The freezing, toxic night fog rolled through the skeletal structures of the ruined metropolis like a silent, predatory tide.
It had been hours since the trio left the front gates of the guild.
The deeper they marched into the sprawling, post-apocalyptic concrete graveyard, the more the rotting decay of the old civilization pressed down on them.
Towering skyscrapers loomed in the dark like jagged teeth, their glass facades long since shattered, replaced by creeping vines and thick layers of grey surface ash.
Stripped of the guild’s defensive warmth, the open dead zone was an absolute icebox.
Because they were wearing only their comfortable casual clothes, the drop in temperature was brutal.
Jahek shivered violently, his arms tightly crossed over his chest.
Ambo adjusted his posture, glancing down at his own gear.
He wore his loose black shorts and white clogs, but his upper outfit remained a highly unusual statement: the vibrant purple, oversized jacket served as his base layer, but directly on top of it, he had layered his old, tattered black oversized t-shirt from the cave.
The shredded black fabric draped loosely over the purple outerwear, its raw slashes allowing the deep violet color underneath to show through.
“Hey, Ambo,” Jahek muttered through chattering teeth, desperately trying to distract himself from the cold.
He casually popped a fresh piece of bubble gum into his mouth.
“I’ve been meaning to ask…
what’s with the fashion statement?
You look like a stylish refugee.
Why did you insist on wearing that tattered cave shirt on top of a perfectly fresh jacket?” Ambo looked down at the frayed, ripped threads over his chest.
A subtle, warm static hummed against his skin, responding to his movements.
“I told you before, Jahek.
I don’t know why, but looking at these slashes…
it feels heavy.
Like there’s a sentimental value locked inside the cloth.
It’s the only physical thing I have from before I woke up.
I feel like if I keep it close, it might eventually help me remember my past, or eventually point to where I originally came from.” “Hey, if you want to look like a dangerous stray, be my guest,” Jahek chuckled softly, though the smile quickly faded as a blast of wind cut through the alley.
“Ugh, it’s freezing out here.
My stamina is actively draining just from keeping my body temperature up.
How much further, Captain?” Ambo stopped in his tracks, looking up at a massive, cracked overpass that stretched into the choking mist.
The sheer scale of the rotting concrete blocks around them felt endless, a grand mystery that his blank mind could not piece together.
He turned his gaze toward their guide, the questions finally bubbling to the surface.
“By the way…
I am eager to ask this to both of you, Jahek and Captain,” Ambo spoke up, his voice echoing slightly against the silent walls.
“This is a really big city, and it feels like a very long journey.
How long are we going to take to arrive at the destination?
And what are these places anyway?
I don’t know anything about where we are walking.” At the front of the line, Asher paused, his high-heeled combat boots locking perfectly balanced against the loose asphalt.
His dark green hair shifted slightly in the toxic fog, and his silver earrings caught the dim moonlight.
The wavy snake-sword strapped to his back remained perfectly still, but his sharp eyes drifted down toward the cracked road.
Asher sits comfortably with the rookies.
When Ambo asks confused questions about the layout of Bembaran, Asher doesn’t speak with clinical coldness—he patiently and kindly maps out the city puroks in the dirt using a stick, making sure the kids feel secure out in the freezing wild.
Jahek crowded around the drawing, blowing a small pink bubble before it popped against his lips.
“The massive, ruined capital city we are standing in right now is known as The Ruins of Bembaran,” Asher explained, tapping the center of his stick drawing.
“Centuries ago, it was a sprawling, advanced metropolitan civilization.
Now, it’s a completely rotted dead-zone territory.
The central point of this entire city is Katingland, the guild headquarters where we just came from.
It sits right at the heart of the metropolis as its core purok.” Asher dragged the stick slightly outward, pointing to the different sectors carved across the dirt.
“Before Zaiden and Jahek brought you in, you were hiding out on the outer, rocky fringes of the capital in a small cave network called The Ginto Threshold.
The lawless harbor where you had your first run-in with those dark operators is The Lipat Docks.
And the elite, wealthy zone on the far east side where the aristocrat Von Raj rules from luxury?
That’s The East Sector of Sariman.
They are all just broken-up puroks within this same dead capital.” Ambo nodded slowly, his eyes tracing the lines.
“Are there other cities like this?” “There are three major capitals on the board, but they exist on completely different tiers,” Asher said, his voice tightening as he drew a massive circle hovering high above their heads.
“Far above us is Neo Terra, the sky vehicle capital.
It’s a giant, flying tech-island where the elite Neomans live in absolute luxury, gatekeeping the world’s resources.
