The Anomaly's Path

Leaving the western plaza behind had been nothing but a frantic, bloody run through the ash. Ever since Professor Veyra slammed her massive water barrier shut behind us, locking herself in that open square with the nightmare to buy us time, we had done nothing but push forward.

I kept my eyes locked on the road ahead.

Our goal was clear: cross the outer roads, cut through the broken streets, and reach the central plaza where Sylvia and Elian were holding the main defense. Deep down, a small part of me held onto the foolish hope that Veyra would somehow break her own seal, survive the fall, and catch up to us from behind.

But hope didn’t clear the way...

On the way, we ran into several packs of Grade 3 and Grade 4 monsters. We didn’t stop to fight them properly, we killed whatever was right in front of us, pushed through, and kept running. But the constant fighting had drained us badly.

My core was running on empty, only pulling in a tiny amount of mana every few minutes. My bloodline helped me recover a little faster, but it wasn’t enough to keep up with the fighting. My black lightning sparked weakly along my veins, barely holding together.

Behind me, thirty-eight students dragged their feet through the dirt. There had been forty-two when we left the plaza.

Four had fallen behind when the monsters caught us in the narrow alleys. I hadn’t gone back for them. I couldn’t. If I slowed down to drag a screaming student with a broken leg, whatever was tracking us from behind would take the whole group.

Nobody argued with my call. Seris, Roan, Elisabeth, none of them said a word, because they knew just as well as I did that it was the right decision.

In a situation like this, sentimentality was a death sentence. You couldn’t save everyone, you could only save the ones capable of keeping up. I hated it, but I didn’t regret it. Still, the silence behind me felt heavier with every step we took.

I tried to keep my eyes fixed on the distant, flickering spire of the Central Plaza, forcing those dark thoughts to the back of my mind.

”Leo, stop.”

Roan’s rough voice cut through my thoughts. He stepped right in front of me, his hair matted with dust, dark circles under his tired eyes. He pointed the broken shaft of his spear back toward the line of students.

”Look at them.”

I stopped. The group collapsed behind us the moment we froze.

Everyone dropped to the ground like fallen trees. They were gasping for air, their lungs struggling to breathe in the thick haze. Students who had never seen anything worse than a training match were now shaking in pools of dried blood.

Nyra crouched on a pillar, her wolf ears flat against her head as she sniffed the air, her chest heaving. Amelia sat in the street, her hands stained with useless magic, staring blankly at her knees.

”They can’t keep going like this,” Roan said, his voice rough.

”I know you’re worried about what’s chasing us, but look at them! You’re moving fast because your body can handle it, but they’re not strong fighters. Most of them aren’t like you or me. If a fight breaks out right now, half of them will die because they can’t even stand. Give them five minutes to rest. Just five minutes.”

I looked at the group, and the truth hit me square in the chest.

Roan was right. I had been pushing a pace that only someone like me could keep up with, someone with an absurd bloodline, a core that still recover mana faster than normal, and a body that refused to quit even when it should.

But these people didn’t have that. They were running on pure fear and willpower, and both were about to run out.

I let out a long breath, ”...Alright, We’ll rest for five minutes. But don’t let your guard down.”

I didn’t stay standing. My legs were shaking too violently for that. I dragged myself toward the middle of the street and slid down against a broken stone pillar, sitting right alongside the exhausted students.

I took a slow, deep breath, trying to calm my pounding heart. Around me, students were huddled together in the dirt, their breathing rough and uneven. Some were crying quietly, others staring blankly at their bloody clothes.

I leaned my head back against the wall and turned my focus inward, trying to force my core to work. It was painfully slow. My bloodline was pulling back tiny bits of mana, barely enough to ease the burning in my empty channels.

As I sat there, wiping dirt from my face, I noticed something strange about the sky above us. On our way here, the purple mist had been so thick you could barely see your own hand in front of your face.

Why is the fog thinning out here?

