The forest clearing no longer existed.
Where trees once swayed, where quiet earth once breathed, there now gaped a fifty-foot wound—an impact crater sculpted into molten geometric chaos. The blast had turned soil into sheets of black glass, fractured into cruel angles that caught the dying light like broken mirrors. Steam hissed from the fissures as though the ground itself were exhaling its final breath.
The air was thick. Too thick. Ozone stung the lungs, burnt bark clung to the tongue, and beneath it all… the metallic sweetness of blood hovered like an accusation. At the crater's core, a body lay sprawled in an unnatural sprawl.
Kresor.
If life had a face, he wore its ugliest version. A twitch rippled across his cheek. Then—
A close-up of his eye snapped open, wide, delirious. Pupil blown. Focus fractured. Panic lurking at the edges like circling wolves.
A sharp, piercing ringing flooded his skull—shrill enough to make the world vibrate. Beneath it throbbed the wet, labored rasp of his own breathing, as if his lungs were pulling air through torn cloth. He tried to move. The universe punished him for it.
Pain erupted—not as a sensation, but as an event. A detonation. A total occupation of his nerves. For a heartbeat, it devoured thought, memory, instinct… everything but survival. His jaw clenched so violently his teeth grated. His throat tried to scream, but only tore itself further open.
He tasted copper. He tasted ash. When he finally forced his gaze down, he understood why. His uniform was gone—burned to filaments, scattered like dead embers. What remained of his torso barely qualified as flesh. Charred skin clung to him in cracked plates. Beneath it, faint lines of cold silver pulsed along his ribs, branching like veins carved by a cruel sculptor.
His left arm hung limp. The hand was a mangled claw, fingers curled inward as if trying to escape the body they belonged to. No response. No strength. No promise of healing.
KRESOR (internal) Alive. Unfortunately. Ribs three through seven: fractured. Left arm: nonfunctional—nerve death from Purity backlash. Dermal layer: more absent than present. Pain index… unquantifiable. It is a universe of its own. And it is swallowing me whole.
A whisper bled into his thoughts, smooth and cold as a blade dipped in oil.
SCOLRIOUS (V.O.)Enough. Stop cataloging your ruin like a scribe at a funeral. Stand. Predators rise—prey collapses. Do not humiliate yourself in front of the watching dark.
Kresor's lips peeled back in a snarl. KRESOR"…Shut up."
The words were barely a whisper—yet heavy enough to crack something inside him.
He pressed his good hand against the obsidian floor. The glass sizzled at the contact, still radiating the memory of catastrophic heat. His palm skidded across the slick surface until it found purchase in a jagged seam. He dragged himself forward. His body resisted every inch—skin tearing, nerves shrieking, bones grinding like sand under pressure. A low groan escaped him, the sound of a creature forcing itself back into existence.
He rolled onto his stomach. The glass burned his chest. His skin hissed—literally hissed—as if it were cooking anew. The smell of burnt flesh spiraled into the air. He swallowed hard, tasting his own blood as it dripped into his mouth. Press. Drag. Kneel.
He rose to one knee, breathing in fractured bursts. A glob of blackened blood slid from his chin and struck the mirror-like ground with an obscene splatter. The reflection staring back at him was monstrous.
A silhouette wreathed in heatwaves, half his body scorched into raw, blistered ruin. Steam drifted from him like the exhalation of some infernal beast. His hair clung to his forehead in damp strands. His eyes—one normal, one faintly glowing—seemed carved out of exhaustion and refusal.
He looked less like a survivor… More like a demon pulled unwillingly out of the furnace that tried to kill him. And yet, beneath the ruin, something endured. Something grim. Something quiet. Something that refused to die simply because the world demanded it.
The crater around him crackled softly. The forest whispered. And Kresor, burned and broken, lifted his head. The night wasn't watching him. It was waiting for him to rise.
Footsteps scraped against glass. At the rim of the crater, two silhouettes stumbled into view—tiny against the vast wound carved into the earth. Norphis slid first, half-falling down the slope, boots skittering across the slick obsidian. Clauiy followed, breath sharp, eyes wide, both of them descending like survivors searching for a body they were terrified to find.
The heat struck them before the sight did. And then they saw him. Clauiy stopped a few meters away, her breath catching. She looked as though reality itself had reached out and slapped her numb.
CLAUIY"Kresor…?"
Her voice cracked on the second syllable. In the crater's center, surrounded by steaming glass and smoldering ruin, Kresor looked less like a student and more like something dredged from a battlefield—scorched, smoking, broken in ways that defied human shape.
CLAUIY"Oh gods… your skin…"
Her trembling fingers closed around a Purity vial—soft white glow leaking between them like hope trying to escape. She took a step toward him—
NORPHIS"Clauiy, stop! Don't get closer!"
