Chapter 36

A rock slipped out from under my foot, skittering off the ledge with a sharp crack. My stomach fluttered as I watched it bounce once, twice, before vanishing into the trees far below. It took a full five seconds before I heard the faint thud of impact. That didn’t exactly help the vertigo.

I let out a slow breath and steadied myself against the cliff wall. The stone was slick in places, worn smooth from centuries of wind and rain. Moss clung to the cracks and my boots found poor purchase on more than one step. Still, I moved carefully. Downward. Always downward.

The fox moved ahead of me, bounding from ledge to ledge like it didn’t have a care in the world. Its small paws landed with the grace, tail flicking lazily for balance. At one point it even turned around, as if to check whether I was keeping up. I gave it a dry look and kept going.

The descent wasn’t easy. There was no real path, just worn rock and patches of stubborn grass. I had to climb with my hands more than once, gripping exposed roots or wedging myself between jutting stones to keep from sliding straight down the slope. My shoulders burned. My calves ached with the strain. But I didn’t stop.

Minutes passed. Then more. The air changed as I dropped lower. It grew thicker, damper, filled with the scent of pine and something I couldn’t quite place. Something faintly metallic. I paused on a narrow ledge and pulled in a breath. The world above felt like another place entirely. I couldn’t even see the top of the cliff anymore, just stone rising up into the grey light.

I looked down again. Still a ways to go.

The fox let out a short yip below me. I spotted it perched on a half-rotted log wedged between two boulders, its ears twitching as it waited. I sighed and moved after it.

The last stretch was the hardest. The slope grew steeper, and more than once I had to lower myself using twisted roots like makeshift ropes. I slipped once, nearly falling, but managed to catch myself on a jut of stone sharp enough to tear skin. Or should have been sharp enough to tear skin. Instead the stone chipped and my body was unharmed. I looked at my arm in wonder. 

Eventually, the slope began to level. Trees grew denser, crowding the base of the cliff with ancient trunks and broad, heavy canopies that filtered the daylight into hazy green shafts. The sound of birds returned, faint and scattered.

And then, finally, my boots touched solid forest floor.

I exhaled and leaned against the nearest tree, letting the cool bark press into my back. The forest stretched out in every direction—wide, endless, and quiet.

I rolled my shoulders and stepped away from the cliff, deeper into the trees. 

The small fox looked at me, those curious black eyes locking with mine, before it turned and darted into the forest. I stared after it, debating whether to follow, but it was already gone—vanishing like smoke into the underbrush. I sighed and muttered under my breath, “Thanks for showing me the way then, I guess.”

I unslung my duffle and took a sip of water. The climb had been long and difficult, but I wasn’t even winded. That alone told me how far I’d come. My body might’ve looked the same on the surface, but inside, I was different. Still the water felt refreshing.

I looked around. I didn’t have a map, didn’t really have a plan either. But the beast wave had come from somewhere down here. That meant I just needed to keep moving. I chose the direction the fox had gone, part instinct, part convenience and started walking.

The terrain quickly grew wild. Flax and bamboo wove together into dense thickets, forcing me to draw my sabre and hack my way through. The undergrowth fought me every step, the vines clutching at my ankles like grasping hands. Sunlight filtered down in slats, broken and murky through the thick canopy above.

It was too quiet. Even with my enhanced senses, I could barely hear anything beyond the occasional insect buzz or the distant rustle of wind-stirred branches. No birdsong. No beast calls. No scampering paws or shrill cries of prey animals.

After walking for a while, a smell hit me. Faint at first. Just a whisper of rot on the breeze. But the deeper I went, the stronger it grew. Like something long dead and left to fester in the sun. I pulled my sleeve up over my nose, but it didn’t help much.

Eventually I shoved my way through a final patch of low shrubs and emerged into a clearing. Then I froze.

The trees had been flattened and burned. The ground churned into mud and old blood. And scattered across the ruined clearing were bodies. Dozens—no, hundreds—of dead beasts. More than any we had faced at the village. By a lot. 

Some I recognized, like hedgebeasts and Mistfangs. Others I didn’t. Giant lizards with barbed tails, hulking creatures that resembled rhinos with plated hides, long-necked bipeds with fractured antlers and oversized talons. Every one of them lay still. Torn open. Burned. Crushed. Dismembered.

It wasn’t a battlefield. It was a grave.

The stench was overwhelming. I gagged, the bile rising in my throat and cursed my new senses. Who knew they could hinder me like this. I clenched my jaw and forced it back down, stepping cautiously into the clearing. My boots squelched through old blood and soft earth.

I prodded a smaller beast with the tip of my sabre—something that looked like a massive centipede. It was nearly as long as I was tall, which was saying something. The underside of its belly had been ripped open, its carapace scorched black with heat. Its limbs had been snapped or torn off entirely, and thick green fluid oozed from the wounds, still sizzling faintly on the ground.

“What the hell did this?” I muttered, voice tight.

Whatever it was, it hadn’t just killed these things. It had slaughtered them.

I crouched beside one of the larger corpses—a creature with pale, flaking scales and a mouth full of shattered fangs. Flies buzzed at the corners of its mouth, but the blood beneath it was still tacky.

I stood slowly, eyes scanning the treeline.

Something was very, very wrong.

I kept walking. The deeper I went, the more bodies I found—twisted, mangled things strewn across the forest floor like discarded toys. Some were half-eaten. Others looked like they’d been shredded apart just for the sake of it.

