ATHEON'S ARRIVAL

Outpost Vester had never been silent, not truly.

There were always the clanging forges, the chatter of scouts, the hum of watchtowers, the grind of pulleys on the walls.

But tonight, when Atheon's team staggered through the southern checkpoint—the entire outpost stopped breathing.

Atheon stumbled first, catching himself on the gate frame. His armor was shredded, the fist-shaped insignia on his chest smeared in dried black blood. A lot had left with him. Only few returned.

And those few… were barely standing.

The guards rushed forward, hands gripping spears out of reflex before realizing who had arrived.

"Adept commander Atheon?" one asked, voice cracking.

Atheon didn't answer. His jaw was set too tightly, his face carved in stone and exhaustion. He took two labored steps into the courtyard and collapsed onto one knee.

"Medic lines—NOW!" someone shouted.

The courtyard exploded in motion. Healers sprinted from their stations. Runners scattered like panicked birds. Lanterns were pulled closer, casting shaking gold across blood, torn leather, and hollow faces.

Atheon wiped his mouth with the back of his gauntlet. It came away red.

"Check out the lieutenant first," he rasped as he directed the medics to first lieutenant Maren.

The medic nearest to him stiffened from the pressure In his voice as it wasn't a daily occurrence to have an adept's will directed at you.

Atheon took in the lieutenant's condition and felt something he had buried beneath years of campaigns and bloodshed. Maren had always stood at his side, unwavering, and seeing her now—collapsed, drained, diminished—gnawed at him in a way no enemy ever had.

He loved her. The truth struck with the force of a hammer. Denying it had only stunted him; an adept's strength was born from the soul, and the soul had no room for lies. To manifest power, one had to manifest truth—and he had been running from his.

Atheon stared past her, past the torches, past the walls. The thought had been gnawing at him ever since the battle: telling her how he felt might steady his soulforce—might finally stop the fracture inside him. But admitting it carried its own dangers. She could reject him. Worse, the fragile structure their team had built over the years could crumble because of a single truth.

Love was a cheap commodity in this godforsaken place. Yet he found himself thinking—to hell with it. Maren was beautiful, brilliant, unwavering. Pretending otherwise wasn't saving him; it was hollowing him out.

And he needed all the strength he could muster for Vester. Without enough power to carve out his own place in the infrastructure and rebuild a system he could work with, he would be nothing more than a fish on the chopping block once the two adepts assigned to this outpost finally turned their gaze on him.

BRIGHT POV

Bright and his group emerged from the treeline hours later—if "emerge" could be used to describe a procession that looked more like a funeral march.

Baggen had regained consciousness long enough to walk on his own feet, but only barely. His arm was slung around Estovia's shoulders; she half-dragged him, half-supported him, though her face hid the strain.

Bright followed behind them, posture straight by sheer force of will. He didn't limp—but only because a limp would have taken energy he no longer had.

His eyes were dull, half-open, but sharp enough to catch every shadow, every flicker, every whisper of danger.

When the guards spotted them, their shock shifted the entire entrance into motion again.

More survivors.

More wounded.

More explanations that made no sense in the timeline Vester had been expecting.

"You—Hells, you all look like you fought an army!"

"We did," Bright muttered.

He stepped into the torchlight fully. Blood streaked down his arm. His jacket was torn in three places. And the cores in his pocket pulsed faint warmth against his chest, like a heartbeat he didn't want.

Estovia announced, "Two teams behind us. Scattered. Some might make it. Some won't."

Baggen coughed once, nearly buckling.

Bright caught him before he hit the ground.

"We can't stop here," Bright said to the nearest officer. "The crawlers are moving. The burrowers too. Maybe more."

His voice wasn't loud.

But it cut through the courtyard like a blade.

Still vester wasn't some run of the mill outpost they sure as hell could handle it.

SILAS

Silas ran.

And tripped.

And survived.

At one point, he slipped down a muddy slope—directly under the swing of a clifflurker that missed him by an inch and decapitated another crawler trying to grab him.

"Ha!" Silas gasped as he tumbled, "I meant to do that!"

At another point, he dodged left to avoid a falling branch, unknowingly sidestepping a burrower erupting from the soil.

"South," he kept muttering. "Just keep going south. The Captain said south. I said south. We're a south-bound household now."

Then he stumbled into a shallow stream and followed it, mumbling:

"Please let this lead somewhere civilized. Or somewhere with fewer limbs crawling around."

