The morning mist thinned as the rift's false sun rose higher, painting the forest in dim hues of silver and green. Stephen moved cautiously through the underbrush, his sword already drawn. The eerie sense of being followed hadn't faded — if anything, it had only grown sharper.
Every sound made his heart quicken. A snapped twig. A gust that carried the faint scent of iron. The deeper he went, the more wrong the air felt.It wasn't just the beasts anymore. Something else was moving here.
He slowed his steps when he caught sight of faint boot prints — human, but heavy, as if carrying more weight than normal. The trail was recent. Fresh mud still clung to the edges.
"Other participants?" he murmured under his breath.
He followed them for a while, keeping his distance, until the faint sound of voices drifted through the trees.
At first, he thought it was just another team of examinees — many had formed temporary alliances to survive the trial. But as he crept closer, crouching behind a tree, he realized something was off. Their formation was too tight, their movements too deliberate. Even their breaths seemed synchronized.
A dozen figures stood in a small clearing surrounded by mist, their uniforms plain, but each wore a small black band on their left wrist — not the Federation-issued bracelets.At the center stood a tall youth, his face half-hidden beneath a hood, speaking in a low tone that carried a strange weight.
"The signal was clear. We proceed once the mist thickens again. Remember your orders — points don't matter. Our task is to locate the sealed entrance beneath the rift's heart. The offering must be made before the Federation's dogs catch on."
Stephen's breath caught. Offering? Sealed entrance?What were they talking about?
The youth's voice darkened.
"The day will come when the Ruler's shadow falls upon this world again. We, the chosen, will be its heralds."
And then, almost in unison, the others responded —
"All hail the Ruler Beyond the Veil."
The sound sent a chill racing down Stephen's spine. He didn't understand all of it, but the intent behind those words was unmistakable.These weren't just examinees.
They were something else entirely.
High above the forest, in a massive glass-walled observation chamber hovering outside the rift, several examiners sat before glowing panels filled with shifting dots of light — each dot representing a participant.
The air was thick with the smell of coffee and roasted meat. One of the older examiners, a grizzled man with a scar running from jaw to collarbone, stabbed a piece of roast into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
"Huh. The mortality rate this time's higher than last year," he muttered. "Almost a quarter down in just the first week."
A younger examiner shrugged without looking up from his screen.
"That's what happens when they let the Federation pick this rift. Half the beasts here are mutated."
Another examiner — a woman with sharp eyes and a calm tone — tapped her screen, zooming in on a cluster of blinking red dots.
"Mutated beasts aren't the real problem," she said quietly. "Look here. This group's not behaving like the others. They're not collecting rings. They're moving toward the rift's center in formation."
The older man leaned closer.
"Formation? In an exam like this? That's either military discipline or…"He trailed off as realization dawned."Ah. You're thinking them, aren't you?"
The woman nodded slowly.
"The Demon Worshipping Cult. Their movements match the reports we got from the northern sector last month."
A silence fell over the room. Even the younger examiner stopped typing.
"I thought those lunatics were wiped out after the Cleansing War," he said uncertainly.
The older man snorted.
"Hah. You can't kill a plague with a sword. They worship the Ruler from beyond the rifts — that beast the old records called the Devouring Monarch. The only creature to ever reach the cusp of godhood before the Ten Demi-Gods sealed it away."
"A hundred years ago," the woman added, glancing at the scarred veteran. "And most of those Demi-Gods are still recovering from that war. If these cultists manage to open another path from the other side…"She didn't finish. She didn't need to.
The veteran's hand tightened around his fork.
"Let's hope it's just a coincidence. If not—"
A sudden alarm flared across the central display.Several dots had vanished at once — wiped clean off the screen.
"What the—? That's Sector Twelve!" the younger examiner shouted. "That's within the safe perimeter!"
"Check the feed!"
The panels flickered, showing brief glimpses of carnage — a swirl of mist, blood staining the ground, and then static.
The woman's face hardened.
"Get a recon squad ready. Someone's tampering with the monitoring field."
The veteran slammed his hand on the table.
"Damn it. I told the Federation we weren't ready for another full-scale trial so soon."
Back inside the rift, Stephen had already slipped away from the clearing, every instinct screaming at him to move fast and stay low. The words he'd overheard kept echoing in his mind.
"The offering must be made before the Federation's dogs catch on…"
He didn't know what kind of offering they meant — but he knew one thing for certain.Whatever it was, it wasn't something the examiners had planned.
And if those people were truly what he thought they were…then this wasn't just a survival test anymore.
It was a battlefield.