We stood there in the clearing, clean, healed, rejuvenated, and looking like we'd just stepped out of a commercial for "Adventurers Who Smell Nice."

The blood was gone.

The grime was gone.

The trauma was… temporarily suppressed.

Perfect time to ruin the mood.

I clapped my hands once.

Loud.

"Alright, children. Fun's over. We need to move."

Three sets of eyes looked at me like I'd just declared myself their father, which to be honest, I didn't do.

I ignored them.

"The sun's going down any minute," I continued, glancing up through the thick canopy of trees blocking the sun. "We need to find shelter before then."

Because here's the thing:

These three?

They grew up privileged as hell.

Little golden lives.

Warm beds.

Safe homes.

Proper meals.

No danger, no uncertainty, no sleeping with one eye open.

Meanwhile, me?

I'd slept in alleys in a past life.

On cold concrete.

With rain smacking me in the face at 3 a.m.

And rats nibbling way too close to my toes.

A demon forest filled with monsters that would try to kill us every second wasn't much different.

Only the rats were bigger and had fangs.

Shelter was everything.

And we needed to find it before dark hit. There already was a lack of much light because of the trees, but when the sun went down...it would be pure hell.

I turned back to them. "Move. Now."

Kent raised a hand like a confused schoolboy.

"Wouldn't it be better if we spent the night hunting?" he asked. "You know more monsters, more points?"

I opened my mouth.

I truly did. I was about to tell him that our placement wasn't decided by the number of monsters we killed, but by how much we displayed our power and our ability to adapt.

But Annalise beat me to it.

"Are you an actual idiot?" she asked flatly.

Kent froze like he'd just been slapped by his mama, a very lovely lady by the way.

Annalise stepped closer, her face calm but her voice dripping with that "I'm judging your entire existence" tone.

"Our performance is being monitored by the professors," she said. "And you want to waste time killing low-level trash? You think that's going to impress anyone?"

Kent blinked at her like she'd just spoken latin.

She sighed.

Loudly.

"The instructors are scoring us based on what they deem worthy. Slaughtering weaklings gets us nothing."

Kent looked at me, confused and overwhelmed.

I shrugged. "She's right."

He turned. "Wait really?"

"Yeah. We need high-level monsters. C-rank at least. Or maybe something that can use dualflow energy and actually has the power to kill us. Anything below that won't cut it."

Kent nodded slowly, as if enlightenment was dawning upon him in slow motion.

Nora patted his shoulder. "It's okay. Thinking isn't for everyone."

Kent swatted her hand away. "Shut up."

Annalise sighed again. "Both of you shut up."

I pointed forward, like the brave, noble, incredibly handsome leader.

"Alright, team. Let's move out. Shelter now, big monsters later."

Kent nodded, finally understanding.

Nora stretched her arms and started walking.

Annalise walked ahead with her strings idly floating behind her, probably imagining new ways to strangle us.

And me?

I grinned.

Freshly cleaned.

Fully healed.

Surrounded by chaos incarnates.

Perfect evening stroll.

We headed deeper into the forest.

A cave loomed before me like a mouth carved into the world itself vast, circular, and impossibly tall, easily dwarfing the twenty-floor buildings I used to walk past in my previous life.

It rose so high that I had to tilt my head until my neck protested just to take in its full height. The entire interior was pitch-black, not the gentle dark of a moonless night, but the kind that looked thick, like ink suspended in the air.

A darkness that felt solid.

A shadow that looked back.

Around the wide, circular opening, massive demon-trees jutted outward like jagged teeth. Their twisted branches curled down toward the entrance, clawing at the black as if trying to stop something from coming out… or prevent anything from going in.

Bark split like cracked bone.

Sap dripped like coagulated blood.

The forest breathed around me quiet, watching, alive.

I stood there, rooted to the spot for a moment, staring up at the monstrous cavern. The ground beneath my boots felt damp and soft, water seeping up between stones as though even the earth wanted to warn me away.

The air was colder here too, not a gentle forest chill, but the sharp, biting cold of someplace ancient and wrong.

Every hair on my body stood on end.

I shifted my gaze left.

Trees.

I shifted my gaze right.

Trees.

Guess what was behind us? You're right, more demon-trees, forming a crooked wall of tangled limbs and eerie whispers. They pressed in so tightly that the only real path, if I could even call it that, was forward.

Straight into the devouring black.

I sighed.

Loudly.

Dramatically.

Even bastard didn't say anything, as if waiting for me to say something clever.

I didn't.

I just raised a hand and signaled Nora.

She stepped up beside me quietly. Her face was pale in the low light, blue eyes reflecting the cave's swallowing void. But to her credit, she didn't hesitate.

She lifted her hand, and a sphere of fire bloomed above her palm bright, warm, and fiercely alive. The sudden light flickered across the trees and sent shadows skittering like startled insects.

The fireball drifted upward as she released it, floating higher and higher until it hung above us like a tiny artificial sun. Its glow spilled across the clearing, illuminating the cave's monstrous frame. The shadows inside it recoiled but didn't vanish. They simply drew back, waiting.

The path ahead came into view.

Rocks.

Roots.

A gaping black tunnel that seemed to swallow the firelight in greedy gulps.

I inhaled slowly.

The air tasted like dust, old stone, and the faintest hint of something metallic.

"Well," I muttered, voice quieter than usual despite myself. "Nothing screaming at us yet. That's… reassuring. Slightly."

I took the first step.

The sound echoed, one single tap swallowed by the cavern's abyss.

Nora and the rest followed.

Then Sacha padded after us, tail curled nervously but chin lifted like she was trying to be brave for me.

Isn't she so cute?

We walked forward, toward either our doom or our salvation. I honestly couldn't tell which.But the darkness waited all the same.

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