The morning sun bled across the crags of Deadroot Ridge, casting flickering shadows through the mist-choked cliffs. It was a land that seemed carved from ash and fire, the rocks cracked and scorched from some long-forgotten disaster. No birds sang. Even the wind moved cautiously.
Ash Lockwood stood on the ridge, cloaked in worn grey leathers, arms folded across his chest. His eyes, sharpened by training and tempered by war, scanned the winding trail below. He stood like a commander on foreign soil—alert, calculating, and cold.
Below, faint movement disturbed the foliage.
"Three groups," Talin murmured beside him. "Two tracking from the ridge path, one sweeping from the northeast ravine. Five men in all."
Ash nodded. "They're from the Yin. Soul-trackers."
"These aren't just scouts," came the low, curling voice in his mind. "They are bred for this—marked by low flame to mask their presence. Most would miss them entirely. But I smell the smoke of their killing hands."
The crimson serpent coiled within his consciousness was ancient, its disdain palpable.
"They think you a wounded dog to corner. Fools."
Ash allowed himself a small smile.
"Let them hunt. We'll show them what prey means."
Behind them, the Crimson Fang unit worked with quiet precision. Mira and Veyra were arranging smoke-tipped thistle grenades near a narrowing choke point. Reyna, barely more than a feral child, but deadly with terrain traps, was stringing reinforced wire between the trees. Rook and Talin positioned deadfalls, pressure triggers, and pit covers disguised with local foliage.
This place—the winding maw of Deadroot—would be a grave.
Ash donned a traveler's cloak, leaving footprints heavy and slow. He moved along a path that skirted the choke point, his flame aura subdued to mimic a weak cultivator.
Two trackers from the northeast ravine latched onto the trail.
Reyna's signal came two hours later—a mimic birdcall that dipped slightly at the end. Ash veered sharply and vanished into a thicket, melting into a false crevice in the canyon wall. Talin waited with steel-plated gloves, already braced to strike.
The two trackers stepped into the trap path. Reyna triggered the deadfall remotely. A burst of loose rubble dropped from above, scattering their focus.
Ash struck first.
His flame pulse snapped from his palm in a controlled burst, like a short-range firearm. The first man's face was scorched, helmet melting. He screamed and dropped.
The second managed a counterstrike, a dark lash of whip-aura trailing black mist. Talin ducked under it and delivered a crushing elbow to his ribs.
"They're not amateurs," Talin warned as the man gasped, twitching on the ground.
"But not prepared for coordinated ambush," Ash replied.
Farther up the ridge, Mira and Veyra led the second ambush. Smoke spheres dropped into the low brush and blinded the final two trackers. Veyra, wearing her rune-marked mask, slipped through the fog like a phantom. Mira charged with brute strength, her soul shield blazing in silver flame.
It was not a fight. It was an execution.
Only one tracker was captured alive.
Bound by Reyna's wire trap and gagged with flame-forged cloth, the prisoner writhed. Ash crouched in front of him, his gaze unreadable.
"Name. Rank. Command target."
The man spat.
Ash ignited his finger lightly—a whisper of Soul Flame—and pressed it to the man's thigh.
He screamed until blood filled his mouth.
Eventually, he broke.
"Luthan Yin," he gasped. "He's the one who sent us. He thinks you're just some survivor with stolen flame. He wants the mark back."
Ash's eyes narrowed.
"He's in the city?"
"He commands the east forge. Has control over two garrisons. City guard answers to him."
Ash stood. Mira ended the man's pain without a word.
"Assassinating a Yin steward in his stronghold? That is not revenge. It is war," the serpent hissed, amused. *"Have you decided to escalate the game already, Ash Lockwood?"
Ash gazed toward the city in the distance, smoke stacks rising like iron thorns.
"He escalated when he sent men to gut me in the forest. He just doesn't know what war looks like yet."
"Hmph. Do as you please. But understand this: true power paints targets. Once you strike, you will not sleep the same again."
Ash ordered the bodies hung upside down, symbols of defiance carved into their flesh with surgical precision. It was not just intimidation. It was a message to Luthan Yin.
Come and die.
Arlen looked troubled, but said nothing. He tended to Talin's arm, where a whip-aura had grazed.
Later that night, Ash stood over a smoldering campfire as the others rested.
He removed his shirt and stared at his chest.
The first Soul Mark—long dormant—pulsed faintly. Not pain. Not heat.
Recognition.
"Your soul is stirring," the serpent said, its voice softer than usual. *"You move as if your blood remembers command. The body was weak. But the soul within... it was a killer once. Wasn't it, Ash?"
Ash didn't answer.
But his fingers curled like they once held a rifle.
Ash addressed his team before dawn.
"We move tomorrow. Not just to hurt the Yin—to break them. Luthan dies. We infiltrate the city. Blend in. Watch his routes. Learn the rhythm of his palace. Then we cut the head."
No one argued. They were no longer recruits. They were becoming a unit.
Crimson Fang.
Built for war. Designed with Earth tactics. Forged by vengeance.
They spent the day in training. Mira taught Reyna how to deflect incoming aura blades using terrain shifts. Talin drilled Arlen in field medicine under live pressure. Veyra sparred blindfolded with Rook, their strikes barely audible but deadly.
Ash sharpened his blade. But more importantly, he studied maps. Smuggler routes. Sewer tunnels. Trade routes.
"Luthan Yin lives in a mansion above the eastern forge. Guarded, warded, and patrolled by spirit sentries," the serpent whispered.
*"I need more than entry points," Ash replied. "I need exit vectors, blind spots, and a way to mask flame resonance."
"You'll need a forge crystal. Rare. Illegal. But you have options. The black-market alchemist in Ember Alley owes a favor to someone dead. You can leverage that."
That night, Ash stood at the canyon's edge, staring at the distant city.
He thought of Feng Yao—the boy whose body now carried the soul of a soldier.
He thought of Earth. Of his squad. Of betrayal and death.
And he thought of fire.
"The Yin want war," he whispered.
"Let's give them one that burns their legacy to ash."