The symbol faded.

  Not faded like paint worn away by time. But like it was being erased. The wood around the symbol's curves appeared to vibrate subtly, as if its molecules were being rearranged to cover the curves. In a matter of seconds, the sharp and clear symbol became blurred, then remained only as a faint impression on the wood surface, and finally vanished completely. Only the cracked bark of ordinary old oak remained.

  As if something—or someone—didn't want the symbol to be found.

  Mira gasped, staring blankly at where the symbol had been. "That... where did it go?"

  "Ancient weather pattern," Kieran repeated, his voice louder than he intended. "They can be unstable. Especially in dead wood." That was a cleanup. Who? The System? Another entity? Or just reality's defense mechanism? There was no time to ponder that now.

  Kieran felt the urge to scan the area with his full senses, but that would raise too much 'noise'. He restrained himself. His priority was Mira.

  "Go home now," he commanded, and this time there was an iron weight behind his words that made Mira turn and walk quickly away from the forest without asking again, glancing over her shoulder.

  Kieran remained in place long after Mira left. He approached the fallen tree, knelt, and placed his palm on the wood where the symbol had been. No energy residue. No temporal residue. Just dead wood. But the silence in the forest now felt different. Deeper. More watchful.

  He remembered the wolf's howl earlier. Beasts that were restless were now silent, too obediently. That was more worrying than the restlessness itself. Like something larger had passed and issued a command for calm.

  He stood, brushing dust from his robe. The plan had to be accelerated. The symbol that appeared and vanished was a sign that the timeline wasn't as stable as he had hoped. He needed an operational base, needed to start recruiting, needed to build a foundation before other unforeseen things appeared.

  Kieran walked back to the village with measured steps, his mind mapping the next moves. The cave in the eastern hills had to be checked tomorrow. He needed to speak with Garron, Mira's father, perhaps offer services as a supervisor or advisor to secure more permanent housing. And he needed to monitor Mira closely, guide her new perception without triggering dangerous intuitive leaps.

  As he entered the village, the sun was already low on the horizon, painting the sky with orange and purple. Smoke from hearths rose straight into the calm air. A fragile, peaceful atmosphere.

  And then, that peace shattered.

  The sound of fast and loud horse hooves echoed on the dirt road from the east. A single horseman approached at full speed, stirring up dust behind him. The rider was a young man in his mid-twenties, with messy brown hair, his face hardened and eroded by travel and worry. He wore a simple leather tunic and a worn traveler's robe, but at his waist hung a well-maintained short sword.

  Kieran recognized him instantly. Even before the memory of the name surfaced, his young body reacted with a faint, strange warmth—a remnant of a bond from a previous life that hadn't happened yet.

  Rhen Ashford. His adoptive brother.

  In the original timeline, Rhen died on Floor 12, killed while defending a collapsed barricade due to a logistical miscalculation. He died from lack of arrows, something that always left Kieran bitter. Kieran had recalculated the logistical needs for that defense a thousand times in his head over the centuries. He knew exactly how many arrows they should have had.

  Now, Rhen was here. Alive. And from his tense expression, he was bringing bad news.

  The horse stopped in front of the village head's house. Rhen jumped down agilely, immediately greeted by several residents who came out anxiously. Their muffled, panicked voices began to hiss.

  Kieran stood in the shadow of Hilda's house, observing. He didn't need to approach to hear. His senses sharpened by battle caught fragments of conversation.

  "...in Willowridge village... half the livestock died overnight...""...cold burns... flesh frozen from within...""...no beast tracks... no thieves...""...three villages have reported... spreading this way..."

  Rhen Ashford turned his face, his tired eyes sweeping the village. And then, his gaze stopped on Kieran.

  Their eyes met.

  In Rhen's eyes, Kieran saw exhaustion, worry, and a flash of recognition mixed with disbelief. In Kieran's own eyes, there was an ocean of memories that had to be quickly submerged. He nodded, once, small. An acknowledgment.

  Rhen nodded back, then returned to speaking with the village head, his voice growing lower and more serious.

  Kieran remained in place. The evening wind carried the scent of wood smoke and something else—a faint smell like cold metal and rotting flesh coming from the east.

  Three neighboring villages. Livestock dead. Cold burns.

  Those weren't signs of ordinary monsters from the first wave. Those were signs of magic. Crude magic, basic, but magic nonetheless. And it was happening now, years earlier than any schedule he remembered.

  He clenched his hands inside his robe sleeves. The plan changed again. The threat wasn't waiting for him to be ready.

  From behind her hut's window, Mira stared out, her face pale. She also heard the news. Her eyes searched and found Kieran. There was a question in them, and a fear deeper than fear of strange patterns.

  Kieran looked away, staring toward the east where the sky was beginning to darken.

  The first lesson in silence had ended. Now, the first test would soon begin.

  **

  The night wind that brought Rhen Ashford's news felt different on the skin—thinner, sharper, like a blade already honed for surgery. Kieran stood in the shadow of Hilda's house, listening to fragments of words cut by fear from the gathering of residents in front of the village head's house. Those words weren't just sounds. They were vectors of psychological disease: "frozen from within," "no traces," "spreading."

