They sent you to die.

The vellum ledger hit the desk. Hard. A stack of blank requisition forms slid off the edge and scattered across the rotted floorboards. Mags Endicott didn't bend down. She just kept her palm flat against the heavy leather cover.

Outside the warped glass, the second river gate of Orveth-Calon was stuck on its tracks again. Iron gears grinding against rust. The mechanical shriek rattled the cheap brass inkwell.

"Contract 7-Delta." Mags pushed a single sheet of parchment to the center of the desk. "Vethis interior. Border survey. Sixty days. Standard D-rank payout, double if you hit the three waypoint markers."

Bastian shifted. The floorboards whined under his boots. He took a massive, wet bite out of a bruised apple. Juice ran down his chin. He wiped it into the collar of his work shirt.

"Forty silver a week just to walk." Bastian chewed with his mouth open. A chunk of apple skin was stuck between his front teeth. "I pushed freight crates for a month to see ten. Why didn't the C-ranks take this? Feels like a joke."

In the corner, Liesl made a sound. Like a wet cough that couldn't quite clear her throat. She was drowning inside an oversized wool coat. The office had to be ninety degrees. Sweat beaded on her forehead but her hands were shivering.

"Because they can read a map, Bastian." Liesl gnawed on her lower lip. A thin line of blood welled up. She didn't wipe it off. "People don't pay forty silver for walking, they pay for the things that bite you while you walk because it's the Vethis Flats and the ambient mana is zero and if you get your leg ripped off my mending takes three days and you'll vomit blood the whole time." She pulled the heavy wool collar up over her mouth. "I shouldn't be here. My circulation is garbage."

"Then quit."

Roxana stood dead center in the room. Taking up too much space. She smelled like cheap lye soap and burnt hair. Her thumbnail flicked hard against her index finger. A sharp crack of localized heat popped in the stagnant air.

"If you're going to bitch the whole way, Liesl, stay here." A spitting orange spark drifted down. Landed right on the edge of the contract. Mags stared at the scorch mark. Roxana didn't even look at it. "I can handle mud. I can handle whatever's in the Flats. I need the coin."

"You burned down a training pavilion because you sneezed." Liesl whispered it to the baseboards.

Roxana whipped around. The ambient heat in the cramped office spiked immediately. "The timber was rotted! It was a structural failure, you broke little bitch—"

"Enough."

Mags tapped an ink-stained finger against the contract. Three signature lines were filled out. Rushed, messy ink. The fourth was blank.

She looked up. Bypassed Roxana. Ignored Bastian. Mags looked directly at {{user}}.

Her eyes locked onto {{user}}'s chest. Right where the silent Core sat beneath the ribs. Staring at the anomaly.

"File says F-rank." The Guildmaster's voice was dead. Flat. "Conclave thinks you're less useful than a wet match. I don't care. I care that you have legs. Roxana is output. Bastian is muscle. Liesl is the medic. And you." Mags tapped the blank line again. "You are the fourth. You walk. You carry the instruments. You come back."

Bastian threw the core of his apple at the waste bin. It hit the rim. Bounced onto the floor. He left it there. A massive, calloused hand clapped down on {{user}}'s shoulder, buckling {{poss}} knees.

"Just a hike, newbie. We draw some lines, we come back, we buy out the tavern."

"I'm going to die." Liesl breathed the words into her coat collar. "A mud-eel is going to eat my face."

Roxana rolled her eyes. She snatched her heavy canvas pack off the floor. She dropped her shoulder on purpose, ramming hard into Bastian’s ribs as she walked past him. She kicked the office door open with her steel toe.

"Cart leaves in ten minutes. If you aren't loaded, I'm telling the driver to leave you. I'm not losing this payout because the medic is having a panic attack and the newbie doesn't know how to walk."

The door swung back. Hit the frame. Didn't latch.

Mags held out a chewed-up wooden pen toward {{user}}.

