberate steps, keeping his presence low.
The closer he got, the worse it became.
Whispers crept into his mind. Paranoia. Caution. Then something uglier—envy.
Images of his father crushed beneath a system that never blinked. Smug faces. Rich brats laughing in penthouses, never once looking down at the lives they'd trampled.
How dare they smile while I drowned?
His hands clenched. How dare that fat pimp hurt my family? I should've killed him. Should've killed all of them.
The rage swelled, fast and irrational, like a storm skipping stages. His blade hand twitched.
No. Stop.
He exhaled sharply, biting down on the thoughts before they rooted. Without hesitation, he activated Observation Glare.
Threads appeared—hundreds of them, weaving through the air like veins of cursed silk. Bright red, cyan blue, green, and darker hues he couldn't name. All of them stretched from the lake. Some reached for his head, subtle as whispers, but never quite able to latch on.
It made sense now. Why he felt enraged. Why the others were irritable. The lake was doing something. Probing. Twisting.
His relief was cold and temporary. The number of threads meant others were already compromised.
He was still thinking it through when movement caught his eye.
A figure emerged from the fog—a middle-aged man, face drawn into a smug grin. His eyes, however, screamed something else: desperation. Behind him, mutated, blood-soaked wolves—fangs bared and hungry.
The man didn't yell. He didn't run. He just led them straight toward Lysander like he was dragging trouble to someone else's door.
And it worked.
Within seconds, they were on him.
---
Colonel Shamrock's breath burned in his lungs, but he didn't stop until he was sure the pack had taken the bait. His men—what was left of Red Fang—were likely regrouping now, buying time.
You owe me for this, he thought bitterly.
He turned to confirm the distraction… and froze.
The masked man wasn't running.
Instead, he stood there, unsheathing his blade, turning slightly as if to make room for the incoming wolves.
That idiot's not running… he's preparing to fight?
X-X-X
Facing more than half a dozen mutated wolf's I steeled my nerves and unsheath my sword and soon fight broke out .
The first wolf lunged like a shadow with teeth. Lysander moved on instinct—dropping to the side, the claw grazing past his mask, slicing air where his neck had been a second ago.
He hit the ground hard, shoulder scraping stone. Pain bloomed, but he ignored it. His fingers closed around a fist-sized rock mid-roll, and he snapped upright just as the second wolf pounced. He hurled the rock, full-force. It struck the creature square in the eye with a dull, wet crunch. The wolf yelped and staggered, shaking its head, disoriented.
No time to gloat.
Another wolf was already on him—snarling, slavering jaws wide open.
He sidestepped, barely. The fangs skimmed past his cheek, close enough that he felt the heat of its breath. His blade slid from its sheath with a hiss, and he drove it upward, into the beast's gut as it crashed into him. Blood sprayed across his arm, hot and thick.
The weight drove him back, nearly knocking him over. He gritted his teeth, twisted the blade, and kicked the dying creature off with a heave.
Two down.
Four more circled.
His breath came in sharp, short bursts. They weren't just beasts—they were corrupted. Stronger. Meaner. Twisted by whatever force controlled this Trial. And they weren't attacking at random. They were herding him—testing his reactions, reading his patterns. Just as I was thinking of retreating I felt someone prying Into my secrets in response , Lysander took a step back and activated Observation Glare promoting a painful glare from woods soon he looked around as the world bled color. Threads bloomed into visibility—slithering tendrils of red and blue and void-black that coiled in the air like living nerves. All of them emanated from the lake.
One thread attached to a wolf's spine glowed differently. Thicker. Pulsing.
Pack leader.
He shifted his footing, grounding himself in the cracked stone. The other wolves snapped and feinted, but he didn't take the bait.
Instead, he waited—watching the lead wolf circle just outside the radius, confident, controlling.
Now.
He faked a stumble to the left. The wolves surged—but he didn't go left.
He twisted, pivoted hard, and hurled his backup blade—not at the closest wolf, but at the one with the glowing thread.
It sailed clean, almost silent.
The blade buried itself in the alpha's throat.
The change was immediate.
The pack paused mid-strike. Confused. Disoriented. One howled, but it was uncertain, leaderless.
Lysander didn't wait.
He stepped forward and struck—slashing the nearest wolf across the face, then ducking under another's leap, driving his knee into its ribs with a crack. A final twist and his blade severed its spine.
The others didn't fight. They fled.
Just like that, the clearing emptied, silent again.
Lysander stood still in the aftermath. Blood dripped from his forearm. He stared at the line of corpses .
Lysander wiped the edge of his blade against the moss-covered bark, the coppery stench of blood clinging to his gloves. The wind had picked up slightly, enough to stir the threads of lake-fog that coiled through the trees like wary ghosts. Behind him, boots crunched—steady, not rushed. Whoever it was, they weren't afraid of being heard.
He didn't turn.
"So," a gravel-thick voice said behind him, "you're not one of mine. But you held your ground. That counts for something."
Lysander shifted just enough to glance back. A man in faded combat fatigues, eyes sharp beneath a battered cap, stood with his arms loosely crossed. Colonel Shamrock.
"You threw a wolf pack at me," Lysander said without emotion. "I don't take that lightly."
The Colonel didn't blink. "And yet here you stand. Impressive."
"Don't confuse competence with consent."
That earned a faint smirk from the older man. He took a slow step forward, boots sinking slightly into the blood-wet earth.
"You weren't supposed to die. Just distract. There's a difference."
Lysander finally turned to face him fully, one hand still resting near the hilt at his belt.
"Intent doesn't matter when the claws are an inch from your throat."
A beat passed. The Colonel studied him for a moment, then gave a small nod—acknowledging, maybe even respecting, the defiance.
"That mask of yours," Shamrock said, "hides a lot. But not the way you move. You're no fresh meat. What cohort?"
"I don't have one."
"That's dangerous."
Lysander shrugged. "So is breathing out here."
The Colonel chuckled under his breath, more out of habit than humor. "Point taken."
The woods fell quiet again, save for the distant ripple of water from the lake—its surface unnaturally still now, as if it too were eavesdropping. The silence stretched, heavier than it should've been.
"I don't like this place," the Colonel muttered, eyes narrowing as he scanned the treeline. "Feels like it's watching. Judging. Turning us into something else."
"You're not wrong," Lysander replied quietly. "It already tried."
Shamrock glanced at him, brows tightening.
"The lake?"
Lysander nodded once.
"I saw the threads. Got into my head. Almost made me think things that weren't mine." He paused. "Or maybe they were. That's the worst part."
The Colonel didn't speak right away. His jaw flexed, a subtle tic betraying unease. Then he said, "That why you kept your distance from your group?"
Lysander looked at him carefully. "I thought they were losing it. But now I wonder if I was the one being pushed."
"Maybe both," Shamrock said. "This whole zone's wrong. I've lost good men to madness faster than I lose 'em to monsters."
They stood in silence, not as allies but as two soldiers on a faultline, listening to the hum of a place that wanted them fractured. Finally, the Colonel turned to go, pausing only once.
"If you decide to stick around," he said over his shoulder, "don't stab me in the back. I won't give you a second chance."
Lysander didn't move.
"If I stab you," he said calmly, "you won't get a first."
The Colonel gave a low, rasped chuckle, almost approving, and disappeared between the trees.
Soon excusing the colonel he turned to look at the woods from where groan came from but soon he frowned looking at a bit of blood and nothing .
X-X-X
In the dark , somewhere in the woods a man was smiling deviously as he whispered to no one in particular while wiping his blood from edges of his eyes
" Nice toy , you got there my dear son jason"