The rain in the Drimos Helioros—the so-called Sunlit Forest—did not cleanse; it merely slicked the rot with a sheen of grey misery. It was a heavy, vertical downpour that turned the forest floor into a slurry of pine needles and sucking mud. Haxi wiped the water from his eyes, the leather of his gauntlet creaking. He could smell it before he saw it: the musky, copper-tang of an Agriokapros—a D-3 class Wild Boar—and the sharper, sweeter scent of fresh blood.
"Orange tier contract," Kael had spat earlier, checking the flint on his fire-striker. "Easy coin. A Sarkophagos piglet scaring farmers."
Kael was a fool. The tracks Haxi crouched over now were deep, the cloven imprints splayed wide by immense weight. This was no D-1 scavenger. This was a D-3 Agriokapros, a creature of muscle and bad temper, its tusks likely sharpened on the granite of the foothills. Haxi felt the hum of his Mana Soul, a faint, orange warmth in his chest that did little to ward off the chill. He was a Signifer, yes, but a novice. His reserve was a shallow pool, not an ocean.
"Movement ahead," Elara whispered, her voice barely audible over the drumming rain. The Infusus user was pale, her hands trembling slightly as she gripped her staff.
They pushed through the ferns, emerging into a clearing dominated by the skeletal remains of a pre-Schism ruin—jagged teeth of white stone jutting from the earth. In the center, the beast was at work. It was a mountainous thing, covered in bristles as thick as wire, its breath pluming in the cold air. It wasn't feeding. It was battering its massive, gore-slicked head against a barricaded wooden door set into the ruin's base.
Thud. The wood splintered. A scream, high and thin, echoed from within the darkness of the chamber.
"There's someone inside," Haxi murmured, his mind racing. The Agriokapros reared back for another charge. Its flank was matted with old blood—it was wounded, desperate, and therefore twice as dangerous.
Kael raised a hand, his palm glowing with a flickering Pyro flame. "I'll blast it."
"No," Haxi hissed, grabbing his wrist. "You'll burn the structure down with them inside. The wood is dry-rot under the damp."
The boar squealed, a sound like grinding metal, and slammed the door again. The timber groaned, buckling inward. One more hit and the beast would be inside, turning the survivor into paste. Haxi had seconds. He could feel the two Sigils on his forearm itching—the Augmentation demanding action, the Recomposere analyzing the structural weakness of the stone archway above the door.
The rain seemed to pause, holding its breath, as Haxi raised his gauntleted hand. He didn't scream an incantation; in Elysium, magic was biology, not theater. He simply pulled at the structural integrity of the archway with his mind.
The Recomposere sigil on his forearm flared—a sickly, feverish orange against the gloom. He felt the mortar binding the ancient stones dissolve, turning from solid history into loose, grey dust.
Gravity, the oldest law of all, reclaimed its due.
With a sound like a cracking vertebrae amplified a thousand times, the heavy lintel stone sheared free. The Agriokapros looked up, its beady, blood-mad eyes widening for a fraction of a second before the ton of white granite descended. The impact was absolute. There was no squeal, only a wet, pressurized explosion. The beast's spine snapped with a sickening crunch, and the stone drove it into the mud, flattening the front half of the creature into a spray of dark gore and bone shards that splattered Haxi's boots. The copper smell of blood was instantly overpowered by the stench of ruptured bowels.
"Got it," Kael started to grin, lowering his hand.
Then the rumbling continued.
Haxi had calculated the lintel's fall, but he hadn't accounted for the vibrations. The rot-weakened timber frame of the doorway, no longer battered by the boar but now shaken by the stone's impact, gave way. With a mournful groan of splintering wood, the rest of the entrance collapsed inward. A cloud of choking rock-dust billowed out, mixing with the rain to form a blinding grey slurry.
The scream from inside was cut short, replaced by a suffocating silence.
"You idiot!" Kael snarled, shielding his face. "You buried them!"
Elara rushed forward, her staff glowing with a soft, pale light, but she stopped at the wall of debris. "I can't sense them," she whispered, her voice tight with panic. "The stone... it's blocking the mana signature. If they're alive, they're suffocating."