Night pressed in thick and cold. The trees seemed to bend around him, creaking with malicious amusement.

Silas glared at one.

"Listen here, you tall bastard—don't you try anything."

Eventually—miraculously—he spotted torchlight through the canopy.

He stopped dead, tears stinging his eyes.

"Civilization… by the Shroud's merciless left toe, civilization."

He began sprinting toward Vester, a dirt-stained, leaf-covered, half-delirious, wholly lucky disaster of an initiate.

ROWAN KADESH POV

Rowan Kadesh, captain of the northern wall and unofficial voice of kadesh's military oversight, marched into the courtyard the moment word spread.

He was built like a hammer—dense, hard, unflinching. His dark coat carried the golden crest of kadesh: a crowned stag.

His eyes swept the courtyard.

Atheon, half-conscious on a stretcher.

Bright's squad, slumped against crates, being tended to.

Other fledglings limping in behind them.

The smell of rot clinging to the air.

Rowan stopped before Vester's logistics commander,—a wiry woman in a steel-plated cuirass, working directly for adept vaelith.

"Why," Rowan said slowly, "are survivors arriving in droves when the border report suggested minimal Shroud movement this week?"

The commander bristled. "Because the border report was wrong."

Rowan stepped closer. "Kadesh does not get border reports wrong."

"Then maybe your scouts didn't do their jobs properly."

A ripple went through the nearby guards.

Rowan's jaw ticked. "Are you saying my men cannot be trusted to do their jobs?"

"I'm saying the Shroud doesn't give a damn if they did."

Rowan exhaled through his nose—slow, controlled.

"Very well," he said. "Tell me everything."

Before she could respond, a runner sprinted up.

"Sir! Captain! Rumors are spreading across the barracks—about some Monarch!"

Rowan stiffened.

"There was a sighting of another," the runner panted, "and its moving."

The words cut the courtyard open.

An aged healer, who knew what a monarch represented dropped her tools.

One soldier whispered a curse.

Atheon's eyes snapped open in raw fear. It had taken the Cavendish elites—and his entire crew—to bring down just one, and even then they'd been left bleeding.

Estovia froze mid–bandage wrap as well. The Republic's education, drilled into her since childhood, kicked into overdrive as she recalled what truly made a crawler a Monarch.

As the night deepened, the rumors only grew:

"The Monarch was spotted near the glade."

"No—someone said it commands the mist now."

"It consumed a Tier II patrol whole."

"Atheon saw its silhouette."

"Someone high up wants the outposts to stay quiet about it. Someone from Crownhold."

Lies mixed in with truth spread like wildfire.

Crownhold soldiers began muttering about incompetence festering in vester.

Kadesh soldiers muttered about Crownhold's arrogance.

Politics being played even at the edge of a cliff that all but guaranteed certain death.

Even the recruits, exhausted though they were, felt the tension in the air like static before a lightning strike.

Bright watched it all unfold from the wall where he sat.

Estovia stood beside him.

"They're scared," she murmured.

"They should be," Bright replied.

Baggen limped up behind them. "You think the Monarch is actually close or it's just a ruse ?"

Bright didn't answer immediately.

He looked toward the dark forest stretching endlessly beyond Vester's walls.

Something moved out there—not a monster, not a crawler, not a burrower.

The Shroud had a sick sort of playfulness to it that he could never describe ; even if today's reports were false, a power pay by the leader's of vester to consolidate power, they could just as easily become true tomorrow.

"I think," Bright finally said, "that we're all going to find out soon enough."

Later on,

A horn sounded from the east tower.

Sharp.

Shrill.

Panic-laced.

The fear was palpable due to the rumors spreading rumors about a monarch heading for vester.

Soldiers sprinted toward the ramparts.

The ground had been whispering for minutes before anyone admitted hearing it. A low, rolling tremor—subtle at first, like distant thunder smothered by layers of earth. Then it grew. Shifted. Multiplied.

The soldiers had assumed it was one thing.

A single massive Shroud-beast shadowing the survivors from the ridge as they retreated toward Vester's shattered outer wall—a titan unseen, the kind of nightmare that turned entire squads into stories whispered in mourning tents.

That was the image their fragile minds summoned whenever the word monarch was uttered.

But when the first crawler broke through the treeline, the breath that left most throats was laced with relief. A swarm of burrowers and night-crawlers surged forward—dangerous in their own right, yes, but nowhere near the reality-warping horror that defined a monarch. These things killed men. A monarch erased them.

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