The ash was falling sideways.
Cael stared up at the darkening sky, trying to make sense of it. The wind had picked up again—not a breeze but a pressure, constant and low, like the exhale of something ancient buried just beneath the cracked earth. Ash drifted in slanted lines, gray against the scorched-red glow of Ember Wastes. Somewhere behind them, the horizon still shimmered with phantom heat.
The Black Team had begun their slow crawl eastward before the false dawn. Now they moved in near silence across the brittle tiles of C-row, each step a crunch or a hiss as soles kissed searing stone. Ember Wastes didn't sleep. It pulsed. It breathed. It watched.
"We're crossing into B-row soon," murmured Rune, appearing at Cael's side with the soft flicker of his short-range teleport. "Eyes sharp."
"No one's blinking," Ryve muttered behind them, wiping sweat from his neck with a trembling hand. "Feels like the air's trying to skin us alive."
The terrain had changed. Subtly at first—hairline fractures in the obsidian tiles, like veins under a bruised surface. But now those cracks glowed faintly, lit from below in slow pulses of orange. A warning. Or a countdown.
"Left flank—dense tile shift," Lyndra called. She'd taken point alongside Pax, blade unsheathed and resting against her shoulder. "I don't trust that formation."
Cael followed her line of sight. Just ahead, the tiles rose into uneven clusters—some jagged and angular, others rounded like vertebrae. Heat shimmered between them. But what set his nerves on edge was the faint outline of something… darker. As if a shape had moved there and disrupted the soot pattern. A smear of shadow where none should linger.
"Rune," Sora said evenly, voice carrying with a quiet command that silenced even Pax's muttering. "Take Lyndra. Sweep around. Slow. Don't blink if it moves."
Cael felt a chill run down his spine, absurd in this furnace of a biome. She knew something. Her stance had shifted—more rigid, more alert. The Bishop's crimson scarf, normally trailing like lazy smoke, now coiled tight against her collarbone.
They advanced, step by step, until—
A hiss.
Low. Drawn-out. It came from beneath a shelf of cracked tile to the right.
Then—movement. A long, slithering roll of scaled muscle across the lava-glazed stone. Cael's eyes caught the shimmer of its form just as the light shifted—a Cinder Skulker.
"Back!" Rune shouted. "There's two!"
The monsters surged forward like living firelines, komodo-sized with ember-glowing eyes and tongues that flicked in rhythm with the tile pulses. Their bodies shimmered with heat distortion—each scale rimmed in flickers of red, orange, and black. Not bulky, but elongated and sinuous. Their claws scraped against the stone in rhythmic stutters, and their gaping jaws leaked smoke from between rows of serrated teeth.
The first one lunged straight at Cael.
He ducked left, instincts faster than thought, and swung his sword up in a defensive arc. Sparks flared as metal clashed with molten scale—but the blade only glanced off. The monster twisted mid-air, redirecting with a whip-like tail that clipped Cael's shoulder and sent him sprawling.
"Don't engage alone!" Elara shouted from the rear line. Her voice—hers again, not the cold soldier from training—cut through the chaos like a bell.
The second Skulker veered toward Pax and Ryve, jaws opening wide as smoke poured from within. Not just for show—its breath stung like acid, causing Ryve to stumble, coughing.
Sora raised her hand.
The air cracked.
A blast of kinetic force slammed into the Skulker's side, throwing it sideways into a jutting tile. Stone exploded in shards. Lyndra sprinted forward, blade drawn, and brought it down toward the stunned creature's exposed belly.
It vanished.
No—it moved. So fast it looked like disappearance. A blur of heat against heat. It reappeared behind her, claws raised.
"Lyndra!" Cael shouted, surging upright.
But she didn't need his warning.
Lyndra spun on her heel, dropped into a slide, and drove her dagger up into the beast's underarm as it descended. The blade punched through one of the few soft joints in its armor, and for a heartbeat, the Skulker screamed—a high, metallic shriek, too mechanical for something organic.
It reared.
Then something flared beneath Pax's boot.
He had stepped on a glowing sigil—half-buried in the ash. A tile.
The symbol flared green-gold, pulsing like a heartbeat, and in the next moment—Pax was gone.
"PAX?!" Ryve shrieked.
But Pax hadn't disappeared—he was still there, crouched, panting.
Only now, he was blending. His form flickered like a desert mirage. Camouflage tile.
"I—I can't see him," Lyndra murmured.
"I can," Sora said softly, voice unreadable. "For now."
Cael met her gaze. "We need to finish this. Fast."
The Cinder Skulker bled smoke.
