Three days passed with no thefts.
But no answers, either.
Trust remained broken.
Denzel watched him more now. Reika watched him differently.
Chloe said nothing, but she shifted patrol assignments and gave Yuren fewer solo excursions—something he noticed immediately.
So when she sent him out with Mason and a new arrival—a C-rank with metal skin named Barrik—he knew it wasn't random.
It was a test.
The jungle was denser along the eastern slope.
Canopy heavy. Soil spongey with runoff. The kind of place where things didn't just hunt—they waited.
Barrik led the group, stomping confidently, his half-armored form cracking branches underfoot.
"I don't see what the big deal is," Barrik muttered. "Everyone acts like these beasts are invincible. I cracked one in half three days ago."
"Was it alone?" Yuren asked, watching the trail with Trace Sense quietly active.
"Yeah."
"Then it wasn't hunting."
Barrik laughed. "You're the paranoid one, right? The scout?"
"I'm the one who's still breathing," Yuren replied flatly.
They found the corpse in a narrow gully, half-submerged in muddy water. Something with feathers and a jaw full of fangs had been ripped open from neck to hip.
It wasn't a clean kill. It looked… angry.
Mason crouched beside it. "Thermals are weird. There's residual heat… like two different sources. Not human. But not like the big ones, either."
Yuren went still.
Two?
Trace Sense glowed faintly—he turned his head—
Too late.
From the treetops, something slammed down.
A four-limbed, catlike predator, twice the size of a lion, hit Barrik full-force. The C-rank's armor held—but only for a second.
The creature's claws tore under the plating at the joints.
Barrik screamed.
Yuren didn't think.
He moved.
Titan Grip surged through his limbs as he shouldered the creature off Barrik—throwing it sideways with raw, brute force. Not graceful. Not strategic.
But enough.
It hit the dirt, snarled, twisted—
And Yuren raised his hand.
Glassshot.
He fired three unstable shards. Two missed. The third sank into the creature's eye.
It shrieked.
Thrashed.
Yuren rushed in again, grabbed a thick branch, and drove it into the creature's throat as it writhed.
It stopped moving.
Mason stared, wide-eyed. "What the hell was that? That wasn't Trace Sense."
Yuren exhaled, slow. "It's an… offshoot. Sensory conversion. I've been practicing compression."
Barrik groaned, bleeding from the arm but alive. "Offshoot, my ass… that was a B-rank strike if I've ever seen one."
"Think what you want," Yuren said. "You want to explain to Denzel why you let a D-rank save your ass?"
Barrik went quiet.
Mason didn't push it.
But the way he looked at Yuren now?
Different.
That night, Yuren sat with the stone glyph again.
Turned it over in his hand.
Looked at the three dots beneath the EX sigil.
Three powers, maybe? Three tiers of replication?
Or something else?
He pressed a finger to the stone.
Something moved under the surface.
Just for a second.
A flicker of heat. Or energy. A reaction?
He froze.
But nothing happened.
Still… it had never done that before.
Someone else had touched this stone.
And whoever they were…
They left something behind.
Yuren kept the stone buried beneath his mat during the day.
No one saw him with it. He checked it only at night, when the camp quieted, when even Reika had gone to sleep.
But now?
Now it was warm.
Not hot. Not burning.
Just… warm.
Like body heat from something that hadn't moved in a very long time.
He'd left it untouched since the encounter with the creature. Buried it deeper than usual. No risk.
But when he returned that night—alone, after helping Chloe reroute the perimeter stakes—he'd found it waiting.
The glyph on its surface shimmered, faintly.
The lines looked the same.
But the three dots were gone.
In their place were three indentations. Sunken, smooth, like sockets waiting to be filled.
He didn't sleep.
He sat cross-legged beside the stone and studied it under the moonlight.
When he focused his powers—Trace Sense, then Glassshot—the stone pulsed faintly, responding to both.
Not glowing. Not lighting up.
But it felt… aware.
Each time he summoned a power, the indentations darkened, filled with a soft vibration deep inside his chest.
It's reacting to abilities.
But not like a storage device.
Not like replication.
It was measuring.
Tallying.
And after both powers flared through him and faded?
One of the three sockets began to fill with light.
He jerked his hand away from the stone.
The light dimmed instantly.
It wasn't just tracking powers—it was feeding on use.
Or worse…
Waiting for all three.
The next morning, Chloe caught up to him before patrol.
"You're on rotation with Reika today," she said. "South loop."
"Anything specific?"
She nodded. "Mason said the thermal patterns shifted last night. Fluctuations near the ridge. Like something heated the ground for a few seconds and vanished."
