The Anomaly's Path

Fuck! I knew something wrong would happen.

”Alice, you crazy bitch! Stop pulling more of them toward us!” I yelled, swinging Tempest in a wide, flat arc.

The blunt side of my blade slammed hard into a charging dwarf candidate’s chest.

The impact jarred my shoulders, but the force sent him flying backward into a crumbling stone archway. He slumped into the dirt, his eyes flickering with that sick purple glow before he went completely unconscious.

”Oh, come on, boss! I’m just giving you more exercise!” Alice shouted back. She laughed wildly, her great sword flashing as she blinked through the fog, appearing behind a group of three turned candidates and cleanly sweeping their legs out from under them.

We were sprinting through the outer ring of the eastern ruins, and everything was a chaotic, loud mess. Sweat was dripping down my neck, and my chest was heaving.

Two straight hours, I thought, gritting my teeth as I blocked a heavy axe strike from a brainwashed elf. We’ve been running and fighting for two straight hours.

No matter how many we put to sleep, more just kept pouring out from the thick purple fog. It was completely annoying.

We had left the camp behind hours ago.

After I finished explaining the plan — the map, the routes, the Statue of Unforgotten Sorrow — we had packed up and moved out. Caster had the eastern path marked on his radar. Julia had her Spatial Pressure stretched thin, feeling for ambushes.

We’re in the outer ring now, I thought, ducking under another swing. The middle ring is ahead. That’s where the real wall is.

Caster had shown us the data back at camp. Thousands of brainwashed candidates were packed into the middle ring, forming a shield around the inner sanctum. The statue was using them like soldiers.

...And we had to cut through them to reach the temple.

The worst part?

We hadn’t found Arthur or any other sane survivors in the past hours. Every corner we turned just had more purple-eyed puppets or rotting walls.

”Leo! More on the left flank!” Riven shouted, his daggers flashing as he pushed back a pair of armored candidates. He wasn’t killing them either, but his face was twisted with frustration.

”Caster, how much further?!” I yelled over the noise of the battle.

”The.... mana density is too high! My scanner is completely glitching!” Caster panicked, frantically tapping the glowing device on his wrist while running behind Lyssaria. ”But Julia’s reading was correct! The core density is straight through this street!”

”Amelia, keep your water barrier tight!” I ordered.

Amelia nodded, her staff glowing with a soft blue light. A thin layer of water rippled around us, catching stray arrows and deflecting them and it kept the worst of the purple mist from choking our lungs.

Julia clung close to her side, her face pale but her eyes locked onto the path ahead.

”We need to break through this alley!” Cordelia called out, her rapier flashing as she parried a strike from a turned candidate. She just moved fast, her blade precise and quick. ”It’s a dead end if we stay here!”

”Then we push!” I roared, gripping Tempest with both hands. If we don’t find Arthur’s bright plot-armor light soon, we’re going to drown in this crowd.

We crouched low inside the damp, hollow shell of a collapsed stone watchtower, our backs pressed hard against the freezing walls.

Outside, the thick purple fog swirled like a heavy soup, violently scraping against Amelia’s water barrier. The barrier was translucent, humming with a soft, warm radiance that barely kept the creeping mist from choking our lungs.

”Alice, get your head down before I chop it off,” I hissed, grabbing her by the collar of her shirt and yanking her down just as she tried to peer through a wide crack in the stone. ”Do you want that stone bastard to catch your mana signature?”

”I was just looking, boss!” Alice huffed, though she didn’t laugh this time. Her usual teasing smirk was completely gone. She sat back on her heels, her small hands tightly gripping the massive hilt of her greatsword.

It looked ridiculously heavy against her small frame, but she held it like it weighed nothing at all.

And why she even calling me boss?

We had been moving through the outer ring of the Cradle of Tears for hours, treating every ruined building and fallen wall as a temporary hiding spot.

Even though I had told them back at the camp that we had to rush the inner sanctum, running blindly down the middle of the street was a death sentence. The fog was thin here, but the pressure was already mounting.

Every few minutes, a low, agonizing hum would vibrate through the stone floor, making the bones in my skull ached.

In the corner of the dark watchtower, Caster was curled into a tight ball, his glasses constantly sliding down his nose as they reflected the erratic, bright blinking of his holographic display. His fingers were flying across the screen, sweat dripping onto the glowing glass.

