The portal spat them out like something it didn’t want to keep.

CRASH.

Everyone hit the ground hard, one after the other, tripping over the broken floor. Holden caught his footing in two steps. He heard Emric grunt behind him, the heavy shield clanging against the ground as he steadied himself.

Holden straightened up and looked around.

The sky above the Ruins of the Ashen King looked murky and grey. There were no clouds or big storms.

And the fog was everywhere.

The grey fog came up to his waist. It flowed between the ruins like a slow stream, taking its time and filling the space. The broken columns and fallen walls of the city rose out of the fog.

"Okay so," she said, and then stopped.

She looked at the fog. At the grey sky. At the broken ruins stretching in every direction until they disappeared into the mist.

"Okay so this is genuinely the most unsettling place I have ever stood in," she said. "And I grew up near a mining town that had a haunted smelter, so that’s saying a lot. Why is the sky that color? Is that just the sky here? Is that its whole thing? What happened to the normal sky? Also I can already feel the fog on my ankles, is that the burning? That might be the burning."

"That’s the burning," Emric confirmed. He was checking the settings on his fog filter, adjusting the seal along his jaw. "Your natural energy should counteract the low-density absorption at ankle height. The filter handles the respiratory risk. Correct your breathing cycle and you’ll have adequate protection at this concentration."

"My breathing cycle is currently the kind a person does when they’re nervous."

"That is unfortunately not the academy standard."

"Adjust your breathing," Lyra said, not unkindly. She was already moving, scanning the ruins around them. "The technique works. Trust it."

Renna took one deliberate breath. Then another.

"Okay," she said. "Okay. It’s fine. We’re fine. What’s the formation?"

Holden looked at the ruins. The layout matched the briefing map closely enough. Broken walls, collapsed columns, multiple entry angles for anything moving through the fog at ground level. High-risk approach from the north and west.

He pointed.

"Emric, front. Lyra, right. Renna, center. I’ll take left."

Emric shifted his shield to his forward arm and stepped to the head of the group.

Lyra unclipped her spear from her back in one smooth motion.

Renna knocked an arrow. Her hands were steady.

They continued walking.

The fog didn’t change much at first, but a strange silence began to fall over everything.

Every step muffled slightly. Somewhere ahead, stones shifted on their own, settling.

Renna spoke just above a whisper now.

"Is it just me or does the fog look thicker over there," she said. "Like to the left, past that column, it’s moving differently. It’s moving like something is in it."

"Twenty meters ahead," Emric said quietly. "I see three contacts. Ground level. Moving in a spread pattern. They’re flanking."

Holden had seen them two seconds before Emric called them. He said nothing.

"Three contacts," Lyra repeated. "Confirm Ashen Crawlers?"

"Confirmed. Stone-type. I can hear the grinding."

Skrrrr. Skrrrr.

The sound came up from the fog before the shapes did. A low, grinding drag, like rock on rock, irregular and fast. Holden watched the fog at ground level and saw it displacing before the beasts themselves cleared the surface.

The creatures were low-slung and moved on four legs, their bodies shielded by overlapping stone plates. Dark, shadowy energy pulsed in the gaps between their armor. Instead of normal eyes, they had two pits of absolute darkness. Despite looking like a heavy pile of broken stone, they moved with startling speed.

The lead Crawler burst out of the fog at full sprint, aimed at Emric’s left side.

SLAM.

Emric took the blow head-on, keeping his shield flat and his knees bent to stay steady. The impact was powerful, vibrating through his arms and forcing him back half a step, but he didn’t let his guard down. The Crawler didn’t stop, immediately digging its claws into the face of his shield.

CLANG. CLANG.

"Firing," Renna said.

THWIP.

The arrow missed Emric’s shoulder by only two inches and struck exactly in the gap of the Crawler’s neck armor. The dark energy inside the joint began to sputter and die.

Second one on our right flank," Emric reported, his voice steady.

Lyra was already moving.

She closed the distance in four steps and drove her spear through the second Crawler’s center plate. The beast locked up and went still.

Meanwhile, the third monster had moved out wide, circling away from Emric’s shield to find a better angle of attack.

"Left," Holden said.

He was already there.

Holden kept his energy tightly controlled and his weight ready for a quick shift. He made his footwork look like a series of quick, desperate reactions instead of the calculated moves they actually were. With three clean strikes, he handled the monsters coming from the fog, careful not to use even a tiny bit more force than was necessary.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

All three down.

The dark energy in their joints faded out.

Emric lowered his shield slightly, checking the face of it for damage. Renna had a second arrow already knocked and was watching the fog in a slow arc.

Lyra looked at the three beasts on Holden’s side.

"Three," she said. "One strike each."

"They were slow," Holden said.

She held his gaze for a moment the way she had been doing lately, like she was calibrating something. Then she turned forward.

"Reform," she said. "We keep moving."

The System pinged in the back of Holden’s vision.

[Ashen Crawlers Defeated.]

[Base KP: 30.] [2x KP Booster Applied.]

[Total KP Earned: +60.]

[Current Kill Points: 1,110.]

He let the notification fade.

Sixty KP for three minutes of careful underperformance.

He almost felt bad about it.

Almost.

"That was actually pretty smooth," Renna said, falling back into formation. Her voice was full of surprised admiration rather than fear. "We’re all alive and well. Emric took the hit, I landed my shot right where I was supposed to, and Lyra’s spear work was incredible to watch."

"We didn’t fall apart during the fight," Lyra said. "That’s all that matters."

Renna glanced at Holden. "How did you take out three of them that fast?"

"Fast feet," he said.

She looked like she wanted to follow up on that. Then she looked at the fog still shifting around them and decided the conversation could wait.

"The safe zone is north-northeast," Emric said, glancing at the compass on his shield strap. "It’s about four kilometers away. Based on our current speed and how many monsters are in these ruins, I’d guess we have three or four more fights ahead of us before we reach it."

"Three to four more," Renna said.

"Possibly five."

"Possibly five," she repeated. "Great. That’s a great number. I love that number."

Holden led the way forward.

As he walked, the fog swirled around his boots and immediately settled back into place, as if he had never been there at all. The ruins stretched out ahead of them, hiding whatever other dangers were waiting in the shadows.

They continued their trek.