I looked up toward the sky above the central sector. High above the broken rooftops, faint lines of power were weaving together across the sky, forming a massive grid overhead. Someone had actually managed to activate the main shelter barrier.

Relief washed over me, heavy and sudden.

If the shelter barrier was fully up, it meant two things. First, the system was still working, so the civilians and students in the central square had a safe place. Second, that huge dome would cut off the direct connection to the Gate outside the city.

That meant the endless flow of purple mist pouring into the streets was finally being stopped. Without the Gate constantly producing more monsters and mist, no new beasts could appear inside the city. All we had to deal with now were the ones already trapped in here with us.

It was a double-edged sword, though. On one hand, the barrier protected the city from an endless wave of monsters. On the other hand, cutting off the Gate’s control meant the remaining beasts inside would go completely wild.

A monster cut off from its leader was just a violent, unpredictable beast... and sometimes, a scared beast trapped in a cage was far more dangerous. Still, it was the best news we’d had all night. If we could just cross this last stretch and get inside the central plaza, we would be safe.

I was deep in those thoughts, calculating how much time we had left, when a sudden, cold chill ran straight down my spine.

The air pressure dropped.

It didn’t just feel cold, the weight of it slammed down on us like a heavy block. The ground beneath our feet groaned, small cracks spreading through the ground. The thick purple mist thirty yards ahead was violently pushed aside, torn apart by a towering, horrifying shape.

Fourteen feet tall. Grey skin stretched over exposed, blackened ribs. Legs ending in jagged stumps, dragging across the ground with a grinding crunch. And in the center of its skull, a gaping hole packed with hundreds of pale, wriggling human fingers instead of teeth.

My breath caught in my throat. My stomach dropped into a cold, bottomless void.

Veyra was dead...

Seeing that horror standing right here meant her water barriers were gone, her life was over, and a Grandmaster Low had failed to stop it. Everything she died to buy us, every second, every step of distance, had just been erased. It had hunted us down anyway.

Behind me, the silence was absolute. Nobody screamed. Nobody moved. Everyone recognized it instantly, their bodies freezing in pure terror as the memory of what that finger-filled mouth did to their friends hit them all at once.

”Get up!” I screamed, the sound tearing through my dry throat. ”Get up right now!”

Panic exploded instantly. Students scrambled backward, falling over each other, dragging their bruised bodies along the ground as the creature’s heavy presence washed over the street.

The finger-filled hole in the monster’s face twitched. Then, the fingers curled outward like a sick flower. A sound blasted out of its skull, not a roar, but a high, layered scream of human voices. It was the stolen cries of everyone it had eaten:

Five students dropped to their knees, clutching their heads as blood burst from their ears and noses. Two of them started shaking violently on the ground, their eyes rolling back as the creature’s scream shattered their exhausted minds.

I took the full hit.

My instincts warned me a split second before the attack hit, but my brain was already fried. The scream felt like a rusted spike being driven through my skull. I stumbled back three steps, my knees giving out as warm blood poured from both nostrils, streaming over my lips.

My vision turned completely red.

”Don’t listen to it!” Seris yelled, her voice straining as she forced a thin layer of pale Lunar energy over her head. ”Block your ears with mana!”

”Roan, take the students and move!” I called out, wiping the blood from my chin with my sleeve. ”Get them toward the plaza! Seris, with me!”

Roan hesitated, his tired eyes darting between the monster and the panicked group, but he knew the truth. We couldn’t run with thirty-eight half-dead kids. Veyra was dead. The barrier wasn’t going to save us if this thing caught us from behind.

We couldn’t outrun it, and we couldn’t kill it. Our only choice was to stand and fight... or die right here in the dirt.

I drew my sword, forcing my dry core to work. Black lightning sparked weakly along the steel like a dying flame, tearing at my exhausted channels.

”We don’t have a choice!” I yelled, my rough voice cutting through the panic as I planted my feet against the ground. ”We can’t outrun this thing! We have to buy seconds!”

