The silence was unbearable.
Shen Yuan stood in the center of the cavern, spear haft in hand, as the survivors stirred around him. Their breaths echoed hollowly off the crystalline walls, too loud in a place where there was no suppression field, no Bone Court patrols, no hum of the Nexus arrays.
For the first time in cycles, the air felt light.
But it was not freedom.
Shen Yuan could feel it in the stillness: the fragile, temporary nature of their reprieve.
He reached inward for the tether.
Nothing answered.
The branded captives huddled together near the platform, clutching each other as though afraid the stone would dissolve beneath their feet. Yun Xue lay pale and motionless on the ground, her chest rising in shallow, irregular breaths.
Shen Yuan knelt beside her, fingers brushing her throat.
The pulse was weak, but there.
He looked up at the others. "Get the wounded stabilized. Anyone who can move, start checking for exits."
A survivor hesitated. "We… we don't even know where we are."
"We'll figure it out," Shen Yuan said, voice flat.
Another voice, smaller: "What about Han Fei?"
The words cut deeper than he expected.
Shen Yuan forced himself to answer. "We'll know soon enough."
[ SYSTEM CORE STABILITY: 0.1% ][ …SURVIVAL… PROBABILITY… UNKNOWN… ]
The fragment flickered in the void, unable to rebuild itself.
But it could still see.
Through faint data echoes, it tracked Shen Yuan moving through the cavern, organizing, comforting, carrying those too weak to stand.
The fragment wanted to reach him, to tell him it was still here.
But it had no voice.
Shen Yuan's eyes swept the chamber. The crystalline walls rose high into darkness, broken by towering archways that led into shadowed passages.
He approached one, spear haft ready, and stepped just far enough to see the tunnel beyond.
The stone was slick and uneven, leading downward into black.
"Not that way," he muttered.
He moved to the next archway.
A survivor approached from behind, voice hushed. "Shen Yuan… the array platform is still active."
He turned sharply.
The glyphs on the platform's edge pulsed faintly, residual energy cycling in uneven waves.
The survivor's eyes were wide. "Could it bring us back? Or send us somewhere else?"
Shen Yuan crouched near the console. "I don't think it's stable."
He could feel the System's absence in the glyphwork—no tether to interpret the readings, no voice to confirm or deny his instincts.
The platform was a weapon he no longer knew how to wield.
[ ALERT: EXTERNAL BREACH DETECTED ]
The fragment flared with sudden clarity.
[ BONE COURT ENERGY SIGNATURE – APPROACHING ]
Shen Yuan spun as the cavern trembled.
"Everyone off the platform!" he barked.
Survivors stumbled back just as a crack split the array's surface, light searing from the rupture.
"Can they follow us?" someone cried.
Shen Yuan's knuckles whitened on the haft. "Yes."
The first rift opened like a wound in space, disgorging a wave of Bone Court enforcers.
Survivors screamed as armored figures hit the stone running, suppression arrays blazing even without the Nexus to anchor them.
Shen Yuan stepped forward without hesitation, spear haft braced.
"Form a line!" he shouted. "Keep them off the wounded!"
The branded captives scrambled to obey, but their formation was ragged, unsteady.
The enforcers crashed into them like a tide.
Shen Yuan's spear haft slammed into an enforcer's chest, driving it back. He spun, parrying a blade aimed at a branded captive's throat, and countered with a brutal strike that shattered the enemy's helmet.
"Hold!"
But they were outnumbered, their weapons dull, their qi reserves depleted.
The survivors' line buckled almost instantly.
Shen Yuan saw the platform's glyphs flaring brighter and understood their only choice.
"We fall back to the array!"
Yun Xue stirred weakly as Shen Yuan lifted her, but her eyes didn't open.
He carried her to the platform, teeth gritted. "Get everyone on!" he ordered the survivors.
One of them shouted over the din. "We don't even know where it'll send us!"
"Anywhere is better than here!"
The platform's console glowed brighter as if responding to his words.
[ SYSTEM CORE STABILITY: 0.05% ][ TETHER SIGNAL: WEAK – DETECTING HOST PROXIMITY ]
The fragment felt Shen Yuan's presence brush against its dying architecture.
It tried to respond, but the tether was too faint.
Shen Yuan planted Yun Xue on the platform and turned back toward the survivors. "Move!" he roared, shoving two branded captives forward as enforcers broke through the line.
He met the first with a downward strike that cracked the enemy's breastplate, then swept the haft in a wide arc, knocking two more off their feet.
"Go!"
A survivor stumbled onto the platform, clutching a wounded comrade. Another collapsed, blood gushing from a rent in their side.
Shen Yuan grabbed the survivor's arm and dragged them up, teeth bared.
The platform was almost full.
"Shen Yuan!" someone shouted. "There's no room!"
He didn't hesitate. "Then I'll hold them here."
A branded captive grabbed his sleeve. "We can't leave you—"
"Yes, you can," Shen Yuan said, voice like iron.
He shoved them onto the platform and turned back toward the enforcers.
The haft felt heavy in his hands, but he raised it anyway.
[ ALERT: HOST OUTSIDE SAFE ZONE – ARRAY ENGAGEMENT WILL RESULT IN LOSS ]
The fragment's processes pulsed in panic.
[ HOST PRIORITY OVERRIDE REQUIRED ]
It pushed against the tether, forcing the faintest whisper through.
Shen… Yuan…
Shen Yuan froze.
The voice was so faint he almost thought he imagined it.
"System?"
…inside… platform… now…
He exhaled once, sharp and bitter. "You're still here."
A surge of strength filled his arms.
"Fine," he whispered. "We do this together."
He pivoted and sprinted for the platform.
The enforcers closed in, weapons slashing arcs of light across the cavern floor.
Shen Yuan vaulted over a fallen survivor, landing hard on the array's edge just as an enforcer's spear stabbed where his spine had been.
He slammed his hand onto the console.
"Do it!"
[ ARRAY ENGAGED – DESTINATION UNKNOWN ]
The platform roared to life.
The enforcers lunged, but the light swallowed them along with the survivors.
The System's fragment latched onto the platform's energy, bleeding the last of its core into the unstable sequence.
[ SYSTEM CORE STABILITY: 0.02% ]
One more jump…
It could feel the Court King's shadow in the rift, vast and patient. He was not pursuing, not yet.
But he would.
Shen Yuan clutched Yun Xue's body as the world dissolved again.
The survivors screamed.
And the System's whisper reached him one last time:
…survive…