Blood.
The smell hit Neo hard the moment he reached the tavern.
He stopped outside the door.
'Why the smell of blood?'
His hand did not move toward the handle right away. He stood there reading it the way Zone 0 had taught him to read things, not just what was visible, but what was wrong about it. The door was shut, the walls were still standing, and nothing about the building had changed in any way he could point to.
Except the smell.
He pushed the door open and stepped inside.
The tavern looked the same as always. Nothing visibly out of place.
But the old man was not on his stool behind the counter.
Neo stopped just past the door. No grumble came from the back nor an insult, not even the scrape of movement or glass. He closed the door behind him slowly and walked farther inside, quieter now.
He stopped in front of the counter and waited.
Nothing.
'What is he doing? Did he butcher some animal to prepare me a meal because I was hungry? Nah, that's not possible, he's a cheap old man.'
A few seconds went by, and the silence only grew stranger. Normally he would have called out just to irritate him, but the silence had already changed the mood of the place. He did not sit down.
He did not like walking into the back of the old man's place without reason. The old man hated that. He always called that area his sanctuary, as if it were more than a kitchen, storage room, and the part of his business customers were not supposed to see.
Neo respected that.
For all the insults he threw at him, there were lines he usually left alone. The old man was one of the few decent people in Zone 0. Maybe the only one Neo liked enough to wait for.
Nothing changed.
Even his stomach had gone quiet.
He moved around the counter, one step at a time, and looked toward the door behind it.
Then he saw it.
Something red was sliding from beneath the gap under the door. It moved slowly across the floor, thick enough that it held together instead of spreading like water.
Neo went still.
He recognized that color and thickness immediately.
That was not some cut in the kitchen.
He drove his shoulder into the door and forced it open.
The smell inside was worse.
The old man was sprawled on the floor, dragging himself toward the doorway through a dark red smear. His clothes were soaked through. His face was swollen and bruised, one side of his mouth split open. This was no accident. Someone had beaten him down and left him there to die.
Neo dropped to a knee beside him so fast his hand nearly slipped.
"What the hell happened to you?" His voice came out sharper than he intended. One hand hovered, then settled carefully on the old man's shoulder. "Can you hear me? I'll get help."
The old man's breathing was ragged. His fingers twitched weakly against the floor. His lips moved, but only a broken sound came out.
Neo bent lower.
"What?"
The old man's mouth trembled.
"Ru..."
Neo blinked."Ru? What are you trying to say, old man?"
The old man's remaining eyes widened. Something desperate flashed across his battered face. His hand jerked once against the floor, and then he dragged in a rough breath and forced the word out with everything he had left.
"Run!"
The shout cracked through the room.
Neo straightened at once.
A shadow lay across the old man's broken body.
Neo's head snapped up.
A man stood a short distance behind him, a dagger hanging loosely from one hand as though there was no need to grip it any tighter. Gray hair slicked back. Brown eyes. A calm face untouched by strain. He was simply standing there, watching, like a man already looking at the end of something.
Neo froze.
The stranger met his eyes, and that alone told him enough.
Neo shoved himself off the floor and sprinted through the tavern without a word, slamming into the front door hard enough to send it flying open.
Behind him, the gray-haired man looked down at the old man sprawled in blood.
"There it was," he said, almost to himself.
The old man twitched and forced his head up with what little he had left. "There...?" His voice was barely there. "You were looking for Neo...?"
The man crouched slowly, dagger still loose in one hand.
"Neo?" One brow lifted. "Who the fuck is Neo? That boy is worth less than the shit of a high-rank Soul Beast." His eyes stayed cold. "The artifact on him is not."
The old man's remaining eyes widened.
He tried to speak. Tried to force something out. Nothing came far enough.
The dagger passed across his throat in one clean motion.
Blood poured through his fingers as he clutched at the wound, but it did nothing for him. His body jerked once, then went still.
The man rose and walked out after Neo.
Outside, Neo kept running.
Not toward the city. No one there would save him. The forest was full of Soul Beasts, but at least it gave him space, shadows, and a chance to break line of sight.
So he ran for his life.
The forest swallowed him fast. Branches whipped across his face and arms. Thorned plants scraped at his clothes. Roots and uneven ground kept trying to break his rhythm. He hated this place. Everyone in this Zone 0 did if they had any sense at all.
Still, it was better than staying near that tavern.
'What the hell was that?'
His thoughts came in broken pieces while he ran. His mind kept dragging him back to the same things, the old man on the floor, the blood, that final word forced out with everything he had left.
That was the part scratching at him now. The old man dealt in small work, the kind meant to pass quietly from hand to hand. Nothing about him suggested a mess like this. Had someone come over a past job? A debt? Revenge?
None of it sounded right.
One thing was simple. He had seen the man's face. That meant he was not supposed to leave that tavern alive.