Its flank hissed where Lyndra's dagger had sunk in, black ichor bubbling around the wound like melted tar. The creature thrashed, claws carving furrows through cracked stone, tail snapping wide in frustration. Its second set of eyelids blinked rapidly—horizontal slits that narrowed in pain. And rage.
The second Skulker had vanished again.
"Where is it?!" Ryve spun in circles, blade out, wild-eyed.
"Stay grounded!" Sora barked. She raised both arms now, palms outward.
Her scarf lifted.
And then—so did the earth.
With a sound like bones grinding in reverse, a section of tile to their right ripped upward in a jagged spiral. The terrain shifted around her in response to her will—telekinesis focused into a terrain alteration burst. A wave of dust and heat rippled outward.
It revealed the second Skulker mid-lunge, arcing toward Cael's back.
Cael turned on instinct.
Too late.
But something else moved first—a blur of silver and black: Rune. His teleport cut through space with a flash of blue and a sudden thundercrack. He collided with the Skulker midair, twin daggers plunging into its neck, dragging it down in a tangle of smoke and scale.
They hit the ground hard. Rune rolled clear, landing on one knee, panting.
"Not gonna lie," he grinned through clenched teeth. "That one almost got your pretty face."
Cael gave a breathless nod. "I owe you."
The Skulker roared, struggling upright, neck slick with steam and gore. It turned toward Rune, breathing hard—its flanks expanding unnaturally, like bellows filling with flame.
"It's building pressure!" Lyndra called. "It's gonna—"
It exhaled.
Not smoke. Not fire.
Ash.
A tidal wave of scorching dust blasted from its jaws, sweeping toward them like a living stormcloud. Cael barely dropped behind a jagged tile in time, feeling the heat rake over his back. The air smelled of scorched metal and blood.
"Move, move!" Elara shouted from the rear, sprinting forward now—no longer holding back, no longer a silent shadow. Her boots slammed the ground as she launched herself forward, slicing across the ash cloud with precision.
She hit the Skulker in the face.
Her blade dug through one of its forward eyes with surgical force, severing the stalk and sending the monster reeling with an earsplitting shriek.
"NOW!" she ordered.
The Pawns moved as one.
Cael drove his sword low, slashing across the back legs. Lyndra vaulted over the tail and buried her blade in its spine. Rune reappeared above it—dropped from mid-air, daggers out.
The Skulker collapsed.
It didn't shatter. It burned—its body catching from the inside, flames licking from the wounds as its internal temperature surged past containment. The stench of cooked marrow filled the air. Its skin blistered inwards before finally cracking, revealing a molten interior that pulsed one final time—
Then dimmed.
A silence fell. Not peace—just absence.
One body down.
The other still twitched.
"Cael," Sora said, nodding toward the first Skulker—wounded, but not dead. "End it."
He didn't hesitate.
The creature turned toward him slowly, vision blurring from its wounded eye. Its jaws opened again, but the hiss was weaker this time—more desperate than dangerous. Cael tightened his grip, feet shifting into the stance the Drillmaster had drilled into him a hundred times.
He ran.
The tile beneath him hissed from the heat of his soles.
The Skulker lunged too late.
Cael dropped to one knee and drove his sword through its open mouth, straight into the burning core behind its tongue. The glow inside dimmed. Its claws scratched once—twice—then fell limp.
Done.
He stood there for a moment, panting, sword still embedded in the thing's skull. His heartbeat thudded in his ears. His arm trembled. But his stance didn't break.
Only when Elara touched his shoulder did he release the hilt.
"You alright?" she asked.
"Yeah," he breathed. "Are you?"
She looked at him a second longer than necessary.
Then nodded once, sharply. "Good kill."
Behind them, Pax had deactivated the camouflage tile. The glow beneath his feet faded with a faint shimmer, and he flickered back into view fully.
"That was—" he started.
"—cool as hell," Ryve finished, beaming. "You looked like a ghost."
"I thought I was dead," Pax muttered, brushing ash from his arms.
"You were lucky," Sora said. "That tile's randomized. Could've been a Detonation or Override."
He swallowed hard.
"We'll need to watch every step," Rune said. "No more surprises."
Cael turned his gaze eastward.
Just ahead—barely visible through the smoky haze—the cracked edge of tile E4 marked the end of Ember Wastes. Beyond that: green. Faint, but undeniable. Something like vines. Something alive.
"We're close," he said.
Lyndra nodded beside him. "Too close to drop our guard."
Sora narrowed her eyes at the treeline.
"They're waiting."
The last stretch of D4 felt longer than the entire quadrant.
Every step forward made the air grow denser, as though Ember Wastes itself didn't want to let them go. The volcanic tiles beneath their boots steamed in protest. Heat rose in ghostlike tendrils from the cracks, tugging at their legs with invisible fingers. And ahead, across the jagged boundary line, the color palette changed.
