The forest dampened, rain drizzling through the canopy, dragging with it a clogged stench harsher than before. Regardless, Kage, Talia, Marcus, and Lian Feng pressed on together down the forest path.
They trekked for a while before hunger clawed at them. Kage distributed at, but without fire—alerting every danger in these woods was suicide—they had to rinse their portions with swampy water and choke them down raw. Better that than let starvation bleed them dry.
All thanks to Talia, who couldn’t stop thrusting at and food at anyone within reach. But also thanks to her, they at least had fresh water to drink instead of the fetid swamp.
Their journey continued until they reached a section where the forest trees wove together like tangled thread, a sh of nature’s own making. Kage and the rest had to bend and crawl through the gaps, navigating carefully until they finally cleared the Hanging Trees without incident.
However, right at the exit—beyond the interwoven branches—they saw sothing that froze them.
Kage closed his nose first as the tallic tang of blood struck him. Lian Feng frowned, following Kage’s gaze to the blood trail streaked across oak bark. Following it down, he spotted a hollow-cheeked, black-haired boy slumped at the tree’s base.
He moved to rush forward, but Kage caught his wrist. Lian Feng looked back. Kage shook his head.
"It’s too late."
Marcus, behind them, imdiately recognized the boy.
"Nero! No... no, I’m so sorry, Nerooo..." His voice cracked.
Lian Feng glanced at Marcus.
"You know him?"
Marcus nodded, his expression on the verge of collapse.
"Yes. He was in my group before he walked off..."
Pain pooled in his eyes as he stared at the corpse.
Talia stood there trembling, unable to reconcile what her eyes showed her.
"Bu—But the—they s—s—said no one is supposed to die? I don’t understand."
Kage studied the boy, limp and lifeless against the tree, then stared forward. His face was cold, his voice colder.
"With the Impure situation on our hands, everything’s changed. We’re on our own now."
Talia shook again.
"I hope the other group is safe."
Kage looked at Nero’s corpse, then ahead into the forest’s maw. There was every chance in the world that Isolde and her team were already dead.
He placed his right hand on Bei’s hilt.
"We have to be ready to fight."
Lian Feng looked at him like he’d lost his mind.
"Fight an Impure with mundane weapons? Are you okay, my friend? Even with a Pure Armant, you need to be a Purist to stand a chance at defeating one. What are you talking about—fighting?"
His face clenched tight, teeth grinding.
"This is bad. This is bad. This is bad. I can’t let anyone else die."
Kage studied him, then Talia and Marcus. All three were unraveling, and who could bla them? No one stays steady after seeing this much blood and one of their own gutted.
They were alone in the woods—or at least they believed so. No one had confird the instructors’ movents. No one knew how they were being watched, if at all. So to them, they were isolated, and one examinee was already corpse-cold.
This was the mont it settled into their bones—their clans wouldn’t save them from this place. Not until they were all dead.
Kage sighed. Then he roared.
"GRIP YOURSELVES, YOU DUMBWITS!"
All three jolted out of their stupor, eyes wide and trembling as they snapped to him.
"If you don’t want to die, we better figure out a way around this. Or I promise you—we’re all going to end up like him." He gestured sharply at Nero’s body. "As far as I’ve known and read, sulking never provided a solution to anything. We need to act. And I’m sorry to break it to you, but you look more alive than dead right now. That makes want to say—you might as well be corpses already!"
He jabbed a finger at Lian Feng’s face.
"Even you! Co on!"
Lian Feng flinched, then pressed his lips together.
"I’m sorry..." He clenched his fist and raised his head, hardening his expression. "Thank you, Kage."
Marcus wiped the tears from his eyes.
"I’m sorry. I was just... he didn’t deserve to die."
Talia frowned rigidly, steeling herself.
Kage looked at all of them, then focused on Marcus.
"Nobody deserves to die. But they do anyway. Nobody deserves to live either—but we do anyway. It’s all a matter of competence. So stop acting like fools and start moving."
He pressed forward, Bei in hand. They followed.