Before anyone could take another breath, the Grade 7 monster lunged.

Despite its huge, twisted body, it moved with sickening speed, dragging its uneven legs and throwing its fourteen-foot bulk forward like a falling wall. Its massive grey arm, ending in six razor-sharp claws, swung straight toward the frozen, screaming students.

Move. MOVE!

My mind went completely blank, taken over by pure instinct.

Thin, weak black lightning burst from my boots. The sudden spike of energy tore open the half-healed wounds on my thighs, spraying blood across my ruined clothes, but I forced my body forward anyway.

I threw myself between the monster’s falling claw and the terrified screams behind me. I raised my sword with both hands, pouring every last drop of mana I could scrape out of my empty core into the edge of the blade.

Heaven’s Divide!

The air split with a high, tearing shriek as my blade met the monster’s arm.

The strike cut clean through two of its massive fingers, severing them in a spray of thick, black sludge. But my core was empty. There was no power left to back up the strike, no momentum, and no solid stance to brace against the force.

The sheer weight of the beast slammed into my chest like a heavy hammer.

Crack!

The sound of my ribs breaking echoed inside my own head.

I was thrown backward like a stone from a sling. I crashed through the frame of a shop, smashing through tables and rolling over shattered glass before slamming to a violent stop against the back wall.

”Leo!” Roan’s voice tore through the street, filled with a terror I had never heard from him before.

In the rubble, I lay flat on my back, staring up through a cloud of dust at the broken ceiling. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs refused to work, every desperate attempt to draw air felt like swallowing fire. Dark, bloody foam bubbled out of my mouth, spilling over my cheeks.

Fuck... get up... move your fingers... clench your hand...

My right arm was useless. My channels were screaming, raw, burned, and scraped from forcing black lightning through empty paths.

My bloodline was working. I could feel the slow trickle of energy being pulled in, turning into mana at a painfully slow rate. Normally, my core recovered about one percent every minute, and every time I survived a near-death beating like this, my channels grew stronger.

But I had pushed too hard.

The exhaustion, using Volt Step and Heaven’s Divide back-to-back on an empty core, had put my body into shock. The mana was coming, but my channels were too damaged to carry it. It was like trying to push water through cracked glass.

Through the broken doorway of the shop, I watched the nightmare unfold.

Elisabeth stepped up first, her violet eyes cold despite her shaking knees. She forced her Noctis Blood affinity to flare. Crimson blood mixed with dark, freezing energy surged from her palms, wrapping around the monster’s ankle.

When her blood touched the creature, the temperature dropped, frost creeping up its leg. But the beast didn’t even slow down. The sheer weight of it snapped her blood-bonds like thin string. With a lazy swing of its arm, it backhanded her across the street.

She hit the ground hard, her body bouncing twice before rolling to a stop.

Seris fought like a woman possessed. Her sword was a blur of silver light, thrusting again and again into the monster’s grey hide, but the strikes barely went skin-deep. The beast didn’t even flinch. Its leathery flesh tightened around the steel, trapping her blade.

The gaping hole in its skull opened wide. A blast of violet mist shot out point-blank. She didn’t even get to scream. Her pale Lunar power shattered into dust, and she dropped to her knees as dark blood poured from her eyes, nose, and ears.

”Damn it! Get away from her!” Roan shouted as he lunged from the side, his spear thrusting toward the creature’s eye. The monster reached out and caught the blade in its bare, finger-filled palm. The bone fingers snapped and grew back instantly.

With a lazy twist, it broke the spear shaft like a twig. The beast’s backhand caught Roan across the chest, throwing him into a wall. The stone cracked, and Roan hit the ground in a heap, spitting blood.

Amelia tried to step in, raising her hands to form a water shield over the fallen, but she couldn’t even make it work.

The weight of the creature’s power hit her like a punch to the head. Her water magic flickered and died before it could form, and the backlash drove her to her knees. She collapsed onto the ground, clutching her temples as blood dripped from her nose.

