A few hours later, the squad stood assembled in the courtyard—packed, geared, and unusually silent.
Tarrin adjusted the straps on his pack, feeling the weight of three swords—one of which he'd acquired through questionable charm and strategic sweet-talking. His rations would last a month, assuming he adopted a monk's diet and didn't mind being hungry.
Not that it mattered. By then, they'd either be dead or done.
They were gathered now for a different reason—saying their goodbyes to Lucas, who would be heading off on a separate mission the next morning.
"I'm sure you'll handle this," Lucas said, his tone a few shades short of convincing. "The Sergeant leading you… he's strong. Supposedly."
"Yeah, nothing will go wrong," Riko added, dry as ash. "Rainbows and Spire-shine. Just like the posters." He glanced toward the approaching figure of their Sergeant, expression unreadable.
Lucas turned to Tarrin, hesitation flickering behind his usually blank stare. He raised a hand. Tarrin met it with a quick dab.
"Good luck," Lucas offered.
Tarrin gave a sharp nod. "We'll need it."
Then the Sergeant arrived, all ice and silence.
"Alright. Everyone's here. Move out."
His tone was frostbitten steel—colder than the last time they'd heard him speak. Tarrin figured it had something to do with being handed a death sentence mission and saddled with a bunch of barely-trained recruits.
Or maybe the man had just skipped breakfast. Who could tell?
Moments later, they were moving.
The fortress gates creaked open—heavy slabs of blackened steel grinding against reinforced stone—and there it was: the same path they'd marched in on nearly a week ago. Somehow, it felt like a lifetime.
A silent understanding settled over the group. This mission wasn't just hard. It felt impossible. Especially for rookies.
But through it all, Tarrin never lost sight of the one thing that truly mattered. The promise he'd whispered to himself, over and over again.
I'll survive. Even if I have to betray. Even if I have to kill.
Whether he could hold to those words, only time would tell.
Roughly a few hundred meters down the winding mountain path, they stopped in front of a steel door embedded in the cliffside. Hidden from sight unless you knew what to look for.
A quick facial and ID scan later, the slab hissed open.
What lay beyond was another world.
A massive hangar stretched out before them—steel walkways, crisscrossing catwalks, personnel moving in organized chaos. Military vehicles hummed quietly in place, while larger monstrosities sat parked in the corners—cannons the size of freight trucks, engines rumbling beneath armored plating.
Everyone stared. Everyone except Celith.
She didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Just walked through the scene like it was her living room.
Considering her grandfather, it might've been.
"Don't stare. Move."
Nicolas' voice cut through the awe like a blade dipped in frost.
They snapped out of it, boots falling into step behind him.
As they walked through the hangar, Tarrin couldn't ignore the stares. Soldiers, engineers, techs—everyone seemed to glance their way, then look away just as fast. But the judgment stuck to his skin like grease.
It didn't take long for Nicolas to break his silence.
"They're giving you the death look," he said, voice flat. "They know what it means when fresh meat gets a ride out this far. Most don't come back."
Tarrin blinked at him, dumbfounded.Is this some kind of twisted morale booster? Reverse psychology? Or does he really just not care?
A few more steps brought them to the tunnel mouth. Their ride waited at the end—an armored troop carrier, boxy and unmarked, its hull scuffed from a thousand past deployments.
Tarrin looked back at his squad one last time, chest tightening. He knew the odds. Some of them wouldn't return. Maybe none. Maybe not even him.
Jayden caught his glance and gave a faint smile. Barely there. Maybe that was all he could manage.
They climbed into the truck. No windows. Rust in the corners. The stale stench of old sweat and dried blood soaked into the metal walls.
Charming ride, Tarrin thought.He wouldn't have been surprised if someone had died in here last week. Still, he sat on the floor anyway. No point complaining. Not anymore.
The Sergeant returned from the front, done speaking with the driver. He gave the inside of the truck a single sweep with his eyes, then banged twice on the rear wall.
The doors slammed shut behind them.Light vanished.
The darkness swallowed everything.
The truck rumbled forward, wheels grinding against steel as it started down the tunnel, toward Ember Basin.
For the first few minutes, no one spoke. Not a whisper.
But for Jayden, it wasn't a matter of choice.
He couldn't speak.
'Why does it have to be so dark?'
The thought looped over and over in his mind, each pass cutting deeper. Jayden had always hated the dark, even as a kid. Too quiet. Too still.
Too much room for the wrong kind of memories.
But after that day, the dark became something else.
Something monstrous.
His chest tightened. Breathing grew harder.
Smoke. The memory of it came first—thick and black, choking the air, devouring everything. Then came the fire. The screams. The splintering of walls and bones.
