Birds called faintly in the distance — a scattered chorus fading beneath the canopy.
Then even that fell silent.
The forest listened.
Only the rhythm of footsteps remained — thousands of boots pressing softly against damp earth, moving as one.
The air was cold and still, heavy with breath and the quiet clink of metal.
Mist wove through the ranks like pale silk.
It coiled around armor, slid across helmets, brushed shoulders — a living veil between the world they'd left and the one waiting ahead.
The cadets moved in long, winding lines — a river of black and gold threading through ancient trees.
The nobles walked at the front, banners faintly glinting in the haze.
Behind them, the commoners filled the forest's breath — dark-armored, quiet, steady.
In their midst walked trios upon trios — small knots of will and purpose.Some whispered to each other.Most didn't.
And around one trio — the strongest among the commoners — others gathered closer. Not to speak. Not to guard.
Just drawn by instinct — like moths pulled toward unseen fire.
No one broke formation. No one dared.
Yet the air around them carried a strange rhythm — the synchronized beat of hundreds of steps, the faint hum of Veil energy threading between heartbeats.
The forest gave nothing back.No wind.
No song.
Only watching.
The trees rose impossibly tall, their bark etched with faint gold veins that pulsed like sleeping hearts.
Every few paces, a leaf fell — slow, deliberate — catching a glint of light before vanishing into fog.
The deeper they went, the heavier the silence became.
Even their footsteps began to sound distant, swallowed by the mist.
And still, they walked — the sea of cadets, the whispering armor, the breath of thousands moving forward through a world that refused to echo.
It felt like crossing the threshold of a dream — one too fragile to break, and too alive to escape.
On the far side of the formation, where the mist thinned into bands of pale light, Kael Draven walked beside his trio.
Unlike the black-clad commoners, their armor gleamed white — polished to a quiet shine that caught every flicker of sun between the trees.
It wasn't noble gold or ornate steel. It was something purer. Unadorned. Honest.
Beside him two women moved with balance and grace.
One carried herself like a spark — quick-smiling, sharp-eyed, her voice always ready to cut the silence called Layla.
The other was her mirror opposite — calm, measured, her gaze cold as frost, her steps silent as falling snow called Velvar.
Together, they looked like fragments of the same star: one burning bright, the other fading cool.
Kael allowed himself a faint smile. Not pride — just a quiet satisfaction. In a place this bleak, it mattered who walked at your side.
Ahead, the mist broke just enough to reveal the nobles' front ranks. Three stood at their center — distinct even among shining armor.
The first bore a crown-like circlet etched into his helm, every step deliberate.
They called him The Ash Prince — first of the noble prodigies.
Beside him walked Duskheart, his armor carved in deep gray tones, movements controlled, eyes unreadable.
And between them, faint light glinted from the black-trimmed edges of the third — The Malevolent Dawn, whose very presence bent the air faintly around him.
Kael slowed.
"I've been noticing something lately," he murmured.
The cocky girl glanced over. "What now?"
He didn't answer at first. His gaze stayed on the three nobles ahead.
"I'm starting to see faint colors around people." His voice lowered. "Like… shades leaking from their souls."
The cold girl frowned. "Colors?"
Kael nodded once, eyes narrowing.
From the three nobles, the light warped — their outlines wrapped in a massive shadow, a darkness that pulsed and breathed.
It wasn't a trick of the mist. It was alive.
He exhaled slowly. "Those three… they burn black."
Kael's eyes lingered on the nobles ahead — the Ash Prince, Duskheart, and the Malevolent Dawn — their dark auras writhing faintly like smoke trapped beneath glass.
Then something changed.
A sound.
Soft. Far off.Almost too faint to notice.
A low creak, like wood bending under unseen weight.
Then another — closer this time.
The forest stirred.
Leaves rustled, though no wind moved. The pale mist trembled, shivering between the roots.
Kael turned his head slightly. "Did you hear that?"
His cocky companion frowned, scanning the tree line. "Probably the wind."
"There is no wind," the cold one replied quietly.
Across the ranks, others began to notice.Helmets turned. Steps slowed.
The rhythm of a thousand boots faltered.
From the other side of the formation, Gareth lifted his head.
Cassiel and Teramon froze beside him.
"…What was that?" Cassiel murmured.
Someone farther up whispered, "Something's moving."Another voice answered, nervous. "Where?".
"I don't know—"
Then silence again.
Every cadet stood still, the forest suddenly too quiet — even the birds had fled.
The mist thickened, crawling low to the ground.
From somewhere deep within the trees came a hollow snap — like a branch breaking under great pressure.
Heads turned. Weapons half-raised.
Kael's gaze drifted toward the sound.
His sight flickered — faint colors burning in his vision again.
Shadows within the mist.
