The morning of the seventh day did not arrive with the gentle grace of a sunrise. It arrived with the "Chime"—a dissonant, metallic reverberation that pulsed through the stone floor of the barracks, vibrating through Renji's teeth and pulling him from a dream of Tokyo's rain. He sat up on his thin mat, his body screaming in a dozen different languages of pain. The sedentary life of an insurance adjuster had left him ill-prepared for the sheer physical tax of Aetheric saturation. Every joint felt as though it had been injected with liquid lead.
"Get up, Sato. The air is already thinning," a voice rumbled from the doorway.
It was Darius. The construction worker looked transformed. He was dressed in the standard-issue Vanguard fatigues—a heavy, charcoal-grey canvas reinforced with boiled leather. He looked sturdier, his grief from the Cinder Pit buried under a layer of grim, survivalist necessity. He tossed a bundle of fabric onto Renji's lap. "Clean clothes. The Captain is waiting in the Courtyard of Ash. She doesn't look like she's in a patient mood."
Renji dressed quickly, his fingers fumbling with the unfamiliar buckles of the leather bracers. As he stepped out into the hallway, he felt the shift in the atmosphere. The barracks were no longer a refuge; they were a staging ground.
The Courtyard of Ash was a wide, circular plaza of grey stone located at the base of the North Tower. In the center stood a massive obsidian obelisk etched with thousands of names—the "Roster of the Fallen." Standing at the base of the obelisk were three figures, silhouetted against the rising Gold Sun.
Lyra Thorne stood in the center, her Wolfsteel armor polished to a mirror finish. To her left was a man who seemed to be made of sharp angles and cynical sighs. He wore robes of deep indigo, hemmed with silver thread that hummed with a visible electrical charge. His eyes were covered by a visor of tinted glass, and a staff of whitewood rested against his shoulder.
To Lyra's right was a girl who couldn't have been older than nineteen. She was small, wiry, and dressed in form-fitting dark green leathers. A pair of curved daggers were strapped to her thighs, and her hair was a shock of vibrant, artificial-looking crimson.
"Sato. Darius. Stand fast," Lyra commanded as they approached.
"Is this it?" the man in indigo robes asked, his voice dripping with boredom. "This is the 'Cipher-born' and his pet giant? I've seen sturdier-looking refugees in the Refinement bins."
"Kaelen, hold your tongue," Lyra said, though there was no heat in the reprimand. She turned to Renji. "Sato, this is your squad. You will live together, bleed together, and if the Architects decree it, die together."
She pointed to the man in indigo. "Kaelen Silverwind. A disgraced magus from the Collective. He handles the logistical Aether—shields, portals, and the science of the rot. He is cynical, arrogant, and currently the only reason you won't be dissolved by the first puddle of acid-rain you step in."
Kaelen offered a mock bow, his visor glinting in the sunlight. "A pleasure, Unit 114. Try not to explode near me. I find violet resonance to be terrible for the complexion."
"And this," Lyra continued, gesturing to the girl, "is Miri. Our scout and 'Shadow-Stepper.' She was harvested in Year Zero. She knows the Tundra better than she knows her own name."
Miri didn't bow. She simply stared at Renji with a pair of eyes that looked far too old for her face. "You smell like the Architects," she whispered, her voice like wind through dry grass. "It's a loud smell. The beasts will hear you coming from a mile away."
"The introductions are over," Lyra said, her tone snapping back to military precision. "Today is your first live-fire exercise. We are moving beyond the Wall into the Whispering Woods. It is a Tier 1 zone, currently under 'Moderate Contamination.' Our objective is a fallen supply pylon. We recover the core, we come back. If you encounter a Wraith, you do not engage. you run. Am I clear?"
"Clear, Captain," the squad replied in unison, though Renji's voice was a beat behind.
The transition through the Great Gate was a sensory trauma. As the massive slabs of Adamantine ground open, the "Static" hit Renji like a physical wall. Beyond the barrier of Newhaven, the world felt unfinished. The trees in the Whispering Woods were not made of wood and leaf; they were pillars of calcified Aether, their branches crystalline and translucent, vibrating with a low-frequency hum that set Renji's brand into a frantic, rhythmic pulse.
"Stay within my aura," Kaelen commanded, tapping his staff on the ground. A faint, dome-shaped shimmer of blue energy expanded, encompassing the five of them. "The air out here is 40% corruption. Without the filter, your nervous systems will start firing at random. You'll literally dance yourself to death."
