The night was a living thing—thick, heavy, pressing down on the bastion. Beneath a moonless sky, even the stars seemed to hold their breath. The silence was no longer a mere absence of sound, but a tangible presence, broken only by the faint, obsessive murmur of essence beginning to seep from the ground. In front of the gaping tunnel mouths, Maggie stood motionless, arms crossed, her unblinking gaze fixed on the operation below.

The Awakened of the Sixth Unit were descending into the earth's veins, their spectral silhouettes lit by the inner glow of their stigmas and the dim luminescence of the essence crystals they carried like beating hearts. They looked like pilgrims of some forbidden cult, walking down into the belly of the world. Their eyes, glassy and faraway, reflected a light not of this world, and their movements had the hypnotic fluidity of those who commune with invisible forces.

"Secure the perimeter," Maggie ordered, her voice low yet cutting cleanly through the stillness. Her soldiers—ordinary men with tense faces—tightened their grip on their weapons. They formed a jagged ring of steel around the entrances, a wall of flesh and metal against whatever might come out… or go in. Fear was an acrid scent in the night air, mingling with ozone and wet soil. It was an invasion, yes—but not of territory. They were invading the enemy's mind.

Farther below, Rhelas stepped into the main gallery, his long dark coat making no sound. He moved with calm certainty, as if returning home. Maggie watched him stop before Mia, the pale-haired woman who was already tracing intricate symbols onto the rock with her fingers. A bluish glow followed her touch—similar to that of the black structure, yet more controlled—and sank into the stone.

"Don't impose form, Mia," murmured Rhelas, his soft voice echoing strangely in the tunnel. "Plant a seed. The idea of fear. The essence will do the rest. It will shape itself around what they carry inside."

Mia inclined her head, her milky eyes fixed on her work. "Like a mirror?"

"Exactly. A mirror that doesn't reflect their faces—but the darkest corners of their souls. We're not creating monsters. We're simply giving them a form they can see."

Even from afar, Rhelas's words chilled Maggie to the bone. It was devilishly clever—and profoundly disturbing. The plan did not rely on the strength of their illusions, but on the weakness of the human mind. Every soldier of Pilaf would become the unwitting accomplice of his own terror.

For hours, the underground work continued. The Awakened planted "dream spores" at key anchor points—nodes of pure fear that would resonate throughout the network of caves and fissures, their vibrations spreading like a sickness through the Umbral Gorges. The air itself grew heavy, charged with a morbid anticipation.

By dawn, as a sickly gray light began to stain the horizon, Rhelas emerged from the tunnels. His face was pale, his eyes blazing with intense concentration. He met Maggie's gaze and gave a brief nod. It was the signal.

With a gesture of his hand, Rhelas released the final impulse.

A tremor ran through the ground—deep, violent, not like an earthquake but as if the world itself had exhaled in pain. Then came a sound from the Gorges, a low continuous murmur that belonged to no human tongue. It was the sound of fear itself.

When daylight came, it revealed the change. A strange mist, shimmering with violet and green hues, began to pool within the ravines of the Umbral Gorges. It moved in jerks, as if it were alive.

From her vantage point on a ridge overlooking the bastion, Maggie raised her scope toward Pilaf's forward positions. The first signs of confusion were clear. Soldiers pointing, shouting, gathering hastily. A scout running back, gesturing wildly before collapsing, convulsing. The signal reports began to flash in—rapid, chaotic.

"Unidentified movements in the mist."

"Footsteps with no visible source."

"A soldier screamed he saw his dead brother."

At first, Pilaf's officers dismissed the reports as hallucinations, or the tricks of Awakened beasts. But soon, the messages grew consistent in their horror. Entire units refused to advance. Sentinels abandoned their posts, screaming warnings about "whispering shadows." The seed of fear planted in the dark had begun to sprout—and it bore the faces of their worst nightmares.

But as Maggie watched their plan unfold, a cold dread gripped her. The effect was not confined to the enemy.

Zirel appeared beside her, silent as a ghost. His expression was grave.

