Dawn crouched near the ridgeline, his breathing steady despite the downhill sprint. The molten pulse of the Infernal Mantle coursed beneath his skin—not flaring, but steady. Focused. The scar from the volcano still glowed faintly across his chest, as if the mountain had claimed him.
He looked east.
A golden beam had pierced the sky earlier—not lightning. Not a flare. A sign.
"Ingrid."
He moved.
Barefoot across jagged stone. No sound. No hesitation. Every muscle worked with practiced precision. He didn't need halos. He didn't need light.
He was movement.
But just before he reached the next ridge—
Twelve radiant halos broke through the fog.
Gary Amberson.
He descended at a brisk stride, not gliding but grounded—each step pushing the storm back. His uniform was half-torn, frostbitten along the shoulders. Despite exhaustion shadowing his face, the twelve golden halos pulsed in orbit—bright, solid, real.
Dawn slowed.
Gary reached him with a nod. "Didn't expect you."
"Same," Dawn replied, eyes flicking east. "You saw it?"
"Ingrid. Behind the waterfall." Gary motioned to the wall of ice towering ahead.
Dawn exhaled. "Makes sense. Coldest spot in range."
They stood quietly. Wind curled past them like warnings.
Then Dawn said, low, "There are cultists."
Gary's jaw tensed. "How many?"
"Three. Maybe four near the fall. More scattered. I fought a group earlier. They're targeting first-years."
Gary didn't respond right away, but something behind his gaze sharpened.
Then, quietly: "What happened to you?"
"I fell."
Gary arched a brow. "Into what, lava?"
Dawn's shoulders rose in a faint shrug. "Best event of the day."
Gary gave him a long look, but said nothing. They moved forward together, shadows slipping through mist toward the fall.
Then they saw them.
Three cultists. Pale robes with bone clasps. Masks carved from some white material—not ivory, not wood. Wrong. And embedded across their bodies—glyphs. Not etched, but planted. Devices. Shards. Parasites.
One held a twisting object—part compass, part claw. Another knelt by the ice, holding what looked like a vertebra engraved with moving grooves, pressing it into the surface.
"Ingrid," Dawn said. "They're trying to reach her."
"Or bind her tighter," Gary muttered.
The halos brightened.
The cultists turned—joints twitching unnaturally. One stepped forward.
"You should have stayed back," it rasped. "First-years are easy to offer."
Dawn stepped ahead, hands loose.
"We're not offerings," he said. "We're the ones that ruin your plans."
The cultists lunged.
---
Gary moved first.
His halos flared—not to attack, but to resist. The air thickened. Movement slowed. One cultist's arm locked mid-swing as Gary caught it with his bare forearm, redirected it, and launched a punishing elbow into the ribs. Crack.
Dawn dropped low as a cultist charged, a glyph implant buzzing violently on their spine. Dawn weaved past a lunge, caught the cultist's wrist, twisted, drove a knee into the stomach, and slammed them face-first into the icy wall.
The third came at Gary with an object—like a spike humming with static.
Gary ducked, twisted the arm sideways, then flipped the man over his back.
They weren't human. Not fully. Not anymore.
The implants pulsed again—drawing power from something else. Something behind the curtain of reality.
Gary cursed. "They're preparing a surge."
"Then break the chain," Dawn snapped.
They moved as one.
Gary's halos bent light—feeding it into his muscles. He closed distance in a blur, landing a spinning hook into a cultist's temple. The body flopped, limp.
Dawn fought with economy. No flash. No grace. Just brutal geometry—two palm strikes, then a low sweep that flattened his foe.
Two down.
One stumbled.
Dawn's fingers twitched, the Infernal Mantle whispering inside his bones—but he held it back. Not yet.
Gary turned toward the fall. "She's right behind it. We end this."
Dawn nodded. "Together."
---
Ingrid felt them before she saw them.
The air around her prison shifted. Not warmth. Not pressure. But purpose. A battle—close.
Her mind snapped awake.
Ingrid wasn't unconscious. She hadn't been for hours. The mechanism that caged her had stolen her motion, not her mind. And in the stillness, she had listened. The device didn't just bind—it drained. She had felt it feed on her Primal Origin Light. Suppressing it. Storing it.
But now... that drain had paused.
Why?
Then she heard it. Voices. Blows. Footsteps. Familiar rhythms. Gary. Dawn. They came.
A flicker of heat behind her ribs. Not power—resolve.
She shifted her mind's focus inward. There was no spell, no hack, no key.
Just complexity.
The bindings were older than anything she'd studied. But they were built with intent. Intent could be unraveled.
She began.
One node. One latch. One layer.
A whisper passed beyond the ice—Gary's voice, raised.
Another: Dawn's footfall, landing like thunder.
She worked faster.
The mechanism was built to trap power. But not intellect. Not will. Not her.
A fracture formed on the inside.
She didn't know if she'd make it in time.
But she would try.
---
Outside, Gary and Dawn moved in towards the last Cultist.
But the last cultist didn't run.
He smiled.
From within his robe, he drew a spherical object—small, carved, faintly pulsing. Not metal. Not ceramic. Something worse.
Gary inhaled sharply. "He's going to trigger it."
Dawn stepped forward. "We have to stop him before that."
"Not this one," Gary said. "That's already too late."
The cultist held the sphere high. His voice cracked through the storm:
"You don't get to take her."
He pressed it to his chest.
A tick. A pulse.
Gary and Dawn surged forward.
The cultist's hand gripped the sphere tighter.
Dawn's eyes narrowed. Gary shouted, "Drop it—!"
But the cultist only smiled.
The object in his palm began to hum.
Red veins lit across its surface, crawling like fire under skin.
It didn't explode.
Not yet.
But the sound it made was worse than fire.
It was the sound of imminence.
Of something too late to stop.
And then—
---
To be Continued