The next day passed in pieces.
He stuck close to the temple. Slipping up again wasn't an option.
Legs dragged. Lips cracked. The emptiness inside twisted tighter with every step, hollow and clawing.
Starvation made everything louder — the crunch of leaves underfoot, the echo of his own pulse. He wasn't made for this. Not yet. Maybe never.
The flame trick had sealed the wound from yesterday — cauterized it shut like meat under a brand. But it wasn't a cure. Magic didn't feed cells or knit muscle. It only bought time. And time wasn't on his side.
So, adaptation became survival.
Not for pride. Not even to win.
Just to learn. To survive another day.
He moved low through the undergrowth, slower now. Eyes scanning. Ears open. He'd been sloppy before — too confident, too desperate to control the rules. But this place didn't care about confidence.
Here, the wild dictated. He just tried not to get culled.
A rustle.
There — a shape moving through the clearing. He crouched, breath stilling.
Whatever it was, it wasn't built right.
Spine curved wrong. Limbs too heavy. Like a jaguar someone had tried to reassemble without instructions. Bulbs of fungus swelled across its back, pulsing red, slick with some kind of sap. Its face — if it could be called that — was a mess of closed buds, blind and wet.
No eyes. No snout. No grace.
Just hunger stitched into flesh.
He watched it lumber through the weeds, tongue dangling from its jaw like something half-melted. It didn't belong here. Then again, neither did he.
Still — it bled.
And that was enough.
He tossed bark to its left — a sharp crack against the brush.
No reaction. No turn of the head.
Instead, petals flared open at the base of its neck. Gills. Scent-tracking.
He slid behind a moss-covered boulder. Waited. Let his heartbeat steady. Counted to three.
Then dropped light.
Not a blinding flash — just a sudden pulse, sharp and fast. It hissed like nerves snapping.
The creature shrieked. A wet, high keen. It thrashed, pawing at its own face.
He leapt.
Landed on its back with a grunt, weight driving both of them into the dirt. The shard of mirror — cloth-wrapped, barely sharpened — punched into its neck. It bucked. Screamed again. He stabbed higher, into one of the sacs. Amber fluid burst across his chest, hot and reeking.
It crumpled under him after another minute, twitching as its limbs spasmed in final protest.
He rolled off, panting, arms shaking.
The air stank of rot and nectar and blood.
He crouched beside the corpse, wiping ichor from his fingers with the back of a sleeve that no longer resembled anything human. The hide along the belly was intact — thick, soft, untainted by fungus.
Useful.
He peeled it away in strips, wrapping his shins and forearms. The first layers of armor. The beginning of gear.
He'd mocked this kind of survival training back home — "as if monsters would wait while you tie vines around your legs." But now? Every second mattered.
Every scrap had value.
Even the dead had something to give.
He snapped a fang from the beast's jaw. Sharpened a branch. Fashioned a spear. Basic. Ugly. Still — better than bare hands.
As he stood to leave, something shifted.
Not sound. Not movement.
A feeling.
He turned back.
One of the sacs was swollen — too swollen — and vibrating faintly.
He stepped closer, teeth clenched. Slid the spear into the bulb.
A wet hiss.
Then — a drop. A soft thud in the dirt.
His breath caught.
A shard.
Dark. Glassy. Unnatural.
He picked it up carefully.
It wasn't crystal. Not exactly. Not bone, either.
A resonance fragment.
The kind they were warned about in training. "Unstable. Dangerous. Store it, tag it, report it." Not meant for direct use. Not unless you were desperate.
Or different.
He didn't hesitate.
The moment skin met shard, pain screamed up his arm like static on raw nerves.
He held on.
Willed the light awake — not with words. With purpose.
It surged.
The mark on his chest flared white, the resonance crackling like fire drawn through wire. The shard twitched in his palm. Then—
Crack.
The shell split. Like bark peeled back from a wound.
Inside — gold.
A flicker of resonance, pure and pulsing.
His light took it.
The rush was instant. Blinding. Not heat — power. Real and whole. His muscles stopped trembling. The haze behind his eyes lifted. The weakness that had dragged behind his ribs began to burn away.
He fell to one knee.
Not in pain. Just—
Overwhelmed.
Then he stood.
Breathing slower. Deeper. The world quieter somehow. Clearer.
He turned to the corpse.