Neo ducked beneath a low branch, almost lost his footing on the slope behind it, caught himself, and forced more speed into his legs. His chest burned. His breathing had already turned rough.
'I didn't survive almost sixteen years in this shithole to die like this.'
The thought came sharp and ugly.
'I refuse.'
Something sliced through the air behind him.
Neo turned his head on instinct.
A projectile flashed past so close it shaved strands of white hair from above his ear.
He dropped at once.
The thing hissed over him and buried itself somewhere ahead. Neo hit the ground hard, rolled through leaves and dirt, then shoved himself back up before the pain even finished landing.
His heart slammed against his ribs.
'He's going to kill me at this rate.'
Neo ran harder.
Another projectile tore through bark to his left and exploded wood across his path. A second punched into a tree ahead, forcing him right. Birds burst from the branches above. Smaller creatures scattered through the undergrowth. The whole forest had started reacting to the violence cutting through it.
Neo kept moving, breath tearing in and out of him, fear and rage twisting together until he could barely tell one from the other.
Then his mind clicked.
That face.
The gray hair slicked back. The eyes. The calm expression standing over the old man like nothing there mattered.
Neo knew him.
Roderic.
Roderic Duplain. The name almost stopped his legs entirely.
'What the fuck is someone like that doing in a Zone 0?'
The Duplains were not just rich. They owned territory, influence, political weight. People like that appeared on screens, in news reports, in places polished enough to keep dirt like Zone 0 out of sight. They were the kind of family that moved things from above and never had to dirty their hands in person.
And one of them had been in that tavern.
In that rotten little tavern.
None of it made sense.
But if Roderic Duplain had gone there himself, then whatever this was, it had nothing to do with some petty debt or common killing. Something bigger sat underneath it, and somehow Neo was in the middle of it.
That realization pulled his thoughts half a step away from the forest around him.
Half a step was enough.
Something huge came out of the shadows at his side and crashed into his ribs. Pain tore through Neo's side so hard his vision blurred white for a second. He was sent flying.
He hit the base of the mountain and folded there, breath punched out of him, one hand flying to his ribs on instinct. The moment his fingers touched them, he knew. Something was wrong there in a way that would not be fixed by getting back up and forcing himself forward. Every breath bit into him. Every movement sent another spike through his chest.
Still, he kept his eyes open.
The thing that had hit him stepped out from the dark between the trees, and Neo felt his stomach drop.
'A Duskmane.'
Its fur was black enough to seem like it swallowed the little light that reached it. More than seven meters tall, broad and heavy in a way that made the trees around it feel smaller, it carried that strange ring of shadow around its neck like a living collar. The air around it felt wrong. Thick. Violent. As if the forest itself knew better than to breathe too loudly near it.
Neo tried to move and failed. Pain locked him against the stone.
'I'm dead.'
He had no class or weapon, nothing that would do anything against something like that. If the man with the dagger did not kill him, the Duskmane would finish the job in one hit.
Then Roderic arrived.
Neo saw the beast's attention shift at once. Its body sank into shadow and vanished. A heartbeat later it appeared behind Roderic, claws cutting down with enough force to tear through flesh and bone alike.
A sword appeared in Roderic's hand.
Neo's eyes widened.
'A Soul Relic...'
Steel met claw with a crash that shook the ground beneath him. The Duskmane roared and Roderic slid back a step, then drove forward again, moving with the kind of control that made Neo understand the difference between them all over again. This was not a fight he could even imagine joining. It belonged to a world above him, the world of powerful classes, Soul Relics, and people whose names carried weight far beyond places like Zone 0.
Neo pressed himself harder against the mountain, breath ragged, and stared through the pain at the clash in front of him.
'Please kill that bastard first. I want to see him dead before me.'
It was a miserable thought, but an honest one.
The Duskmane moved through shadow like a fish in water. Roderic answered each strike without wasting motion, his blade flashing in clean, brutal arcs. Trees split. Dirt blasted upward. The force of their blows ran through the ground and into Neo's broken ribs until he could barely hold onto consciousness.
Then heat bloomed in his chest.
At first it felt faint, almost distant. A second later it surged upward with violent force, so sudden and intense that Neo cried out.
"ARGH!"
Neither of them looked at him. They were too deep in their own fight.
Neo looked down. The ring hung against his chest.
It was glowing.
The light was not bright, but it was alive, pulsing through the metal in a way that made the heat worse. It kept him awake when his body wanted to shut down. It kept him there long enough to feel something shift behind him.
The mountain opened.
The rock simply parted behind his back as if it had been waiting for him all along. Only a narrow opening, barely enough, but enough.
Neo felt empty air where the mountain had been.
Then it took him.
He dropped backward into darkness, sliding along stone before the gap sealed above him again. Outside, the Duskmane and Roderic kept fighting as if nothing had changed.
And Neo vanished into a place no one should have known existed.