A Mistfang lay impaled on a broken tree trunk, its insides spilled out in a glistening mess. A beast that looked like a crystalline elk had been torn in half—back legs missing entirely, its antlers snapped and buried in the mud. I crouched near one of the corpses, frowning at the damage. Burn marks traced the muscle. The hide was melted in places, scorched in others. Some of the wounds looked like acid. Others like claws. Nothing was consistent. Everything screamed chaos.

The stench of rot was unbearable. It filled my mouth with every breath, clinging to the back of my throat no matter how hard I tried not to gag. I pressed forward through the underbrush, blades of bamboo scraping against my arms and legs.

Then I heard a wet crunching sound.

I froze, hand instinctively gripping to the hilt of my sabre tighter. My heart hammered in my chest.

I crept toward the sound, staying low. Moved behind a wide tree and  peered past its trunk.

That’s when I saw it. A beast crouched in the clearing.

It looked like a wolf—but wrong. Too long in the body. Skin pulled tight over muscle like blackened leather, glistening in the gloom. No fur. Just veins—thick, throbbing things that pulsed with every breath it took. Its ribs shifted beneath its flesh as it hunched over a massive lizard’s corpse, tearing into it with a jaw that stretched too wide.

The thing’s eyes glowed red, casting a sick light over the clearing. They didn’t blink. Just stared ahead as it ate, its maw dripping with blood and saliva. The sound was awful.

My stomach churned. Every part of me was screaming that I had to end this abomination. Like it was meant to be in hell and I had to put it there.

Then another crunch echoed behind it.

My eyes darted toward the trees and something stepped out.

At first, I thought it was a person because of how humanoid it was. But quickly realised I was wrong.

It was too tall. Too thin. Its arms hung longer than they should have. Its skin was deathly pale, stretched taut over corded muscle, and its veins bulged just like the beast’s—black and red, pulsing in erratic patterns. Its eyes glowed with the same hellish light, framed by a curtain of long, stringy white hair.

I felt something crawling on my hand. I looked down and saw a spider. I cursed and flicked my hand into the tree. God I hated spiders.

I looked back up. The humanoid creature was scanning the forest where I was kneeling. 

Shit.

I quickly pulled my head back behind the tree, wishing I left the spider alone and cursing my foolishness.

I held my breath, fingers clenched around my weapon. I didn’t dare move. 

After a few seconds the humanoid being let out a low whistle.

I chanced a look around the tree, to see if I had to fight.

The wolf-thing looked up. Growled softly.

And then walked toward the humanoid.

They stood together for a moment. The humanoid scanning the forest.

Then, without another sound, they turned and disappeared into the trees—slipping into the darkness like ghosts.

I stayed there, frozen behind the tree, until I was sure they were gone.

Only then did I let out the breath I’d been holding. My hands were shaking. My jaw ached from how tightly I’d been clenching it.

I waited a few minutes after they vanished, just in case they doubled back. Then, slowly, I stepped out from behind the tree. My breath came quiet and controlled, but my heart was still pounding, adrenaline filled my veins.

I walked after them, one step at a time. I followed the trail they’d taken, careful to keep my distance. Every so often I caught a glimpse of those glowing eyes in the distance or the sick glisten of skin moving between the trees. I knew I’d stumbled into something. These things must have had something to do with the beast wave. They were unnatural and I got the sense that just from being here, they tainted the very air.

The deeper I went, the worse the forest became. The trees here were warped—trunks bent and leaning in strange angles, bark split open in long, unnatural cracks. The moss was blackened in places, curling up and dying like it had been poisoned. Even the light felt wrong. Dimmer. Like something was leeching the life from the world.

Then I saw it.

The forest opened up again—this time into a wide clearing bordered on the far side by a cliff face that towered into the clouds. It stretched so high I couldn’t see the top, only the jagged ridges vanishing into fog and shadow. But that wasn’t what made my breath catch.

At the base of the cliff was a cave.

A gaping wound carved into stone, wide enough for five men to walk through side by side. And in front of it stood more of them. The same pale, veined abominations. Some hunched and twitching, others tall and silent. They paced in loose patterns near the mouth of the cave, and I could see more shapes deeper inside. Shifting forms in the dark.

A barricade of jagged stone and twisted wood had been erected in a wide half-moon around the entrance. I cursed under my breath. This meant they weren’t mindless.

I crouched behind a fallen log, half-buried in dead moss, and tried to steady my breathing. The stench here was stronger than before. It clung to the air like smoke, thick and sharp with rot and something fouler—something sickly sweet that made the back of my teeth itch.

A soft crack of a twig snapped behind me.

Every muscle in my body seized. I turned, slow, hand already on the hilt of my sabre, mind screaming for me to act. I was ready to cut whatever it was in half, my Qi pouring through my meridians.

But it wasn’t another monster.

It was the fox.

The same small black thing that had followed me from the cliff. It was sitting atop a nearby rock, completely at ease. Tail curled neatly around its paws, head tilted ever so slightly as it stared down toward the encampment like it knew exactly what I was seeing.

“What the hell are you doing here,” I whispered, half to myself.

I turned back toward the cliff and the cave mouth. My fingers flexed against the grip of my weapon. I didn’t know what I was dealing with yet, but I knew one thing for sure:

This was the heart of it. The reason for the wave. The thing the system had pointed me toward. And whatever waited in that darkness… it wasn’t meant to be on this side of the world.

Not anymore.

As I finished that though, the system seemed to agree with me because it a soft chime sounded and a notification popped up.

Quest Generated
Objective: Destroy the Sundered encampment
Reward: A New Skill