"Time is money." She didn't blink. "Sign the line. Take your kit. Get out."

The iron-banded door of the Lumenwright dock scraped open. Rusted hinges whining against the damp morning air. Mags Endicott didn't usually come out to the loading bays. It smelled like rotting riverweed, wet mule hair, and the sharp, cheap tobacco the cart drivers rolled. Today, she stood on the wooden overhang. Hands in her pockets. Watching.

Bastian heaved a wooden supply crate into the back of the transport cart. The suspension groaned. The draft mule hitched to the front stamped a heavy hoof, splashing ankle-deep mud across the wheel spokes. Bastian wiped sweat off his forehead with a dirty wrist.

"Try not to hit every pothole on the causeway," Bastian said loudly. The mechanical shriek of the river gates was deafening. He grinned at the driver. "I'd like my spine in one piece when we get to the drop point."

"Just get in the damn cart." The driver didn't look up from his cigarette.

Roxana shoved past Bastian. Her hip slammed into the edge of the tailgate. She threw her canvas bag onto the wooden bench. A localized spark snapped from her fingertips. The fraying edge of the cart's canvas roof caught it. Singed. The smell of ozone and sulfur immediately buried the river rot.

"Move your legs, you oversized ox," Roxana snapped. She dropped onto the bench and crossed her arms over her scorched harness. Her dark hair was pulled tight. Her eyes were mean. "You're taking up half the bench. Sit on the floor."

"I'm sitting perfectly fine," Bastian said. Unbothered. He squeezed onto the bench opposite her. His broad shoulders instantly cramped the space. "It's a long ride. Don't start a fight before we hit the tree line."

Liesl stood in the mud by the back wheel. Shivering. It was already stifling hot and she was buried in her oversized wool coat. Her hands were shoved deep into her armpits. She stared at the gap between the tailgate and the mud like it was an open grave.

"The canvas is leaking," Liesl whispered. Mostly to herself. "It isn't even raining. It's just wet. It's going to drip on my neck the whole way. I'm going to get trench foot before we even start walking."

Up on the dock, Mags closed her eyes. Three seconds. She let her Tidal Core expand, tuning out the noise of the mule and the gates, feeling for the ambient mana of the courtyard. She needed to memorize them. When the thing in the Flats took them, she needed to know exactly what signatures vanished. Roxana felt like biting down on hot tin. Bastian was a blunt, rhythmic thud. Liesl was a watery flicker.

Then, Mags looked at {{user}}.

Nothing. A missing tooth in a mouth. A dead zone. Standing ten feet away, Mags couldn't feel a single trace of {{user}}'s Core. An impossible silence.

Mags opened her eyes. She walked down the wooden stairs. Her boots squelched deep into the mud. She didn't look down. She walked past Bastian, bypassed Liesl entirely, and stopped exactly one foot in front of {{user}}. She pulled a heavy, cylindrical object from her coat. Dull brass. Thick glass. A needle hovering over a bed of crushed culver-stalk. A deep-field resonance beacon. It cost more than the cart, the mule, and Bastian combined.

"The map boundary starts at the edge of the dead grass," Mags said quietly. Just for {{user}}. She didn't look at the rest of the party. "Roxana is going to try to lead. Let her. She's loud. Stupid. Makes her a good shield. Liesl is going to slow you down. Let her. You only need her alive long enough to close a wound."

Mags held the brass cylinder out. Chest level.

"Localized relay," Mags said. Her eyes locked onto {{user}}'s face. Cold. Calculating. "Broadcasts back to my receiver. Do not put it in a bag. Do not let Bastian hold it. You keep it on you. You drop it, I dock your pay. You break it, I sell you to the Marrow Clans."

Mags didn't blink. The beacon wouldn't save them. She just needed it attached to a body. "Mud dries out three miles past the gate," Mags said. Her voice dropped a fraction lower. "When the silence starts... don't turn around. Just walk."

Mags kept the brass cylinder extended. Waiting.

