We stayed together.
Ten bodies moving as one, steps uneven, spacing tight. Too many people for stealth. Too few to feel safe.
Even the trees knew it.
The deeper we walked, the more the forest bent inwards—like a throat preparing to swallow.
The air thickened.
No breeze. No birdsong. Just the steady rhythm of boots on wet earth and the low rustle of leaves overhead. I felt it first—a weight in the air, subtle but growing. Not mana. Not quite.
Presence.
Thalia must've sensed it too. Her fingers brushed her wrist, where she kept a curved blade tucked beneath the sleeve. Marcus shifted beside her, calm but alert. Even Eleanor stopped chewing her roots.
A sound rumbled through the soil.
Then the roots moved.
We barely had time to scatter before the thing erupted from the ground—its form massive, bark-limbed, hunched beneath a canopy of rotting vines and bone-white fungus. No eyes. Just a gaping hollow where its face should be, leaking spores that shimmered faintly in the dark.
A tree creature—but not natural. Twisted. Fused with corpses and pulsing with parasitic life. Something born of this place.
"Move!" Thalia snapped, already darting left.
Mana surged around us as shields flared and weapons drew.
The creature howled—a raw, wooden shriek—and swung an arm wide.
Eleanor deflected it with a spike burst from her Titanroot, knocking bark and rot into the trees. Orin hurled a spear that stuck, pulsing with charged energy, but the thing didn't slow.
Then the spores hit us.
It wasn't immediate—more like a slide.
Colors brightened. Sounds thickened. The earth underfoot became too soft, then too hard, then not there at all.
Hallucinogenic.
Perfect.
I forced my breath low, controlled. Filtered through my collar. Suppressed my mana to nothing—invisible. I was the only one not radiating power. The only one the creature wouldn't track.
They were disoriented.
Dull. Vulnerable.
And I saw it—Isaac, stumbling back from the line, eyes glazed, shield flaring weak and crooked. He wasn't going to hold. He was too far in. Not elite. Not adaptable.
Liability.
I moved behind him. Quick. Silent.
No one saw. No one would.
I pushed.
A light touch to the back—just enough to shift his balance.
He gasped, spun, and fell—right into the creature's path.
The arm came down like a falling tower.
Crack.
His shield shattered. The mana went dark.
The sound that followed was wet. Final.
Someone screamed. Maybe Sophie.
I didn't flinch.
"Regroup!" I shouted, voice steady. "Fall back and circle—don't let it box us in!"
They moved. Reflexes kicking in, training overriding grief.
No one questioned how Isaac had ended up there.
The fight continued.
Calixtus phased halfway through the beast's leg, leaving a trail of vaporized bark. Thalia struck from the side, shockwaves flashing with precise rhythm. Marcus anchored our center.
I hung back—still invisible, still cold.
My body was adapting faster again. I could feel it.
The spores couldn't find purchase in me. Not fully. The suppression made me unreadable, untouchable. The perfect ghost.
And the creature began to falter.
Too much mana converging. Too many elite techniques at once.
A burst from Eleanor blew half its torso into the river behind us. Screaming in silence, it stumbled back—then collapsed into a crater of twitching roots and rot.
Silence returned slowly.
Then—
"Isaac…" Sophie murmured, stumbling toward the wreckage.
Isaac's body was a ruin—his chest caved in, bones and flesh indistinguishable.
"Don't," Thalia said, catching her arm. "It's done."
Sophie didn't argue. But she didn't move either.
Verena sat down, shaking.
Nerissa looked at me. "You saw what happened to him?"
I met her eyes.
"Fog," I said. "He broke formation."
It was all I needed to say.
She nodded. It made sense. The kind of sense people want when the real answer's too cruel to name.
We burned what was left of the spores, set a temporary ward line, and pulled back to safer ground.
Another survivor gone. Another problem solved.
Their mental state was inching closer to cracking.
I didn't feel guilt.
Only clarity.
The forest was doing its part. And I was doing mine.
I felt it during the fight—that sharp, familiar gaze slicing through the smoke. The same one I'd felt before we left for the Veiled Forest.
Grandmaster Nyra.
She'd been watching. Ready to intervene. But she noticed too late.
And now I knew the truth.
They didn't have technological surveillance.
She was the method. Her Seed had something to do with her eyes—maybe illusion, maybe spectation, maybe something worse.
But it didn't matter.
She hadn't seen me until the moment passed.
My mana suppression had worked.
It came at a cost—no conjuration, no augmentation. My body dulled. But in return, I became invisible. Untouchable.
Freedom was getting closer.
The fire crackled low. No one spoke much.
We set camp against a shallow ridge, the trees thinner here, like the forest had pulled back after the fight. A false reprieve. No howls. No shifting roots. Just the stink of rot still clinging to our clothes and the weight of Isaac's absence.
Sophie was silent. Her shoulders didn't rise like someone breathing deep—just shallow, almost still.
Verena finally broke the silence.
"He shouldn't have died like that," she said, voice low.
Marcus didn't look up. "No one should."
Her eyes flicked across us.
For a moment, no one said anything.
Then Sophie whispered, "He wasn't that far from us."
I didn't react.
"We were close. We could've—" she stopped, swallowed hard. "We should've reached him."
"You couldn't," Thalia said flatly. "Not in that fog. You wouldn't have made it either."
"It doesn't matter now," Nerissa added, quieter.
Sophie didn't argue. But her hands curled tighter around her knees.
They were all wrong. It did matter. But not for the reasons they thought.
It mattered because Isaac's death hadn't weakened us—it had refined us. Thinned out the unnecessary. Raised the pressure.
And pressure always cracked something.
I looked around the firelight, noting every breath, every subtle twitch. Sophie was spiraling. Verena too. Orin was getting quieter. Marcus was trying to hold them together by force of habit. Eleanor was watching everything. And Thalia—Thalia was watching me.
Later, as we rotated night watch, Marcus handed out shifts.
"I'll take first. Calixtus and Eleanor after. Thalia, last."
He paused before the final name.
Kaelen.
I met his eyes before he could say it.
"I'll take third."
His jaw worked like he wanted to protest, but didn't. Just nodded.
Of course he didn't argue.
They wouldn't say it aloud, but I saw the hesitation—brief, barely visible. A flicker in his decision.
He was starting to doubt me.
Good.
I didn't need to suppress my intentions completely—I needed the cracks to form now.
When second watch handed over, I didn't move right away. I waited in silence, long after Calixtus had vanished into his meditative trance on the ridge. The forest was quieter here—too quiet. Like it was listening back.
I rose and paced slowly along the camp's perimeter, eyes half-lidded, mana still suppressed to a faint trace. I didn't need light. I'd memorized the layout. Step by step, I traced a half-circle around the camp, not looking back.
Halfway through, I heard someone shift.
Sophie.
She hadn't slept.
I'd pretend to care—just enough to stir the fire.
"You don't sleep much, do you?" I asked without turning.
"Not lately."
A pause.
"He was better than me," she said, almost too soft to hear. "Isaac. He was braver."
"No," I said. "He was slower."
Silence.
Then footsteps, retreating toward her bedroll.
I didn't watch her go.
I just listened.
My perception and mana control increased in this place. I was stronger than I was when I came here.
Far above us, in the black canopy where no light reached, a second presence lingered.
Watching.
Too slow, this time.
Just like Isaac.