  He didn't wait for an invitation.

  His steps cut across the dirt road that was beginning to darken, approaching the crowded gathering. The faces that turned to him radiated primitive relief—strangers who arrived just before disaster were often considered either cause or solution. Kieran chose to be the latter.

  "You," he said to Rhen, his voice cutting through the rumble of panic. "Show me the first one."

  Rhen Ashford—adoptive brother in another life, victim of a logistical miscalculation on the twelfth floor—looked at him with a tired gaze mixed with recognition. There was a history that hadn't happened between them, a burden only one party remembered. But crisis erased formalities.

  Stolen story; please report.

  "Willowridge. One hour's ride east," Rhen answered, his voice hoarse. "But Kieran—"

  "I need to see it directly." Kieran cut him off. He had already turned, estimating distance. His young body would ache tomorrow from riding, but that could be endured. He caught Mira's gaze from her hut's window. The girl had already donned a cloak, face pale but eyes determined. She nodded, once. I'm coming.

  Rhen sighed, then nodded. "My horse is already tired. We need three."

  "I have two," said the village head, a narrow-minded but pragmatic man. "Take the brown one and the spotted one."

  "I'll take the spotted one," Kieran said. It was a younger, wilder horse. He needed full control over speed.

  The journey to Willowridge was made in silence split by hoof beats and the hiss of their own breath. The forest at night turned into a labyrinth of threatening shadows, but Kieran wasn't afraid of ordinary darkness. He was afraid of unnatural cold—traces of mana that shouldn't exist in this era.

  Willowridge was a village smaller than Ashvale, a cluster of twenty wooden houses huddled around a central well. As they entered its boundary, the silence was more frightening than screams. No barking dogs. No sounds of livestock in pens. Only the piercing whisper of wind, carrying a strange scent: rotting flesh mixed with something resembling metal cooled to freezing point.

  An old man waited in front of a large barn, his face like a sculpture of suffering. "Inside," he said, his voice hoarse. "All twelve. Still like that."

  Kieran dismounted from his horse, his knees trembling slightly from cold or exhaustion. He ignored it. He pushed the barn door that stood wide open.

  The smell hit him first—not the smell of natural decay, but something stagnant and arrested. Then the sight.

  Twelve full-sized cows lay in the straw, arranged in an almost neat pattern. Their bodies weren't stiff in the sense of ordinary rigor mortis. They looked... peaceful. Like statues of flesh and fur. The fur on their bodies was covered by a thin layer of frost crystals that reflected moonlight from gaps in the roof, glittering with a terrible beauty.

  Kieran crouched beside the nearest carcass, a brown-colored female. He didn't touch it first. He looked.

  The cow's eyes were wide open, clear vitreous eyeballs, but within them were delicate ice crystals like flowers blooming on a glass surface. No signs of violence. No claws, bites, or wounds. Its nose and mouth were clean. But its entire body radiated an absolute lifelessness, like a concept of "death" that was dropped all at once without process.

  From beside him, Mira gasped, hand covering her mouth. Rhen cursed softly.

  "This isn't disease," Rhen muttered. "This... what is this?"

  "Quiet," Kieran commanded. He needed to concentrate.

  He extended his hand, palm open above the cow's frozen fur. He didn't touch. He felt. [Mana Sense: Passive Sensor] was the most basic Tier 1 technique, just opening perception channels to magical energy flow. But in this pre-mana era, the channel was like a plug. He had to push.

  With a light hiss, he activated it. The world around him changed—not visually, but conceptually. The usually empty air was now filled with a thin fog of latent energy, weak flows moving slowly like underground rivers. But around the cow's carcass, there was a different pattern. An area where the flow was severed, distorted in a perfect circle with a three-meter radius. Inside that circle, there was no mana. Void. Like something had sucked all energy, including heat, and left emptiness.

  But that wasn't the characteristic of Frost monsters. Frost elementals usually left ice mana residue, not void. This was more like... sealing.

  "Please," the old man whispered from the door. "Is this a curse? Should we burn them?"

  "Not yet," Kieran said. He finally touched the carcass.

  Its skin was cold, but not as cold as ice. Its temperature matched the night air—about ten degrees. That didn't make sense. A dead body should take environmental temperature slowly, but this carcass felt already perfectly adapted. As if thermodynamic laws were suspended at this location.

  He pressed his finger to the frozen fur. The frost crystals didn't melt. They maintained their shape even under the pressure of his warm body.

  "How many villages reported?" Kieran asked, not turning.

  "Three," Rhen answered. "Willowridge, Oakhaven, and Millpond. All reported this morning. The pattern is the same. Livestock died overnight, frozen, no signs of struggle."

  "Other animals? Wild beasts?"

  "No reports."

  So the target was domestic livestock. Or more precisely, large biomass collections in enclosed pens. Kieran stood, brushing nonexistent dust from his robe.

  "We must go to the other villages. Now."