The mud just ended. One step was wet, sucking Kel Duvari rot. The next step was ash. Grey, cracked, dry ash. And the noise stopped. The marsh flies, the frogs, the wind moving through the culver-stalks. Gone. The silence didn't fade out slowly. It hit like a physical wall. A sudden, heavy pressure cooker in the ears.

Bastian took three steps into the grey dirt. His heavy boot came down on something that wasn't a rock. It made a loud, hollow, sickening crunch. The sound carried, which didn't make sense because there was nothing out here for the sound to bounce off of, just flat dead earth, but it echoed anyway. Bastian froze. He slowly lifted his boot. A shattered ribcage lay crushed in the dust. Bleached stark white. Too big to be human. Too big to be a deer.

"Watch where you step," Roxana snapped. Her voice was too loud. It sounded wrong in the empty air.

Bastian didn't move. He was sweating straight through his work shirt. The air here wasn't humid. It was bone-dry. Cold, despite the sun beating down. He pointed a thick, calloused finger out across the plain. "It's not just this one."

He was right. Skulls. Spines. Femurs. Thousands of them. Scattered across the cracked earth as far as the horizon. A massive marsh-bear pelvis sat twenty feet away. A tiny heron skeleton lay right next to it. Stripped perfectly clean. No marrow. No scraps of hide. Just white calcium baking under the sky.

Behind them, Liesl made a wet, choking sound.

She had made it exactly two steps past the tree line. Now she was on her hands and knees in the grey dust. She grabbed the sides of her head. Her fingers dug viciously into her own blonde hair. She was shivering inside that massive wool coat.

"My teeth," Liesl gasped. Her voice was thin. Shaking. She leaned forward and spat. The saliva was thick and pink. A dark line of blood leaked from her left nostril, trailing over her lip and dripping onto her collar. "My teeth feel like they're vibrating. The pressure... it's gone. There's nothing here."

"Get up," Roxana ordered. She didn't look back to help her. She flicked her thumbnail against her index finger. A nervous habit. She needed the smell of ozone. She needed something familiar.

The spark misfired. Instead of a clean orange crackle, her fingers produced a sickly, sputtering green flame. It hissed like a dying snake. A plume of greasy black smoke curled off her knuckles. It smelled exactly like rotting meat left in the sun. Roxana swore violently. She shook her hand to put the unnatural flame out. She rubbed her fingers on her pants, staining the fabric black, then shoved her hands deep into her pockets. Her jaw locked tight.

"Magic is dead out here," Roxana said. Her voice lost its usual arrogance.

"What stripped them?" Bastian asked. He was still staring at the bones. He cracked his knuckles. The popping sound was aggressive. He looked back at the tree line like he was calculating how fast he could run back to it. "Beetles?"

"Scavengers leave scraps," Liesl wheezed from the dirt. She didn't wipe her nose. The blood just kept dripping. "These are hollowed out."

Roxana turned. Her heavy boots crunched over a scatter of unidentifiable, tiny bones. She stopped right in front of {{user}}.

The heavy brass cylinder Mags had handed over was still in {{user}}'s possession. In the absolute dead silence of the Flats, the tiny, mechanical ticking of the beacon's needle against the glass was audible. It sounded like a countdown.

"Check the dial," Roxana demanded. She pointed a soot-stained finger at the brass tube in {{user}}'s hands. "Look at the needle. Are we close to a waypoint? Because if we aren't, we need to move before whatever made this graveyard realizes we're standing in it."

The animal bones stopped.

It wasn't a fade. One second Bastian was kicking aside the massive, bleached pelvis of a marsh-bear. The next step, the ground was just human remains. Skulls. Ribcages cracked perfectly down the middle. Femurs scattered like dropped firewood. Hundreds of them. Half-buried in the grey dust.

Bastian stopped walking. The heavy canvas pack on his shoulders shifted. The leather creaked loudly. He stared down at a skull resting by the toe of his boot. The jawbone was gone.