And directly beneath our boots, miles down into the abyss, sits the final capital: The Kasanaan Vaults.” “The underground city?” Ambo asked, leaning in.
“Yeah, but don’t get any ideas about visiting,” Jahek chimed in, shivering as he looked down at the cracked ground.
“The subterranean tier is completely abandoned.
No one lives down there in the dark because the sun never shines deep within the absolute abyss of that area.
It’s just a freezing, pitch-black tomb of hollowed-out subway lines and ancient bunkers.” Asher dragged the stick forward again, carving a deep, chaotic zigzag line through the dirt away from Bembaran’s center.
“Right now, we are officially stepping into The Ilian Grid.
It’s a sunken transportation maze constructed entirely out of rusted old-world cargo train cars and collapsed steel bridges.
It separates the inner city puroks from our final destination on the absolute edge of the limits: The Magway Depot.” “The Depot is a dead-end industrial shipping yard,” Jahek added, his seriousness returning.
“That’s where the intel says the cargo boxes are stockpiled.
But walking through the grid to get there takes days on foot if you don’t want to get spotted.” Asher tossed the stick aside, rising back to his full height.
“The Neomans up in Neo Terra track the major surface sectors via the cloud ledger.
They love protocols, but out here in the open wild, their laws mean nothing.
Human clothes do nothing against teeth, and if you rely too much on flashing shields or continuously supplying your raw Astral energy just to stay warm, you will run dry before we ever find the warehouse.
A Culler who relies purely on elemental manifestations is blind to their raw, human reflexes.
Out here, your internal stamina is your true lifeline.” Ambo studied the stick-drawn map in the dirt, absorbing the names of the world.
He could feel the malicious, sleeping entity inside his body shifting silently—a presence that possessed zero Astral energy but responded with a terrifying weight whenever his survival instincts peaked.
“We take shelter inside that hollowed-out oil silo across the railway line,” Asher commanded, gesturing toward a towering, rusted metallic cylinder looming through the grey mist.
“The toxic fog is peaking.
We rest, we conserve our physical energy, and we move again when the wind shifts.
Stay low.” The interior of the massive, rusted oil silo was pitch black and reeked heavily of old iron and ancient petroleum residue.
While Jahek immediately collapsed against the curved metal wall, panting as he attempted to focus a tiny, localized spark of raw Astral energy into his hands for warmth, Ambo began to quietly explore the dark perimeter of their makeshift shelter.
His white clogs kicked against centuries of forgotten debris—shattered plastic crates, rotted electronic components, and petrified old-world garbage.
Suddenly, his foot struck something dense and rectangular buried beneath a heavy heap of grey ash.
Curious, Ambo knelt down and brushed the dirt away, his fingers brushing against a thick, leather-bound object.
It was a discarded book from the old civilization, its pages water-logged, decayed, and partially petrified by time, yet the faded print on the cover was still barely legible.
Ambo opened the fragile, crackling pages.
As his dark eyes scanned the faded old-era text, a sudden, blinding flash of agonizing pain violently shot through his temples.
The dark void of his amnesia violently fractured.
For a fraction of a second, a fleeting, chaotic blip of a phantom memory erupted inside his brain.
He didn’t see faces, but he saw a vision of a world completely different from the broken concrete carcass of the ruins.
He saw blue skies unchoked by toxic grey fog, towering structures made of shimmering glass that weren’t rotten or abandoned, and a vast, endless river network flowing with clean, crystal-clear water.
But just as quickly as the vision appeared, a wave of deep, malicious black static rushed through his mind, violently wiping the memory away and leaving a heavy, suffocating silence in its place.
Ambo gasped aloud, dropping the book into the ash as he clutched his head, his split-tongue vein lines along his jawline throbbing violently in the dark.
“Whoa, Ambo!
You okay, man?” Jahek asked, instantly looking up from his hands, his single missing tooth showing through the dim torchlight.
Ambo slowly lowered his hands, his breath ragged as he stared down at the discarded book.
The tattered black shirt over his purple jacket felt heavier than ever, vibrating with a cold, lingering warning.
“I’m fine,” Ambo whispered, his voice shaking slightly as he looked back toward the dark entrance of the silo where Asher stood guard.
“I just…
I think I remembered something.
Just for a second.” Asher didn’t turn around from the threshold, his snake-sword resting silently against his shoulders, but his sharp eyes remained locked onto the shifting shadows of the concrete maze outside.
“Keep that memory locked down for now, stray.
The fog is starting to clear, and tomorrow, the real training begins.
If you can’t learn to read the atmospheric vibrations without relying on your eyes, you won’t survive the next grid.”