He understood.

He gave her a small, almost imperceptible nod, a silent acknowledgment of the unspoken truth that now hung between them.

She pulled her hand back as if she'd been burned, her composure slamming back into place with the force of a reinforced steel door.

"Go," she said, her voice suddenly stiff, formal. "We move out in five."

She turned and walked away, her back ramrod straight.

The Gauntlet was being held in the heart of the city's abandoned garment district.

The streets were cordoned off, a silent, empty no-man's-land.

But the rooftops were full.

A crowd of observers was already there, dark silhouettes against the gray, overcast sky.

Guild leaders in expensive suits.

DGC officials, their faces grim and unreadable.

And a swarm of silent, hovering news drones, their red camera lights like the eyes of a hundred hungry predators.

They were about to step onto the world stage.

And the world was waiting to see if they would fly, or fall.

The B-Rank Gate pulsed in the center of the street, a shimmering, jagged tear in reality that seemed to hum with a strange, crystalline energy.

They stood before it, the five of them, a small, desperate island in a sea of expectation.

Forge's gruff voice crackled in their comms, a final, grim blessing.

"The council is watching, Thanatos."

"Try not to die in the first five minutes."

"It makes for bad television."

Michael looked at his team.

At Jinx's grim resolve.

At Jax's manic, terrified grin.

At Luna's quiet, trembling courage.

He took a deep breath.

"Let's go give them a show," he said.

And together, they stepped into the light.

The world on the other side of the Gate was beautiful.

And it wanted to kill them.

They were standing in a vast, cavernous space, a cathedral of pure, shimmering crystal.

The walls, the floor, the ceiling—everything was carved from a single, unbroken mass of a strange, translucent, and faintly glowing mineral.

Light, from some unseen source, refracted through the crystalline structures, splitting into a thousand different rainbows, painting the air with a dazzling, disorienting beauty.

"Whoa," Jax breathed, his voice a hushed, reverent whisper. "This place is sparkly."

He took a step, and the sound of his boot on the crystal floor was a sharp, clear, ringing chime that echoed through the vast, silent space.

"It's like we're walking inside a giant, very pointy chandelier," he added.

Jinx, however, was not impressed.

She had her rifle up, her eyes scanning the crystalline walls with a deep, professional suspicion.

"This is a kill box," she growled, her voice a low, cynical rasp. "A beautiful, sparkly kill box."

"The light," she said, squinting. "It's bouncing everywhere. It's going to play hell with our optics."

"And our senses," Michael added, his own mind a chaotic jumble of reflected, refracted, and utterly useless data.

His [Void Sense] was a mess.

The crystal walls were acting like a hall of mirrors for psychic energy, creating a thousand false echoes, a thousand phantom threats.

He couldn't tell what was real and what was just a reflection.

He was blind.

"Luna," Chloe's voice was a calm, steady presence in their ears. "We're relying on you. Can you find us a path?"

Luna stood in the center of the group, her eyes closed, her face a mask of pure concentration.

She wasn't trying to see.

She was listening.

"The maze… it's singing," she whispered, her voice a distant, wondering thing.

"The crystal… it has a rhythm. A pulse."

"It's not a dead thing," she said, her eyes snapping open, wide with a new, dawning understanding. "It's alive."

She pointed to a shimmering, archway-like formation to their left.

"That way," she said, her voice gaining a new, quiet confidence. "The song is… quieter there."

They moved, a small, cautious knot of black tactical gear in a world of blinding, crystalline light.

They hadn't gone twenty feet when the first attack came.

From the walls themselves, the crystal seemed to flow, to coalesce, forming into a pack of sleek, beautiful, and utterly deadly creatures.

They were wolves.

Or a nightmare's version of them.

Their bodies were carved from the same translucent, glowing crystal, their eyes burning with a cold, internal light.

[CRYSTAL SHARD HOUND (LV. 15) IDENTIFIED.]

They didn't roar. They didn't howl.

They moved in a perfect, silent, and terrifying unison, their crystalline claws making a soft, chiming sound on the floor.

