The mountains north of Valdoria were a place where summer never truly arrived.
Wind tore through the crevices of the rocky cliffs, carrying a bone-chilling frost. Kael pulled his gray cloak tighter, his breath pluming white in the air with every exhale. Beneath his leather boots, the steep, slippery, moss-covered trail demanded absolute focus with every step. They had left their horses at a hidden border post three hours ago; the smuggler's path they were currently navigating was far too narrow and precipitous for any mount.
The Special Operations Unit moved in disciplined silence. Their formation was simple and efficient.
Taking point, about twenty paces ahead, Reva Ashwind acted as the primary scout. The woman moved like a shadow gliding over the rocks. Her steps produced no sound whatsoever. Kael noted how Reva occasionally utilized a whisper-thin current of Ventus Aether around her body—not to attack, but to bend the wind currents so they wouldn't carry her scent northward. The Moon Shadow style native to the Sylvandell Elves made Reva a phantom in the wild.
In the center of the formation, Kael walked side-by-side with Gareth Stoneblade. If Reva was a phantom, Gareth was a walking mountain. The giant, muscular man with a reddish beard wore plate armor over a leather tunic, and strapped to his back was Stonecleaver—a heavy battleaxe etched with Terra Runes that probably weighed as much as Kael did. Despite his bulk, Gareth climbed the steep slope with a steady breathing rhythm and zero complaints.
Taking the rear, Captain Aldric secured the formation, ensuring they left no tracks and that no enemy could ambush them from their blind spot.
"Muscles screaming, kid?" Gareth's raspy voice suddenly broke the silence, though he kept the volume remarkably low. The giant threw a sideways glance at Kael.
Kael didn't answer immediately, swiping a sheen of cold sweat from his brow. Without a reserve of Aether in his core to passively reinforce his physical stamina, this mountain climb felt three times more agonizing than the most grueling drills at the academy. His legs felt filled with lead, and his breathing was growing shallow.
"Just... a bit stiff," Kael managed, forcing his tone to remain steady.
Gareth let out a low chuckle, a deep baritone rumble. He tossed a waterskin from his belt. Kael caught it and took a swig—ice water cut with a hint of pungent herbal extract that stung yet refreshed his throat.
"That's because your body is used to being pampered by the flow of magic," Gareth noted, taking the waterskin back. "The academy mages always forget that before they became vessels for Aether, they were humans made of flesh and bone. Feel that ache in your calves and back, Kael. As long as you can still feel pain, it means you're still alive."
"Stop babbling, Gareth," a cold voice cut in from the front.
Reva had halted at the crest of the incline. The short-haired woman turned to level a sharp stare from her dark brown eyes. The scar across her left cheek crinkled. "Your voice could trigger a rockslide on this cliff."
"I was merely enlightening our new recruit, Reva," Gareth shot back smoothly, though he dropped his volume even further.
Kael reached the top of the incline and stood beside Reva. His breath hitched the moment he saw the landscape stretching beyond the ridge.
Sprawling before them was a narrow valley choked with a sea of colossal pine trees. The trees weren't green; their bark was as black as charcoal, and their needles emitted a dull silver gleam. A thick gray fog hung low among the branches, shielding the forest floor from the pale morning sun.
"The Whispering Pines," Aldric murmured as he stepped up to join them. "The fastest route to Thornwood's rear lines. And the deadliest trail in the entire northern territory."
Kael stared at the forest. The chill radiating from the valley felt unnatural. The hollow void in his solar plexus suddenly throbbed, reacting to something invisible. Kael might have lost the ability to manipulate Light Aether, but his body still reacted passively—like a magnetic compass quivering near iron ore.
"The forest... feels wrong," Kael whispered, his hand instinctively dropping to the hilt of his steel sword.
Reva regarded him with a raised eyebrow, faintly impressed. "At least your instincts still work even when your magic is spent. These trees react to magical fluctuations. Their silver needles absorb Aether radiation from the soil."
She pointed toward the forest canopy below. "Listen closely. If the wind blows and you hear a sound like glass chimes, the area is clean. But if you hear a harsh scraping noise, like thousands of people sobbing..."
"...Draw your weapons," Aldric finished for her. "That means the pine needles have turned black from Dark Aether radiation. And that means we are not alone."
