The military steel truck roared roughly, tires crushing wet gravel, then sped away without mercy. Leaving a plume of black exhaust instantly slapped away by the mountain wind.

  Only he was dropped off.

  Like a misaddressed package discarded by a courier too lazy to deliver to the destination.

  Arka stood frozen at the edge of the muddy footpath.

  His eyes were blank, staring bleakly at the departing truck. His steps staggered, balance not fully recovered from the marathon torture of land and air travel earlier.

  Morning here was different.

  The sky above was no longer friendly. Gray clouds hung low, thick and heavy. The warm morning sun? The bright blue sky when he played swords with the Blond yesterday?

  "Tch," Arka spat, lips trembling. "Yesterday was just a weather bonus. Just a free trial."

  Now the trial period was over. Reality here was grim.

  Whoosh...

  The mountain wind blew. Not a gentle breeze, but a wind carrying microscopic ice particles.

  "Cold... Damn, freezing..."

  Arka reflexively rubbed his arms, chafing skin covered in goosebumps.

  He looked down at his appearance. This expensive suit... thin wool fabric, stylish slim fit cut... was absolute trash here.

  "Usefulness of this suit is zero," he cursed. "Just makes me look like a young executive corpse lost in the woods."

  Arka forced his legs to move. He walked fast, half-dragging his heavy steps.

  In front of him, a structure greeted him stiffly.

  A low, moss-covered concrete archway. There, written in faded black paint that dripped down like dried blood:

  GATE 134

  Behind that gate, there was no high-tech base. No glass building.

  Only a simple wooden barracks. The roof was rusted corrugated iron, the walls made of ironwood planks blackened by weather. The building stood pitifully right in front of a perimeter—a small rocky path splitting the forest and piercing the steep mountain ahead.

  Drip. Drip.

  Drizzle began to fall. Needles of water that stabbed.

  "Ah, come on!"

  Arka ran staggeringly, shielding his head with empty hands, toward the wooden barracks. His foot slipped slightly in the mud, but he managed to grab the porch pillar and scrambled inside.

  He slammed the wooden door shut behind him.

  "Hah... hah..."

  His breath puffed white in the room's air.

  He turned, eyes sweeping the surroundings.

  Quiet. Silent. Dead.

  "Hello?" his voice hoarse. "Excuse me? Anyone here?"

  No answer. Only the sound of wind whistling through the plank cracks.

  "Damn... Alone?"

  Arka peeked into the next room, empty rooms containing only iron cots without mattresses. Thick dust everywhere. Spiderwebs in the ceiling corners. This place looked like it had been abandoned since the first world war.

  "Discarded. I was really discarded," Arka laughed bitterly. A dry laugh.

  Suddenly, another sound was heard. Louder than the wind.

  Growl...

  His stomach protested. A massive demonstration. The nausea from the plane was gone, replaced by a black hole of hunger demanding to be filled.

  "Hunngry..." Arka moaned, clutching his stomach. "Forget ghosts, I need food."

  He checked the last room at the end of the hall.

  The door creaked open.

  Arka’s eyes widened. This time not from horror, but from emotion.

  Kitchen.

  Although dirty and messy, on the long wooden table lay a treasure.

  Stacks of label-less military sardine cans.

  Several cans of corned beef.

  And a small sack of rice with the corner slightly open.

  Arka approached, snatching a cold sardine can. He weighed it as if it were a gold bar. A thin smile carved on his pale face.

  "Okay," he mumbled, eyes glinting wildly with hunger. "Life."

  The canned sardines tasted like metal and salt, but to Arka right now, it was a five-star steak.

  With a stomach finally full and warm, he dragged his steps outside, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the damp wooden porch.

  His eyes stared straight ahead.

  There, stretched a rocky path splitting the dead pine forest, twisting sharply and disappearing into the belly of the steep mountain.

  That was it. The entry path.

  Arka replayed the vague memories in his head. He tried digging information from memory files nearly deleted by travel sickness.

  "Gate 134..." he muttered.

  He remembered the hologram graphic presented by the stuttering MC.

  This mountain wasn't just a pile of rocks. It was a sieve. There was a giant array installed along the Iron Mountains. Its function was like a funnel or a dam. The array herded "Shadows" that escaped the Mirror Canyon, forcing them into the mountain's natural labyrinth, and vomiting them forcibly at specific exit points.

  One of them was here. Right under Arka’s nose.

  Arka massaged his temples, brow furrowed.

  "Hahh... What were the details the MC said???"

  He snorted roughly.