No thanks. No prayer.
Just one dry mutter, sharp and bitter-edged:
"Appreciate the donation."
His voice sounded strange in the stillness. Like it belonged to someone else.
Still — a grin curled at the edges of his mouth.
There were more out there.
And if they bled, he could learn.
If they dropped fragments, he could grow.
Ezra didn't stop with one.
The next kill came easier. And the one after that.
He learned fast.
The bloomborn beasts were scattered — lurking in hollow trunks, nestled under vines that twitched when he passed. Some slept. Others stalked. None of them spoke. None of them felt alive in the way real animals did.
But they bled.
And their blood came with gifts.
Ezra didn't let himself think too hard about that.
Every fight was a lesson. In movement. In timing. In what parts tore easiest.
He learned which tendons to slice. Which blooms shrieked when lit with resonance. Which sacs held usable skin and which exploded into clouds of spores that burned the eyes.
The kills gave him armor. Tools. And fragments.
He kept track without realizing it. How many he'd taken. How much stronger his light pulsed after each absorption.
The hunger came next.
Not for food. Not anymore. He still needed it, sure — but the ache had dulled.
It was replaced by something cleaner. Sharper.
The need to hunt.
To burn.
To grow.
He mapped the perimeter of the ruins by day, clearing as he went.
By the fifth day, the corpses had stopped appearing. He found tracks. Crushed foliage. But no monsters.
No resistance.
Ezra stood in the middle of a rotting grove that stank of old blood and burst ichor sacs, fingers twitching.
Nothing came.
He turned a slow circle.
The quiet felt wrong. Too still. Too safe.
The temple loomed behind him, vines curling up the broken archways. Once, it had been a place of fear. Now it felt… small.
Conquered.
Ezra flexed his hand, light crackling faint at his fingertips.
He didn't feel stronger in the way his instructors had described. This wasn't balanced growth. This wasn't training.
This was consumption.
And the lack of something to burn made his teeth itch.
He clicked his tongue. Looked skyward.
The moon wasn't visible. Just a dull, red glow behind the clouds.
He turned and walked back toward the temple, muttering under his breath.
"Great. All that, and now I'm bored."
His voice echoed off stone and ruin.
No answer.
The air shifted.
Not wind — something else. Like the trees had leaned in. Like the forest had exhaled.
Ezra had just finished skinning another creature — some vine-draped quadruped with too many eyes and a skull like pressed bone — when he noticed it. The silence. The kind that didn't come from peace. The kind that meant something else was listening.
He froze.
No birds. No insects. Just the faint twitch of leaves that weren't moving.
Then—
Whispers.
Low. Directionless. Not in a language he knew. Not in any language at all.
He stood slowly, hand closing around his makeshift spear. His skin prickled.
Something was watching him. Not a riftspawn — those were beasts, instinct and decay. This was different. Intentional. Focused.
He backed toward the edge of the ruined archway. Every vine now looked like it could strike. The moss seemed to crawl.
Then it stepped out.
Tall. Wrong.
Its body was the shape of a man, but stretched — elongated like someone had yanked it at both ends. Its skin was slick, like glass coated in blood. Its head tilted too far, neck bending without sound. And its eyes—
Ezra didn't see eyes.
He saw mirrors.
Cracked, dull, set into the sockets like silver rot. They faced him and reflected nothing.
The thing raised a hand. Not in threat. Just a gesture. Greeting?
The mirrors flickered.
And in them — for just a second — Ezra saw himself. But not here. Not standing. Not armed. A version of himself curled in the fetal position, hands bleeding, mouth sewn shut.
He blinked. The image vanished.
The creature didn't move.
Ezra's hand clenched tighter around his spear.
He didn't charge. Didn't flare his light. Didn't even breathe too hard.
Instead, he took a step back. Then another.
The creature didn't follow. It just watched. Tilted its head. Then, slowly, almost mockingly, it raised one long finger and touched the center of its chest.
The same place Ezra's mark burned beneath his ribs.
And then it whispered:
"She sees you."
Its voice didn't pass through air. It landed in his skull. Like a thought he didn't have permission to think.
Ezra turned and ran.
He didn't look back. He didn't want to know if it was following. The forest warped around him — roots in the wrong places, paths leading nowhere. He stumbled once, cracked his shin, caught himself on a stone.