Aldric turned to face his unit. The veteran captain's features hardened. "Remember our objective. Varen's main force of fifteen thousand troops is marching down the primary road. They need three days to arrive. Our job is to infiltrate through this forest, discover what infrastructure the enemy is building with the captive corpses, and ensure the main route isn't trapped. Move fast, and leave no bodies behind."
The four of them nodded in unison. Kael took a deep breath, compartmentalizing the ache in his legs, and followed Reva down the slope into the sea of whispering pine fog.
Entering the Whispering Pines was like stepping into the belly of an ancient beast.
Sunlight was immediately choked out by the massive, twisting branches overhead. The air within the forest was stagnant, smelling of frost and ancient soil. The crunch of their footsteps was muffled by the thick carpet of shed silver needles on the ground.
True to Reva's word, as Kael walked, he could hear a delicate, chiming sound from the surrounding trees—the pure voice of the forest responding to the residual Light Aether emanating from Aldric, Reva, and Gareth.
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They trekked through the fog for two hours without incident. Kael began adapting to the rhythm of an elite patrol. Reva used hand signals to communicate whenever she detected a fork in the path, while Gareth consistently positioned himself as an invisible shield between the dark woods and Kael's blind side. There was no wasted movement or energy.
Suddenly, the cold dread in Kael's stomach erupted into sharp nausea.
The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. His passive Dark Aether instinct, magnified dozens of times by the emptiness of his core, screamed an absolute warning. Kael looked up.
Directly above Reva, the silver pine needles had shifted to pitch black. The delicate chiming abruptly mutated into a horrific, grating scrape—like the wails of thousands being strangled.
"Reva, look out!" Kael roared at the top of his lungs.
Ignoring the burn in his muscles, Kael lunged forward, shoving the scout hard from the side with all his might. The two of them rolled violently over the damp bed of needles.
The exact second Kael shoved her, a thick, transparent web slammed into the dirt precisely where Reva had been standing a heartbeat before. The webbing hissed viciously, melting the moss and soil it touched into blackened dust.
"Ambush from above!" Aldric bellowed, the Ironforge blade already singing from its scabbard.
Three massive shadows dropped from the dark canopy. Kael gasped as he registered the form of their enemy. Gore-weavers—demonic spiders the size of warhorses, clad in carapace as thick as steel armor, tinted a purplish-black. Their eight glowing red eyes burned with hunger, and their serrated mandibles dripped corrosive venom onto the forest floor.
The battle did not unfold as a chaotic scramble. Instead, the Special Unit instantly exploded into a lethal, efficient formation.
Gareth let out a gruff laugh. The giant stepped forward to block two of the Gore-weavers simultaneously. He swung Stonecleaver with both hands.
"Graviton Edge!"
The massive axe blade glowed with the brownish-yellow hum of Terra Aether. As the axe slammed into one of the giant spider's legs, the magical weight of the weapon multiplied exponentially. A deafening crack of shattering carapace echoed; the demon's leg, thick as a tree trunk, pulverized as if made of thin glass.
The second spider attempted to pounce on Gareth from his blind spot, but Reva had already recovered from her fall. Her features hardened with a freezing fury.
She launched herself into the air with an agility impossible for a normal human, propelled by a burst of Ventus Aether at the soles of her feet. Mid-air, she drew her twin short daggers in a crossed motion. The Moon Shadow Style was not merely about speed; it was about absolute precision. Reva's daggers were coated in razor-sharp, resonating wind. In one lethal spin, she drove both blades directly into the spider's cluster of red eyes, piercing straight through to the demon's central nervous system.
While Reva and Gareth executed their targets with high-tier magic, the third spider—smaller but faster—ignored the Aether-wielders and set its sights on Kael, the weakest prey who emitted no magic.
The spider hissed and lunged at him, its mandibles thrown wide to inject its venom.
Lacking Aether, lacking magic, and possessing a weakened body, a wave of panic threatened to overtake Kael's mind. However, months of hellish training at the academy and the trauma of the Simulation Forest took the reins. He didn't try to parry a monster that vastly outweighed him.
Kael dropped to his back, sliding across the wet moss directly beneath the leaping demon's underbelly. Gripping his steel sword with both hands, Kael angled the blade vertically at forty-five degrees. Harnessing the momentum of the monster's own pounce, Kael's sword viciously tore open the spider's lower abdomen, where there was no steel carapace to protect it.
