The morning light over the Ark was thin and pale, filtered through the glass panels that ran the length

  of the dormitory hall. It cast long bars of white across the floor, the kind that made the world feel

  distant, muted. The team moved slowly, shoulders stiff, muscles heavy from the prior day’s storm of a

  battle.

  No one spoke at first.

  They all knew what they’d walked through. What they’d nearly died in.

  Rixor stretched with a grunt, his joints cracking audibly. “Feels like I got folded in half by a lightning

  bolt.”

  Taren stepped up beside him, pressing her palm lightly to his back. A soft resonance rippled outward,

  nothing glowed, no wounds sealed, just verification. “You’re fine. No lingering injuries.”

  He nodded, rolling his shoulders. “Good. Just stiff. Think I’ll keep my organs where they are today.”

  The others gave faint smirks, but even the humor was subdued. The weight of what they’d survived, the

  raw power of that battlefield, the things they’d felt pulse through them, hadn’t yet faded. It clung to

  them like dust.

  They met in the cafeteria shortly after. Trays lined with ration packs and metal mugs of synth-caf, the

  same bland breakfast as always. Gear checks came next, rounds of ammo, blade edges, sensor

  calibrations. The sound of clicking magazines and checked safeties filled the silence.

  Then Calen looked up from his bowstring, expression tight. “I don’t get it.”

  Bash glanced at him, brow arched. “What?”

  “We’ve been through how many portals now?” Calen asked, his tone sharp enough to slice through the

  quiet. “We’ve fought thousands of beasts. We’ve seen nearly every type of essence there is. And you

  still haven’t unlocked anything. You’re a Green, guaranteed to unlock three abilities minimum. Fifty

  percent chance for four. There are only four left, Reincarnate, Space, Time, and Gravity, and three of

  those are basically myths.”

  The table went silent. Every eye turned toward Bash.

  Calen leaned forward slightly. “Either you’re the luckiest Spartor alive, or the unluckiest.”

  Bash exhaled slowly. His jaw flexed once. “You think I’m holding back?”

  Calen didn’t answer.

  “I want an ability more than any of you,” Bash said evenly. “You think I enjoy dragging us into one

  death trap after another, just to get nothing every time? You think I want to go through another world

  full of monsters just to watch you all grow stronger while I stay the same?”

  No one interrupted.

  He continued, quieter now. “I’d take anything. Even something non-combat like imbuing. But I’ve got

  nothing. Not even that.”

  The silence that followed was suffocating. Forks paused halfway to mouths.

  “I just hope I’m the luckiest,” Bash finished. “And that whatever’s waiting in Portal 003 changes that.

  Because we’ve got fourteen days left before the tournament, and I’d like to know what the hell I can

  actually do before then.”

  He stood. “Let’s move.”

  The team rose one by one, the scrape of chairs echoing in the cafeteria. They were halfway to the exit

  when another group entered, the sound of boots too confident to mistake.

  Murdoc.

  Four Reincarnates flanked him. Their attention locked straight onto Bash.

  “Well, if it isn’t the miracle team,” Murdoc drawled, stepping into their path. “Word is you’ve been

  busy. What’d you unlock this time, Green?”

  “Piss off,” Bash said flatly, brushing past him.

  Murdoc matched his pace, smirk widening. “Heard you haven’t unlocked anything. Figures. You were

  always a waste of a core.”

  The team said nothing. They kept walking.

  “Shame,” Murdoc continued, loud enough for the whole room. “Guess I’ll just have to wait for the

  tournament to crush what’s left of your ego. Assuming you make it that far.”

  Bash didn’t slow. The others followed. None of them looked back.

  When they reached the portal chamber, the tension hung between them like static. They checked in

  wordlessly, received their beacons, and were escorted to the shimmering white ring of Portal 003.

  The light engulfed them.

  Disorientation hit hard, stomach flipping, lungs hollow, the feeling of falling upward through water.

  Then stillness.

  The world they landed in was nearly silent, painted in shades of ash and fading light. Above them

  stretched a torn sky, an immense rift, like a wound across reality itself, pulling everything slowly into a

  black vortex.

  The pull was impossibly gradual, like time itself resisted the destruction. A city in the distance floated

  in the process of dying, buildings stretched toward the void, their fragments hanging midair, neither

  falling nor flying. It looked less like motion and more like a memory trying to collapse.

  No sound.

  Only the low groan of warped gravity.

  Bash steadied his breathing, scanning their surroundings. “Map.”

  A faint projection flickered to life. One single marker pulsed about a kilometer away, an individual

  signature.

  “That’s our start,” Bash said. “Let’s move.”

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  They advanced through the ruins in silence. The earlier tension lingered between them, Calen’s words,

  Murdoc’s mockery, until the crunch of debris underfoot became their only conversation.