”Leo, the scanner is completely going wild,” Caster whispered, his voice shaking so hard his teeth clicked.

”The mana density from the inner side of the ruins is completely suppressing the radar. But... I’m still picking up the signatures you told me to look for.”

”Are they puppets?” Riven asked, adjusting his grip on his twin daggers. He was bouncing slightly on his toes, his light armor rustling. As a pure dagger user, these narrow, broken spaces should have been his playground, but his face was completely pale.

”No,” Caster shook his head quickly, tapping the screen to zoom out. ”The signatures are chaotic, but they’re stable. Not corrupted. There is a massive, sprawling cluster moving from the northern road, right where the forest entrance connects to the ruins. It’s... it’s hundreds of people. And they’re fighting.”

I leaned over his shoulder, my eyes locking onto the blinking green dots on the map. The northern road. The main entrance. ”Arthur?” I muttered, my teeth clenching. ”That golden idiot actually did it and he even dragged a whole army with him.”

”And the other ones?” Cordelia asked, her fingers nervously tracing the elegant guard of her rapier. Her royal dress was already ruined, stained with black soot and dirt from the road, but she kept her posture straight.

”Two isolated signatures are cutting through the northern ridge, right above the alley path we planned to take,” Caster said, pointing to two bright dots moving at an unnaturally fast pace. ”They’re incredibly strong. They’re bypassing the puppet walls entirely.”

Elisabeth and Roan? I thought, the weight of the situation dropping on me. Of course the vampire princess and the elf prince would find a way to skip the line. But if they push too fast without a light to anchor them, their minds will snap.

”Julia, what do you feel?” I asked, turning my head toward the back of the tower.

Julia was sitting cross-legged next to Amelia, her small hands pressed flat against the cold stone tiles. Her pink hair hung loosely over her eyes, and her small body was trembling.

”The pulse... it’s getting faster, Lord Leo. It’s not a heartbeat. It feels like cold, heavy stone grinding together. The puppets in the middle ring are moving. They are forming a wall right across the plaza we need to cross.”

”Then we don’t have a choice,” I said, grabbing the hilt of Tempest. The black katana felt cold against my palm.

”We stick to the plan. We move through the eastern alley, cut across the side plaza, and look for a opening. If Arthur’s group draws enough attention on the main northern road, we can slip through the archway corridor into the inner sanctum before the statue realizes we’re there. Amelia, can you keep the barrier up while we run?”

Amelia nodded seriously, her grip tightening on her white mage staff. ”I can do it, Leo. But the whispers... they’re getting louder. They sound like people I used to know.”

”Ignore them,” I commanded, my voice dropping all humor. ”They aren’t real. Let’s move.”

We slipped out of the broken watchtower one by one, staying low against the rotting stone walls, heading straight into the suffocating purple dark of the eastern alleys.

_

Meanwhile, on the northern road of the ruins, the world had turned into a literal massacre.

Arthur Vale swung his sword in a brutal, desperate arc. A brilliant, blinding wave of golden mana exploded from his blade, cutting through the thick purple fog and sending a dozen charging students flying backward into the dirt.

”Hold the line!” Arthur shouted, his chest heaving violently beneath his torn, blood-stained shirt. ”Do not let them break the vanguard! Keep the light together!”

Behind him, a small army of over three hundred candidates moved in a tight, terrified circle. For the past forty-eight hours, Arthur had been running through the forest and the edges of the ruins, playing the hero, pulling every sane student he could find out of the purple mist.

It was a diverse, chaotic group.

Elves with bows, heavy-set dwarves clutching shields, beastkin with bared fangs, and humans from every lesser noble house, all huddling behind Arthur’s golden aura because it was the only thing keeping the darkness away.

They had even managed to kill a couple of lower-grade monsters on the way, which had given them a false sense of hope.

They had thought they were safe. They had thought Arthur would lead them to an early rescue.

But the moment they crossed the northern gate into the middle ring of the ruins, the Statue of Unforgotten Sorrow had closed the trap. The monster didn’t just command the puppets in front of them — its invisible mind waves were actively tearing into Arthur’s own ranks from within.

”Please! Brandon, stop! It’s me!” a human boy screamed from the left side of the formation.

Arthur snapped his head around, his golden eyes widening in horror.

