When I opened my eyes, I thought—I'm alive.
But the relief lasted less than a second.
The agony surged like fire through every vein. My ribs screamed, my shoulder hung wrong, and something deep in my chest throbbed like it was about to explode. My mouth tasted of blood and bile. My eyes were crusted shut, yet somehow wide open—staring into a world that no longer made sense.
I tried to move. My body jerked like a puppet with its strings snapped. Pain flooded every nerve. I screamed, but it came out a broken gurgle. A wet rattle.
What the fuck is happening?
The air felt… wrong. It shimmered, warped like oil on water. Colors bled where they shouldn't. The walls pulsed. Faint symbols, glowing in violet, crawled across the stone—alive, whispering. Breathing.
That's when I felt it.
Inside me.
Something was moving inside me.
Like a parasite. A swarm. Crawling under my skin, through my blood, my bones, my eyes.
"𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐞—𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐞—𝐈 𝐝𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐧𝐧𝐚 𝐝𝐢𝐞!"
I slammed my head against the rock. Once. Twice. Three times. Blood sprayed. Didn't matter.
The whispering didn't stop.
"𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐞."
The voice. Again. Echoing in my skull like a blade scraping bone.
"𝐅𝐈𝐍𝐃 𝐌𝐄."
I screamed back. Feral. Mindless.
I clawed at my chest, tearing my shirt. My skin bubbled with black veins, pulsing with sickly purple light. I vomited blood—so dark it looked like tar. I could feel something in my brain twitching. Rearranging.
This isn't real. I was in my room. I was just playing a fucking game.
But the pain was real. The blood was real. The stink of rot, the iron in my mouth, the hallucinations that weren't hallucinations.
The Frenzy virus was real.
I felt it consume me.
Not just my body.
My mind.
I began to forget my name. My family. My life in Malaysia. My job. My world. It all turned to static.
My thoughts twisted. My hands curled into claws. My mouth twitched into a grin I didn't mean to make. I laughed.
"𝘈𝘩𝘢… 𝘩𝘢𝘩… 𝘧𝘶𝘤𝘬… 𝘢𝘩𝘢𝘩𝘢𝘩𝘢𝘩𝘢…"
Then, silence.
And from the blackness in front of me, it emerged.
The Gore Magala.
Not walking. Not flying. Gliding through the darkness, its wings drawn tight like blades, its tendrils dancing on the edge of perception. Its eyes gleamed—no, not its eyes. Its presence. It didn't need to look to see. It knew me. It saw into me.
A vision burst in my skull.
Dead cities. Towers crumbled. Skies blackened by wings. Screams. Screams. Screams.
Beasts infected. Hunters torn apart. Civilizations shattered.
I curled into myself. Clawing. Biting my own lip until it tore. Scratching at my arms until I hit bone. Blood. Infection. Madness.
I blacked out.
---
I woke again. Barely. The cold seeped into my bones.
I was in another part of the ruins—deeper, darker. My vision was doubled, maybe tripled. My body was numb and burning all at once.
Every breath hurt.
But I was still breathing.
I dragged myself forward. A single inch. Then another. My nails snapped on the stone. My wounds opened with every crawl.
I didn't know where I was going.
But something in me refused to die.
Not here. Not like this.
Not yet.
---
In the darkness behind me, I heard it.
Wings.
Breath.
The Gore Magala.
I turned, weak, barely able to lift my head. It stood above me, watching. Waiting.
Its tendrils swayed gently in the air.
Its stare at me as it smile terrifyingly.
Then it disappeared—into smoke, into shadow, into the void.
I collapsed, barely clinging to life.
But I was alive.
---
Kael's POV
The campfire crackled weakly in the temporary forward base near the Wildspire drop zone. Medical tents were erected hastily. Groans of injured hunters filled the air, mixed with the hiss of healing poultices and the muted whispers of disbelief.
Kael sat with his back against a stone crate, blood dried to his armor, hands shaking despite the heat.
His eyes had not moved from the mouth of the chasm.
"Still nothing," the scout beside him murmured, head bowed. "No signs. No echoes. Not even carrion fliers circling."
Kael didn't reply. He simply stood.
The Commander's tent was ahead—guarded, but not barred.
Kael pushed inside without a word.
The Commander looked up from the crude map table, his chest still bound from the earlier fight. He frowned. "Kael."
"I want a rescue quest approved," Kael said bluntly. "Immediately."
The Commander exhaled through his nose, slow and heavy. "You know I can't do that."
"He's still alive," Kael said, stepping closer. "I know it. I saw the way Gore Magala looked at him. It wasn't an attack—it was something else. Obsession. That thing chose him."