She froze in mid-step. But Norphis wasn't even looking at her. His eyes—wide, reflecting the molten crater—were fixed on Kresor. Not the wounds. Not the burns.
The aura. That suffocating, predatory pressure from the Queen's chamber. Except this time… it wasn't diluted by distance or chaos. It was concentrated. Focused. Cold. Kresor felt it too—felt their fear blooming like frost on warm skin.
KRESOR (internal)They came back. Idiots. Don't they see? Don't they smell the monster breathing beneath my ribs? If she touches me with Purity now… the recoil alone would kill us both.
SCOLRIOUS (V.O.)They are prey now. Unaware prey. Weak.
Sever the limb before it rots you through.
Kresor lifted his head. He saw Clauiy's shaking hand. He saw the vial glowing like a soft, naïve promise. He saw hope aimed at him like a weapon. For a heartbeat, he longed for that hope. For help. For someone to tell him he wasn't what he felt inside this ruin. He crushed that longing before it could grow teeth.
KRESOR"…Put that away."
His voice was sandpaper on stone—dry, raw, dangerous.
KRESOR"It burns."
Clauiy staggered forward a half-step anyway, desperation flaring.
CLAUIY"We can fix this! We'll go to the professors—tell them the armor malfunctioned—someone sabotaged the chamber—Kresor, let us—"
He laughed.
Not a human sound. A torn, wet, broken thing—like a cracked vessel leaking darkness. It killed her hope instantly.
KRESOR"An accident?"
He pushed himself upright, swaying as if the air itself resisted supporting him. The aura bled out of him in slow, suffocating waves. Shadows lengthened. The smell of old blood grew thick enough to taste.
KRESOR"You didn't see him run, Clauiy."
His eyes gleamed—fever-bright, predator-sharp.
KRESOR"The Executioner. I liked it—the way he screamed when I tore him apart."
Clauiy recoiled as though struck. Her mouth trembled, eyes filling with something worse than fear. Grief.
NORPHIS (horrified whisper)"You… monster."
Silence swallowed the crater whole. Only Kresor's breathing remained—slow, jagged, inhumanly calm.
KRESOR"Yes."
He didn't shout it. He didn't need to.
KRESOR"Now run back to your light… before I get hungry again."
The words slithered into the cooling air like a death sentence. And they believed him. Norphis didn't hesitate.
He seized Clauiy's arm—fingers digging in hard enough to bruise—and dragged her up the glassy slope toward the Golden Portal. She stumbled after him, still staring back at Kresor with wide, shattered eyes. Her feet scraped, slipped, burned on the hot obsidian, but Norphis pulled harder. No time for softness. No time for goodbye. Behind them, Kresor turned the other way.
His steps were uneven, cracked, leaving faint streaks of black blood across the glass. Each breath came thin and serrated. His shadow stretched long behind him, warping across the crater like something alive. He walked toward the uncharted wilds.
Toward the dark. The sky reacted first. Clouds congealed above him like clotting wounds, deepening the heavens into a dried-blood red. A low tremor rolled through the realm—distant at first, like thunder.
Then the horn came. A war horn. Ancient. Massive. The kind blown only when realms fall or kings die. The sound rattled the world's bones. A colossal System Window exploded across the heavens, burning through the crimson sky like a blade of light. Every student—every creature—every watcher in the realm froze as the message carved itself into existence.
SYSTEM
// EMERGENCY REALM BROADCAST //
ALERT LEVEL: CRIMSON.SUBJECT IDENTIFIED: KRESOR VEIL.
ANALYSIS:SUBJECT MANIFESTS FORBIDDEN UNHOLY ENERGY SIGNATURES.CONFIRMED USE OF CATACLYSMIC FORCE.
DESIGNATION UPDATE: HUMANITY'S ENEMY.STATUS: KILL ON SIGHT.
BOUNTY: 50,000 AETHER COINS.AUTOMATIC ASCENSION FOR THE KILLER.
COMMAND:ALL STUDENTS EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY.PURGE SQUADRONS INBOUND.THE HUNT IS OPEN.
The final line rang across the realm like a sentence from a cold, indifferent god. Kresor stood in the fading heat of the crater, illuminated by the glowing letters describing his execution. The wind bit coldly against his half-burned skin. His ribs throbbed in the rhythm of a dying drum. The world's verdict hung above him like a crown made of blades.
He stared up at his own death sentence. A hollow laugh almost rose in his throat, but it died halfway—choked out by exhaustion. He turned his head.
The Golden Portal pulsed several meters away—warm, steady, promising. Safety. Medicine. A chance to live. A guarantee of chains. Then he looked at the forest beyond—dark, ancient, whispering. Agony. Monsters. Freedom. His choice carved itself into his bones.
KRESOR"…So be it."
He limped into the treeline, swallowed by shadow. Branches creaked. Leaves hissed. The forest accepted him without hesitation—like it recognized one of its own. Behind him, the air split in a burst of golden light.
