Maika.
Lucen stopped cold.
Another scream followed. This one deeper. Kell. Then another. Shorter. A grunt, cut off.
Lucen's breath hitched in his throat.
The system blinked.
[External Party Signals Detected]
Location: Separated
Distance: 84 meters
Vital Status: Fluctuating
His chest tightened.
Not from fear.
Not yet.
From confusion.
'Eighty-four meters. That's not far. We didn't split that deep. How the hell did they get dragged that far off?'
He looked down at the glowing path.
Still pulsing.
Still calm.
Like it hadn't heard anything.
He took a step forward.
Another scream ripped through the hallway. This one clearer. Maika again.
"Back— get back!"
Then static. Like a comm crystal being crushed underfoot.
Lucen ran.
The fog surged with him. Not slowing him down. Not helping either. Just keeping pace, like it didn't want to miss the show.
The hallway narrowed. Then widened again. The light beneath his feet curved into a tight spiral around a cracked floor vent. He ignored it.
Ten more steps. Twenty.
The screaming cut off.
Completely.
Lucen skidded to a stop at a corner.
His boots scraped the tile.
He leaned into the wall and forced himself to breathe.
'Don't panic. Don't start thinking about blood. Could be a false call. Could be an echo. This drift's already broken in five different ways.'
He blinked at the system again.
Party Signals: Interrupted
Status: Unstable
Threat Zone: Recalculating…
Lucen grit his teeth.
'Don't recalculate. Just tell me if they're alive.'
The hallway beyond him was darker. The fog was thicker.
But the glowing line kept going.
He followed it.
Slower now.
More deliberate.
His fingers brushed the edge of his coat, hovering near the chalk he kept for emergency casting. The preloaded spells in his system were still active. But his nerves were louder than the icons.
He whispered, "I swear, if this drift just killed my ticket out of here, I'm gonna lose it."
No answer.
Just fog.
And that light ahead, still pulsing like nothing had happened.
Lucen turned the corner.
The hallway ended.
A room opened ahead, wide and sunken, shaped like a broken half-dome. The ceiling had collapsed on one side. Metal rods jutted down like spears frozen mid-fall.
Fog clung to the floor in thick clumps now, dense enough to look solid in some places. The air smelled burnt. Not fire-burnt. Mana-burnt.
He stepped inside.
The glow under his boots faded the moment he crossed the threshold.
His eyes landed on a figure crumpled near the far wall.
Kell.
Face down.
Still.
Blood pooled under his shoulder.
Lucen's chest tightened.
His brain tried to pretend it wasn't blood. That maybe it was some kind of fog trick, or a core fluid spill, or literally anything else. It didn't work.
Rin was nearby, back against a wall, one arm hanging limp at her side. Her other hand still clutched her knife, but it didn't look like she had the strength to lift it.
She saw Lucen and didn't say anything.
Just blinked once.
Then tilted her head toward the left side of the room.
Lucen followed her eyes.
Maika.
She was on her knees, trying to cast something with shaking hands. Her spatial anchors flickered around her like dying fireflies. One glitched out entirely and snapped into static before vanishing.
Lucen's breath hitched.
He looked left.
That's when he saw it.
The thing.
It stood in the far corner, hunched and twitching. A mess of arms and tendrils and joints that bent the wrong way. Its surface shimmered like oil. Dark. Viscous. Layers of armor-like bone fused with crawling fog that moved when the rest of it didn't.
Its head…or what passed for one, tilted at Lucen.
No eyes.
Just a curve of something smooth and wet.
Lucen froze.
His system pinged.
[Unclassified Entity Detected]
No core signature
No known spell lineage
Drift Field: Adaptive
Danger Rating: Critical
The word critical hit him like a punch.
He'd never seen that before.
Not even on forum screenshots.
He looked again at Kell.
Still unmoving.
Then at Rin.
Her shirt was soaked through the side. Deep red.
Maika tried again to lift her hand.
Her fingers shook like she'd been casting too long without rest.
The creature turned its head fully toward Lucen now.
It stepped forward.
One foot. Then another. No sound. Just pressure.
Like a dream walking wrong.
Lucen backed up, heart in his throat.
'Okay. Don't run. Don't cast too early. If it's reacting to spell builds like the crawler thingy did, I can't give it a target.'
The system opened again on instinct.
Spells still loaded.
Mana still full.
Three spells.
Three chances.
Maybe.
He shifted slightly to his left. The thing mirrored him.
Lucen whispered, "Yeah. That's fair. You're like the sentient fog's big brother. Great."
It stepped again.
Faster this time.
Lucen snapped his hand up.
But he didn't cast.
Not yet.
He moved right instead.
The creature paused.
Just one step behind now.
Close enough to smell.
It didn't have a scent.
Just the wrong kind of silence.
Rin coughed once. Quiet. Wet.
Lucen's eyes flicked toward her.
The monster took the chance.
It lunged.
Lucen didn't think. He didn't plan. He just cast.
Gravitic Snap exploded from under its leading foot.
The floor cracked.
The pressure spike tilted it just enough to throw off its balance.
Lucen followed with Kinetic Point, slamming the spell into its chest before it could realign.
It staggered. Didn't fall.
Didn't scream at all.
Just twitched like it was hit with a stick by a child.
Lucen ran forward.
He grabbed Maika's arm and yanked her sideways, hard.
She cried out but didn't resist.
Rin tried to stand. Failed.
Lucen swore under his breath and dragged her up with one hand.
The monster didn't chase.
It just turned.
Slow.
Almost bored.
Lucen pulled both of them toward the doorway he'd entered through.
His heart was slamming against his ribs. His breath burned. The system blinked again in his periphery.
[Exit Path: Unstable]
Enemy Tracking: Delayed
Suggested Action: Evacuate
"No kidding," he hissed.
They made it past the threshold.
The fog didn't stop.
But the monster did.
Lucen looked back once.
It hadn't moved from the center of the room.
Just stood there.
Watching.
Waiting.
Like it wanted to see if he'd come back alone.