"The illusions aren't staying put, Maggie. They're spilling over."

He pointed toward the twisted treeline of Thornspine Forest, near their own bastion. Faint lights—like will-o'-wisps—flickered between the trunks.

"And that's not all. Two of our Awakened returned from the tunnels. They're… not well. They speak of things they've never seen. Memories that aren't theirs."

Maggie descended from her observation post and strode briskly toward the rear of the camp, where the healers worked. Two young Awakened sat there, eyes empty, murmuring fragments of sentences that made no sense.

"…eyes in the walls… they know my name…"

"…mother? but you're dead… why are you crying?…"

They had been too close to the flow—had handled fears not their own—and by holding the mirror too long, part of their reflection had stayed trapped inside. The illusion was no longer a tool; it was a parasite, feeding on the minds of its makers.

Maggie turned toward Rhelas, who had joined her, his mask of cold composure cracked by a flicker of concern.

"Rhelas, did you anticipate this? This… contamination?"

He shook his head, gaze lost in the distance where the colored mist thickened.

"No. Emotion is a far more potent catalyst than I calculated. The essence doesn't just reflect fear—it amplifies it, recycles it. Each new terror feeds the system, expands it. We're no longer the ones manipulating fear. Fear has learned to propagate itself."

His words were cut short by a strangled cry from across the camp. A signal runner, carrying wooden stakes, dropped his load. He pointed toward the forest, trembling, eyes bulging.

"I saw him! By my fathers' blood, I saw him! My captain… from the last war… his face was—"

He couldn't finish. He fled, chased by a ghost only he could see.

The contagion was here. In their own camp.

The mirror of the Umbral Gorges was turning back on them.

Maggie felt a wave of vertigo. They had tried to toy with the fire of the human psyche, and now the flames were spreading out of control. Rhelas's plan was working perfectly—too perfectly. What had begun as a tactical strike had become a race against time to contain a nightmare of their own making, one that was now learning to walk on its own.

———

The morning rose without light.

A gray veil stretched over the camp, swallowing color and sound alike. The familiar noises—the clang of metal, the footsteps, the shouted orders—seemed distant, muffled, as if the world had been wrapped in soot-stained cotton. Maggie could almost hear the bastion's heartbeat. Slow. Too slow.

The two infected Awakened had been isolated in a tent. Their murmurs never stopped. They spoke the way others breathed—of fear, of impossible memories, of faces they'd never seen. More than one soldier made the sign of warding when passing by.

They said the Awakened drew shadows to them.

Maggie forced herself to enter.

The air inside was thick, saturated with the metallic tang of ozone and the cold flesh-smell of failed rituals. The two sat rocking back and forth, and one—the younger—stared blankly at a point on the ceiling. His forehead gleamed with sweat.

A faint whisper slipped from his lips:

— "If you stare into fear long enough… it's fear that blinks first…"

A chill ran down Maggie's spine.

She knew an echo when she heard one. That wasn't a learned phrase—it was an essence fragment. The current speaking through him.

Rhelas entered behind her, his eyes bloodshot from exhaustion. He held the curtain aside, watching the afflicted with a kind of morbid tenderness.

— "We've crossed the resonance threshold," he said quietly.

— "You mean they're lost?"

— "No. They're… vibrating. What you see, Maggie, are the first conscious victims of a living network. The flow already connects them."

She frowned.

— "A network?"

— "Every fear released in the Gorges feeds the system. The illusions have merged. They communicate. They're testing their limits."

He said it like a scientist marveling at the birth of a plague.

Maggie clenched her fists.

— "You speak of this like it's an achievement. But if it spreads, our entire army will—"

— "…learn what it hides," he interrupted softly.

Then he met her gaze, unflinching.

— "You're afraid too, aren't you, Maggie?"

She didn't answer.

But deep down, she felt it—the same mist she'd seen in the distance had crept in here as well. Not physically, no—but in thought.

At night, she dreamed of an endless tunnel and a faceless figure waiting in the dark.

And every morning, it grew harder to convince herself it was only a dream.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.