The other five hadn't gone far. Before long, everyone had returned to the place where they'd first arrived—a broken crossroads where the cobblestones were slick with something dark that wasn't rainwater. The air tasted of old smoke and wet limestone, a gritty film settling on the tongue.
Chen watched as Hunter shifted the massive weapon in his hands. There was a low, grinding sound, like stone sliding against stone, and the great blade folded in upon itself, segments locking and rotating until what remained was a tower shield of burnished steel, its surface etched with geometric patterns that seemed to drink the weak light. A warrior of **Order**—one of the few professions renowned for defense, not offense. A wise choice for a survival **Trial**.
*Shield-sword.* A weapon that could change its form at will. An A-grade artifact that only dropped for those above 1600 on the **Leaderboard**. Hunter had just crossed that threshold and already possessed one. *Either he's got connections,* Chen thought, *or luck is smiling on him. For now.*
"I found today's **Order Anchor**," Hunter announced, his voice cutting through the oppressive silence. He tapped his shield, and a faint, golden luminescence pulsed from the etchings. "A bar was buried under the rubble to the west. I dug through the debris and found one of its rules still intact, carved into a piece of the counter: 'Today, only fruit wine.'"
As he spoke, Hunter produced a bottle from thin air. It was a slender, green-glass vessel, its label faded and unreadable. This one clearly hadn't come from the ruins; it had the pristine look of an item summoned from a personal inventory.
Every Believer had one—a **personal storage space** about the size of a bank safety deposit box. It was where you kept your most vital possessions, the things you couldn't afford to lose when thrown into a **Trial**. Chen had one too, stuffed with an assortment of oddities he'd collected. He'd just never imagined someone else would use theirs to stock beverages.
The others looked more confused than Chen did. Fiona raised a delicate eyebrow, while Summer's hand drifted unconsciously toward the hilt of her blade. Misty simply watched, her expression unreadable.
Hunter chuckled at their stares. "The pressure… it gets to you. Can't sleep at night without a couple of drinks. So I always keep a few bottles handy." He uncorked the bottle with a soft *pop*. The scent that wafted out was surprisingly sweet and fresh, like sun-warmed berries, a stark contrast to the ruin-stench around them. "Everyone take a sip. The light of **Order** will protect you. Don't worry, it's low-proof. Won't affect the coming fight."
The **Edict** of **Order** was the seeking of structure, of rules. Only by following a discovered law could one receive its blessing. To gain **Order's** protection, you had to abide by the order that had been found. A simple, clear **Anchor Point** like this was a gift—it raised the group's collective survival odds.
Relief, subtle but palpable, washed through the party. One by one, they took the bottle. Fiona took a measured, elegant sip, her lips barely touching the glass. Summer took a quick, practical swallow. Misty's sip was so small it might have been ceremonial. Three accepted it with a nod, his eyes already distant, calculating timelines.
Then it came to Chen.
He took the bottle, felt its cool weight. He didn't bring it to his lips for a delicate taste. He raised it and drank—deep, audible gulps that drained nearly half the contents before he lowered it with a satisfied sigh.
Hunter's eyebrow twitched. A flicker of doubt crossed his stony features. *This priest,* his expression seemed to say, *might be a problem.*
Beside him, Three seemed to have had similar success with his own **Edict**. He produced several golden pocket watches from the folds of his long coat, their chains gleaming dully. He began handing them out.
"I've anchored **Time**," he stated, his voice precise and dry. "All chronometers are synchronized. This watch will chime five minutes, three minutes, and one minute before the top of the hour. Pay attention to your own condition. A Walker of **Time** can decide when a **Time Battlefield** begins and ends, but I cannot dictate what state you'll be in *within* that battlefield."
Chen accepted his watch. It was heavy, solid, unmistakably pure gold. Even the hands and numerals were gilt, shining with a rich, opulent light. In the old world, this would have been a treasure. In this one, gold was about as useful as polished gravel. **Trials** that demanded gold were considered easier than those that demanded fresh bread. Still, some Believers clung to its symbolism, using it to patch holes in the lives they'd lost.
