The first thing I notice is the sound.
It's not the scream of a beast, not the clash of steel it's… tearing.
Like the air itself is being ripped apart.
My vision snaps white for a heartbeat. The trees around me… they don't sway, they jerk flickering like a broken projection. One second they're there, the next they're shadows of themselves.
The ground under my boots shudders. My balance goes, and I hit my knees just as the forest floor splits open. The smell hits me first hot ash, iron, something burnt.
"Kai—!" Lira's voice cuts through the noise, raw and sharp. She's grabbing my arm before I even process it, yanking me away from the jagged crack racing across the dirt.
The sky above if you can call it a sky anymore blinks. The stars vanish for an instant, replaced by rolling black code, red error symbols I can't read fast enough.
[ZONE STABILITY: COMPROMISED]
[MAP RECONSTRUCTION INITIATED]
[RELOCATING SURVIVORS…]
"Run!" Lira doesn't wait for me to argue — she drags me, her grip like iron, boots pounding against ground that feels less and less real.
"Where the hell are we running to?" I shout, but my words are swallowed by the low, chest-deep hum building under everything.
Lilith's voice flickers into my head like bad radio static.
Kai… don't let go of her. Whatever happens, keep moving.
It's the first time her tone doesn't carry that usual teasing lilt it's flat. Urgent. That scares me more than the glitching forest.
Another blink of the world, and suddenly the slope under us isn't dirt anymore. It's slick black stone, sharp enough to slice if I slip. My legs burn as we scramble upward, the crack of falling trees echoing somewhere behind us.
Lira looks over her shoulder not at me, but at something in the shifting treeline. Her face tightens.
"It's following."
"What's following?"
She doesn't answer.
The hum becomes a pulse, like the heartbeat of something massive right beneath the surface.
And then —
The ground drops out from under us.
We fall for what feels like too long. The air is hot and smells like old metal. I slam into something hard enough to make my vision pop black for a second. My ribs scream, my shoulder takes most of the hit, and I roll until stone stops me.
Lira lands nearby, twisting mid-air so she hits in a crouch. Her breath is sharp, but she's already scanning.
The light here is wrong. Everything has a faint red cast, shadows too deep, like we've been shoved into a place that doesn't obey the same rules as before.
A single System prompt floats in my vision, flickering.
[ERROR — CURRENT ZONE UNREGISTERED]
[WARNING: ENTITY LEVELS UNKNOWN]
Lilith's voice again, low.
Kai… this wasn't supposed to happen. Even I can'tt.
Her words cut out, replaced by a sharp hiss of static that makes me grit my teeth.
A sound rises from the dark edges of this… canyon? Ravine? It's hard to tell. The walls are jagged, spiked, and wet with something black that drips too slowly to be water.
It's breathing.
Something's down here.
Lira's hand drifts to her weapon, the muscles in her arm taut. "Don't move," she whispers.
My heart's already pounding. "You see it?"
"No." Her eyes are on the shadows. "But it sees us."
The breathing grows louder, wet and uneven, like lungs filling with sludge. I catch a flicker of movement something long, too long, sliding just out of the faint red light.
Lilith's voice cuts back in not playful, not seductive. Just… cold.
Run.
The sound shifts.
Not footsteps more like claws dragging across stone. Slow, deliberate, scraping just enough to tell me it knows we can hear it.
My grip tightens around the shard knife I took earlier. It feels pathetically small.
Lira doesn't look back at me. "When I move, you follow. Don't stop. Don't look at it."
"That's—"
"Kai." Her voice slices through mine. "Trust me."
A moment's pause. Then she moves. Fast.
I force my legs to follow, lungs already protesting. The stone floor here isn't flat it's fractured, with sudden drops and knife-like ridges. My boots scrape, sending tiny echoes into the dark.
The breathing behind us stops.
I wish it didn't.
Something drips onto my shoulder. Warm. Thick. My stomach turns. I don't look up.
Lilith's voice hums in my ear, almost amused despite the urgency.
It's above you.
I do look up.
And I see nothing until the shadow above shifts, peeling itself off the wall.
It's huge. Not in a lumbering, beastly way in a wrong way. Limbs too thin, joints bending the wrong direction. Skin stretched so tight I can see where bone cuts against it.
Then its head lowers into the faint red light.
It doesn't have eyes. Just a mouth, too wide, lined with jagged, wet teeth.
My breath catches. My knees almost stop moving.
Lira doesn't slow, doesn't look, just says, "Keep moving or you're dead."
So I run.
The thing drops from the wall with a wet thud. Its claws scrape, catching sparks on the stone. It moves fast, but not in a straight line it jerks, like each step is decided a second before it happens.
The space narrows ahead. We duck into a split in the rock, barely wide enough for us to squeeze through. My shoulder screams as stone tears my sleeve and skin.
The scraping behind us gets louder.
"Kai," Lira says, low, controlled, "when we get out of here, drop left."
"What if it's—"
"Just do it."