Thick black blood geysered out, drenching Kael's chest and arms. The monster shrieked in excruciating pain, tumbling past Kael and slamming into a pine trunk so hard the tree violently shook.
The thrashing beast attempted to right itself, but Aldric was already there. In a single sweep of the Dawn Blade technique bathed in pure Light Aether, the monster's head was cleanly separated from its thorax.
Silence descended upon the Whispering Pines once more, broken only by the hiss of demon blood burning and evaporating into black ash in the frigid air.
Kael panted heavily, pushing himself up to a kneeling position as he pressed a trembling hand to his arm. He stared at his sword, now slick with thick gore.
A slender yet strong hand extended toward him. Kael looked up to see Reva.
The scout pulled him to his feet. There was no smile, no shift in expression on her cold face. However, the disdain in her gaze was entirely gone.
"You spotted the web before I did," Reva said flatly. She slapped the dust from Kael's shoulder rather roughly. "Your reaction saved my life, kid. Don't expect me to thank you at length."
Reva turned and walked away without waiting for a reply, returning her scrutiny to the canopy. Yet to Kael, those brief words were worth more than a thousand medals. He knew, from that second onward, he was no longer considered just a piece of the Captain's baggage.
Gareth strolled over, resting his giant axe on his shoulder, laughing uproariously at the sight of Kael covered in demon blood. "Told you, pain keeps you sharp! Good job, kid! An efficient kill."
Aldric wiped his blade with a coarse rag and returned it to its scabbard. He offered Kael no praise, but the look in his eyes betrayed a measure of relief and quiet pride. "Kael is the only one among us purely focused on a Dark Aether radar right now. Use that as our tactical advantage."
Reva pivoted to inspect the remains of the ambush nest from the three Gore-weavers. Ambush spiders typically stored the remains of their prey wrapped in webbing up in the canopy. However, after scaling the nearest pine tree and scanning the surroundings, she descended with a tense expression.
"Something's wrong, Captain," Reva reported, brushing a stray lock of black hair from her face. "There's no prey in their webs. Beasts or humans, nothing at all. And those spiders didn't appear to be hunting."
"Then what were they doing here?" Gareth asked, furrowing his broad brow. "Waiting for us?"
"No," Aldric answered. His gray eyes stared deep into the northern woods. "They weren't hunting. They were guarding the route."
Kael walked closer to the spot where the first web had dropped. His eyes locked onto something glittering among pine roots that were decaying unnaturally. A thin layer of yellowish-green fog hovered inches above the soil, hissing faintly as it touched the dry leaves. Miasma.
"Captain," Kael called out, crouching down while holding his breath to avoid inhaling the toxic air. Using the tip of his sword, Kael scraped something free from beneath the rotting roots and lifted it into the air.
It was a small sliver of silver metal. A Valdorian military dog tag.
Gareth stepped closer, squinting. "That's the division crest of the Third Battalion."
Kael's chest tightened, the image of Erik's carving knife flashing through his mind.
Aldric stared at the green miasma and nodded slowly, his jaw clenched tight. "Blight-callers. A faction of Corruptor mages just passed through this trail. They deliberately stationed the Gore-weavers behind their lines as a rearguard to slaughter anyone attempting to follow this track."
"Soul-rot miasma," Reva murmured, her face paling slightly. "Magister Corvus's theory was right. Those corpses... or the surviving prisoners of war from the Third Battalion... they were herded through this route overnight."
The scale of the horror finally struck them in full force. The demons hadn't merely slaughtered the Valdorian soldiers. They were managing a logistical supply line of human souls, dragging them alive across this frozen forest toward Thornwood, to be consumed in a colossal ritual.
"They already have a full night's head start," Aldric said, turning to face Kael, Reva, and Gareth. The captain's voice had lost every trace of its casual edge. "Valdoria's main army won't arrive for three days. If that Necromancy ritual is completed before Varen gets there, our fifteen thousand troops will just be marching into a mass death trap."
Aldric took a deep breath, his eyes blazing with absolute resolve.
"We don't stop to rest anymore. We hunt down that column of Blight-callers, and we make sure not a single soul from the Third Battalion makes it into Thornwood."
— To be continued in Chapter 22 —