Haxi scrambled over the corpse of the boar—its hind legs still twitching in a posthumous nerve-spasm—and clawed at the rubble. It was packed tight. Wet earth, shattered timber, and heavy granite. He could see a gap, a small fissure near the floor where air might still be flowing, but a massive, jagged slab of the lintel blocked access.
His breath came in ragged gasps. He had seconds. His mana reserves were already dipping from the transmutation; the cold ache in his chest told him he was approaching his limit.
The deafening CRACK of the collapsing lintel stone still echoes in the ravine, now replaced by a thick, suffocating silence. Dust billows outward, grey and choking, mixing with the unrelenting rain to plaster Haxi's hair to his forehead. The heavy granite slab lies wedged against the shattered timber frame, a tombstone sealing the survivor in darkness.
The air is thick with the smell of wet earth, pulverized stone, and the copper tang of the Agriokapros's spilled blood. Inside the ruin, there is no sound—no scream, no whimper. Just the terrifying quiet of a tomb.
"You buried them!" Kael's accusation hangs in the air, sharp and panicked. Elara is already at the blockage, her hands glowing with a desperate, pale light, but she shakes her head, eyes wide. "The stone is too dense. I can't sense past it."
Haxi stares at the slab. It's massive, a piece of pre-Schism architecture that has withstood centuries, now an obstacle between life and death. He feels the Recomposere sigil on his forearm burning hot, a residual itch from the destruction he just wrought. The Augmentation sigil hums a lower, more dangerous note, offering brute strength at a terrible price.
He takes a breath, tasting dust and rain. Panic is a luxury he cannot afford. The Recomposere path spared his body before, but it caused this mess. Precision is needed now, not brute force, but his mana reserves are dangerously low. A mistake here means petrifying the survivor or bringing the rest of the ruin down on their heads. But lifting it? That slab weighs tons. Even with Augmentation, the strain could tear his muscles apart, leaving him crippled in a forest teeming with predators.
"Move," Haxi grates out, stepping up to the slab. He places his hands on the cold, wet stone. He doesn't push. He closes his eyes and feels the structure of the granite—the ancient, compressed grains of quartz and feldspar.
"Kael, get back," Haxi orders, his voice tight. "Elara, be ready to shield the inside the moment this clears."
He focuses. The world narrows down to the stone beneath his palms. He visualizes the bonds holding the granite together, not as solid matter, but as a lattice of mana-infused connections. He pushes his remaining mana into those gaps, commanding the stone not to break, but to change.
Unmake. Become soft. Become dust.
The orange glow of his sigil flares blindingly bright, illuminating the rain-slicked ruins. Veins of light spread across the granite slab like cracking ice. Haxi grits his teeth, sweat mingling with the rain on his face. The strain is immense; his head feels like it's splitting open, a sharp, whining ringing in his ears. He feels the stone resisting, its ancient density fighting his will.
Yield.
With a sound like a heavy sigh, the granite's structural integrity fails. The massive slab doesn't shatter; it simply dissolves. It crumbles into a heap of coarse, grey sand and gravel, cascading down with a wet hiss.
Haxi stumbles back, gasping, his vision swimming with black spots. The path is clear.
"Go!" he wheezes, bracing himself against a jagged piece of wall.
Elara dives into the opening, her staff illuminating the darkness within. Moments later, her voice floats out, shaky but relieved. "I found him! He's... he's hurt, but alive. The beam missed him by inches."
Kael rushes in to help, and together they drag a figure out into the rain. It's a man, dressed in tattered leather armor, clutching a satchel to his chest. He's bleeding from a gash on his forehead, and his leg is twisted at an unnatural angle, but he's breathing.
"Thank the stars," the man gasps, looking up at Haxi with wide, fearful eyes. "I thought... I thought the boar had me."
Haxi nods, trying to hide the tremor in his hands. He succeeded, but he's drained. His mana soul feels like a wrung-out sponge.
Kael looks at the survivor's leg, then at the satchel he's clutching so tightly. "We need to get him back to the outpost. That leg needs a healer better than a field dressing."
"Wait," the survivor says, gripping Kael's arm. "The satchel. You have to take it. I... I can't make it back with this leg. The Agriokapros wasn't hunting me for meat. It was hunting this."
He opens the flap of the satchel. Inside, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic light, sits a cluster of eggs. They are translucent, revealing curled, embryonic shapes inside, and they glow with a soft, dangerous purple hue.
