The squad reached Latip Forest just after noon, the sun a smudge of light behind the clouds. Shadows stretched long through the trees, draping the underbrush in patchy darkness.
Stank didn't bother with the preamble. He walked to a short tree, grabbed the nearest branch, and snapped it with a sharp crack. Sap glistened where bark had torn.
Kneeling, he dragged the stick through the dirt, rough lines cutting into the soil until they formed a jagged star.
"Five teams," he announced. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried. "A through E. Mole, Jaffar, and I are holding the tent. Team B heads north, C east, D west, E south."
The men pressed in, fourteen bodies circling close like moths around a dull flame. Stank pointed at the map with his stick.
"Don't go past five kilometers. Be back in under four hours. Any later, don't expect a fire waiting."
Fat Bondo shifted on his feet. "And if we hit something?" he asked, the tremor in his voice.
Stank gave him a flat look. "Kill it or run. Just don't lead it back here."
"That's not exactly fair," Hokon muttered.
Stank rose to his full height, tossing the stick aside. "Neither's life. Follow the orders, or walk home."
Hokon gave a lazy salute. "Aye aye, Captain," he said with mock cheer, earning a few quiet snickers.
Aldrich was assigned to Team C. He moved out with Haku and Kartika, three silhouettes slipping into the eastern trees, boots whispering through underbrush. They weren't searching for enemies, not exactly. They were searching for people. Survivors. Stragglers. Anyone Konor could add to his cause.
Konor called it building an army.
Aldrich called it collecting pieces.
"Think we'll see any monsters?" Kartika asked, eyes darting between trees.
"Skitterlings. Holbits. Maybe direwolves," Haku replied. He ticked them off like he was reading a checklist.
Kartika winced. "Holbits?"
"Small, fast, cannibalistic," Haku said, casually spinning his knife in his fingers. "They'll set traps. Go for soft targets. Think of goblins with worse manners."
Aldrich stayed quiet. He was walking slightly ahead, absentmindedly flipping a stick through his fingers. His mind wasn't on monsters, it was on the box. The one he hadn't had the chance to know its content yet.
Haku drifted closer. "Why'd you lie?"
Aldrich glanced back. "About what?"
"Your points."
Aldrich raised a brow. "Who says I did?"
"There's no way the guy who knocked me down twelve times only has eight hundred."
Aldrich smirked. "You kept count?"
"Of course I did. So what's the real number?"
"Four thousand five hundred and forty-five."
Haku stopped walking. Froze, actually. Mouth open, eyes wide like he'd just swallowed a bug.
"That's why I lied," Aldrich said. His voice held no apology. Just truth.
"You're a monster," Haku whispered, and he sounded genuinely impressed.
Kartika caught up, brow raised. "What's funny?"
Neither answered. Aldrich had already spotted something through the trees. A slumped shape near the base of an old pine. Pale limbs. Bloodied cloth.
He got there first.
The boy was young. Maybe eighteen. Shirt torn open, chest soaked red. Aldrich crouched, lifted the cloth, and saw the faint glow of a core beneath the skin, white.
Highlander.
"It's a Lowlander," Aldrich lied quickly. Said it calm. Easy. No one questioned him.
Five to ten minutes after a core user died, their cores became unviable, unable to be transplanted to another person. It was very common knowledge. But Aldrich wanted to see. He wanted to know if it applied to his ability to absorb it.
"Dead less than a day," Haku noted, crouching beside him.
Aldrich tilted the head. Clean slash across the throat.
"Holbit?" Kartika asked, voice tight.
"No," Aldrich said. "They'd have eaten half of him. And it's not Skitterlings either, they are not as precise as this. This is something else."
He motioned for them to spread out. "Stay close."
They obeyed. That surprised him, how easily they followed.
Alone, Aldrich worked quickly. He used his blade to carve the core out. It melted into his skin like water poured into hot metal. The familiar hologram flickered, showing new stats. Then it was gone.
It worked.
He exhaled. That changed everything.
"Over here!" Haku called.
Aldrich rose and followed. Another body. This one face down. Same wound.
"Highlander," Haku said.
Damn.
He couldn't risk a second core. Not with eyes this close.
That's when he saw footprints. Seven pairs, each of different sizes, all spaced oddly, like dancers caught mid-step. Thin and Flat.
"Human tracks," he muttered.
Kartika frowned. "Are we killing one another now? What is the point?"
Aldrich didn't answer immediately. His eyes traced the grooves, the dirt, the scattered leaves.
"Seen anyone barefoot back at camp?" he asked.
"Not really," Kartika said. "You, Haku?"
"No. But what are you thinking?"
Aldrich's expression hardened.
"People don't usually walk around barefoot," he said, voice low.
"Unless they're not people."
He said the word like it tasted bad.
"Sylvariths."
They ran.
No formation. No strategy. Just pounding footsteps and the slap of branches across their arms. The forest blurred around them, too fast to care, too quiet to trust. Aldrich didn't slow. Not for breath, not for caution. Haku wheezed behind him, Kartika not far off, both struggling to keep up.
But Aldrich wasn't thinking about breathing.
He was thinking about the Sylvariths.
And he was thinking about the camp.
"They're in the forest!" he shouted over his shoulder. It wasn't a warning, it was a fact. Solid and heavy.
"Only Stank, Mole, and Jaffar should be there!" Haku called back, voice ragged.
Aldrich didn't reply. He didn't have to. His gut had already told him how this ended.
The trees thinned.
Camp came into view, and the world tilted.
Five Sylvarith corpses scattered across the clearing like broken puppets. Red blood soaked the dirt, thick and glistening. It smelled sharp, wrong.
Mole lay face-down, unmoving. Jaffar beside him, eyes wide open, staring at nothing.
Then there was Stank.
Slumped against a tree. His chest had been opened like someone had torn through him with knives and hate. His white skin-suit was shredded, the fabric soaked through until it was more red than white. His breath came in shallow jerks. Rattling. Almost gone.
They stopped.
All of them. Even Aldrich.
Because sometimes, even monsters hit too hard.