"Contact!" Jinx yelled, her rifle barking.

PING!

The bullet, a high-caliber, armor-piercing round, struck the lead hound in the chest.

It didn't leave a hole.

It just glanced off, ricocheting around the cavern with a high-pitched, whining scream before embedding itself in the far wall.

"They're bulletproof!" Jax yelled, his voice a mixture of terror and delight. "Of course, they're bulletproof! This is so much more interesting!"

The pack was on them.

The fight was a chaotic, disorienting dance of light and death.

Michael moved, a blur of motion, his Reaper's Fang a useless sliver of black against their shimmering, crystalline hides.

He couldn't get a purchase. He couldn't find a weak point.

He summoned his Revenant, the glitching, spectral form of the Phase Hound a welcome patch of purple darkness in the blinding light.

The Shard Hounds ignored it. Their attention was fixed, with a cold, single-minded focus, on the one thing in the room that was a true threat to them.

The one thing that could harm them.

Luna.

"They're after the Seer!" Chloe's voice was a sharp, urgent command. "Protect her! At all costs!"

Jinx and Michael formed a desperate, two-person wall around the terrified girl, their own weapons all but useless.

"Jax!" Jinx roared, parrying a snapping, crystalline jaw with the butt of her rifle. "Any time you're ready to make with the boom-boom would be great!"

"Patience, Jinxie, patience!" Jax called back. "Art cannot be rushed!"

He had one of his new "Crystal Calamity" grenades in his hand. He wasn't aiming at the hounds.

He was aiming at the ceiling.

"If you can't break the toy," he said, a manic grin on his face, "break the shelf it's sitting on!"

He threw the grenade.

It sailed through the air and attached itself to a massive, chandelier-like formation of crystals hanging directly over the pack.

He slammed his hand down on a detonator.

There was no explosion.

There was just a sound.

A single, pure, and impossibly high-pitched note that vibrated in their very bones.

The massive crystal formation shuddered.

It turned from a solid, shimmering thing into a cascade of fine, glittering dust.

A shower of razor-sharp, crystalline sand rained down on the Shard Hounds.

They let out a silent, pained shriek as their beautiful, perfect forms were scoured, pitted, and weakened by the resonant pulse.

They weren't bulletproof anymore.

"Light 'em up!" Jax screamed, his voice full of a pure, triumphant joy.

Michael didn't hesitate. He was a phantom in the swirling dust, his blade finally finding purchase, shattering the weakened crystalline forms with a series of satisfying, chiming cracks.

They had done it. They had won the first round.

They stood panting in the sudden, ringing silence, their bodies covered in a fine, glittering dust.

"Okay," Jax said, his voice a little shaky. "That was awesome."

They navigated the first section of the maze, a tense, nerve-wracking journey through a world that felt like it was actively trying to blind them.

Luna was their guide, their compass, her quiet, confident voice a steady anchor in the disorienting beauty.

"Left here," she would say. "The path is… stable."

"Wait," she would whisper. "The song is changing. It's angry."

They were working as a team. A real team.

They were a chaotic, dysfunctional, and surprisingly effective machine.

They reached a massive, circular chamber, the heart of the first level of the labyrinth.

The path forward was clear.

A single, shimmering archway on the far side of the room.

"We're through," Jinx breathed, a note of genuine surprise in her voice. "We actually made it."

Just as the words left her mouth, Luna cried out, a sharp, sudden gasp of pure pain.

She stumbled back, her hands flying to her temples, her face going pale.

"Something is wrong," she gasped, her voice trembling.

"The maze…"

She looked around the chamber, her eyes wide with a new, dawning horror.

"It's not just shifting," she whispered, her voice a terrified, disbelieving thing.

"It's hunting us."

With a low, grinding groan that seemed to shake the very foundations of the Gate, the archway they had just come through, their only way back, began to seal itself shut, a solid, impenetrable wall of crystal flowing into place.

The walls of the chamber itself began to move, to close in, the beautiful, crystalline structures rearranging themselves with a cold, intelligent, and deeply malevolent purpose.

They were trapped.

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