Yuren's throat tightened slightly. He kept his voice flat.
"Could be volcanic veins. This place doesn't follow tectonics."
Chloe didn't smile. "Or it's one of us."
He said nothing.
She stepped closer.
"You'd tell me if someone was hiding something dangerous, right?"
He looked her in the eye.
"Of course."
She didn't blink. Didn't smile.
Then walked away.
By midday, he was walking beside Reika through the southern treeline, where ferns grew the size of cars and sunlight broke through in jagged shafts.
"You okay?" she asked.
He nodded. "Just tired."
"You look like you haven't slept."
"Probably because I haven't."
She didn't press.
But the way she glanced at his hands—at the knuckles, the slight scars forming from repeated grip training—told him she hadn't stopped watching.
"You ever get that feeling?" she asked suddenly. "Like we're not the first."
He tensed. "What do you mean?"
She pointed to a vine-covered ridge. "That slope back there? Flat base, stone layering under the moss. That's not natural. Someone built that."
He said nothing.
Reika smiled faintly. "You've found places like that, haven't you?"
He didn't answer.
Not directly.
Instead, he said, "There are more ruins in this world than predators."
"That's what scares me."
"Why?"
"Because ruins mean someone lived here. And there aren't any bones."
That night, he returned to the stone.
The first socket was still lit.
The second—barely stirring.
He stared at it for a long time.
Then placed his palm on the surface.
The stone shifted.
Mechanically. Like it had been waiting.
The center glyph rotated once, clicking into place.
And from within the slab, a series of tightly carved inscriptions began to rise. Thin. Precise. Not language. Not at first.
Then a single line shaped itself across the top:
ONE OF THREE.
STIRRED BUT UNCHOSEN.
THE DOOR REMAINS.
Yuren's hand went cold.
Three nights later, the glyph slab pulsed again.
Not faint this time.
Rhythmic.
Yuren could feel it even without touching it—through the dirt, through the soles of his boots. Like a second heartbeat beneath his own.
The phrase still burned on the top ridge:
THE DOOR REMAINS.
He didn't know what that meant exactly.
But he knew where it pointed.
He left camp two hours before dawn.
No words. No explanation.
Only silence.
The jungle was heavy with mist. The ridge he'd first climbed to find the buried structure was slick from a night rain, and the deeper gully had begun to erode in places—exposing more of the black stone beneath the earth.
This time, the entryway was open wider.
The roots that once blocked it had shriveled, as if burned back from within.
Yuren stepped inside.
The chamber hadn't changed.
But something within it had.
The pedestal was glowing faintly now. Three lines pulsed across the surface—one active, two dim.
And at the back wall, a new panel had risen.
Three horizontal bands. Each one with a shallow depression.
Circular. Palm-sized.
Slots.
Keys?
He moved closer and raised the stone glyph.
It shook.
Just slightly. But real.
As if it knew it was home.
He placed it into the first depression.
Click.
The pedestal dimmed. The three bands flickered, waiting.
Yuren held his breath.
Nothing else happened.
But he understood.
This wasn't a weapon.
Not yet.
This was a lock.
And the stone he found?
Only one of three.
Behind him, a foot slipped.
Stone clattered.
Yuren spun, instincts blazing—
And found Reika standing halfway into the entrance.
Eyes wide.
Breathing sharp.
She didn't speak.
Just stared at the slab in the wall, the glowing lines, the pedestal.
Then at him.
"You've been coming here alone."
He didn't respond.
"You didn't tell anyone."
Still nothing.
Reika stepped forward slowly. "You think it's a vault?"
"I don't know what it is."
"You're lying."
Yuren met her gaze.
Not hostile.
But hard.
"I never said I was honest."
She crossed the room, slow, deliberate.
"You've copied someone."
It wasn't a question.
Yuren didn't flinch. "What makes you say that?"
"You flinched during the raptor fight. But not when you killed it. The strike wasn't natural. It wasn't just strength. And now you're summoning glass shards when you think no one's looking."
He said nothing.
Her voice dropped lower. "You used my technique."
The silence stretched.
Then Yuren exhaled, slow.
"You can't tell anyone."
"I'm not going to," she said.
That made him blink.
She walked up beside him, stared at the stone in the wall.
"I don't care what your ability is. What I care about… is whether it works."
He frowned. "What do you mean?"
"I've had a theory since day two. About the powers. About the timing. The world doesn't just give us random abilities. It's responding. Trying to guide something."
She looked him in the eye.
"And if this place is a test?"
Yuren swallowed.
Reika smiled faintly.
"Then you're the one taking it."