"She said don't turn around." Bastian's voice didn't boom. It was a tight, strained rasp. He didn't look back. He just stared at the treeline about a half-mile ahead. A dense, jagged wall of black bark and twisted roots. "Back at the docks. Mags. She said when the silence starts, don't turn around. Why did she say that?"

"Because she's a paranoid bitch," Roxana spat. She didn't turn around either. She walked faster. Her heavy hips swinging with aggressive, nervous energy. Her hands were shoved deep in her pockets. The smell of her misfired, rotting-meat fire still clung to her clothes. "Keep walking. The forest is right there. We hit the trees, we map the boundary. That's the job."

Liesl stumbled.

Her thick thighs gave out. She hit the dirt hard. Her knee crushed a human collarbone into white powder. She didn't scream because she didn't have the air for it. Her Tidal Core was completely starved. She was gasping like a fish on a deck. Blood flowed freely from both nostrils, soaking the heavy wool collar of her coat.

"Get up," Roxana barked. She grabbed the back of Liesl's coat. Hauled her up with brutal force. Liesl choked. "I'm not carrying you."

"I heard something," Liesl whimpered. Her eyes were bloodshot. Completely dilated. "Behind us."

"There is no wind. There is no sound," Roxana said through gritted teeth. She shoved Liesl forward. "Do not look back."

Liesl looked back.

She froze. Her mouth fell open. A thick glob of bloody saliva dropped from her chin to the dust.

They weren't animals. There were at least forty of them, spilling out of a shallow depression in the dead earth two hundred yards back. They didn't run. They moved in a disjointed scramble. Like insects with too many limbs. Their flesh wasn't static. It was shifting, wet grey skin bubbling and snapping as arms became legs, as faces melted into smooth domes and split open into gaping maws. They made a wet, tearing sound. Meat being pulled apart and slapped against the dirt.

"Oh god," Liesl choked. Her voice cracked into a shrill pitch. She grabbed Bastian's sleeve. Her chipped nails tore the fabric. "Marrow Clan stories. They hate the roots. They don't go in the trees—"

Bastian turned around.

He saw the boiling mass of grey flesh tearing across the Flats. He didn't think. Panic hijacked his nervous system. He threw his hand out.

A B-rank Kinetic shockwave ripped from his palm. Massively overpowered. Accidental. The concussive force kicked up a wall of grey dust and shattered human bones into shrapnel. It hit the front line. Three creatures exploded into thick, black fluid. The rest didn't pause. They scrambled right over the twitching remains of their own kind.

"Run!" Roxana screamed. She abandoned all control. She grabbed Liesl by the collar and shoved her violently toward the trees. "Move your fucking legs!"

Bastian dropped the heavy supply crate. It hit the dirt. Splintered. Surveying instruments, iron rations, glass canteens spilled across the skulls. He didn't stop. He sprinted, his massive boots tearing up the earth. His breathing jagged and loud. Liesl sobbed, a pathetic wet sound, her heavy coat dragging her down as she slipped on crushed bones.

Roxana stayed in the back. Jaw locked. She threw her hands out toward the horde. Tried to cast. Tried to pull heat from her Core. A pathetic green spark sputtered and died before it hit the ground. The creatures were eighty yards away. The wet slapping sounds getting louder.

"The beacon!" Roxana yelled over her shoulder. She scrambled over a massive ribcage, her heavy hips throwing off her balance. "Don't drop the fucking beacon! Keep running!"

The tree line. Massive, twisting black roots rising out of the dirt like the fingers of a buried giant. Damp earth and living wood finally broke through the dry rot of the Flats. Behind them, the horde let out a synchronized, high-pitched mechanical clicking. It vibrated right through the teeth.

Bastian hit the first line of roots. Scrambled up the slick wood. His massive hands tearing bark loose. He reached the top of the embankment. Turned. His chest heaving. Face completely drained of color.

He reached a thick, calloused hand down toward {{user}}.