Shapes that didn't belong.
He whispered, "Something's watching us."
The cold girl tensed, hand on her blade.The cocky one's grin had faded.
Across the clearing, Gareth felt it too — a pulse, deep beneath the ground, brushing the edge of his Veil like a heartbeat not his own.
Teramon's voice came out quiet. "That… didn't sound human."
No one spoke after that.
The forest seemed to inhale — long and slow — before returning to utter stillness.
And for the first time since stepping through the gates, every cadet understood what the instructors had meant when they said:
The Wild Zone is alive.
The forest was still again. Too still.
Then Gareth felt it.
A sudden, searing pulse beneath his skin — sharp enough to steal his breath.
His hand shot to his arm instinctively, fingers gripping the fabric where the mark burned through.
The pain was blinding.Not fire. Not light.Something deeper — like the Veil itself had reached inside him and twisted.
"Gareth?" Cassiel's voice was faint, distant through the haze.
Teramon turned toward him. "Hey—what's wrong—?"
He didn't answer. Couldn't.
The mark was glowing — a dim, furious red beneath the black armor, veins of light spreading up his forearm like cracks in glass.
Every pulse sent another wave through his chest.
In that moment, memory tore through him. Garric's voice — calm, heavy, certain — echoed from somewhere deep inside his skull:
"The Summoned One. Marked by the Shattered Throne.A hunter cursed to draw death wherever he goes.They called him… the Sun's Pallbearer".
"It's not monsters hunting us. It's me bringing them."
The words struck like thunder — too real, too close.
Gareth's breath hitched.
"They'll die because of me."
His knees almost buckled.
He felt the forest answering — the ground humming faintly, distant whispers threading through the mist.
He looked around — hundreds of cadets, unaware of the danger.
Their armor gleamed faintly, faces calm, still searching the trees. They didn't feel it.
They couldn't.
But he did.
Something out there had heard his mark.Something ancient.Something hungry.
Terror clawed at his chest — not for himself, but for everyone marching beside him.
His voice came out a hoarse whisper."No… no, not here… not now…"
Cassiel gripped his shoulder. "Gareth! Look at me—"
The red light flared once, brighter than before — then dimmed, fading into a faint ember beneath the skin.
The forest fell quiet again.
But the silence wasn't peace anymore.It was waiting.
The mist tore open like paper.
From between trunks and heap of roots poured them — hundreds at once, a tide of broken shapes that had once been people.
They moved with awkward, terrible grace:
faces slack or frozen in rictus, eyes gone pale as bone.
Black veins crawled beneath skin like ink spilled across a map.
Where they bled, the dark ran slow and glistening, staining leaf and stone as it fell.
A single, small sound broke the march — a gasp that became a scream — and then chaos.
Boots faltered, shouted orders cracked and broke, a thousand cadets all at once unraveling into frantic motion.
Trios dissolved into small clots of people running, stumbling, clashing into one another as they fled toward the gate.
Torches were dropped; banners dragged through mud.
The Wild Zone answered the panic with cold, patient silence, and the corrupted pressed forward like fog given teeth.
Gareth felt the world tilt. Fear rose hot and blind, an immediate instinct: run.
He started — heel striking earth, breath cutting sharp — and then the pain lanced up his arm again, brighter than before.
The mark flared, a furious ember beneath his skin, and something inside his chest clamped shut.
He stopped.
All around him, the flood of humanity scattered like leaves in a storm.
Hundreds fled — shouting, colliding, shoving — until the forest swallowed them whole.
The echo of their retreat faded fast, replaced by the wet dragging of corrupted feet and the ragged pulse of the wind.
Only twelve figures remained amid the ruin of panic.
The Ash Prince stood ahead, his pale armor cracked with light, eyes hard as glass.
Beside him, Duskheart — calm, dark, unflinching — raised his blade, while the Malevolent Dawn smiled faintly, crimson eyes burning with quiet thrill.
Across the torn clearing, the Princely Prince of Dawn stood steady, dark cloak swaying, radiance and fear battling across his features.
Near Gareth, Cassiel and Teramon drew close, breath sharp, their bodies half-turned as if still ready to flee.
Janus gritted his teeth, silver dust of light coiling faintly around his hands.
Kael stood apart, his twin companions behind him, faces pale, eyes hard.
And between them all, Aelthar Veyne — the silver-haired boy — raised his gaze, calm and detached, moonlight glinting off his blade.
Twelve against hundreds.
The air quivered. The forest itself seemed to hold its breath.
Gareth's legs froze because the ground at his feet had changed.
At first, he thought it was only shadow — the mist pooling thicker around his boots — but then he saw it:
A thin black line, an ink-spread crawling outward through soil and leaves.
Veins pulsed beneath the dirt, reaching in branching patterns from where his soles touched the ground.