  The wind carried a faint, rhythmic hum.

  Then movement.

  A shape crawled across the fractured street ahead, low, metallic, six-limbed, its shell reflecting the faint

  light like dulled iron.

  Shardback Crawler.

  S-C’s voice hummed quietly in Bash’s head.

  “Individual classification. Mineral type. Likely others nearby, communal resonance.”

  He relayed the warning. “One Crawler ahead. There’ll be more once it dies.”

  Calen pulled his string with his wind arrow and let loose. It struck true. The creature shrieked, a

  metallic grinding wail, then went still.

  The ground trembled.

  “Here we go,” Bash muttered.

  Cracks split across the pavement. From the shadows of broken buildings, dozens, then hundreds, of

  Shardbacks emerged, their shells scraping like stone grinding against stone. The hum deepened into a

  sub-gravitic vibration that made the air shudder.

  “Open fire!”

  Calen’s arrows flashed, Nyra’s rifle barked bursts of fire and essence energy, and Rixor charged

  forward with his hammer raised high. Each hit shattered a Crawler into shards of mineral dust. They

  came in waves, climbing over their dead, hundreds strong, each only a meter long but relentless,

  crawling in overlapping patterns like an armored tide.

  Taren’s healing rounds flashed out, keeping the line steady. Liora and Darik raised mineral walls,

  funneling the horde into choke points.

  In under a minute, the street was carpeted in motionless bodies, crystal shells dimming one by one.

  Bash straightened, breath fogging. A faint pulse rippled through him.

  “Total essence detected,” S-C said. “One hundred Mineral-class Tier One Common absorbed.”

  Bash barely flinched at the familiar sting. “Guess I’m getting used to it,” he muttered.

  “The rest must have divided between Liora and Darik,” S-C added.

  He nodded, still scanning the ruins.

  Bash brought up the map again. A larger signature blinked to life about two klicks east. “Hive-type

  reading,” he said. “Let’s move.”

  “Not even grabbing the fragments?” Calen asked.

  “Worthless,” Bash said. “Tier Ones won’t move the meter.”

  Darik shrugged. “The Nexus still tracks returns. We show up empty-handed after a slaughter like that,

  we’ll get audited.”

  Bash sighed. “Fine. Make it quick.”

  They gathered what they could, dumping the crystalline trinkets into collection pouches. Once done,

  Bash gave a sharp nod, and they moved out.

  The terrain shifted as they entered the outskirts of a pale forest. Trees bowed unnaturally, roots half torn

  from the ground, bark stripped by the constant gravitational strain. Dust drifted sideways through the

  air, bending toward the black rift overhead.

  Then came the sound, high, thin, and wrong. Like glass vibrating underwater.

  S-C’s tone sharpened.

  “Hostile swarm detected. Wind essence hybrid. Classification: Tier One Greater.”

  The treetops split open.

  Dozens, hundreds, of translucent shapes swirled out of the canopy, each no bigger than a hand, wings

  flickering like shards of quartz. The air pressure dropped in an instant.

  “The Aeolite Swarm,” S-C said.

  They struck first.

  Wind compressed into blades as the swarm dived, carving trenches through the dirt. Liora raised

  mineral shields that cracked under the pressure. Calen fired into the dense clusters, arrows dispersing

  bursts of wind essence that momentarily broke their formation.

  Bash blurred through them, blades flashing, cutting arcs of resonance that shredded drones midair. The

  fragments sang when they broke apart, raining faint blue dust.

  Rixor slammed his hammer into the earth, sending a shockwave that burst through the cloud. The

  swarm reeled, split, then reformed instantly, thousands of wings shimmering like liquid glass.

  Taren fired round after round, her bullets trailing healing resonance that traced across the team’s armor,

  patching burns and cuts.

  Minutes blurred. The air became a storm of light and shards.

  When the last wave fell, silence pressed in again. Only the slow drift of dust marked the aftermath.

  Bash exhaled, wiping a line of grit from his jaw.

  “Six hundred ninety-five Wind essence pulses absorbed,” S-C reported.

  He shook his head. “Feels like a trickle now.”

  “Adaptation threshold increasing,” she replied.

  Behind him, the others had already started gathering fragments from the shattered drones.

  Bash glanced over, brow furrowing. “We really doing this again?”

  Darik smirked faintly, kneeling to collect the glowing shards. “You heard me. Nexus sees a thousand

  kills with no returns, they’ll call us thieves. Let’s not give them a reason.”

  Bash sighed, scanning the distorted skyline ahead. “Fine. Then hurry. I don’t plan on staying in this

  gravity trap longer than we have to.”

  He turned back toward the endless pull of the black rift above.