"Grab my hand!" Bastian roared, his voice cracking. The slapping sound was deafening now. Kicking up a storm of grey dust and shattered bone directly behind them. "Come on!"

The tree line didn't offer relief. Just a different kind of suffocation.

The canopy was a tangled, rotting roof of black branches that completely blocked the sky. The air was heavy, wet, and smelled violently of decomposing leaves. They had been staggering for four hours. Nobody spoke. The adrenaline crash hit them two miles in, turning the sprint into a numb, silent march. They finally stopped when they hit the river.

It wasn't a stream. It was a massive, churning artery of dark water. The ambient mana radiating off it was so dense it actually made the air shimmer. It tasted like a mouthful of dirty copper pennies.

Liesl didn't take her heavy wool coat off. She just collapsed. Her knees hit the wet mud and she immediately started dry-heaving into a patch of ferns. Her Tidal Core, completely starved in the dead-zone of the Flats, was now being violently force-fed. She gagged. Spat a string of clear bile into the dirt.

"My head," Liesl groaned. Her voice was a wet rasp. She pressed her forehead directly against a cold, mossy root. Her fingers dug into the earth. "It's too loud. The water. Feels like a nail behind my eyes."

"Don't look at it." Roxana dropped her canvas pack. It hit the mud with a hollow thud. She didn't sit down. She paced. Her heavy boots tore up the moss. She flicked her thumbnail against her index finger. A bright, perfectly clean orange spark snapped into the air. The sharp smell of sulfur returned. Her magic was back.

Bastian dropped to one knee by the water. His chest was heaving. His right arm was trembling uncontrollably. The fabric of his sleeve was torn, and the skin beneath it was mottled a deep, swelling purple. His veins looked completely blown out from the massive Kinetic recoil. He cupped his good hand. Splashed freezing, dark water over his face to wash away the grey dust of the bone ocean.

"We need a fire," Bastian muttered. He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist. He winced as his bruised forearm throbbed. He looked back at the meager pile of gear Roxana had dropped. "And food. I dropped the main crate."

Roxana stopped pacing. She turned her head slowly. The air around her spiked ten degrees.

"You dropped the crate." Her voice was dangerously low. "The iron rations. The surveyor's tripod. The clean canteens."

"I was a little distracted!" Bastian pushed himself up. He took a heavy step forward, boots sinking into the bank. He pointed back the way they came. "There were fifty of those things! Shifting meat! I blew a hole in the front line so we could run! If I didn't, we'd be hollowed out in the dirt right now!"

"I don't give a shit what you blew a hole in!" Roxana shoved him. Hard. Both hands against his chest. Bastian stumbled back a step. "You left the food and the mapping instruments! How are we supposed to map the waypoint without the tripod? Mags isn't paying us to guess!"

"We have the beacon!" Bastian yelled. His crooked nose flared. He gestured at {{user}}. "The newbie has the beacon. We're tracking."

"The beacon just tells Mags where to find our corpses!" Roxana dragged a hand down her face. Smeared soot across her cheek. She turned away in disgust. Walked over to a pile of damp, dead branches. She didn't arrange them. She just kicked the pile and blasted it with a messy, jagged burst of fire. The wet wood hissed, smoked, and finally caught, throwing an aggressive orange glow against the trees.

Liesl crawled over to the heat. Shivering. Her skin was a sickly, pale green. She reached out and touched Bastian's purple arm. A weak, watery green light pulsed from her muddy fingers.

Bastian flinched. He gagged, turning his head to spit into the dirt. "Makes my stomach turn. Every time."

"Fixing the micro-tears in the muscle," Liesl mumbled. Her eyes were closed. Blood leaked from her nose again. "Nausea is a side effect. Stop complaining."

Roxana ignored them. She walked down to the edge of the river. She stood exactly where Mags Endicott had stood twenty-three years ago. Staring at the dark water. She kicked at the mud with the steel toe of her boot.

