Outpost Vester did not look like the salvation it was trumped up to be.

It looked like a scar. A very ugly one.

Stone ramparts hunched against the dark like broken teeth, patched in places with metal plating salvaged from older ruins. The walls rose high—higher than Grim Hollow's ever were—but their height told a different story. Not confidence nor security, but the telling of a place ravaged consequently. It was shaded with the stench of paranoia.

That's because no one chooses to paint a building knowing it'll be stained the next day, just as no one wraps a wound expecting the bandage to be torn off.

Two watchtowers flanked the entrance, each glowing with pale lantern-crystals, and two squads of soldiers paced in restless circles beneath them. The sight should have brought Adam some measure of comfort.

It didn't.

Because even from afar, he saw the divide.

One squad wore armor trimmed with slate-blue—the colors of an Adept he would later know to be Adept Commander Vaelith Crownhold. Their weapons were polished, their formation tight, their eyes sharp. They carried themselves like they lived and breathed protocol.

The other squad wore armor marked with iron-red scars—the symbol of the adept, Adept Commander Rowan Kadesh. Their stance was looser, more predatory. Their boots were muddy, their shoulders broad with pride rather than discipline. These were fighters, not administrators.

Two squads.

Two commands.

Two factions in one outpost.

A storm waiting to break.

A shit show waiting to be unleashed.

And Adam, leading a frightened trail of workers, felt the tension in the air like invisible thunder.

He swallowed.

He had earned the trust and support of the workers from their shared trauma brought up by the journey, and some of them would eventually be transferred to Outpost Vester—another reason he'd volunteered to guide them here. He basked in their gratitude, weaving it together with his honey-laced words as he quietly laid the groundwork for a future web of informants. Not spies though. He wasn't that treacherous yet. They all served the same Republic at the moment. Acquainted whisperers felt like a gentler truth.

"Stay behind me, people" he whispered.

A few nodded. Most simply trembled.

The gates opened with a grating groan as the guards shouted down:

"IDENTIFY!"

Adam stepped forward.

"Survivors," he called. "From Grim Hollow."

A murmur swept the guards.

The iron-red soldiers immediately leaned forward, faces darkening in curiosity and dread. The slate-blue ones whispered among themselves but remained perfectly in line.

Then someone barked,

"Let them through!"

And the gates parted.

Adam and the workers shuffled inside, exhaustion sinking into their bones the moment the outpost swallowed them.

Vester's interior was not like Grim Hollow's simple barracks-and-yard layout. No, this was a miniature city carved in weathered stone.

Three platforms ascended the central slope, each connected by narrow crisscrossing stairways:

The Lower Tier were for the barracks, mess halls and supply pits.

The Mid Tier were for the training yards, armories and tactical rooms.

And the Upper Tier were for the command spire, Adepts' quarters, and the private archive tower.

Adam stared upward.

"Gods," he muttered. "This is… structured."

"Structured?" a worker repeated. "More like a maze."

Adam didn't disagree.

He took in every detail with the same quiet hunger he always had.

Here, the blue-trim soldiers marched in strict lines, moving crates with silent precision.

There, the red-scar soldiers brawled or sharpened weapons openly, scowling at anyone who looked too long.

The division was so blatant he wondered how the place hadn't torn itself apart already.

A heavyset officer approached, face stern, armor scratched.

"Name," the man demanded.

"Adam," he replied. "No rank. Civ—well—recently attached to Grim Hollow's labor roster." He gestured to his fledgling uniform.

"And the others?"

"Workers. Survivors."

The officer sucked his teeth.

"Lucky bunch. Follow me. You'll be quartered in the lower-tier resthouses. Adept Crownhold wants a list of everything that happened back there."

Adam stiffened.

Crownhold? Already?

He had expected questioning, yes…

But by an Adept Commander?

They really were desperate for information.

As the officer gestured for him alone to come forward, the workers hesitated.

"You'll be safe here," Adam promised them softly. "Just stay in the resthouse until morning."

An older man nodded gratefully.

"Thank you, lad. If not for you… we'd be bones in the canyon."

Adam's throat tightened. He hated praise. It tasted like a lie he hadn't earned. Still he welcomed it.

"I just pointed us south," he muttered. "That's all."

But they didn't hear him—they only saw him as someone who had saved them.

Someone who had led.

Someone who had mattered.

The officer waved again, impatient.

"Move."

Adam followed.

They reached the Mid Tier where a narrow stone corridor tunneled into the wall, lit by flickering crystal torches. The officer stopped at a chamber with a high slit-window overlooking the outpost.