"C-Class Arktophonos eggs," Haxi whispers, recognizing the distinctive chill radiating from them. "Bear-killers. Where did you get these?"
"Stole them," the man coughs, pain etched on his face. "From a nest near the Titanwood border. High-value contract. But the mother... she's coming. She's tracking them."
A deep, resonant roar echoes from the forest, far deeper and more terrifying than the boar's squeal. It shakes the rain from the trees.
"She's close," the man whimpers.
Haxi looks at his team. They are tired. He is nearly spent. Carrying a wounded man is one thing; carrying a wounded man and a beacon that is attracting an enraged C-Class apex predator is suicide.
The decision is made in the space of a heartbeat. Haxi snatches the satchel, the leather strap biting into his shoulder. The eggs inside shift, heavy and warm, pulsing with a faint, rhythmic thrumming against his ribs.
"We take them," Haxi growls, his voice leaving no room for argument. "We're Vanguards. We don't leave coin, and we don't leave monsters to breed."
Kael stares at him, pale-faced, but nods. He and Elara hoist the survivor between them, the man groaning as his shattered leg drags through the mud.
"Move," Haxi commands, taking the rearguard. "Don't look back."
They scramble into the treeline just as the ruin behind them explodes.
It isn't an explosion of fire, but of sheer kinetic force. A massive, ursine shape crashes through the remaining stone walls as if they were made of parchment. The Arktophonos—the Bear-Killer—is a nightmare made flesh. Standing nearly fifteen feet tall on its hind legs, it is a mountain of matted, dark fur and ancient scars. Its roar is not merely a sound; it is a physical pressure wave that rattles Haxi's teeth and shakes the rain from the canopy above.
This is no mindless beast. Haxi sees the glint of intelligence in its small, black eyes. It ignores the others. It looks directly at Haxi—specifically, at the satchel under his arm. It smells its unborn kin.
"Run!" Haxi screams, turning to follow his team.
The chase is a blur of adrenaline and terror. The forest floor, slick with rain and mud, fights them every step of the way. The survivor is slowing them down. Kael and Elara are slipping, gasping for air, while the ground behind them trembles with the rhythmic, thundering impact of the Arktophonos's charge. It is gaining. It doesn't need to run; its stride is so long that it is simply walking them down, snapping thick pine trees like twigs as it pushes through the undergrowth.
They reach a narrow ravine, a tributary of the river swollen by the downpour. The only way across is a fallen log, slick with moss. Kael and Elara struggle to get the survivor across.
Haxi spins around, drawing his sword, though he knows the steel is useless against a C-Class hide. The beast bursts into the clearing, thirty yards away. It drops to all fours, preparing to lunge. The Augmentation mana rolling off it is visible as a faint, heat-haze shimmer around its massive shoulders. It is preparing to pounce—a leap that will clear the distance instantly and crush Haxi into paste.
Haxi's mana is critically low. The Recomposere transmutation earlier took a heavy toll. He has enough for one significant act.
Haxi planted his boots in the slick mud, the roar of the Arktophonos vibrating in his very marrow. He didn't run. He turned to face the avalanche of fur and muscle, his chest heaving, his mana reserves scraping the bottom of his soul.
"Recomposere," he whispered, the word lost in the thunder of the charge.
He dropped to one knee, slamming his palm into the slurry of the ravine bank. He didn't try to lift the earth; he changed its nature. He visualized the waterlogged soil not as mud, but as a non-Newtonian fluid—a substance that hardened instantly under impact.
Become the wall.
The ground between him and the beast rippled, turning a dull, bruised purple as the alchemy took hold.
The Arktophonos hit the transmuted patch at full sprint. It expected the mud to give way, to slide. Instead, the earth seized up, becoming as hard as bedrock the moment the beast's massive weight struck it. The physics were brutal. The creature's momentum carried its upper body forward while its legs were arrested instantly.
There was a sickening crack that sounded like a tree snapping in a gale—the sound of the beast's shinbones shattering under the torque. The Arktophonos flipped forward, crashing face-first into the mud with a force that shook the ground beneath Haxi's knees. It shrieked—a sound of confused, enraged agony—and thrashed, its hind legs fused into the alchemical mire.
"Now! Go!" Haxi screamed, his voice cracking.