He watched, horrified, as the nearest corrupted stopped mid-motion. Its head snapped toward him.
Then another. And another. Until hundreds of milky eyes fixed on him at once.
Horror surged up his spine. Not for himself — but for the nine who stood near him.
They're not after them, he realized. They're after me.
The mark blazed crimson, spilling veins of red light through his forearm. The blackness at his feet pulsed in reply, creeping farther toward the others.
Cassiel shouted his name. Teramon reached toward him. But Gareth couldn't move.
He could only feel it — the world bending around his curse, the air tightening, the ground whispering beneath his soles.
He could run — abandon them all — but he knew the truth now. Wherever he went, death would follow.
So instead, he swallowed the terror, clenched his shaking hand, and drew a single breath.
Then, while the forest screamed and the corrupted advanced, Gareth took one step forward.
The corrupted closed in like a tide. For a breath, the clearing was a thunder of feet and the rasp of ragged breath.
Then the Princely Prince of Dawn was there—sudden, sure, a blade flashing white as dawn.
He shoved through the nearest gap, caught Gareth under the shoulders, and hauled him up as if he weighed nothing.
Gareth's knees shook; the world swam. The Prince's sword swept once, twice—clean arcs that bit through the nearest corrupted with precise fury, not cruelty.
The malformed bodies fell back as the Prince jumped away, leading a line of charge.
At his signal the other nine surged in. Duskheart and the Malevolent Dawn met the corrupted with the cold rhythm of trained steel.
Janus and Aelthar moved like living silver, blades ringing.
Kael and his companions—wounded, blinking, furious—rallied, claws and teeth of their own will answering the strange teeth of the forest.
Cassiel and Teramon fought beside Gareth, faces set, breath hot in the chill.
For a moment their panic forged into a single, terrible resolve, and the corrupted were driven back, hacked and thrown, collapsing like ragged nightfall.
Then the worst came—quick, ugly, impossible to stop.
The sarcastic girl who had walked with Kael—sharp-tongued, always first to laugh—ran forward, blade slashing for a head that shouldn't have been there.
A corrupted stepped out from the mist, too close, too sudden.
It struck with the same raw hunger as everything else here. Her cry cut the open space;
the blade she held clattered from her hand as she doubled, a dark bloom staining her armor near the stomach.
She sank to her knees, eyes wide and fierce, and then she was still.
No gore, only the terrible smallness of a human shape folding in on itself.
Kael's face broke as if a stone had been thrown into him.
The cold girl was called Velvar—always the ice beside him—crumbled in a way Kael had never seen:
The last corrupted fell with a shriek, its body splitting under the Princely Prince's blade.
Mist scattered with the motion, silence closing again around the survivors like a shroud.
Then a sound broke through — a choked gasp.
Kael saw her again.
The cocky girl was Layla— the one who'd always laughed like she could scare fear away — was on her knees, clutching her stomach.
Blood welled between her fingers, spilling down her white armor in rivers of red.
"No—no, stay with me Layla!" Kael dropped beside her, voice trembling.
His hands were slick with her blood as he tried to hold pressure, tried to stop what couldn't be stopped.
The cold girl fell beside him, cradling her sister's head, her face twisted and wet with tears.
"It hurts…" the wounded girl whispered, voice cracking. Her eyes fluttered toward the cold girl.
"Tell Mom… tell her I'm sorry… I can't come back this time…"
"Don't—don't say that," Kael's voice broke.
His tears hit her hand as he squeezed it tighter, shaking his head in disbelief.
A weak smile touched the dying girl's lips.
"You always cry too easy…" she murmured — and then she coughed once, blood flecking her lips, her breath shuddering into stillness.
The cold girl froze. Then a sound tore out of her — raw, cracked, breaking.
She held her sister tighter, whispering her name again and again until her voice vanished into sobs.
Kael bowed his head, shoulders shaking. His fingers didn't let go.
From a distance, Gareth stood motionless. His chest heaved, rage and sorrow mixing until they were the same thing.
His fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white.
The mark burned red again — not in pain this time, but in fury.
Gareth's voice came low, steady, and trembling with wrath:
"It's all my fault…"
He lifted his gaze to the darkened woods ahead, eyes sharp through the tears.
The wind moved through the Wild Zone, whispering over the fallen.
The blood on the leaves gleamed like dying embers — and the night waited, silent and watching.
Gareth watched it all as if through water.
The black veins at his feet pulsed once and then began to recede, but it did nothing to unmake what had happened.
"I'll hunt these monsters down till the last of them—damn wretches on my soul. I'II kill every single one of those wretched creatures."
The words fell into the mist and did not die. The forest listened. The corrupted retreated into shadow.
Around him, those who remained steadied themselves and tightened their grips.