They had rested only briefly after the world nearly came undone. The sun hung low behind veils of cloud, casting an amber hue across the snow-dusted cliffs. Ingrid had tucked the black, unreadable book away. No one had asked about it. No one dared.
Some truths needed time.
Dawn was the first to stand. He didn't speak right away. He just stared out over the frostbitten horizon, where the land rose in jagged silence.
He felt it again—the pull. Not from the sky, not from his blood, but from the ground.
"The cultists," he said suddenly. "They didn't strike at random."
Gary blinked. "What?"
"They attacked when we were… vulnerable," Dawn continued. "When we were wrapped in our own desires. You, reaching for your strength. Ingrid, unraveling secrets. Me—"
He stopped. His eyes drifted to the distance. The memory of flames licking through his veins, of heat becoming shape. Of almost losing himself again.
Ingrid finished for him. "When you were embracing the Infernal Mantle."
He nodded. "They were aimed at our transformation points. Whoever sent them knew what moments to disrupt."
Gary narrowed his eyes. "So they weren't some chaotic wave. More like… pressure points. Hit where it hurts the most."
"No coordination," Ingrid said. "Just instinctual sabotage."
"And not just us," Dawn added. "It wouldn't have stopped with Primordial Academy students."
Ingrid's eyes widened. "The Covenant of Design. Doctrine of Grit. Tidebound Circle. They all sent their own."
"And no one's come," Gary muttered. "No signals, no flares. Either they're trapped—or worse."
Dawn exhaled slowly. "Then we find them."
Gary scoffed. "We? Just us?"
Ingrid tilted her head. "Why not? We're not dead."
"Yet."
"Then let's make sure others aren't either," Dawn said.
There was no debate after that.
---
The moment they committed, the world responded.
Not a sound. Not a shift in wind.
The land changed.
Snow melted in precise streaks, revealing stone etched by time. Trees leaned in strange directions. The ice on the cliffs groaned—not collapsing, but folding inward, revealing steps.
Paths emerged.
Not made.
Revealed.
The Wilderness listened. It always had.
From the day at the Wall, they had been warned: This land reacts to your desires. Not your commands. Those who sought strength met trials. Those who sought escape found traps. Now they sought others—not for gain, but protection.
And so the land gave them direction.
For the first time, their desires aligned with its ancient hunger.
"It's listening," Gary whispered. "It's actually listening."
"It always was," Ingrid said. "We just never asked for the right things."
---
They moved fast.
The path was subtle but constant. Trees bent just enough to mark direction. The snow thinned when they needed speed. Cliffs grew grooves like handholds.
The first survivors came within hours.
A pair from the Covenant of Design, twins in layered robes torn by ice and blood. One limped, half-carried by the other, their warding sigils crackling weakly. Paper-thin metal bands clung to them like dying petals.
"You're from Primordial Academy," the sister rasped.
"No," Gary said, offering a hand. "We're with you."
Ingrid treated the leg without hesitation. The girl flinched but spoke. "They came when we were drawing. I was... designing a stabilizer glyph. My brother was focused. They struck then. They said we were 'ripe.'"
Dawn's eyes darkened. "Ripe for what?"
There was no answer.
Not one they could speak aloud.
---
They found more survivors.
A bruised boy from the Doctrine of Grit, his fists bloodied from a fight he barely survived. Two girls from the Tidebound Circle, soaked and shaking, but eyes hard with defiance. Each group told the same story: cultists emerged when focus turned inward.
Not to kill.
To interrupt. To take something.
Ingrid muttered, "They know when to appear. Not just when we're alone—but when we're closest to a breakthrough."
Gary spat into the snow. "Parasites."
They pressed on.
The Wilderness continued to answer. A forked path appeared—one side lined with frost-bitten bones, the other warm with faint golden moss. They followed the warmth.
They came upon a ravine rimmed with jagged spires.
There, they saw the marks: dragged boots, blood dried black on frost. Symbols scorched into the stone—glyphs. Crude, jagged, almost forced onto the surface. Nothing elegant or refined.
Dawn knew that shape.
He said nothing.
He'd seen those glyphs once, long ago. In a village where no child should have seen such light. The symbols weren't magic. They were vessels, tools to pull from something that had no right touching this world.
That was when his Mortal Shell first cracked.
The pain had never left. But neither had the truth.
---
The cultists came into view just beyond the ravine.
Ten of them, surrounding three bound students—glyphs swirling above them like flies. Their bodies were rigid, trapped inside a cage of bone and shadow, laced with sigils not carved, but burned in.
One cultist held a jagged dagger. It pulsed—not with energy, but something worse.
Borrowed power. Twisted echo.
Dawn spoke first. "On my mark."
Gary cracked his knuckles.
Ingrid whispered a pattern.
Then they moved.
Gary struck like a meteor, fists glowing with kinetic force. One cultist's ribs shattered with the first blow. Ingrid raised both hands and unraveled the lattice, words like threads cutting through the glyphs. Dawn followed behind—heat coiling around him, not flames but structured combustion, shaped by the Infernal Mantle's will.
He did not burn wildly.
He designed destruction.
The cultists fought with their glyphs—strips of darkened bone and skin etched with marks, thrust forward like weapons. But they were slow. Borrowed. The power didn't belong to them. They were just vessels.
That was their weakness.
And the trio tore through them.
When the last fell, twitching in snow, Gary hauled one cultist up by the collar.
"Why now? Why us?"
The cultist laughed—blood bubbling from his lips.
"You're… opening doors. And the stars…" He shuddered. "The stars are so hungry."
Then he slumped, dead.
---
Night fell like a curtain.
They had rescued nine. Some walked. Some limped. All carried more questions than they could answer.
The Wilderness was still listening. Still watching.
Ingrid sat by a fire. The black book pulsed faintly once, just as her eyes met the rescued. She didn't open it.
Gary sat sharpening a blade, not for battle—but for focus. His thoughts were tangled in too many silences.
Dawn lay back on the snow, staring into the night sky.
The stars looked different now.
No longer distant. No longer cold.
They pulsed like watching eyes.
He didn't say what he remembered.
Didn't speak of the glyphs he'd seen before. The pain he had endured. The way his Mortal Shell had broken so perfectly for something alien to step through.
But he felt it now.
It was a pattern.
And it was repeating.
---
They weren't done yet.
But tonight, for the first time, they weren't just survivors.
They were witnesses.
And the Wilderness had finally answered.