A high-ranking dwarf student, someone who had fought bravely beside Arthur just hours ago, suddenly froze in the middle of the street. His eyes violently shuddered, the natural color of his pupils completely dying out, replaced by a dull, glowing violet hue.

Without a word, the dwarf raised his massive warhammer with his immense physical strength and brought it crashing down onto his own teammate’s shoulder. Bone snapped loudly. Blood sprayed across the gray stones.

”He’s turned! Brandon has turned!” someone screamed in pure panic.

”Don’t let him near the center! Kill him! No, wait, don’t kill him, he’s our friend!”

Desperation tore through the army.

The three hundred candidates, already physically exhausted and running completely on fear, began to break apart.

In the middle of the dark fog, friends were turning on friends in a matter of seconds. A beastkin girl wailed in agony, her sharp claws ripping through the chest of her own cousin, her face entirely blank, her violet eyes staring into nothingness as she became a puppet.

Nearby, Lara — the girl with braided brown hair who had been clinging to him since the start, stumbled and fell. A turned candidate raised a sword over her. Arthur moved, but he was too far.

Finn, the beastkin brother, lunged in front of her. He took the blade in his shoulder, roaring in pain, and clawed the attacker’s face. Cora grabbed Lara and dragged her behind a broken pillar.

”Finn!” Cora screamed.

”I’m fine!” Finn growled, pulling the sword out of his shoulder and throwing it away. Blood poured down his arm, but he kept fighting.

Sam, the quiet human with the nervous twitch, got tackled by a group of three puppets. Iris threw a shield over him, but the purple fog was pressing so hard that her magic flickered. She started crying, her shields collapsing one by one.

Arthur’s hands trembled so hard he almost dropped his sword. He rushed forward, using the flat of his blade to knock out a corrupted elf who was trying to pierce a classmate with a spear.

I can’t stop it, Arthur thought, a cold, suffocating despair wrapping around his heart. I gathered them to protect them... and I’m just watching them slaughter each other. My light isn’t enough.

His golden aura, the very anchor of the group, violently flickered. The warmth in the air began to die, and the purple fog surged forward, threatening to swallow them all.

”Arthur! Move your arms or you’re dead!” Nyra roared, bursting through the mist.

Her wolf ears were pinned flat against her silver hair, and her amber eyes were wild with raw survival instinct.

Utilizing her immense physical strength, she swung a heavy iron hammer with one hand, smashing the shield of an oncoming corrupted guardian, knocking them out with precise strikes to their heads and necks.

”They’re pouring down from the roofs! The whole middle ring is swarming!” Nyra yelled, her knuckles turning white as she pushed back three brainwashed students at once. ”If your light dies now, every single one of these people will turn!”

Arthur bit his lip until it burst, forcing his golden mana to flare up one more time, but his core felt like it was cracking. The air was thick with the scent of fresh blood, panic, and the silent, mocking weight of the statue sitting deep within the sanctum.

Suddenly, the stone wall of a three-story building right at the corner of the plaza approach completely exploded.

A massive shower of sparks and heavy debris rained down on the street. Through the rising dust, a sharp, flickering aura sliced through the air, hitting four corrupted candidates cleanly on their chests and knocking them unconscious instantly.

Arthur blinked through the haze, his golden eyes widening in utter shock.

A white-haired boy stepped out of the rubble, holding a katana. His face was covered in dust, and he had a completely annoyed expression on his face. He was aggressively cussing over his shoulder at his own group.

”I swear to god, Alice, if you swing that oversized piece of iron into my back, I will personally throw you to the monster!” the boy snapped, completely ignoring the massive battlefield for a second before turning his gaze toward the scene in front of him.

Arthur’s breath hitched in his throat. ”...Leo?”

Leo looked over at Arthur, then at the three hundred panicked candidates, his jaw tightening in pure irritation. ”Arthur...”

But before Arthur could even answer, a terrifying shift occurred.

The entire middle ring shook. The ground beneath their boots violently cracked, splitting wide open.

Thick, black liquid seeping from the center of the ruins rushed down the streets like a wave, wrapping around their ankles. The low hum in the air turned into a deafening scream that echoed inside their brains.

From the black pools at their feet, shadows began to rise — twisting into the shapes of the dead, the lost, the forgotten.

A guardian had awoken.

The real statue was still deeper in the temple. But this thing, this weeping, shadow-wreathed creature, was the last wall before the inner sanctum.

...And it was hungry.