  "Ah, damn. I only remember that much. The rest was just ringing noise and the urge to vomit."

  He didn't remember the shadow types, didn't remember danger classifications, didn't remember reporting procedures.

  Arka lowered his hand, then stared back at the winding road whose end was swallowed dark by the mountain rocks. That passage looked like the throat of a monster ready to vomit disease.

  "Fine..."

  Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

  Arka’s shoulders relaxed. He straightened his back.

  The logic was simple. If this was a rat hole, he just needed to be the cat waiting in front of it.

  "If anything comes out of there... just punch it, right?" he whispered. "Don't need physics formulas to punch someone. Good... good..."

  Slowly, the atmosphere around Arka changed.

  He was no longer the nauseous, stranded youth. He was an Aksesa.

  Arka gripped both hands on his knees. His knuckles turned white, veins on the back of his hands bulging with fresh adrenaline.

  His eyes sharpened. His black pupils constricted, focused, and wild.

  His smile bloomed wide. Not a friendly smile, but a wolf’s grin baring fangs. The smile of someone who knew he would soon have fun with violence.

  His blood boiled, demanding action.

  "HAHAHAHAHHA..."

  His laughter exploded, echoing to break the silence of the dead forest, challenging the darkness inside that cave.

  "Come out..."

  Arka stared at the dark passage with eyes shining madly.

  "Come out, you Bastard! Come play with me!"

  "Okay, aerial spy... launch!"

  Arka threw his new yellow butterfly origami into the air. He had filled it with void energy. The paper flapped spiritedly, flying fast out from the porch roof toward the mountain path.

  However, the first second it crossed the roof line...

  Drip. Drip. SPLASH.

  Heavy drizzle slammed the paper wings mercilessly. The wet paper fibers went limp instantly, heavy, losing aerodynamics. The butterfly fell in a tragic dive like a failed paper plane, landing in a mud puddle and disintegrating into yellow mush.

  Gulp.

  Arka slapped his own forehead hard.

  "I AM AN IDIOT."

  He ruffled his hair in frustration.

  "Paper meets water means destruction, Stupid! This is a rain forest, not a palace AC room!"

  Arka stood up, pacing on the narrow wooden porch. His footsteps thudded anxiously. His brain spun looking for alternatives. He needed another medium. Something durable. Something hard. Something that... was here.

  His eyes fell on the spread of gravel and river stones in the yard.

  "Stone?"

  He jumped down to the yard, letting the drizzle wet his shirt again. He picked up a river stone the size of an adult's fist. Heavy, dense, cold.

  Arka sat cross-legged on the porch again.

  He placed the stone in his palm. He closed his eyes.

  Meditation began.

  There was only the static sound of rain and Arka’s mouth moving silently whispering intent. He tried channeling the same "pulse" as when animating paper. He imagined the stone becoming eyes, becoming ears.

  One minute... two minutes...

  Arka opened his eyes, brow furrowed deep.

  "Hmmmmmm..."

  Failed.

  It felt like blowing into a leaking balloon. The energy entered, but seeped out instantly through the stone pores that were too dense. The density was too high, or maybe the molecular structure rejected his subtle vibrations.

  "Not maximal... energy escapes easily. Too big maybe?"

  Arka didn't give up. He went down again, grabbing a handful of stones of various sizes.

  He lined the stones on the wooden floor in front of him. Starting from fist-sized, chicken egg-sized, marble-sized, to small pebbles.

  Experiment began.

  Big stone: Failed.

  Egg stone: Still leaking.

  Marble stone: Almost... a little vibration response.

  Arka took the last stone. A small river pebble, dark gray, the size of a pinky tip.

  He centered his focus.

  Ziiing.

  Instantly, he felt it. The small stone "lit up" inside his mental grip. The energy locked perfectly there, spinning stably in the stone's core.

  "Hah! Got it!" Arka exclaimed.

  Turns out for solid objects like stone, the smaller the size, the denser the energy compression.

  "Yoshhhh!"

  Arka worked fast immediately. He picked up dozens of pinky-tip sized pebbles, then "charged" them one by one quickly.

  Now in his hand were several dozen "Stone Eyes".

  Arka looked around, finding an old black umbrella lying in the corner of the barracks—the frame slightly bent, but the fabric still intact.

  Snap.

  Umbrella opened.

  Arka stepped out through the rain, walking along the rocky path leading to the mouth of the mountain pass.

  Every ten meters, he stopped.

  He placed one "active" pebble at a strategic point. Between tree roots, behind a large rock, in a cliff wall crevice.

