The grating sound of stone filled the chamber as three humanoid figures pulled themselves from the walls. They were crude, unfinished things, their limbs mismatched and their faces blank slates of rock. But they moved with a jerky, undeniable purpose, their stone clubs held tight in malformed hands. Their empty eyes fixed on Sera and the unconscious boy beside her.
As they shambled forward, their shadows stretched, writhing independently of the dim, sourceless light. The darkness wasn't passive; it was a weapon. Tendrils of blackness snaked across the floor, grasping at Sera's feet, trying to root her to the spot. A cold, unnatural chill seeped into her ankles where they touched, numbing skin and muscle alike.
She scrambled back, dragging Leo with her. His dead weight was an anchor, his body heavy and unresponsive. Her boots slipped against the smooth black floor. The first Hollow was already raising its club.
"Leo, wake up!" Her voice was a desperate, choked whisper. She shook his shoulder, hard. "Please, Leo!"
The club began its descent.
A groan escaped Leo's lips. His eyes flickered open, unfocused, his vision swimming. His first awareness was wrong—his body felt distant, delayed, like it belonged to someone else. Then came motion. A blur of grey. A looming shape. Panic flared, sharp and disorienting.
Then he felt it.
Not pain. Fear.
Not his own.
His focus snapped violently into place, and he saw her. Sera. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with a terror that cut through his confusion like a blade, deeper than any wound he carried.
"Sera?" The word scraped out of his throat, raw and broken. The world resolved into a nightmare: a stone chamber, monsters made of rock, and Sera—right beside him. Here. In this tomb.
Horror washed over him, followed by a surge of furious disbelief. "What are you doing here?" he snapped, his voice hoarse and shaking. "Are you insane?"
He tried to push himself up, to get between her and the shambling things, but his body betrayed him. His wounded leg screamed as weight hit it wrong, buckling instantly. He pitched forward, barely catching himself on one hand, stars bursting across his vision as pain detonated up his thigh.
The Hollows didn't wait.
The closest one swung its club in a wide, clumsy arc. Leo reacted on instinct, a surge of raw, scraping energy flaring from the burning core in his gut. His body moved faster than his mind could track.
Too fast.
He dodged—but overcommitted. His unfamiliar speed threw him off-balance, his bad leg sliding half a step too far. Pain ripped through him, bright and blinding, and he barely avoided the follow-up swing by sheer luck.
A flash of brilliant light erupted to his right.
Sera, her hands outstretched and trembling, pulsed her Light Chi. It wasn't an attack—it was a glare, a blinding flare that washed over the Hollows. They recoiled, their shadow-hands snapping back as if burned, their advance stalling for a precious heartbeat.
She sucked in a sharp breath, her control slipping for an instant.
He's going to get us both killed.
The thought was cold, instinctive, and vicious. Fear clenched around her chest, tightening her limbs. For half a second—just half—she hesitated.
I should have run.
The guilt hit immediately, crushing and hot. She snarled under her breath and forced another pulse of light out, brighter, harsher, the effort sending a spike of pain through her skull. The Hollows staggered, buying him one more second.
Leo used it.
He saw the second Hollow's swing coming, saw how it committed all its weight into the downward crush. He didn't try to block it. He knew he couldn't. Instead, he dropped low, his movement awkward and uneven, and swung his axe in a rough arc, hooking the creature's stone ankle.
The impact jarred him hard.
The Hollow toppled forward with a grating shriek, its balance shattered. Its head struck the floor, exposed for a single, brutal moment.
Leo didn't hesitate.
He drove the axe down with everything he had left. The blade bit into the blank stone face, and the shock nearly tore the weapon from his hands. Pain screamed through his burned palms and up his arm, white and overwhelming.
The creature didn't bleed. It didn't cry out.
It simply collapsed, its form cracking apart before dissolving into a pile of fine, grey dust that scattered on an unfelt wind.
First blood.
There was no triumph in it. Only pain—and the sickening realization that two more were still coming.
They pressed their attack immediately, their movements jerky but relentless. The grasping shadows shot forward again, faster this time.
Sera tried to step back.
Her foot didn't move.
Cold tendrils wrapped around her ankles, biting deep, locking her in place. She gasped, her light flickering as panic surged. Both Hollows raised their clubs in perfect, mirrored motion, their blank faces turning toward her.
The killing blow was imminent.
Leo was too far away.
Too unsteady.
Too slow.