They pushed deeper into the forest, into terrain more dangerous than before. With no sleep at all, exhaustion mounted slowly but relentlessly—they could all feel its weight pressing into their bones. And though they’d found reprieve from the imdiate fatigue grinding them down, they still had to remain vigilant against other horrors. Suprely—the Impure.
After a while of walking, they ca upon their second sight of corpses.
Two boys had been viciously mangled by what looked like an overgrowth of wooden vines erupting from within their bodies, using their blood as soil to bloom crimson flowers that resembled spider lilies.
They paled. Marcus turned away, emptying the contents of his stomach. Lian Feng averted his eyes imdiately. Even Talia recoiled in horror. But Kage just stared, face carved from stone.
"I think we’re nearing it."
He glanced back at them.
"I want you three to understand—the aim of the battle isn’t to defeat the Impure. We could never do such a thing. The aim is to bypass it sohow. And survive."
They nodded somberly at his words.
Kage himself exhaled heavily. He was the most exhausted of them all, and certainly not in good shape. If anyone had the highest chance of losing their life to this horror, it was him.
And he knew it.
He knew he was leading them straight into death’s maw.
[The Wolf of the North frowns upon you]
Kage’s head snapped suddenly as a tallic clang rang through the trees. Lian Feng and the others followed his gaze.
Kage narrowed his eyes and sprinted forward imdiately, the others trailing right behind him. He followed the sound of steel eting steel, weaving between trees until he burst into a clearing where a raven-haired woman gripped her sword with both hands, straining with all her might. To the side, Shen stood with his hand torn and bleeding, clutching it tightly.
Kaito was positioned at another corner, sword in hand. All of them spread around the Impure like points on a dying star—a formation of desperation.
The creature itself was a nightmare given flesh.
A quadrupedal predator, its muscled body sculpted from ashen tree bark, crowned with antlers of twisting branches—each one ending in grasping, thorned hands. The elongated skull bore no eyes, but its maw bristled with teeth sharp and vicious enough to rip through bark like parchnt.
Kage exhaled painfully and extended Bei. He assessed the situation in a heartbeat.
’Two dead. Two gravely injured.’
Toward the other corner, blocked by the Impure’s massive body, soone else knelt on the ground. Jaru was nowhere to be seen, but Kaito seed intact while Isolde looked like she’d completely shattered.
Kage clicked his tongue irritably and shouted.
"You people are the biggest fools I’ve ever known! What do you think you’re doing!"
Kaito glanced up, saw Kage and his group. He gritted his teeth painfully but held his sword steady with both hands.
’This is not the mont to regret anything!’
Kage’s shout snapped the Thornmaw’s attention. It turned slowly, hoof striking the ground once, twice, like a ritual before slaughter.
Then it shot toward the new entrants.
Imdiately, Kage waited. Ducked low. Passed instructions to Lian Feng, Talia, and Marcus.
"The mont I say ’now,’ I don’t care how many tis—don’t stop striking at its hindlimbs. Focus more on weakening it with force than trying to sever anything."
He leaped as the Thornmaw charged him. Imdiately, he slung Bei at its antlers, threading the blade through and gripping the edge on the other side—hooking the beast even as it drove him along and slamd his back into a tree with bone-jarring force.
Kage did not let go. Blood dripped from his left hand as the blade’s edge bit into his palm, but he only roared.
"Now!"
Even before he shouted, Talia, Lian Feng, and Marcus were already closing the distance. Lian Feng struck with the poml of his sword. Talia swung her forge hamr. Marcus brought down a large stone with desperate strength.
Imdiately the poml of Lian Feng’s sword struck the hindlimb—to his shock, it cracked, shattered, and scattered across the ground in the sa breath.
The sa fate befell Marcus’s stone the mont it collided.
Talia’s hamr, however, held. It rang out with a sound that made them all feel the Impure had taken a genuine hit—as if the blow had struck sothing real beneath the bark-sculpted hide. Confirming that impression, the Thornmaw bellowed, a bleating shriek that shoved Kage forward and slamd him against the tree again. Simultaneously, it threw its hindlimbs back, smashing them into Talia’s abdon and sending her reeling away.
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