As Kealix moved deeper into the ashen forest, the air grew heavier.
Not just with silence or the strange pressure that clung to every step—but with unease. It pressed against his chest, sharp and steady, like the tip of a blade just resting against skin. At first, he told himself it was rational. Understandable. A response to being stranded in an unknown, corrupted land with only a half-functioning deck of living cards and a single eye to guide him.
But the closer the sun crept toward the horizon, the worse it became.
The feeling.
It didn't grow gradually—it expanded, like rot blooming beneath the surface of the world, like something ancient opening its eyes beneath the forest floor.
Hours passed.
No mountains. No caves. No sign of natural shelter. The terrain offered no cliffs to tuck beneath, no hollows to crawl into. Just the endless sprawl of bone-pale trees, each one as tall and identical as the last, as if the forest were a maze built by a god with no sense of mercy.
The sun now dipped low behind the horizon, bleeding pale light into the sky—still off, still wrong, like it had been drained of meaning.
Kealix stopped walking. His boots sank slightly into the ash-soft earth. He looked around one final time—no breaks in the landscape. No luck.
"Damn it all," he muttered, voice raw with frustration.
"Don't worry, young master," Hero chimed, his voice echoing softly from the golden armor. "If the trees attempt anything, I'll wake you immediately."
His tone carried the same confident warmth it always did—steady, loyal, proud. The light in Kealix's armor pulsed briefly, as if to prove the point.
Kealix gave a faint smile, not quite meeting his lips, and nodded as if to say thanks. It wasn't that he didn't trust Hero—he did—but in this place, trust had to coexist with precaution.
"Still," he murmured, "I'll need to deactivate your power once I'm up there. We can't risk attracting anything with light. Not at night. Not here."
Regret bled into his tone.
"Understood," Hero replied, his voice quieter now. "I will remain alert from within. Just say the word."
Kealix spent a long moment scanning the skeletal forest. His eye moved between the trunks—looking for something wider, more stable, more central. Eventually, he chose a tree. It looked like the others—tall, dead-white, and impossibly smooth—but something about its stillness felt less hostile.
He conjured a pair of golden daggers, their weight familiar in his hands. With one deep breath, he launched upward.
Each plunge of his blades into the bark echoed faintly in the dead air—crack… crunch…—and flakes of dry wood flurried down past his boots. The climb was brutal. No branches. No footholds. Only dagger, pull, brace, repeat—over and over again. And with the added weight of the wolf's corpse strapped across his back, every motion took twice the strength.
By the time he reached the upper canopy, he was shaking.
Kealix hauled himself onto a thick branch near the crown of the tree and immediately collapsed against the trunk. His chest heaved. Breath came in short, hysterical bursts—like he'd just been resuscitated, like his lungs had forgotten how to work and were now flooding back all at once.
"Never again," he gasped, dragging the wolf's corpse beside him and slumping against the bark. "I will never do that shit again."
He couldn't even summon anger. Just exhausted disbelief.
Once his breathing slowed, he deactivated Hero's projection. The armor shimmered, then receded into his clothes, leaving only the muted whites of his assassin's garb. The fabric matched the tree bark well—he blended into the trunk, like a ghost woven into the forest itself.
But one problem remained.
The cards.
They still glowed.
A soft, pulsing light bled from the edges of the deck like a heartbeat under his skin. Kealix's eye widened in alarm. If anything out there could see light—and he had no doubt it could—this would be the beacon.
He acted quickly, pulling open the folds of his attire and sliding the deck into the deep inner pockets. The glow dimmed. Not gone entirely, but smothered—safe.
Hero, sensing the panic, shut down his radiance too. The armor became inert, its magic latent, leaving only the barest connection awake. Just enough to watch.
"You'll wake me if anything moves," Kealix whispered.
"Of course, young master," Hero replied, his voice now inside his mind—subtle, protective.
Kealix exhaled slowly.
He sat on that high, bone-white branch, staring out over the dead canopy as twilight swallowed the forest. The trees around him didn't creak or shift in the wind. There was no wind. Just absolute stillness.
And in that stillness, he let the tension slip from his shoulders piece by piece. Not comfort. Not peace. Just the thin illusion of safety that came from height and hiddenness.
Sleep tugged at the edge of his mind. He resisted it for a while, listening to the unnatural quiet.
No birds.
No insects.
No breath of air.
Only the creaking of ancient bark beneath him and the faint, pulsing presence of Hero keeping silent vigil.
Kealix crouched on the branch, peering through the thick canopy of crimson leaves, trying to make out any trace of the forest beyond.
But there was nothing.
The branches were too tightly packed, and the blood-colored foliage blocked out the remaining slivers of dying light. Even from this height, he could barely see more than a few meters in any direction. As night crept in like a tide of shadows, the idea of seeing anything beyond the trees became pointless.