As the others examined their timepieces, Three added a warning, his tone growing graver. "In case anyone's understanding of a **Time Battlefield** is unclear, allow me to reiterate. The **Edict** of **Time** is precision. Punctuality. When I lay down the **Time Battlefield**, we must activate it precisely on the hour, and we must resolve the conflict—end the battle—by the next exact hour. If we fail, we are trapped in a temporal loop until we succeed. But each loop erodes our perception of time's passage. Too many cycles, and we become lost in the river of chronology. The result… I trust I don't need to elaborate. Therefore, if you have confidence we can solve our problems directly, do not call for its use. Temporal reversion is not a panacea."
The others nodded. They were all veterans, survivors who had seen the synergy and clash of various **Paths** and professions. They understood the rules, and more importantly, they understood the price.
One by one, the remaining four, including Chen, reported their **Edicts** successful. Hunter, seeing the group was as prepared as they could be, gave a firm nod. He gestured east with his shield, the movement scattering motes of golden dust from its surface.
"The eastern part of these ruins still has some structures that aren't completely flattened. For safety, I suggest we move there and find cover. We can observe until we encounter one side of this war, or until we're forced into combat. Any objections?"
"None." Summer's voice was still cold, a shard of ice in the damp air. She sheathed her blade with a soft *click*. "I found bodies in the surrounding rubble. Bogmedeans. This is likely a town in Hope's Reach. From the chatter in the Hunter channels, I recall that Hope's Reach was destroyed by a Skeletal Legion."
Three picked up the thread, his fingers stroking the face of his own pocket watch. "Correct. Our geographical markers suggest we're near the Forest Counties. The Mage channels have more scholars who study **Trial** histories. If we are indeed in the Hope's Reach Counteroffensive, then what we're facing is likely the right flank of the Skeletal Legion."
Chen felt a flicker of genuine admiration for these history-minded Believers. He himself had never bothered. In the grotesque reality shaped by the **Faith Game**, staying alive consumed half of one's mental energy. The other half? That was reserved for deception. For the performance.
It had become apparent about two weeks after the **Faith Game** began that **Trials** didn't take place in abstract arenas. They were echoes, reflections of worlds that had once existed, civilizations that had lived, fought, and died long before Believers were forced to play out their final, bloody acts. Unfortunately, the channels associated with Chen's own **Path** were… less than scholarly. All useful historical fragments, all context for the hellscapes they were dumped into, came from the professional channels.
He *was* a priest. Just not the studious kind.
Hunter, clearly no historian either, frowned. "So? What does that mean for us?"
Summer continued, her eyes scanning the broken horizon. "Records of the right flank engagement are sparse. If my memory serves, the most frequently documented threat on this front was…"
She paused. A new sound had entered the world.
It started as a whisper, a dry rustling like a million autumn leaves skittering across stone. Then it grew into a clicking, chittering cacophony, the sound of brittle things moving in unison. It came from the north, from the direction of a shattered aqueduct whose broken arches stood against the grey sky like the ribs of a dead giant.
"They're here," Misty said softly, her first words since their gathering. There was no fear in her voice, only a quiet certainty.
From the shadows beneath the aqueduct, they poured. Not soldiers, not in any human sense. They were **Horrors**.
The word from the source texts was '恐魔'—terror-demons. But in the localized parlance of seasoned Believers, they were simply **Horrors**. They were the shock troops of the **Abyss**, manifestations of primal fear given twisted, skeletal form.
The first one to clear the shadow was a nightmare of mismatched parts. It moved on four limbs, but they weren't legs—they were elongated, multi-jointed arms ending in bone hooks that dug into the rubble, propelling it forward with terrifying speed. Its torso was a cage of yellowed ribs, and within that cage, where a heart or lungs should have been, pulsed a sickly green ember. Its head was a featureless, elongated skull with too many eye sockets, all dark and empty save for pinpricks of that same green light.
Behind it came more. Some scuttled like giant insects, carapaces of fused bone clicking as they moved. Others lurched on two legs, their forms vaguely humanoid but stretched and distorted, with arms that ended in scythe-like blades of bone. They made no war cries, only that incessant, maddening chittering.
"Defensive positions! East, now!" Hunter barked, his voice shedding all casualness, becoming the hard command of a frontline officer. He slammed his shield into the ground, and the geometric patterns flared with intense golden light. A visible, semi-transparent barrier, like heated air rising from asphalt, shimmered into existence in a wide arc before him. An **Aegis of Order**.