They moved into the woods. The ground was covered in a fine, grey ash that muffled their footsteps. There were no birds, no insects—only the constant, haunting whisper of the trees, a sound like a thousand voices reciting a code in a language Renji couldn't understand.
"Miri, eyes up," Lyra whispered, her hand resting on Cinder-Song.
The girl vanished. She didn't just move fast; she stepped into a shadow and simply wasn't there anymore. A few seconds later, her voice echoed in their ears through the squad-link. "Contact. Three o'clock. Scavenger-Hounds. Level 5. They've caught the Salaryman's scent."
"Sato, front and center," Lyra ordered. "This is your hunt. Use the blade I gave you. Do not use the Cipher unless I tell you. If you rely on the 'Nuke' for every dog that barks, you'll be burnt out by noon."
Renji drew the standard-issue Vanguard shortsword. It felt heavy, cold, and dead in his hand.
Three shapes emerged from the crystalline undergrowth. They were the size of wolves, but their skin was a patchwork of translucent muscle and exposed bone, glowing with a sickly yellow light. Their eyes were vacant, leaking a black, oily fluid.
The first hound lunged.
Renji swung, his movements clumsy. The blade caught the creature in the ribs, but the metal barely dented the calcified hide. The hound snarled, its breath smelling of rot, and snapped its jaws inches from Renji's throat.
"Focus, Sato!" Kaelen yelled from the back, his staff glowing. "Stop trying to hit it with the metal! The metal is just the handle for the Aether! Breathe into the sword!"
Renji remembered the feeling from the lift—the sensation of drinking the light. He closed his eyes for a fraction of a second, reaching for the silver star in his palm. He didn't let the fire explode; he channeled it, imagining a thread of violet silk running from his palm, through the hilt, and along the edge of the blade.
The sword hummed. The rust on the edges flaked away, revealing a shimmering, violet-hued edge that vibrated so fast it blurred.
Renji stepped into the next hound's reach. This time, he didn't swing wild. He pivoted, using the momentum of his body, and executed a clean horizontal cut.
The blade passed through the Scavenger-Hound like a hot wire through wax. The creature didn't even have time to yelp before it dissolved into a pile of yellow ash and spent mana.
[ LEVEL UP: RENJI SATO - LEVEL 3 ] [ AGILITY +2 | AETHER CHANNELING +4 ]
"Better," Lyra said, her own blades remaining sheathed. "Two more."
Renji felt a strange surge of adrenaline. It wasn't the fear he had felt in the pits; it was a cold, analytical clarity. He saw the world in lines of force. He saw the yellow "Core" pulsing in the chests of the remaining hounds.
He moved. He wasn't a master swordsman yet, but he was no longer an insurance adjuster. He was a variable.
He dispatched the second hound with a thrust to the heart-core and the third with a vertical cleave that split the beast from head to tail. As the last of the ash settled, Renji stood in the grey woods, his chest heaving, his sword still glowing with a faint violet light.
"Not bad, Rookie," Miri said, reappearing from the shadow of a crystalline oak. She was holding a small, glowing shard she had carved from one of the corpses. "But don't get cocky. The Hounds are just the maggots. The things that eat the Hounds are the ones you need to worry about."
Suddenly, the ground groaned. The crystalline trees began to vibrate violently, their whispers turning into a high-pitched shriek.
"Kaelen! Status!" Lyra shouted.
Kaelen's visor was flashing red. "Seismic Aetheric shift! The pylon core isn't just fallen—it's breached. We have a Rift opening, Captain. And it's not Tier 1. Something is coming through that has a 'Crown' signature."
Lyra's face went pale. "A Crown? In a Tier 1 zone? That's impossible. The Architects—"
"The Architects aren't following the manual today!" Kaelen screamed as the ground beneath them began to tear open, revealing a void of swirling black fire.
A massive, armored hand, thirty feet wide and made of blackened Wolfsteel, gripped the edge of the rift.
"Sato, get back!" Lyra yelled, drawing both her blades. "Squad! Defensive Formation Delta! We have a Grave-Titan on the doorstep!"
Renji looked at the massive hand, then at his own glowing palm. He realized then that the "Whispering Woods" were about to become a graveyard. And Year One was about to get very, very loud.