He was there again. In the ruins of his own home.
The living room collapsing.
His mother's arms wrapped around him.
Her body shielding his.
Her breath shaking. Her sobs quiet and broken.
Then the Void-spawn came.
Shrieking. Crawling. Feeding.
Explosions shaking the world apart.
It all felt so real, like he was reliving it second by second.
He tried to ground himself, to remember that he wasn't that scared boy anymore. He had power now. Control. A Scar. A chance.
That was the lie, the one he fed himself every single day since the day the mark seared into his chest.
But in this blackness, even if he could command shadows, he was just that boy again. The one who felt his mother's hand grow colder in his own. The one who waited sixteen hours, buried in rubble, before anyone found him.
He couldn't save her.
He couldn't do anything.
He just lay there, crying, hoping, failing.
The fear returned in full—suffocating, merciless, familiar.
'Why is this happening to m-me?!' he screamed in his head, but then—
"Jayden? Jayden, you alright?"
His eyes snapped open.
Lena. She was sitting beside him, her face a soft blur in the dark, brows knit with concern. Her voice cracked through the panic like a thread of light.
He swallowed, breath shaky. "Yeah… sorry. Just… daydreaming."
Even he could hear the hollowness in his voice.
Then something nudged his side. He flinched, startled—only to see Tarrin, faint grin on his face, holding out a canteen.
"Drink up," he said.
Jayden took it, hands trembling just slightly, and breathed out.Slowly.
The fear dulled a little.
'At least I've found friends,' he thought. 'Even if I haven't found strength.'
What Jayden didn't notice—what none of them noticed—was the pair of cold eyes watching him in silence. Sergeant Nicolas stood near the back, gaze fixed on the boy like he was already a corpse waiting to be claimed.
The ride dragged on.
Time lost all shape inside the metal box. No words. No light. Sleep came for a few, but only in short, restless bursts.
Then, as they crossed the two-hour mark, a sharp beep cut through the silence.
Nicolas pulled out his Telcom, the faint glow casting shadows across his sharp features. He read the message once, then again, and his expression darkened.
"Idiots," he muttered. "How do you screw up this bad?"
Heads turned toward him, faces expectant, waiting for orders. The tension was instant. Palpable.
He sighed, already tired of this mission before it had properly begun. "Tunnel ghouls ahead," he said flatly. "Side-channel guards were ambushed. Sloppy work."
Then, a pause. A sharp breath. His tone turned clipped, businesslike. "Get up. We're fighting. They shouldn't be too strong."
Whatever drowsiness had lingered vanished in an instant. Those still half-asleep were shoved or kicked into alertness by the others.
The truck halted with a metallic groan.
Nicolas didn't wait—he threw the back latch open and jumped out without a backward glance. Tarrin was right behind him.
"So," Tarrin asked, matching his pace, "what exactly are we fighting?"
He was half-expecting some lecture about local tunnel wildlife, maybe a tactical breakdown.
What he got instead was a flat response. "Humanoid. Venom in the claws and teeth. Don't get scratched, even slightly. You do, we head back."
There was no room for questions. No time.
Tarrin spun around and relayed the warning to the others, who had just finished spilling out of the truck. "You heard him! Watch out for claws and teeth—venomous. One cut and we're done."
The Sergeant gave Tarrin a sidelong look, something caught between mild annoyance and faint approval. Like he'd found the only recruit with a working brain.
"Let's crack some dead meat," Riko said, stretching his arms and slipping on his gauntlets with a metallic click. Then, under his breath: "That sounded way better in my head."
Then came the sound.
Low growls. Snapping bone. Something wet dragging across the stone.
From the shadows, they emerged.
They were things that had once been human—maybe.
Pale flesh, stretched tight over too-long limbs. Eyes sunken deep. Teeth jagged. They moved in twitching bursts, like puppets pulled by broken strings.
Tarrin froze. For a moment, he was back in the simulation. That last fight. The final moments.
The resemblance was too close.
He wasn't sure if these were the same things—but he spoke anyway.
"Target the head," he shouted. "That's where the seed hides."
But then more came. Dozens more. Crawling from every crack, every corner. The darkness moved with them.
Now they were outnumbered—at least two to one.
The Sergeant scowled. No fear. No hesitation. Just calculation. "I'll take ten. You handle the rest."
No one protested.
Not even Jayden.
Weapons clicked into place. Stances locked in. Fear simmered beneath every heartbeat, but their eyes sharpened.
Tarrin let out a slow breath, his fingers curling around his sword hilt.
'Might get wiped before the mission even starts. Hell of a lovely adventure.'