The massive iron gates of Kampilan groaned as they slowly parted, the heavy metallic echo cutting through the freezing dawn air.
Past the threshold lay the Eastern Sector—a lawless, silent graveyard of a forgotten civilization wrapped in a choking blanket of toxic grey smog.
The morning sun was nothing more than a faint, blood-red smear against the clouds, barely illuminating the skeletal frameworks of collapsed highway overpasses and fractured concrete skyscrapers.
Ambo adjusted his posture, glancing down at his gear.
He wore the comfortable black shorts and white clogs, but his upper outfit was a distinct, contrasting statement.
The vibrant purple, oversized jacket served as his base layer, but directly on top of it, he had layered the old, tattered black oversized t-shirt from the cave.
The shredded black fabric was draped loosely over the purple jacket, its raw slashes and rips allowing the deep violet color underneath to show through like teeth marks against shadow.
Beside him, Jahek was casually popping a fresh piece of bubble gum into his mouth, though his eyes darted nervously toward the open wasteland.
Both of them were dressed strictly in their plain casual clothes, their skin completely exposed to the elements.
Out here, heavy armor was nothing but dead weight—human fabric offered zero protection against the teeth of the wild.
Survival relied entirely on their own internal stamina and the speed of their Astral Manifestation.
“Keep your eyes on the dirt, rookies.
The dead zones don’t forgive distraction.” Asher stepped past the gate perimeter, his high-heeled combat boots clicking sharply against the cracked asphalt.
His dark green hair shifted slightly in the wind, the silver earrings catching the dim dawn light.
The snake-sword strapped to his back remained perfectly still, but his entire posture radiated a calm, chilling authority.
Ambo watched him closely.
Asher didn’t emit a blinding, suffocating Astral Pressure like Zaiden or Xan, nor did his physical biology crackle with the raw energy of a typical elite vanguard.
Yet, his physical movements were unholy.
Every step he took was executed with mathematical precision, his eyes tracking the horizon with a type of predatory reflex that felt entirely unhuman.
“We are tracking a shadow,” Asher muttered, stopping abruptly at a three-way intersection of shattered asphalt.
He knelt down, pressing a single gloved finger straight into the powdery grey dust.
“Watch the ground.” Ambo and Jahek leaned forward, tilting their heads.
As Asher focused, a faint, shimmery distortion began to ripple across the surface of the soil—a microscopic, glowing frequency that looked like melting glass trapped in the dirt.
It was an Astral Signature.
“When high-tier conflicts or astral abilities occur, they leave behind an atomic residue,” Asher explained, his deep voice slicing through the morning fog.
“This specific frequency belongs to the Walibu group’s shortcut vial from your dock sting.
Even though days have passed, their raw energy permanently scorched the dust.
This signature is our compass.
It trails straight toward the metropolitan ruins on the city limits.
Learn to read the grid, or you’ll walk straight into a meat grinder.” “Whoa, that’s like a literal tracking device built into the mud,” Jahek muttered, pointing a large glove at the shimmery trail.
“So we just follow the glowing lines?” “If the wind doesn’t erase it first,” Asher replied smoothly, rising back to his full height.
“Move fast, stay down, and do not make a sound.” The trio advanced deeper into the architectural carcass of the dead city, navigating the crumbling underbelly of a double-decker highway block.
The air grew progressively thicker, reeking of old copper, rust, and damp drywall dust.
While moving through the toxic smog, Asher maintains an approachable, steady rhythm.
Ambo kept his gaze locked on the path ahead, attempting to focus the dark, oily fluid that sizzled beneath his skin into his calves to boost his agility and match Asher’s relentless, fluid pace.
He could feel the sleeping entity inside him shifting, a malicious, silent weight that didn’t use Astral Energy but responded directly to his internal panic.
“Stop,” Asher’s voice whispered through the comm frequency.
He didn’t draw his wavy snake-sword, but his gloved hand subtly drifted toward the hilt.
Crouching behind the rusted, overturned chassis of an ancient sedan, Ambo peered through the shattered windshield.
Standing perfectly still in the deep shadows of the collapsing highway pillars was a small pack of White Walkers.
Ambo’s breath caught in his throat.
Up close, their physical appearance was deeply grotesque.
They weren’t creatures made of solid bone; they were horribly deformed humans whose bare, hairless flesh was entirely white, looking like bleached leather.
Thick, pulsing black veins stretched across their chests, winding down their muscular, clawed limbs like parasitic vines.
Their faces were the most terrifying part—a completely flat, smooth white expanse of skin, devoid of any eyes, noses, or ears.
They stood like frozen statues, their heads tilting rhythmically against the wind as if listening to the groaning concrete.
“They’re mindless, but their physical strength is immense,” Jahek whispered, his jolly persona completely gone as he gripped the silver daggers at his thighs.
