A deafening crack echoed beyond the gates.
The earth trembled beneath their feet.
Whatever was forcing its way through…
Had arrived.
Tor exploded into motion.
Beast-bonded warriors vaulted over fences, their spirit beast companions already materializing beside them in flashes of colored essence.
Human cultivators poured into the streets fastening armor, drawing weapons, and swallowing hastily prepared cultivation pills as they ran.
Meanwhile, the ordinary exiles, the merchants, craftsmen, widows, and children who had abandoned the path of cultivation years ago—did exactly the opposite.
They barred shop doors, gathered their families and hurried toward Tor’s hardened refuge carved deep within the fossilized dragon’s pelvic region.
The massive gates, fashioned from interlocking fossil ribs bound together with iron bands, groaned open.
A jagged shimmering tear floated above the fossil plain, leaking a dense purple miasma that poured downward, wherever the purple vapor touched the fossilized earth, frost-like mist rolled outward despite the afternoon heat.
“Who’s going in!” A cultivator shouted.
“What level is it?” Shouted another.
A chorus of chatter followed.
“Has anyone identified it?”
“What rank?”
“How large is the breach?”
“Where’s the Guild Captain?”
“Look!
someone has already gone in!”
It was true.
A narrow fracture had already formed across the Rift’s shimmering surface.
Someone…
Had crossed its threshold.
No one knew who.
No one had seen them enter.
“Someone is solo rifting” said a cultivator in awed shock.
Hushed whispers spread among the gathered cultivators, “They must be strong if they think they can seal it alone.”
Boris shot Marla the entrepreneurial grin she had come to recognize all too well.
Marla shifted her stance and folded her arms.
“I don’t see any reason not to.” She smirked.
“Besides, if I ever want my Fiend Crystal back, I’d prefer Tor not be destroyed.”
Boris chuckled.
“That’s the spirit.”
Rifts had an unsettling habit of opening near towns or settlements throughout Beast Vein.
Ancient records claimed they were remnants of the Great Beast Wars thousands of years ago.
Whether they were weapons, prisons, or gateways had long since been forgotten.
Even their creators had been erased by time.
Only one belief had endured.
They had been made to destroy civilization.
Which was also the main reason why so many clans were nomadic and lived a migratory way of life, towns or settlements were considered taboo by some clans and forbidden.
Boris pushed toward the front of the gathering crowd, gently but firmly moving cultivators aside.
“Make way!
Make way!
We’re going in!”
Heads turned as the pair stepped through the ranks until they stood before the Rift itself.
Clear of the crowd they made their way to the frosted ground beneath the jagged shimmering tear Boris and Marla could see a frozen world inside, “Looks chilly pussy cat, I hope you packed a cloak.” Boris said casually as he double checked the contents of his well-worn hide kit bag, there were dried rations, antidotes, restoratives, a spare bowstring for Marla, fire starters, beast salves, and emergency cultivation pills all sat neatly packed inside.
And of course, his wide array of attack stones.
Boris grinned.
He was loaded for bear
Marla closed her eyes and extended her spiritual senses toward the shimmering tear.
After a long moment, she opened them.
“It’s a four-star Rift.”
A ripple passed through the gathered cultivators.
Several hunters visibly relaxed while others quietly backed away.
A four-star Rift was dangerous, but survivable.
Boris only grinned wider.
“Good.”
He adjusted the straps of his hide pack one final time.
Marla laughed.
“I knew that’s what you’d say.”
Boris slipped his fingers between hers.
“Shall we, Pussy Cat?”
She squeezed his hand.
“Let’s.”
Together they began circulating their Animus.
The Rift reacted instantly.
Hairline fractures spread across its shimmering surface like cracks racing through frozen glass.
”Crack.”
”Crack.”
Two fractures stopped directly before Boris and Marla.
The pull began.
It wasn’t violent.
More like standing in the current of an invisible river.
Their feet slowly left the fossilized earth.
The crowd watched in silence as the pair drifted toward the fractured surface.
The purple miasma swallowed them whole.
For a heartbeat…
There was nothing.
No sound.
No light.
No sensation of falling.
Then, ”Pop!”
The world returned all at once.
A blast of freezing air struck their faces.
Snow crunched beneath their boots.
They stood inside a corridor of ancient blue ice, its walls stretching into darkness in both directions.
Frost coated every surface, while pale crystals embedded in the ceiling cast an eerie azure glow through the frozen passage.
Neither of them spoke.
The Rift had accepted them.