The group moved as one, a well-oied machine born of desperation. Summer and Fiona flanked Hunter, weapons drawn. Three's hands were already moving through the air, tracing glowing, complex sigils that smelled of ozone and old parchment. Misty seemed to melt into the deeper shadows behind a collapsed wall, her presence diminishing until she was nearly imperceptible.
Chen did what a priest was supposed to do. He raised his hands, calling upon the tenets of his **Path**. But his mind was racing, calculating.
The **Horrors** hit Hunter's barrier like a wave against a cliff. The first wave—the quadrupedal ones—slammed into the golden light and were repelled, skidding back with shrieks of grinding bone. The green embers in their chests flared angrily. But the barrier shimmered, strained. It wouldn't hold forever.
A two-legged **Horror**, taller than the others, stepped forward. It raised its bladed arms and brought them down in a simultaneous chop on the barrier. A sound like shattering crystal echoed through the ruins. A web of cracks appeared in the golden light.
"They're testing it!" Hunter grunted, muscles corded in his neck as he poured more energy into the shield. "Three! We need a battlefield, now! On my mark!"
"Understood!" Three's voice was tight with concentration. One hand held his golden pocket watch open, his thumb poised over its crown. The other hand continued weaving temporal sigils in the air, which now hung glowing around him like frozen fireflies.
Chen began his chant. The words were in no human language, but a resonant, harmonic tongue that seemed to vibrate in the chest. A soft, silver light—cool and gentle compared to Hunter's blazing gold—began to emanate from him. It was the light of **Life**, or a convincing facsimile thereof. It washed over Hunter, reinforcing his will, soothing the strain on his spirit. He felt the pressure on the barrier lessen slightly.
But Chen's eyes weren't on Hunter. They were on the **Horrors**, studying their movements, their hierarchy. The larger, bladed ones seemed to direct the smaller, faster ones. And there, far back, barely visible behind the front ranks, was a different shape. It was smaller, more hunched. It didn't chitter. It watched. And from its form, faint tendrils of shadow seemed to seep into the ground, connecting it to the others.
*A linker. A controller.*
"Summer! Eleven o'clock, the hunched one behind the front line! It's coordinating them!" Chen shouted, layering his voice with a tone of urgent revelation.
Summer didn't question the priest's sudden tactical insight. Her body moved before the thought was fully formed. She blurred, a streak of grey and steel, not through the barrier but around its flank, using the rubble as cover. A scuttling **Horror** lunged at her. Her blade flashed once, a horizontal cut that seemed to pass through the creature's neck without resistance. The chittering stopped instantly. The green ember in its chest-cage winked out, and the bones clattered to the ground, inert.
Fiona moved to cover Summer's advance, her own weapon—a slender, needle-like rapier—darting out with impossible speed, piercing the eye sockets of two **Horrors** that tried to intercept. Each strike was accompanied by a faint, musical chime.
"Now, Three!" Hunter roared as another concerted blow from the bladed **Horrors** sent a larger crack snaking up his barrier.
Three pressed the crown of his pocket watch.
*Click.*
The sound was impossibly loud, drowning out the chittering, the clashes, the ragged breathing. For a split second, everything stopped. The falling dust motes hung in the air. The green embers in the **Horrors'** chests froze in mid-pulse. The cracks in Hunter's barrier ceased spreading.
Then, the world *warped*.
The colors bled, running together like wet watercolors. The ruins around them seemed to duplicate, to fold, creating a hall-of-mirrors effect where every broken wall had a ghostly double. The sky swirled with impossible hues—indigo bleeding into copper. The air grew thick, heavy, and time itself felt like syrup.
**Time Battlefield: Established.**
"One hour!" Three's voice echoed strangely, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "We have one hour! The loop is set from this moment!"
The stasis broke. The **Horrors** moved again, but they were disoriented, their chittering now laced with a confused, staticky quality. The temporal distortion disrupted their hive-like coordination.
Hunter dropped his barrier. It had served its purpose. "Push them! Break their line before the controller adapts!"
The battle dissolved into chaos within the warped space. Summer was a whirlwind, her movements even more fluid within the thickened time, each slash leaving after-images of steel. Fiona dueled two of the bladed **Horrors**, her rapier a blur of precise, fatal strikes that seemed to hit a fraction of a second before they visually landed.