“As long as we don’t get close, they won’t—” SHHH-CRACK.
Jahek took a clumsy step backward, his boot catching the edge of a shattered structural rebar cutting out from the asphalt.
The sharp, rusted metal sliced straight through the side of his casual shorts, tearing into the flesh of his thigh.
A single, deep crimson drop of human blood spilled into the grey dust.
Instantly, the absolute silence of the highway block died.
The flat, smooth white faces of the white walkers violently split open down the center.
The white flesh stretched and tore apart with a sickening, wet pop, revealing cavernous, pitch-black maws lined with rows of razor-sharp teeth and long, thrashing black tongues.
A bloodcurdling, collective screech shattered the smog.
“Blood!” Jahek panicked, frantically scooping up a handful of abrasive sand.
“They smelled the blood!
Tactical retreat of the eyes!
Run!” The three white-skinned monsters blurred, their deformed limbs flexing with superhuman force as they launched a frantic, ravenous rampage straight toward the overturned sedan.
Ambo thrust his hands forward, his survival reflex triggering instantly as a thick whorl of oily black fluid erupted from his skin, rapidly coating his forearms into dense, blunt boxing gloves.
He stepped out from the chassis, his heart hammering violently against his ribs as the lead White Walker lunged, its cavernous maw wide open to tear his throat out.
When Jahek accidentally cuts his leg and panics about the Runners smelling blood, Asher doesn’t bark coldly; he smiles to keep them calm, draws his snake-sword, and tells them, “Stay behind me, kids.
Let your captain do the dancing.” Before the monster’s razor-sharp teeth could touch Ambo’s layered outerwear, Asher moved.
There was no explosive burst of an elemental Segonda ability, and no blinding aura radiated from his physical body.
He relied purely on absolute, terrifyingly peak-human reflexes.
In a microsecond, the wavy snake-sword was drawn from his back, the blade turning into a fluid silver flash that perfectly targeted the seams of the monster’s deformed anatomy.
The snake-sword did not flare with light, but it moved like a fluid whip.
With zero raw energy draining his stamina, Asher slipped beneath the lead White Walker’s outstretched claws with millimeter precision.
His predictive reflexes read the twitch of the monster’s white muscles before it even lunged.
He surgically disables the monsters with absolute, smiling precision.
SWISH.
CRACK.
The wavy, snake-like blade twisted through the air, perfectly targeting the seams of the monster’s anatomy.
In two clean, unmanifested slashes, Asher severed the tendons in the creature’s knees, dropping the heavy, deformed entity face-first into the asphalt before it could even register his position.
“Don’t just stare, rookie!” Asher barked, his combat boots clicking as he parried a thrashing black tongue from the second creature.
“Use your hands!” The third White Walker slammed straight over the hood of the ruined sedan, its cavernous mouth wide open, snapping directly at Ambo’s layered tattered black shirt.
Ambo’s survival reflex locked in.
Driven by pure instinct, he didn’t try to pull back.
He thrust his right arm forward, focusing the dark panic in his chest down into his fist.
The thick, oily black fluid bubbled violently over his knuckles, hardening instantly into a dense, heavy boxing-glove manifestation.
BAM!
His locally coated fist smashed directly into the side of the creature’s white jaw.
The impact echoed with a dull, organic thud.
The fluid absorbed the shockwave of the hit completely, preventing any recoil damage to Ambo’s own bones, while the sheer brute force of the black mud-glove violently deflected the monster’s head, shattering its razor-sharp teeth and sending its white, vein-choked body crashing hard into a concrete pillar.
“Jahek!
Right now!” Ambo yelled, his chest heaving as the extreme stamina drain of the local fluid materialization began to make his forearms tremble.
Seeing the creature pinned against the stone, Jahek gripped his teeth, his signature cowardice completely overridden by the raw terror of survival.
He lunged forward, his silver daggers erupting with a sudden, intense burst of his raw Astral energy.
Driven by pure adrenaline, Jahek drove both blades straight through the center of the dazed monster’s skull.
The raw Astral pressure flowing from his daggers flooded directly into the creature’s head, conflicting violently with its immortal cellular biology.
With a muffled, crackling pop, the creature’s white flesh began to rapidly toast from the inside out, sizzling into a fine, powdery grey ash that scattered across Ambo’s white clogs.
Asher executed a flawless, circular spin with his snake-sword, decapitating the remaining two legless walkers on the asphalt in a single, fluid sweep.
He cleaned the blade against his tight pants with absolute calm, sheathing the weapon back onto his shoulders without a single scratch on his armor.
“Not bad for a pair of strays,” Asher muttered, his silver earrings glinting as he looked at the dissolving ash.
“But the scent of blood travels fast in the wind.
We need to leave this highway grid before the rest of the herd wakes up.
Pack the daggers, Jahek.
We’re moving to the city limits.”