He leaned back against the bark with a quiet sigh. There was no vantage point. No warning. If something came for him in the dark, he'd only know the moment it was too late.
The forest had nearly surrendered to the dark now—ashen white trunks swallowed by the growing void.
Kealix's thoughts drifted, unbidden, toward the memory that still clung to his mind like a stain he couldn't scrub out.
The wyvern.
Abbynerr.
The name flickered through his mind like static—ominous, surreal. A whisper branded into memory.
Just one day earlier, it had appeared before him.
It hadn't even fought. It hadn't tried. And yet it annihilated Fenrir—Fenrir—without effort. Kealix could still see it. Still smell it.
Fenrir's body, half-dead and broken.
Bones jutted from its exposed skull, the white slick with blood. Ribbons of muscle and ruined organs hung from its massive frame like wet, shredded cloth. Its eyes—all of them—were either destroyed or barely clinging to their sockets.
It had been horrifying. Tragic. And worst of all?
It hadn't mattered.
Even that grotesque form hadn't been the end. Fenrir had restored itself—clean, regal, reborn. Stronger.
But by then, Kealix had already realized the truth.
They were never going to win.
Not against that.
Not against Abbynerr.
Fenrir, a legendary beast with divine rank—reduced to a footnote in a single strike.
And Abbynerr? That thing had barely noticed. Kealix still didn't understand it. Seraphim class? What the hell did that mean? He'd heard the term before, but it was only used to classify gods most powerful angels and this creature seemed like a god in and of itself, If something that powerful was only classified as Seraphim, what else was out there?
The thought dug into him like a splinter.
Unable to shake the rising tide of dread, Kealix focused.
Focus, damn it.
He tried to summon the glowing text again—the strange golden display that had shown him his stats, his class, his "deck." Whatever that power was. It had felt so natural before, like part of him. Like his own breath.
But now?
Nothing.
No shimmer of light. No familiar hum. No text.
He tried again, eyes narrowed in the dark, his will sharpening into something desperate.
Still nothing.
No matter how hard he focused, how deeply he reached inside himself—it was like grasping at fog. The power was gone, or hiding, or simply refusing to answer.
Two hours passed like that. Two empty hours of silence, effort, and failure.
Eventually, he gave up. His hands fell to his lap, clenched tight with frustration. The forest gave no answers.
Only silence.
Kealix let out a slow breath and finally closed his eye.
Not in peace. Not in comfort.
Just acceptance.
Whatever comes tomorrow…
He let the thought trail off as sleep overtook him, one slow breath at a time.
The forest watched.
The night deepened.
And high above the ashen ground, hidden in a crown of blood-red leaves, the boy slept—dreamless and alone.
"Young master," Hero's voice echoed gently in the dark, nudging Kealix from sleep.
He stirred, barely responsive, one eye still half-shut and unfocused. His limbs felt heavy, as if his body had been buried beneath the weight of exhaustion for years instead of hours. The bark at his back dug into his shoulders, cold and unforgiving. Somewhere below, the world moved—but softly, like something exhaling under the surface of a still lake.
He muttered something incoherent, dragging himself upright with the sluggishness of someone pulled from the depths of a dream too early.
It was still night. Still that thick, suffocating blackness. No starlight, no moon—only the unnatural crimson haze of the trees, their skeletal branches whispering quietly in a wind that didn't exist.
He rubbed the sleep from his good eye. "What is it, Hero?" he asked, voice hoarse. He tried to smother the yawn tugging at his throat, but it escaped in a quiet breath. "Is it morning already?"
"Look below."
There was something in Hero's voice—something new. Caution, laced with the careful restraint of fear. Hero didn't sound like that unless something was wrong.
Kealix stiffened. His body was slow to obey, but adrenaline cracked beneath his skin like ice. He shifted forward, brushing aside the curtain of blood-colored leaves, and looked down.
At first, he thought his tired eyes were playing tricks on him.
The ash-covered forest floor below—normally pale and motionless—was moving.
Not all of it. Just a section. A patch, maybe ten meters wide, writhing subtly—like a ripple in fabric, like breath.
No… not breath. Crawling.
Kealix narrowed his eye. The writhing mass wasn't earth. It was a cluster of creatures.
Hundreds—maybe more—small, quadrupedal things clambering over each other in near silence. Their bodies were grotesquely thin, limbs too long, spines arched at painful angles. Each one was pale, almost translucent, like something not meant to be seen in the light. Veins pulsed faintly beneath their skin like threads of ink.
They didn't chatter. They didn't growl. They moved in perfect, unnatural rhythm—toward the base of his tree.
Kealix's blood ran cold.
"What the hell are those…" he whispered.