But before the clubs could fall, the massive runic door on the far side of the chamber detonated with blinding white light. A pressure wave—heavy, absolute—slammed through the room, driving the air from their lungs.
The two Hollows froze mid-swing, their heads turning in perfect, unnatural unison toward the new arrivals.
The light from the door was so bright it forced Leo to shield his eyes. It wasn't the wild, invasive light of the Gate; this was organized, controlled, and radiating an authority that made the new Dantian in his gut recoil. The hot, scraping core there tightened painfully, pulling in on itself as if trying to hide. When the light faded, eighteen figures stood in the doorway.
They stepped into the chamber not like explorers, but like owners arriving to inspect their property. Every one of them wore immaculate Beast Gear, the leather dark and supple, the metal polished to a mirror sheen. Their weapons hummed with a contained energy that made the air feel thick and brittle. They moved with the quiet, efficient confidence of veterans, their stances balanced, their eyes sweeping the room with a practiced calm that made Leo's own ragged desperation feel small. Juvenile.
His gaze flickered over them, then faltered as a wave of vertigo hit him. For a split second, the chamber tilted, the pressure of their combined presence making it hard to breathe. He swallowed, forcing his focus back into place as his mind automatically began to sort them into threats.
At the front stood a man whose presence was a physical weight, broad and immovable. A king's crest was emblazoned on his chest plate. He didn't feel like a person. He felt like terrain. Like a mountain that had decided to wear armor and walk. Beside him stood a woman in scholar's robes, not armor, her hands folded calmly as her eyes dissected the chamber with cold, clinical precision. When her gaze passed over Leo and Sera, there was no anger or curiosity in it. She looked at them the way a healer might examine a strange growth—something to be understood, not empathized with.
But it was the third man who made Leo's blood turn to ice.
White-and-gold armor, pristine and severe. His presence was sharp, cutting, like standing too close to a blade. His gaze swept past the frozen Hollows without interest and locked onto Leo with immediate, terrifying certainty.
Leo's Dantian spasmed.
A pulse of pain lanced through his abdomen, sudden and disorienting, as if the core itself recognized the danger and tried to retreat further inside him. His breath hitched. For a heartbeat, he couldn't look away.
And at the very back of the group, almost lost in the shadows, he saw them.
Vex. Thomas. Kael.
Their faces were masks of pure, unfiltered shock. They looked as out of place as he felt—like villagers who had wandered onto a battlefield meant for gods.
The combined chi of the group pressed down on him in earnest now, a suffocating weight that bent the air and made his skin prickle. His own small, scraping energy sputtered in response, like a guttering candle fighting against a hurricane. The sensation wasn't just weakness—it was erasure. The certainty that, in this space, his existence barely registered.
They look like gods. And we look like rats they just found in their cellar.
The thought surfaced unbidden, sharp and humiliating. His legs trembled before he realized it. He shifted instinctively, placing himself half a step in front of Sera, his body reacting before his mind could stop it.
It was a useless gesture. A scrap of paper raised against a flood.
But he stayed there.
For a long moment, no one spoke. The newcomers' attention moved from the two Hollows, still frozen mid-swing, to the two bloodied, ragged children huddled against the wall. The silence that followed was worse than shouting. It was the quiet of predators reassessing prey they hadn't expected to find—deciding whether it was worth killing immediately, or later.
Then the man in white-and-gold armor stepped forward.
Each step felt final. With every measured pace, the pressure in the chamber sharpened, the air growing thinner. Leo's pulse roared in his ears, drowning out thought. This wasn't a confrontation. It was sentencing.
The Inquisitor stopped a few meters away, his expression cold and precise. His eyes flicked over Leo once, cataloguing injuries, posture, weakness.
"Illegal entrants," he said.
His voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the silence like cracking ice. It wasn't a question. It was a declaration of fact.
He raised a gauntleted hand, the gesture ritualistic, impersonal. "By authority of the Crown and the laws governing Red Gates, you are under arrest."
Leo felt Sera tense behind him.
The Inquisitor paused, letting the words settle, letting the weight of inevitability sink in.
"The penalty is death."
He raised his other hand.
Light bloomed in his palm—brilliant, searing, and utterly controlled. It wasn't an attack. Not yet. But its passive radiance was absolute. The two frozen Hollows caught within its glow didn't struggle or resist. They simply unraveled, their stone bodies breaking down into dust that scattered into nothingness, erased as if they had never existed.
Effortless. Casual.