"Wait here."

Adam stepped inside.

The chamber was bare—except for a long table, a map nailed into its surface, and a single chair occupied by a man with pale hair and colder eyes.

Adept Commander Vaelith Crownhold.

His posture was immaculate.

His coat was pressed.

His presence radiated authority honed to a razor.

His gaze lifted sharply when Adam entered.

"You're alive," Crownhold said. No greeting nor warmth. Just an observation.

Adam nodded.

"Barely."

He slipped into the conversation with surprising ease. From an outsider's view it looked unnatural—just a fledgling, still wet behind the ears, speaking so bluntly to an adept commander. But for Adam, it felt like talking to an old friend long lost.

"You were at Grim Hollow when it fell?"

"Yes, sir."

"And you brought survivors."

"I brought who I could."

Crownhold studied him—measured him—like weighing a blade to see if it would bend or cut.

"Sit."

Adam sat.

"What happened?" the Adept Commander asked, fingers steepled beneath his chin.

Adam swallowed.

"Everything."

And he told him.

He spoke of the first waves.

The breach.

The walkers.

The crawlers.

The panic.

The death.

The screaming.

The Monarch.

As Adam spoke, some quiet corner of his mind—sharpened by his cognition ability—screamed at the absurdity of how easily he was spilling information.

Crownhold's expression never changed once.

But when Adam mentioned seeing some Cavendish Adepts, heading to Grimm hollow, something flickered in Crownhold's eyes—a sharp, analytical glint.

"A Monarch that far inland…" he murmured. "And Cavendish operatives acting independently… Troublesome."

His gaze snapped back to Adam.

"You did well to lead your group."

He paused.

"And you did well to survive."

Adam blinked.

Was that… praise?

Crownhold stood abruptly.

"You will report again at dawn. Rest until then. And tell no one what you told me."

Adam rose shakily.

"Yes, sir."

The officer escorted him back down, leaving Adam at the lower-tier resthouse, his mind spinning.

Vester was a nest of politics wrapped in stone.

And he had just stepped into the middle of it.

Hours later—

The gates thundered again.

Shouts rose.

"More survivors!"

Adam rushed out of the resthouse just in time to see Sergeant Tyven leading a limping line of fledglings into the courtyard.

Bessia walked stiffly but uninjured—her unnatural lack of wounds drawing confused stares from the Vester soldiers.

Duncan's entire right side was caked in dried blood.

Two fledglings leaned on each other to stay upright.

Tyven himself looked half-dead.

A red-scar soldier barked,

"Medical! Move them!"

Medics from both factions converged—though the blue-trims were more organized, the red-scars more forceful.

Tyven spotted Adam and managed a tired grin.

"You made it," he rasped.

Adam stepped forward.

"You too, sir."

"They pushed us hard." Tyven exhaled. "We lost a lot on the ridge. Some fell behind. Some were ripped—"

He stopped.

He didn't need to finish.

Adam placed a hand on his arm.

"You kept them alive sir. That's what matters."

Tyven huffed a laugh.

"You sound like an officer."

"Don't insult me."

The sergeant smirked, then winced at the pain in his ribs.

Bessia approached next, eyes bright despite the exhaustion.

"You really got here first," she said. "How?"

"Luck," Adam answered.

"No," she replied quietly. "Not luck."

Duncan limped past them, nodding once. He didn't speak—he was too tired for words.

Medics swept the group away, dragging them toward the infirmary.

Adam watched until they disappeared inside, his chest tightening with a strange mix of relief and dread.

More of them were alive.

More of them had made it.

But he couldn't shake the feeling that Grim Hollow hadn't ended anything.

It had begun something.

And Outpost Vester—even with its looming walls, its ordered tiers, its rival Adepts—was not prepared.

Not for Monarchs.

Not for the creeping terror that followed the fall of an outpost.

He turned toward the resthouse, a cold wind slipping down the stone corridors behind him.

Vester was strong.

But strength alone didn't keep ruin away.

Adam inhaled deeply.

"Tomorrow," he whispered to himself, "everything changes."

And above him, high in the command spire, Vaelith Crownhold and Rowan Kadesh—the two Adept Commanders locked in silent rivalry—each felt the same chill sweep through their bones.

Something was coming.

Something big.

The karmic weight of it wasn't good or bad—just an opportunity for whoever had the nerve to seize it. Not some bullshit "chosen one" script.

All roads led to Vester.

And soon, the world would understand why.

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