Green.
Real green—not the digital moss of training simulators or the mold stains that crept through the dorms, but wild, choking green. It bled into the edges of E4, creeping across the boundary like a slow infection. Roots thick as a man's arm curled across the stone, pulsing faintly beneath bark that looked too alive to be trusted.
Root Labyrinth.
"Scouts first," Sora said, her voice tight with tension. "We don't all enter blind."
Rune stepped forward immediately. "I'll go."
Cael raised a hand. "I'll cover."
They exchanged a nod. Rune vanished with a flicker, reappearing just past the tile threshold, crouched low between two root-veined stones. Cael followed behind on foot, blade at the ready.
The heat dropped instantly.
One step into the Root Labyrinth and the Ember Wastes' infernal breath cut off like a door had slammed shut. In its place came humidity—thick and wet, coating the skin. The air was no cooler… just heavier. Full of the scent of loam and decay. Moss clung to the undersides of curling branches overhead. The light was green-filtered and dappled, flickering like they were underwater.
"This place is…" Cael whispered, scanning the undergrowth.
"Alive," Rune finished.
A shape shifted above them—just a shadow, vanishing behind the weave of roots before either could mark it clearly.
"We're being watched," Rune said quietly.
Cael didn't doubt it. The hairs on the back of his neck hadn't laid down since they crossed the border.
Behind them, the others emerged from the ash one by one. Elara first, then Lyndra, Ryve, Pax, and finally Sora, her scarf limp in the dead air. The instant she stepped across, she paused.
"What is it?" Elara asked.
Sora didn't answer right away. Her gaze had gone glassy, pupils narrowed, lips parted just enough to taste the atmosphere.
"…the roots," she said finally. "They're carrying signals."
Pax frowned. "You mean… like, neural signals?"
"Not electrical." She reached down and touched one of the curling vines with two fingers. "But yes. Like a network. Responsive. Listening."
Lyndra's hand was already on her blade. "Then we don't stay here long."
"No," Sora said. "We move carefully."
Ten steps deeper, the trees swallowed the light entirely.
It wasn't darkness—not exactly. There were glows now. Subtle ones. Blue fungus webbing the trunks. Floating spores that drifted like snowflakes and melted before touching skin. Cael stepped over a root and caught sight of something metallic near its base.
A capsule.
He crouched and brushed away the moss, revealing the green band and triangular seal of a food pod—unbroken.
"It's recent," Elara said behind him. "Dropped within the hour."
Ryve looked around, suddenly uneasy. "Then why hasn't anyone grabbed it?"
No one answered.
Cael cracked it open anyway. Steam hissed out. Rations, intact. They passed them around—quick bites, not a feast. They had learned not to celebrate too soon.
Sora crouched nearby, studying the dirt. Her expression changed.
"…blood," she said.
That stopped them.
Lyndra was at her side in an instant. Together, they parted a curtain of dangling vines. Beyond, half-buried in mud and plant matter, was a body.
White armor.
The insignia still glowed faintly on his neck—a White Pawn.
His chest had been torn open, not cleanly but with a mess of slashes, as if something had hooked into him and pulled. His fingers were broken, curled around a shattered dagger. His face was twisted, mouth open mid-scream, eyes glassy and full of soil.
Ryve stepped back, hand clamped over his mouth. "No way he went down to a monster. Not with how we were trained."
Cael stared at the body, silent. Something about the way it had been left—it wasn't just a kill. It was a warning.
Rune traced claw marks on the nearby tree trunk. "Dragged. But only a few meters."
"Elara." Sora's voice was sharp.
Elara was already turning, eyes scanning the treetops. The light flickered oddly there—branches that didn't quite sway right, leaves that shimmered too fast.
Then—
A creak. Not wood. Not natural.
Something moved.
Elara shoved Ryve to the ground as a shape dropped from above—a flicker of claws and bark, a creature that melted into the trunk before she could strike.
Silence returned.
But not calm.
Everyone froze. Even the air.
"…it's gone," Lyndra whispered.
"No," Sora said. "It's just repositioning."
Rune's daggers slid into his hands. "Verdant Skulker."
Cael felt his stomach twist. One of the jungle-row monsters from B-Row. Camouflaged. Fast. Not lethal alone… unless it stalked you first. Unless you were weak. Or alone.
"Form up," Elara ordered, voice low.
They backed into a loose formation, eyes up, weapons out. The roots shifted faintly beneath them. The very floor was alive. Watching. Listening.
"We camp here?" Ryve asked.
"No." Sora's voice was firm.
"We keep moving," Cael said.