  "Now?" Rhen protested. "It's already late, and your horse—"

  "Still has energy for two more villages," Kieran cut off. "We need data before the traces fade. Mira, you stay here. Observe this barn. Don't touch anything. Just... feel the space. Does anything feel strange?"

  Mira nodded, her face still pale but eyes focused. She slowly walked around the barn, as she had done with the chalk diagram. Kieran knew she was trying to activate her innate spatial perception—seeking misalignment.

  Kieran and Rhen left, leaving Mira with the frightened old man.

  Oakhaven and Millpond presented identical scenes—barns with frozen livestock carcasses, the same mana void pattern, the same fear. In Millpond, a guard dog was found dead outside the barn, also frozen in a growling position. That was new data. So, not just livestock.

  Kieran crouched beside the dog. This was smaller, so the traces were clearer. With [Mana Sense] still active, he could see very thin remnants—traces like bluish smoke floating in the air, almost invisible. A signature from something moving fast, leaving cold residue.

  He closed his eyes, gathering will. [Temporal Echo: Hindsight] was an expensive Tier 2 technique for his current body, but he had no choice. He focused his attention on the point of space in front of the dog, rewinding the time tape by five seconds—the safe limit he set for himself.

  The world around him vibrated. Sound and light faded, replaced by a monochromatic version of the moment just passed. He saw a shadow of pale blue fog floating toward the dog—its shape unclear, like a pulsing mass of air. The dog growled, fur on its back standing. Then the fog touched it, just for a moment. The dog froze right in the middle of motion, its body becoming stiff in an instant. The blue fog then floated away, disappearing toward the forest.

  The image shattered. Kieran staggered, his head throbbing with sharp pain. Five seconds of [Hindsight] consumed more energy than he had estimated—the mana-poor environment worsened the cost.

  "Are you alright?" Rhen asked, his hand ready to catch him.

  "Hungry," Kieran muttered, which was a partial truth. He stood, drawing a deep breath. "I know what we're facing."

  "What?"

  "Frost Wisp." The word felt foreign on his tongue, a term from an era that should still be three centuries away. "Low-level elemental entity. Usually appears in areas with high ice mana concentration. They absorb heat to survive, leaving frozen objects."

  Rhen frowned. "But you said there's no magic in this world. That it's just fairy tales."

  "I was mistaken," Kieran lied smoothly. "Apparently some fairy tales have a basis in truth. But Frost Wisps shouldn't be this vicious. They usually avoid living creatures, only taking heat from stones or water."

  "Unless they're starving," Rhen said, his logic working. "Or if there's something changing them."

  Kieran looked at him, slightly impressed. In the original timeline, Rhen was a logistics expert, not a mage. But his mind was sharp. "Possibility."

  "How do we stop it?"

  "By understanding first." Kieran turned toward the horse. "We return to Willowridge. I need to check something."

  Mira was still in the barn when they returned, sitting cross-legged on the dirt floor, her eyes closed. She opened her eyes when they entered, a flash of exhaustion but also discovery in her gaze.

  "There's something," she said, her voice trembling. "This room... feels like a bubble. Like a part of the world that was cut out and replaced with something false. Everything is too neat. The straw isn't messy. Even the cow dung is frozen in perfect piles."

  Kieran nodded. That was an accurate description of a spatial lock effect—a high-level technique that froze space and time in a limited area. But a Frost Wisp shouldn't be able to do that. Unless...

  "You two," he said, pointing at Rhen and Mira. "Do you want to help? Or do you want to return to the village and join the others who are hiding?"

  Rhen and Mira exchanged glances. "We help," Rhen said firmly.

  "Good. First lesson: feeling mana." Kieran walked to the center of the barn, turning to face them. "Mana is energy around us. Right now, you can't see or touch it. But you can learn to feel it. It's like feeling wind—you don't see wind, but you feel its coldness, its pressure on your skin."

  He raised his right hand. [Collector Pattern: Mana Sensorium] was a simple Tier 1 construct—just an energy net that would vibrate when passed by mana flow. He drew the symbol in the air with his finger, pale blue lines that hung in the darkness for a fraction of a second before fading.

  "What is that?" Mira asked, eyes wide.

  "An aid," Kieran answered. "Now, quiet. Close your eyes. Feel the air."

  Mira immediately complied. Rhen hesitated, but finally also closed his eyes.

  Kieran activated the net. The net wasn't visible, but its effect was immediately felt—the air inside the barn grew heavier, denser, like before a storm. He deliberately made it excessive so they could feel it.

  "What do you feel?" he asked.

  "Cold," Rhen said. "But a different cold. Like... there are small needles on the skin."

  "Good. That's mana pressure. Mira?"

  "Everything is pulsing," Mira whispered. "Slowly. Like a very large heart underground. But here, in this barn... the pulse is cut off. There's emptiness."

  Kieran felt a cold satisfaction. Both had sensitivity. Rhen might be low but persistent, Mira high but not yet honed. That was a beginning.

  "Maintain that feeling. Now, we'll make a trap."