"A man can be destroyed but not defeated."— Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea
Purple mist rolled in—silent, heavy, curling through the streets like liquid shadow. It poured from every direction, swallowing alleys, creeping through collapsed highways, flooding over shattered stone.
Sera's voice cracked as she clung to Xavier's arm. "No… not again. Not the smoke."
The other survivors stumbled into view. Amara, coughing as she sprinted across a broken avenue. Theo, wild-eyed, clutching his bleeding side. Jalen and Nyah emerged together, dust clinging to their sweat-soaked faces.
"What now?" Theo gasped, his voice frantic. "What the hell is this?!"
The hunters withdrew, their towering figures fading into the haze. They screeched once, a sound of finality, before vanishing completely.
The mist thickened, wrapping around the runners like a living shroud.
They coughed, staggered, tried to resist—but there was nowhere to go. No escape.
One by one, they collapsed into darkness.
Theo woke first.
Cold stone pressed against his back. His chest rose sharply as he sat upright, choking on his own breath.
He froze.
The ranch.
The building.
The silence.
The same corridors, the same walls smeared with human markings. But the pods—the obsidian chambers that had brought them here—were gone. Removed.
They had been taken after the transfer to the hunting ground.
Sera stirred next, groaning softly, followed by Xavier, Amara, Nyah, and Jalen. They pushed themselves upright, their bodies trembling, their uniforms dirty, faces streaked with dirt and blood.
The six looked at one another. Haunted. Broken.
They had survived. But only barely.
Nyah broke first.
Her fists slammed against the wall, the sound cracking through the silence. "I can't! I can't do this anymore!"
Her hand closed around a jagged shard of stone. In one motion, she raised it toward her own throat.
But the strike never came.
Her hand froze, trembling in mid-air as if chained by something unseen.
A scream tore from her chest, raw and desperate. "Why?! Why won't it work?!"
She tried again, her arm trembling violently, but her body refused to obey.
Jalen stared in disbelief. "What the hell are you doing? Were you trying to—" His voice cracked, lowering to a whisper. "Were you trying to kill yourself?"
Nyah's breath hitched. Tears streaked her face. "Yes! Yes, because we're going to die anyway. But I can't. My mind… my body… it won't let me."
Jalen grabbed the shard himself, pressed it against his wrist—and froze. His arm wouldn't move either. His jaw clenched, frustration twisting his face.
Nyah's voice shook. "Maybe it's a drug. They dosed us before bringing us here. Something in our blood… something that stops us. We can't take our own lives. And we can't hurt each other. Not intentionally."
Amara sank back against the wall, her voice hollow. "So even death isn't ours to choose."
Sera wrapped her arms tightly around herself, whispering like a child in the dark. "We're just cattle. Kept alive only to be thrown back in."
The room fell silent.
That night, they didn't bother barricading the doors. No one suggested it. It was pointless.
Xavier finally said aloud what they were all thinking. His voice was low, but steady. "We'll close our eyes here, and when we open them, we'll be somewhere else. Barricades won't change that."
No one argued.
They lay down in the barracks, exhaustion dragging them into restless sleep. Each one feared the same thing: that when they woke, the world would have shifted again.
Morning came.
Exhaustion weighed heavily in their bones, every step slow.
Then the silence broke.
The metallic groan of hydraulics. The hiss of decompression. The shriek of pods descending.
New arrivals.
The six staggered outside, hearts pounding. Steam curled into the sky as black pods split open. Figures stumbled out, dazed and confused—just as they once had.
One fell hard to the ground, coughing. Jalen rushed forward, hauling him upright. The man shook him off, eyes wide with confusion. "Who are you? Where am I?"
Jalen knelt, his face grim. "Listen to me. Look around. This is real. Welcome to the ranch. Come on inside"
The man hesitated, then rose, following uncertainly.
The newcomers gathered at the entrance. Jalen turned back to the others. "THere are more of us up there."
Nyah, still trembling from yesterday, forced her voice steady. "Welcome," she whispered. Then, louder, though her words cracked. "Welcome to hell."
Xavier stepped forward, his tone flat and cold. "You're runners now. You'll train with us. You'll run, or you'll die."
The new arrivals looked around, fear dawning as confusion turned to dread. Soon enough, their memories began to flood back—the invasion, their capture, the moment the blacked out.
Terror spread across their faces, as it had once spread across the six.
Days passed.
Training became routine.
Running laps until their lungs burned. Climbing walls until their hands bled. Carrying logs like soldiers. Pushing their bodies until exhaustion became normal.
Food was rationed—mysteriously restocked every time the hunts ended. Wounds were patched by Nyah, who used every scrap of knowledge she had. Sleep came only in fits, haunted by nightmares.
Every scar, every bruise, was practice for the next hunt.
And then, a week later, the purple mist came again.
It rolled across the ranch, heavy and silent, swallowing the building whole.
When it cleared, they were back in the hunting grounds.
Weeks bled into blood and terror. The cycle repeated.
One by one, the survivors of the first hunt fell.
Nyah was the first, dragged screaming into the trees by a hunter. Her voice echoed long after her body disappeared.
Theo followed soon after, rage driving him until his luck ran out. His scream was brief. Final.
Jalen lasted two hunts before a spear tore through his chest, leaving him gasping on the ground.
Sera endured two hunts as well. A spear pinned her to the earth, her eyes dimming as the world slipped away.
Xavier, the calm and calculating one, survived two hunts before his body broke beneath a hunter's hammer.
And last of all, Amara.
She endured longer than the rest. Three hunts. Three cycles of blood, smoke, and terror. But in the end, even she was brought down, marked with cruel precision.
None of the first runners lasted more than a month.
Time passed.
Days blurred into weeks, weeks into months.
The pods kept coming. New runners kept arriving. And they died, again and again.
But then something changed.
A new generation arrived. And for the first time, runners survived beyond months.
Malik Haruna. Thomas Ried.
They endured what no others had, lasting months in the cycle. An impossible feat.
And their survival drew the attention of Korr'Vex himself, watching from his chamber high above the ranch, aboard a ship hidden in the sky.