Chen continued his chanting, weaving his silver light through the party. He sent a pulse toward Summer, accelerating her healing from a shallow gash on her arm. He reinforced Fiona's concentration, sharpening her reflexes. But his main focus was on the controller.
He saw Summer closing in. The hunched **Horror** finally reacted. It raised a clawed hand, and the shadows connecting it to the others thickened, pulsing with dark energy. The **Horrors** near it stopped their disoriented milling and turned as one, forming a living wall of bone and malice between Summer and her target.
"Hunter! The wall!" Chen cried out.
"On it!" Hunter hefted his shield. With a roar, he charged, not as a defender, but as a battering ram. The shield's edge glowed white-hot. He crashed into the bone-wall. There was a tremendous crash, the sound of a hundred bones breaking at once. He plowed through, scattering **Horrors** like tenpins, creating a temporary breach.
Summer shot through the gap like an arrow.
The controller **Horror** turned its featureless skull toward her. The empty eye sockets seemed to drink the light. It didn't raise its claws to fight. Instead, it opened its jaw—a jaw that unhinged far too wide—and let out a silent scream.
No sound came out, but the effect was immediate. The very air in front of it *rippled*. The warped colors of the **Time Battlefield** twisted violently around the ripple. It was a **Sonic Screech**, a wave of pure concussive force that traveled faster than sound, designed to pulp organs and shatter bone from the inside.
Summer saw it coming. She tried to dodge, but the ripple was too wide, too fast. She braced, crossing her arms.
A figure materialized from the shadows directly in front of her—Misty. She didn't block the attack. She *intercepted* it. Her form seemed to become insubstantial for a microsecond, the rippling force passing *through* her. But as it did, the shadows around her writhed and absorbed the energy, dissipating it harmlessly into the distorted spacetime. The cost was visible; Misty staggered, a trickle of black blood seeping from her nose. Her **Path**—**Deception**—had allowed her to feign a point of impact, redirecting the lethal energy into a lie.
It was the opening Summer needed. In the moment the controller was spent, its attack neutralized, she closed the final distance. Her blade, held in a reverse grip, plunged not into the chest-cage, but up through the bottom of the elongated skull, piercing the darkness within.
The green pinpricks of light in the controller's many eye sockets flared once, blindingly bright, then vanished.
The effect on the other **Horrors** was instantaneous. The chittering rose to a panicked, discordant shriek. The shadows connecting them snapped. They didn't flee, but their coordination was gone. They became a mob, lashing out individually, predictably.
"Mop them up!" Hunter commanded, wading back into the fray with brutal, shield-assisted strikes.
Chen maintained his support, but his mind was already elsewhere. The **Time Battlefield** hummed around them. They had won the engagement, but the **Trial** had just begun. They were in a historical echo of a desperate battle. The Skeletal Legion's right flank had been stopped here, in this town. But history also recorded that the stopping force was annihilated shortly after.
What came next? What was the second wave?
He looked at Three, who was monitoring his pocket watch, his face pale from the strain of maintaining the temporal field. He looked at Summer, wiping black **Horror**-blood from her blade, and at Misty, who had again faded into the background, nursing her hidden injury. He looked at Hunter, who was checking the integrity of his shield.
*They think the hard part is over,* Chen mused, allowing a convincingly weary smile to touch his lips as he accepted a nod of thanks from Hunter. *They believe the performance.*
Inside, his thoughts were cold and clear. The controller **Horror** had been a lieutenant, not a general. Its death would not go unnoticed by the powers of the **Abyss**. The real **Trial** wasn't surviving the first assault.
It was surviving the attention that assault would bring.
And as if summoned by his thought, a new sound echoed across the warped battlefield of the ruins. Not a chitter. Not a screech.
It was a deep, resonant *tolling*, like a funeral bell made of stone and ice, coming from the heart of the shattered town. A call. And an answer.
From the south, where the earth had been churned into mud by ancient carnage, the ground began to crack and heave. Something far larger than a **Horror** was digging its way to the surface.
The first hour in the **Faith Game** was always the easiest. It was the second that separated the living from the truly damned.
"Heads up," Chen said softly, the silver light around his hands taking on a sharper, more focused edge. "Round two."
The stone bell tolled again. The ground split open. And from the darkness beneath the world, something began to climb out.