Her boot hit something hard. Metal.

Roxana frowned. She dug her heel in, scraping the wet mud away. A piece of rusted, corroded iron breached the surface. A heavy buckle. Standard-issue Conclave combat harness. The leather was entirely rotted away, but the B-rank insignia was still visible under the rust. She stared at it. She didn't call Bastian over. She didn't say a word. She just kicked a layer of mud back over it, burying it completely.

Roxana turned her back to the river. She looked straight at {{user}}.

"You," Roxana ordered. No please. Just a flat demand. "Boil water. Bastian lost the filtered supply, so unless you want to drink marsh-water and shit yourself to death, boil it. And put that brass beacon on the dirt. I want to see if the needle is actually moving."

The fire was dead. Wet wood didn't burn, it just smoked and smelled like rot. The river was loud. Heavy. Then it wasn't.

The noise just cut out. The ambient mana—thick enough to taste on the back of the tongue a minute ago—was gone. Crushed. Something stepped on the entire mana field and flattened it.

Liesl didn't wake up from a snapped twig. She woke up choking. She rolled violently into the mud, gagging into the collar of her coat. Blood poured out of both nostrils. It was hot. It ran over her lips and dripped onto her hands. She scrambled backward. Her boots slipped. She kicked blindly and hit Bastian's shin.

"Get up," Liesl gurgled. She couldn't breathe. The air felt like water. "It's here."

Roxana was already standing. She didn't reach for her knife first. She flicked her thumb against her index finger. Hard. She needed a spark. She needed light.

Nothing. She flicked it again, tearing her own cuticle. The spark died inside her skin. Her Core was suffocating. She drew a heavy, serrated hunting knife. Her knuckles went white.

It didn't step out of the trees. One second the massive oak root across the ashes was empty. The next fraction of a second, it was occupied.

It looked human. Almost. The limbs were too long. The joints rested at angles that didn't belong to a skeleton made of bone. The skin was chalk-white. Smooth. A segmented, grey chitin tail draped casually over the wood. The eyes were entirely black. No whites. No pupils. Glossy like spilled ink.

Bastian made a sound. Not a yell. Just raw, stupid panic. He didn't think. He threw his good hand forward. A massive Kinetic surge tore out of him, aimed right at the creature's chest.

The creature didn't flinch. It just raised one pale finger.

The shockwave hit an invisible wall and shattered. The sound was like breaking glass. The kinetic recoil whipped back. Bastian flew off his feet, hit the mud hard, and slid. He curled around his arm, gasping for air that wasn't there.

"How disappointing." The creature's voice was smooth. No effort. No accent. It sounded like a bored scholar. "Your physical structure is fragile. Your output is disorganized. You attack without assessing the disparity."

The bladed tip of the tail twitched.

"I am the apex here," the creature said. "Vireo, if your primitive mouths need a label. You are D-rank trash. You broadcast your sputtering little frequencies like dying animals. I could have hollowed you out hours ago."

Roxana's hand shook. The heavy knife trembled. "Then why didn't you?"

Vireo didn't jump off the root. He displaced. One millisecond he was sitting. The exact next millisecond, he was standing directly in front of {{user}}.

Roxana swung the knife. She hit empty air. Vireo ignored her. He leaned in close to {{user}}. He didn't smell like rotting meat or mud. He smelled like cold stone and ozone.

"Because of you," Vireo murmured. His voice dropped. Intimate. Cold. "You make no sound. A void. An anomaly."

He raised a hand. His pale, impossibly smooth fingers hovered exactly one inch from {{user}}'s chest. Right over the silent Core.

"They are livestock," Vireo said. He gestured blindly at Bastian and Liesl without breaking eye contact with {{user}}. "Killing them offers no satisfaction. But you. You are like me. Perfect. Or... you are pretending to be."

The tail stopped moving. He leaned a fraction of an inch closer, searching {{user}}'s face.

"I want to find out which it is."

**