The moment they stepped through the rift, reality shattered.
Colors bent into unnatural hues. The air was thick with distorted spirit force, crackling unpredictably with every breath. Trees twisted into impossible spirals, and roots hovered instead of resting in soil. The Vale wasn't just corrupted — it was alive in the wrong way.
Lucas landed first, frost aura already shielding his team from the surrounding miasma.
Kael landed beside him, twin short swords already drawn. Elayne took point, blades out, while Elira flanked silently. Seren walked last, eyes scanning everything with eerie calm.
> "Stay tight," Lucas said. "We can't risk getting separated until we find anchor points."
The dungeon stretched in all directions — rolling mist concealing jagged stone paths, shadowed forests, and what appeared to be shattered temple ruins in the distance.
The map glyphs provided by the graduates were useless. The terrain didn't match.
"This dungeon's already begun to mutate beyond what they thought," Elira said. "Even the time flow here feels wrong."
---
Two hours in.
The team moved like a trained unit. Kael scouted ahead, Elira and Elayne handled side suppression, Seren watched the skies.
Then they heard it.
A howl — like Fenrir, but… broken. Echoing.
From the fog ahead, a massive beast emerged. It had no skin. Its muscles glowed with fragmented runes, and its face was a cracked mirror reflecting their own.
> Mutant Soul Beast: Rift-Warped Direhowler
Star Rating: Estimated 7–8 Star
Traits: Illusion Echo, Adaptive Resistance, Spirit Drain
Lucas was already moving.
"Break its line of sight. Elayne, right. Kael, strike from left. I'll tank front."
He shot forward, frost wings unfurling behind him. The beast roared — its mouth shifting into six directions, each one opening into a different nightmare.
Lucas summoned Fenrir's Ice Fang, a lance of silver that glowed with lunar sigils, and hurled it.
The spear struck.
The Direhowler's entire front half exploded in frost shards.
But the beast didn't fall. Instead, its back regenerated — and from its shoulders sprouted two malformed arms glowing with Elira's spirit signature.
"It's copying!" Elira shouted.
"Adaptive mimicry," Seren whispered, eyes wide. "It's feeding on our spiritual traces."
Kael appeared behind it, blades igniting. "Then I won't give it time to learn."
He slashed in a cross pattern, severing all four limbs.
Elayne followed with a burst of cutting wind, bisecting the beast's core with surgical precision.
It shrieked one final time — and then collapsed into black dust.
The area fell silent.
Lucas walked to where the beast died. At its core, a faint blue flame remained — a fragmented spirit crystal, pulsing irregularly.
He touched it.
> A vision struck him.
Flashes of an ancient war. A divine being falling. A twisted hand sealing something into a tree.
He staggered back, blinking.
Elira caught him. "What did you see?"
"Something old… something sealed."
Elayne turned. "We move. If that was a scout, the main guardian won't be far."
---
Hours later, just before dusk, they reached the central zone — a ruined temple that floated in midair, connected by hovering stone platforms.
The entrance pulsed with ancient glyphs — divine script Lucas didn't recognize.
Seren stared up, her crystalline eyes shimmering. "We've arrived. The core's inside."
Lucas narrowed his eyes. "Then let's end this."
As they stepped forward, none of them noticed the red glyph from earlier pulsing faintly on Drel Murn's forgotten beacon stone — or the soft echo of a second team watching from the shadows.