The Commander didn't flinch. "Exactly why we can't send anyone in. Gore Magala is still active. Frenzy is thick in the air. That chasm—whatever's down there—is not charted. We barely survived once."
Kael's voice cracked. "We left him. Alone. Down there. You think he's dead, but I know he isn't. You've seen how he survives—he's stubborn. He adapts."
"I admire your loyalty," the Commander said, "but I cannot sacrifice more hunters on a hunch."
Kael slammed his fist on the table. "Then I'll go alone."
"Then you'll die alone."
"Maybe." Kael's eyes burned. "But I won't just sit here and wait for bones to rise from the dark. I owe him. We all do."
The Commander's expression softened, if only slightly. He looked at the flickering lantern above. "You remind me of myself, years ago. Before I learned what 'acceptable loss' meant."
Kael's mouth twisted into a bitter line. "Then maybe it's time someone reminds the Guild what compassion looks like."
The Commander remained silent.
"I'm not asking for manpower," Kael continued. "Just access to a supply line, maps of the old subterranean layers, and one flare. That's it."
"Unofficially?"
Kael nodded.
A long pause stretched between them.
Finally, the Commander reached under the table and slid over a sealed scroll and a half-burned torch.
"No support," he said coldly. "No tracking. You vanish down there, you vanish alone. If you're compromised, no one is coming."
"I understand," Kael said, clutching the supplies. "Thank you."
"And Kael," the Commander added as Kael turned to leave, "don't just survive. Bring him back."
Kael gave the faintest nod before stepping back into the night, toward the chasm's edge, the dark wind rising to greet him like the breath of a beast.
---
Kael turned from the Commander's desk, his grip tightening on the scroll and flare, when—
"Wait."
Kael stopped mid-stride. He turned his head slightly, eyes narrowing.
The Commander stood tall now, casting a long shadow over the table as the flickering lantern swayed. There was hesitation in his voice—but beneath it, something else. Calculation. Resolve.
"There's... one more thing," the Commander muttered. "Just before your team departed, a small unit of hunters arrived from Dundorma. Veterans. Elite. I didn't want to risk them yet—not until we had a clear understanding of what we're dealing with."
Kael's eyes widened. "Elder Dragon-level?"
The Commander nodded. "They've faced Kushala Daora. Chameleos. Even a Black Gravios, years ago. If anyone can survive the Frenzy… it's them."
"You're assigning them to the rescue?"
"I'm giving them the choice," he said. "If they agree, you'll have backup. But this is your op, Kael. You lead it."
Kael stood still, stunned. "You trust me with that?"
The Commander looked him dead in the eye. "That boy survived the Wastes, the Guild prison, the hunts, and Gore Magala. If he's still breathing down there, then he's part of our own. And I trust my own."
Kael bowed his head—brief, sharp. "Understood."
Moments later, just outside the Command tent, Kael stood before the new arrivals.
They weren't ordinary hunters.
Six in total. Each bore armor unlike anything Astera's smiths had crafted—worn, battered, but unmistakably forged from Elder-class materials. The scent of dragonbone and ancient wyvern oil clung to them like ghosts. Their leader, a tall woman with piercing grey eyes and a massive gunlance across her back, gave Kael a nod.
"So," she said in a gravelly voice, "you're the one we're following into the pit?"
Kael gave her a measured look. "Name?"
"Ria. Guildbreaker rank."
Kael's brow twitched. That rank was unofficial—whispered, never written. Reserved only for hunters who had walked through hell and returned with trophies.
"You're volunteering for this?"
"We saw the flare. The Magala. One of ours said it screamed like it remembered something. That's not just infection—it's memory. Which means it's more dangerous than we thought." She leaned forward slightly. "And we like dangerous."
Kael's lips tightened. "You understand the stakes?"
"I lost two friends to Frenzy," Ria said quietly. "If he's infected, we'll do what we can to save him. But if he turns..."
Kael's voice was steel. "Then I'll be the one to deal with him. No one else."
Ria nodded once. "Fair."
Another hunter behind her—shorter, clad in a bizarre set of multicolored armor—spoke up. "If Gore Magala is still circling the ruins, we'll have one shot at this. Once we descend, no comms, no waypoints. Just instinct."
Kael glanced at the Commander in the distance. The old man watched from the tent flap, arms crossed, unmoving. Watching them step into the unknown.
"Then let's move," Kael said. "Every second counts."
And with that, under the haunting light of the moon over the Wildspire Wastes, the rescue party assembled—ten souls bound by duty, and one by something far stranger.