Blood welled under his palm.
The whisper didn't return.
But the message stayed.
He wasn't alone anymore.
That should've been good news — some sign that he wasn't the only one dragged into this nightmare. But it wasn't.
The thing wasn't a monster. Not exactly. It watched him. It knew him. There was a difference. Worse than claws or teeth.
Ezra sat on a chunk of collapsed stone, forcing his breath to even out. He unwrapped his bandage and pressed pressure on the fresh cut. Clean. Shallow. Still—stupid mistake.
He'd gotten comfortable.
Too comfortable.
The temple felt like a base. The territory, like his own.
But it wasn't. Not really. This world didn't care how many beasts he'd killed or what makeshift weapons he'd carved. It could change — faster than he could.
And now it had.
His thoughts flicked back to the creature's voice. That message.
"She sees you."
Who was she?
Another monster?
A watcher?
A trialmaster?
A Primordial?
The name tugged at him. Seraphine. They'd said it once, back in training — one of the old, forbidden names. Not a god. Not a spirit. Something older. Unmapped.
Lust, someone had said.
But not the way humans meant it.
The craving of flesh and bone, yes — but also memory. Will. Autonomy.
Desire that dissolved.
He'd brushed it off then. The way most students did.
Now?
He looked down at the blood smeared across his palm.
Now he wasn't so sure.
He had to move. Had to adapt again.
The territory wasn't safe anymore.
Which meant one thing:
He needed others.
He hated the idea of relying on anyone — but this wasn't about trust. This was about math. Survival ratios. Data.
The more people, the more eyes. The more experience, the better the odds.
If anyone else had survived, they'd be somewhere nearby. Other ruins. Other Trial zones. He'd clear this area already — hunted it clean.
And the thing that spoke to him — that knew his mark — it wouldn't stay still for long.
He needed to find others before it did.
Ezra stood.
Checked his supplies. Reinforced his wraps. Re-sheathed the mirror shard he'd cleaned in the creek.
Then he looked out at the tree line.
Time to move.
Ezra moved.
At first, it was aimless. No map. No real plan. Just forward. Away from the temple. Away from the voice that knew him.
He rationed what little he had — strips of monster hide for water collection, fungal stalks that didn't burn his throat when boiled. Not exactly gourmet, but they kept him upright. His light resonance helped — just enough to cauterize wounds and purify small sips from foul streams. Not enough to make him safe.
Nothing here was safe.
The forest changed the farther he walked. What had once been jungle turned… wrong.
The trees grew wider. Their bark slick with mucus. Some breathed. Others bled sap that shimmered like oil. At one point, he passed a nest — not of birds, but something else. Bone lattices. Threads of skin. Inside, something twitched. Ezra didn't stop.
He saw fewer animals.
More statues.
Sunken figures half-consumed by roots and vines, faces twisted into expressions he couldn't read. Some covered their eyes. Others pointed toward the sky.
He didn't look up.
The sun didn't move properly. Sometimes it blinked. Other times, it stuttered across the sky like it had forgotten where it was supposed to be.
Time was breaking down.
So Ezra kept a journal. Scratched into bark, notched into his walking staff. He tracked meals. Hours of sleep. Monster sightings. His own kills.
He scouted caves, hollow trees, collapsed temples. Some he passed. Some he claimed for the night. None he trusted.
One night, the wind whispered in a voice that wasn't wind.
Another, he found a pile of clothing. Still warm. No body.
He didn't ask questions anymore. He just marked it. Logged the direction. Moved on.
By day six — or what he thought was day six — he noticed something new.
Marks.
Not his own. Not from the beasts either.
Footprints.
Half-faded. Some booted. Some barefoot.
Human.
He stopped. Knees stiff. Breath held.
They were real.
Others were here.
Not monsters. Not whispers. People.
It changed everything.
Ezra crouched beside the tracks, fingers ghosting over the impressions. He couldn't tell how fresh. Could've been hours. Could've been minutes. But he knew one thing:
They weren't alone anymore.
And the forest didn't like it.
That night, the trees groaned louder. Something circled his camp. Never showed itself. Just pressed in — a weight against the air. Watching.
He didn't sleep.
Tomorrow, he'd follow the trail.
But for now, he waited.
Blade close. Light ready.
Still breathing.
Still alone.
But maybe not for much longer.