Nyra rushed forward next, her claws flashing in a desperate arc across the creature’s leg. The strike barely left white marks on its hide.

A heavy back-swing caught her mid-air, and throwing her thirty feet back. Bleeding badly from her ribs, she scrambled through the dust, her teeth bared and bloody as she tried to drag Seris behind a pile of rubble.

Behind them, the street was a graveyard. Five students lay completely still, their ears and eyes ruined by the blast. The rest were on their knees, crying, groaning, or clawing at their own heads as their minds fell apart.

None of us could hurt this thing. We were just waiting to die.

The brutal truth hit me through the fog of pain. It was a predator that fed on weakened minds, used fear against us, healed itself instantly, and was far stronger than any of us. A Grandmaster Low like Veyra had died fighting it. We were just exhausted fighters running on empty.

I dragged myself out of the rubble, my left arm hanging dead at my side. Every breath tasted like iron. The creature turned its eyeless skull toward the shop. It didn’t rush. It walked slowly, its uneven legs scraping against the ground with a wet, heavy crunch.

I forced my legs to stand, raising my sword with my right hand. The black lightning on the edge flickered once... twice... and died completely.

The grey hand shot out. It didn’t punch me. Its thick, rough fingers clamped directly over my face, squeezing my skull until my jaw popped and my vision turned red. It lifted me six feet off the ground by my head.

I hammered my right fist against its wrist, but it was like punching solid rock. The finger-mouth opened right in front of my face, the pale, bloody fingers wriggling inches from my eyes as stolen voices echoed directly inside my head:

”Leo... help us...”

”It hurts...”

”Why did you leave us?”

The pressure crushed my mind like a collapsing wall. My ears popped, hot blood pouring down my neck. With a brutal swing, the creature slammed me face-first into the ground. The world broke apart.

The impact rattled my brain, snapping my collarbone with a sickening crack. Sharp pain flared through my chest as my ribs gave way. Before I could even move, its huge grey foot came down hard on my back, pinning me flat into the dirt.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. Every desperate attempt to pull air into my chest only brought up dark, bloody foam that spilled out of my mouth, pooling cold against my cheek. My vision turned into a mess of red and black streaks.

Through the haze of blood filtering over my right eye, I watched the horror unfold in broken pieces. Students were screaming, scattering into the creeping mist like blind sheep.

Get up... damn it, get up...

I tried to command my fingers to close. I tried to force a single spark of black lightning into my legs. Nothing answered. My core was a dark, hollow pit, completely dry. My body was broken, pinned under thousands of pounds of dead weight, entirely at the mercy of the thing grinding my ribs into the dirt.

Is this really where it ends?

A terrible, hollow numbness crept up from the tips of my fingers, slowly drowning out the sharp, tearing agony in my chest.

I couldn’t feel my arms anymore. The ground against my face started to lose its feel, fading into a distant blank space. My heart beat once, a heavy, hollow thud against my broken ribs, and then stumbled, losing its rhythm.

Every breath was just wet iron pooling at the back of my throat. I tried to scrape my nails against the dirt, tried to force even a twitch out of my legs, but my body wouldn’t listen. Then, the weight on my back shifted.

The heavy grey foot lifted off me, leaving a cold, empty space in its place. Shadow fell over my head as the monster raised its leg high, aiming thousands of pounds of flesh and bone straight down at my neck.

I couldn’t even brace for it. The screams of the students, the sound of breaking stone, and the low hum of the fog all stretched out, warping into a slow, muffled echo, like listening to a storm from deep underwater.

My right eye twitched, trying to hold onto the grey shape looming over me. The world smeared into dark trails of red and ash. The edges of my vision collapsed inward, swallowing the ruined street, the fallen bodies, and the raised foot.

Fading...

The feeling of my own skin slipped away. The sound of the blow falling toward my skull dissolved before it could hit. Everything narrowed down to a single, fading spark of light behind my eyes... and then, even that spark went cold.