Leo's stomach dropped. If this was what Thane did without intent, then intent meant annihilation.
The light in the Inquisitor's palm intensified, condensing into a miniature sun that promised a quick, merciful end. Thane took a step forward, his gaze never leaving Leo.
They weren't trespassers.
They weren't criminals.
They were evidence of a failure.
And he was here to erase them.
The light in Thane's hand was absolute, a miniature sun that promised a quick, clean end. Leo pushed Sera further behind him, his body tense, his mind racing. He had survived the wolves, the Rune, the monsters—only to be executed by the law. This wasn't a fight. It was a sentence.
His mouth was dry. His heart hammered so hard it made his vision pulse. A thin, humiliating tremor ran through his legs, and he hated it. He clenched his jaw until it hurt, forcing himself to stay upright.
Just as Thane took another step, a figure moved to block his path.
Vex.
The hunter's face was a mask of grim resolve. He didn't plead. He didn't beg. He spoke with the flat authority of a man stating a fact.
"They're from my village, Inquisitor."
Thane's eyes narrowed, the light in his palm flaring brighter for an instant, the radiance sharpening as if in irritation.
"They're just kids," Vex continued, his voice steady. "They didn't know the law."
Leo saw it then—the subtle shift in the other cultivators' stances. The tightening of grips. The slight turn of bodies. Vex wasn't just defending two orphans; he was challenging a Crown Inquisitor in a Red Gate. A move that could cost him his license, his reputation, or his life.
A dismissive scoff cut through the tension. Theron Flameheart, the noble with the arrogant posture, stepped forward. "Ignorance isn't an excuse, Hunter," he said, his voice dripping with disdain. "They contaminated a Crown trial. Execute them and let's move on. We're wasting time."
Behind him, Thomas stood rigid, his gaze fixed on the floor. He wouldn't look at Leo. Kael, however, met Leo's eyes, and there was no shame in his expression. Only a possessive, personal fury directed at Sera.
This isn't about justice, Leo realized with a sickening certainty. His stomach twisted, bile rising in his throat. It's about ownership.
"Enough."
The voice was calm, but it landed with the weight of a mountain. The room fell silent. Every eye turned to the man in the lead, Commander Arcturus Vale.
He hadn't raised his voice. He didn't need to.
Arcturus's gaze settled on Leo and Sera, analytical and devoid of emotion. "They survived in here for nearly two days," he stated, his voice even. "Alone. Without gear and with what appears to be Level One cultivation." He gestured to the faint dust that was once a Hollow. "They killed three of these things. Explain how."
The silence that followed was heavy. No one had an answer. Vex looked as confused as the rest.
They don't understand what happened any more than I do. The thought didn't steady Leo. It hollowed him out. Anomaly was just another word for problem.
Arcturus let the silence hang for another moment, his expression unreadable. Finally, he turned to Thane. "The law demands their lives," he acknowledged, a slight nod of respect to the Inquisitor. "But pragmatism demands we use every asset."
Thane's jaw tightened. The light in his palm flickered once, compressed, as if being forced back under control.
Arcturus looked back at Leo, his eyes cold and appraising. "They are officially on probation, seconded to this expedition. Their lives are forfeit to the Crown until this trial is complete."
The commander's gaze narrowed, focusing entirely on Leo.
"You will scout ahead. You will test the traps. You will be the first through every door." He paused, letting the meaning sink in, letting the room feel it. "If you survive, the Crown may show mercy."
A cold weight settled in Leo's chest. His pulse thudded in his ears.
This isn't mercy, he thought. His hands curled into fists at his sides, nails biting into his palms. It's delayed disposal.
Thane held his position for a tense second longer, his gaze locked on Leo with naked displeasure. Then, slowly, the light in his palm dissipated. The heat vanished, but the promise didn't.
This isn't over, his eyes said. It's postponed.
Vex gave Leo a single, grim nod. Theron Flameheart looked disgusted, turning away as if the entire exchange had offended him. The alliance was formed—a collection of predators, politicians, and prey, all trapped in the same cage.
No one looked relieved.
Arcturus gestured to the massive runic door at the far end of the chamber, his voice leaving no room for argument.
"Your probation begins now. Open the door."
Leo swallowed. His throat burned. He looked at Sera's terrified face, then at the eighteen powerful cultivators watching him, their expressions a mixture of contempt, calculation, and cold expectation.
They weren't waiting to see if he would succeed.
They were waiting to see how long he would last.