Armored enforcers stormed out of the portal—helmets gleaming, halberds raised, boots splashing into the molten glass. Their visors scanned, hunting, hungry for a bounty large enough to rewrite a life. But the crater was empty. Kresor was already gone. Already hunted. Already becoming the thing they feared he was.
Kael Hightower's private office was a sanctuary carved out of silence.
The rest of the academy trembled under the Crimson Alert, sirens and shouting echoing through its marble halls—but none of it touched this room. Here, the world was soft edges and muted light. The curtains were drawn halfway, letting in a thin sliver of dying sunlight that painted a faint gold line across his desk.
Bookshelves towered around him like quiet watchmen. Incense burned in a small brass dish, trailing lazy curls of smoke that twined through the room. Kael sat by the window, expression unreadable, a cup of jasmine tea warming his pale fingers.
His eyes lifted. The red emergency broadcast reflected sharply in the glass—Kresor's name, his designation, the bounty glittering like spilled blood across the sky. Kael's jaw tightened by a fraction. A glimmer of something—irritation? amusement?—passed through his gaze.
KAEL"'Humanity's Enemy.' Dravien always was dramatic."
He said it calmly, almost fondly, as though reading a child's overblown essay rather than a global execution order. Kael tapped a smooth black communication stone resting on his desk. It responded instantly—violet runic veins lighting up like waking nerves. His voice dropped into something quieter. Sharper. A knife wrapped in silk.
KAEL"Agent Seraph. Status?"
There was a brief crackle. Then a voice answered—distorted, metallic, shaped by old enchantments and a lifetime of bloodshed.
SERAPH (V.O.)"The Order is sending butchers. The boy is crippled. He won't last the night."
Kael breathed out through his nose, slow and measured. He turned the tea cup in his hand, watching the reflection of the crimson sky ripple on its surface.
KAEL"He will if he wants to live. Do not interfere."
A beat of stunned silence followed. When Seraph spoke again, there was confusion in his voice—something close to fear.
SERAPH"You… want them to hunt him?"
Kael's lips curved—not into a smile, but something colder. A tiny shift of expression, like a shadow tightening its grip.
KAEL"He must suffer. He must learn. Temper him. But do not let him die easily."
He set his teacup down with a soft clink. The sound rang in the serene office like the toll of a distant bell—quiet but final. Outside, the crimson sky pulsed. Inside, Kael closed his eyes for a moment, exhaling as though savoring the weight of his own decision. The realm hunted Kresor. And Kael… watched.
Night swallowed the forest whole. Rain fell in violent sheets, each drop cold enough to sting. The storm blurred the world into a smear of black silhouettes and trembling silver lines. Every sound felt louder in the downpour—every breath, every shift of dead leaves, every heartbeat echoing in the vast, wet dark.
Kresor staggered through the mire until his legs finally failed him. He crashed against the trunk of a rotting colossal tree, its bark collapsing under his shoulder like dead flesh. Mud clung to his skin, thick and icy, crawling up his ribs as though trying to claim him for the forest floor. His body shook uncontrollably. He had nothing left.
No uniform—the blast had shredded it to ashes. No weapon—his blade had melted under the chaos. No allies—the portal was long gone, and with it, the last people who dared care about him. Only pain remained. A deep, bone-soaked pain that refused to fade. That clung to him like a living parasite.
KRESOR"I lost… everything."
The words barely left his throat. They felt too heavy, too honest. A cold voice slithered through the storm.
SCOLRIOUS (V.O.)No. You lost your cage. Now you are free. Now… we hunt. The rain hissed off the tree bark. Kresor's breathing slowed. His eyelids drifted shut—not out of exhaustion, but out of surrender. Just a moment. Just a single, stolen moment of stillness.
Then—SNAP.
A twig broke somewhere behind him. Not the gentle crack of wind. Not the shifting of branches. Something stepped on it.
Kresor's eyes snapped open. His muscles went rigid, instinct overriding fatigue. The storm suddenly felt too quiet, as if the entire forest had stopped breathing. Mud slithered as something large shifted in the undergrowth.
He turned his head slightly—just enough. A pair of eyes stared back at him through the darkness. Yellow. Predatory. Wide apart—far too wide to belong to anything human. A deep rumble vibrated through the night, low and hungry. A growl that tasted of blood.
Kresor pressed himself harder against the tree, heart pounding against his ribs as though it wanted to run without him. His breath thinned into shaky, shallow gasps. The creature stepped forward. Rain hit its silhouette and slid down fur-covered limbs. Massive shoulders rolled with each step. Claws sank into the mud with a wet, sucking sound.
Kresor couldn't see its full shape— only its hunger. The growl rose, dark and rumbling, curling around him like a warning… or a promise. He had lost everything. But something in this forest had just found him.
FADE TO BLACK.