He scrambled backward, his vision graying at the edges. The mana drain was a physical blow; it felt as if someone had reached into his chest and scooped out his lungs. He stumbled onto the moss-slicked log just as the beast began to tear the earth apart, ripping its own broken legs free from the trap in a frenzy of bloodlust.
Haxi practically fell across the ravine, Kael catching him by the harness and dragging him onto the far bank. They didn't stop to look back. They scrambled up the ridge, the screams of the crippled bear fading into the distance, replaced by the rhythmic, terrifying sound of it dragging itself through the undergrowth. It was slower now, but it wasn't stopping.
An hour later, the adrenaline finally abandoned them.
They collapsed in a shallow cave recess beneath the roots of a massive Dendro-Titan tree. The rain was a curtain of grey noise outside, but here, it was dry, smelling of dry earth and the metallic scent of the survivor's blood.
Haxi sat slumped against the root wall, his hands shaking uncontrollably. He checked his internal state: Mana reserves were at absolute zero. He was suffering from Mana Fatigue—a throbbing migraine behind his eyes and a numbness in his extremities. If a fight started now, he was no better than a civilian with a sharp stick.
Elara was tending to the survivor. The man—who introduced himself as Joren—was pale, his skin clammy. The field dressing on his leg was soaked through. The bone wasn't just broken; it was crushed.
"He's septic," Elara whispered, wiping her bloody hands on the grass. "The fever is setting in. I can dull the pain with my Infusus, but I can't knit the bone or stop the infection. He needs a surgery table, Haxi. He has maybe six hours before the toxins stop his heart."
Joren coughed, clutching the satchel. The eggs inside were glowing brighter now, a rhythmic, violet pulse that seemed to sync with Haxi's own throbbing headache.
"The eggs..." Joren rasped, his eyes glassy. "They... they're getting warm. They know she's hurt. They're calling her."
Kael looked at Haxi, his face shadowed. "We have two problems. The man is dying, and those eggs are a homing beacon for a cripple-mad bear that is slowly tracking us down. We can't carry him fast enough to outrun it, not in this terrain."
He pointed to a split in the path ahead, visible through the cave mouth.
"The High Ridge," Kael said, gesturing to the left path. "It's exposed, windy, and cold. But the wind will mask our scent, and the rocky terrain will slow the bear down. It's the safest route from the beast, but the cold... in Joren's condition, the shock will kill him before we reach the outpost."
"The Low Marsh," he pointed to the right, down into the fog-choked valley. "It's warmer. There are herbs there—Vitae-Moss—that Elara could use to stabilize him. We could keep him alive. But the mud... we'll leave a scent trail a mile wide. And the fog is thick. If the bear catches us there, we're cornered."
Haxi rubbed his temples. He was the Signifer. The choice was his.
The wind on the High Ridge did not blow; it flayed. It stripped the heat from their bodies with the efficiency of a butcher's knife, screaming over the jagged rocks in a ceaseless, dissonant chord. Haxi led the way, head down, squinting against the biting sleet. Behind him, Kael and Elara struggled with the makeshift stretcher, their boots slipping on the ice-glazed stone.
The roar of the Arktophonos had faded hours ago, swallowed by the gale and the distance. The beast, for all its rage, was a creature of the deep forest; it would not follow them into this frozen purgatory where its scent was lost and its massive frame was exposed. They were safe from the monster, but the cold was a far more patient hunter.
Joren had stopped screaming miles back. He had stopped shivering an hour ago.
Haxi signaled a halt in the lee of a massive boulder, his own breath pluming in the freezing air. He moved to check the survivor. Joren's skin was the color of blue-grey slate. His eyes were open, fixed on the churning grey sky, frosted over with a delicate lattice of ice. The satchel, still clutched in his rigid hands, was the only warm thing on him. The eggs inside pulsed with a steady, vibrant heat, leeching the last of the man's warmth to fuel their own dark incubation.
"He's gone," Elara whispered, her voice hollow. She didn't reach for her healing staff; there was nothing left to heal.
"We carry him," Haxi said, his voice raspy. "We don't leave him for the vultures."
Kael nodded grimly, his face a mask of exhaustion. They lifted the body—a dead weight now, heavier than the living man had been—and trudged on. The victory was ash in their mouths. They had beaten the beast, they had secured the prize, but the silence on the stretcher was a deafening accusation.