We burst out of the crack into a slope of broken rubble. She dives left, I follow
The creature slams out of the gap behind us, too big to fit cleanly. It twists, its bones popping in ways I wish I hadn't heard, forcing itself through.
We scramble down the slope. My foot catches, and I tumble, rock slamming into my side. Pain bursts in my ribs.
Before I can push myself up, Lira's there one hand under my arm, dragging me back to my feet. Her breathing's harsher now, a faint tremble under it.
She's not untouchable.
We run until the slope levels into what looks like the remains of… something built. Not stone walls ruins.
Half-buried pillars jut from the ground, covered in symbols that glow faintly when we pass.
[DATA ANOMALY DETECTED]
[HISTORY ARCHIVE — ACCESS DENIED]
Lilith's voice is almost curious now.
Mmm… now this, Kai, this is older than your precious System.
The predator's screech tears through the air a high, grinding sound that makes my vision blur. It's closer again.
Lira pushes me toward one of the pillars. "Here. Behind."
We duck into a hollow space between fallen slabs. My pulse is so loud in my ears I can barely hear anything else.
The creature enters the ruins. It moves differently here slower, almost hesitant. Its claws tap the ground instead of scraping.
It sniffs the air.
Then stops.
Its head tilts toward our hiding place.
Lira's hand brushes my wrist a silent don't move.
It steps closer.
Lilith's voice is a whisper, right against my ear.
If you run now, you might survive… but she won't.
My chest tightens.
The thing takes one more stepand the pillar we're under flares bright red. A pulse of energy bursts outward, slamming into the creature.
It screams, the sound tearing at my skull, and jerks back, claws slicing deep grooves into the stone before it retreats into the dark.
The light fades. Silence falls.
Lira exhales slowly. "It doesn't like the old places."
My voice is hoarse. "What the hell was that thing?"
She looks at me, and for the first time since I've known her… she doesn't have an answer.
The ruins feel… wrong.
Not in the way the forest felt after the shard exploded, with its glitching ground and snapping trees. This is quieter. The air's heavier here, like the place remembers things it doesn't want to share.
I brush my hand over one of the carved symbols. It's warm.
Lira notices. "Don't touch those too much. We don't know what they do."
"They just glow. It's not like—"
One of the carvings pulses under my fingers. For a split second, my vision flashes white.
And I see something.
Not here. Not now. A city of black stone under a red sky, towers leaning at impossible angles. Things moving in the streets human shapes, but their shadows don't match their bodies.
I pull my hand back like I've been burned. "That's… not normal."
Lira's eyes narrow. "What did you see?"
I tell her, and she goes still. "I've heard stories about places like this. Old worlds that existed before the Trials. They say the System buried them because they didn't fit the rules anymore."
Lilith's voice cuts in, silk over steel.
Bury? Oh, my sweet Kai… it didn't bury them. It ate them.
A shiver slides down my spine.
Lira steps over a fallen slab, keeping her weapon raised. "We should keep moving. That thing might not come into the ruins, but I don't want to be here if it changes its mind."
We move deeper, the glowing symbols following us along the walls. The pillars are taller here, some cracked, some still standing like they've been holding up the sky for centuries.
[ARCHIVE NODE DETECTED — SYSTEM ACCESS… ERROR]
The text flickers across my vision and vanishes before I can focus on it.
I stop. "The System's… glitching again."
Lira glances back at me. "Don't tell me you're surprised."
"No, but…" I look around. "It's watching us here. Directly. I can feel it."
Lilith laughs softly in my head.
Of course it is. This place wasn't meant for Stage One players. You shouldn't even be breathing this air yet.
Her tone shifts, low and warning.
Be careful, Kai. Every step you take here is a step off the path the System planned for you. And it doesn't like losing control.
Before I can answer, the sound of stone cracking echoes ahead.
We freeze.
Not the predator from before this is slower, heavier. Something big is moving in the darkness between two leaning pillars.
A shadow slides across the red glow. Broad shoulders. Too tall for a man.
Lira whispers, "Stay behind me."
For once, I don't argue.
The shape stops just inside the light. I can't see its face, but its voice rumbles like shifting gravel. "You shouldn't be here."
Every instinct tells me to back away.
Lira doesn't move. "We didn't choose to be here."
The shadow tilts its head, and I swear I see something glint where its eyes should be.
"Then you won't choose where you go next."
The ground under us shifts. My balance goes, and in the space of a heartbeat, the stone collapses.
We fall.
The ruins above vanish into blackness.
I hit cold stone hard enough to knock the air out of me. My ears ring. Lira's somewhere nearby, coughing.
Before I can even get my breath back, a new notification burns across my vision.
[TRIAL PROGRESSION OVERRIDE — ZONE REASSIGNMENT COMPLETE]
[WARNING: PLAYER OUT OF DESIGNATED LEVEL RANGE]
[SURVIVE UNTIL EXTRACTION]
Lilith's voice purrs.
Oh, Kai… now the real fun begins.