  He spread them along the shadow escape route. Forming an invisible sensor net.

  Arka stood at the furthest point he dared travel, placing the last stone. He closed his eyes briefly, a mental "ping" sent out.

  One by one the stones responded in his head. Signal dots lit up in his mental map.

  Arka smiled satisfied under the shelter of his decrepit umbrella.

  "At least this is an alarm," he muttered. "If anything passes, the vibration will go straight to my head."

  He turned around, walking leisurely back to his warm barracks.

  "I don't need to keep eyes open 24 hours staring at this damn gate. Sleep tight tonight, Arka."

  Arka entered an empty room in the wooden barracks.

  Outside, the night grew late and the rain showed no sign of stopping. Its sound grew fiercer instead, hammering the rusted zinc roof with merciless rhythm, as if the sky was trying to drown this fragile wooden hut into the mud.

  Arka laid his body on the hard wooden cot.

  "Cold..." he hissed softly, pulling his wet suit tighter.

  He closed his eyes, regulating breath. One long inhale, one slow exhale. He let the sound of rain fade, let the cold of physical air be replaced by the cold of inner energy.

  He sank completely.

  Whoosh...

  His consciousness shifted.

  He entered his Void world again.

  This time, the usually thick milky fog blocking vision appeared thinning. Not as thick as before. Arka could see his soul landscape more clearly.

  The sky here had no sun or stars. There was only a mass of swirling gray clouds moving slowly, rotating like a giant whirlpool in the heavens. The light was bleak, monochrome.

  And there, on the distant horizon...

  The Massive Black Gate stretched out.

  Its size defied logic. Towering through the clouds, made of material darker than night. Silent. Threatening.

  Arka sat there, on soft ground grown with ankle-high gray grass. He stared at his great gate with mixed feelings—fear, awe, and curiosity.

  His mind drifted to the intelligence he heard.

  "First opening of the dark gate in Mirror Canyon... four days away," Arka counted down internally.

  "But even before opening wide, shadows are already leaking out..."

  He remembered Grandfather’s words. The enemy this time wasn't an abstract ghost.

  Anukh-Rama.

  "Dead meat embroidered with void fabric," Arka murmured in his mind.

  Undead moved by void residue. They had physicality. They were fleshy.

  "If fleshy, means shootable," Arka’s logic worked. "Military on the front line there surely can handle it. Tanks, artillery, a battalion of elite troops... that's easy food for them."

  Arka plucked a blade of gray grass, playing with it.

  "But..."

  He imagined the worst scenario. Amidst the chaos of the great war in the Canyon, surely one or two rats would sneak by. They slip through the net of fire, traversing the winding Iron Mountain Labyrinth Array.

  The array would spin them around, confuse them, and... Tadaaaa!

  Vomit them out forcibly at one of the random disposal Gates.

  Arka chuckled cynically in his meditation.

  "Ah, unlucky is the person getting that surprise," he thought, feeling pity for whichever gate guard got the share of leftover war trash. "Just enjoying coffee, eh visited by walking corpse."

  Just as that ironic pity crossed his mind...

  ZZZZIIIIPPPP...

  Not sound.

  It was a pure sting slamming his cranial nerves. Like a hot needle stabbed directly into his brain center.

  His mental connection screamed.

  "ARGH!"

  Arka jerked awake from his lying meditation. His eyes snapped open wide, breath hunting in the pitch-black room. His heart beat fast, pumping cold adrenaline throughout his body.

  He needed a second to process what just happened.

  That wasn't just signal interference. It was a warning.

  In the mental map in his head, he saw it. The indicator lights he installed this afternoon.

  The pebbles he scattered along the path.

  They were not silent. They were screaming.

  PING. PING. PING. PING.

  The signals came in a streak. Fast. Very fast.

  Stone at the furthest bend... vibrated violently. Then died (destroyed).

  Stone at 50 meters distance... vibrated. Died.

  Stone near fallen tree... Died.

  Something was running down from the mountain. Something heavy, stepping on and crushing his stone sensors one by one with unnatural speed.

  Arka’s face paled. His eyes stared in horror toward the front door.

  Realization slapped him hard.

  "Good heavens..."

  He swallowed bitter saliva.

  "I am that unlucky person. Turns out it's me..."

  It turned out Gate 134 wasn't an empty trash can. This was an active sewer pipe.

  Arka jumped down from the cot, snatching his decrepit umbrella with trembling hands.

  "TRASH....!!!" he cursed loud, his voice cracking amidst the roar of the storm rain.

  PING!

  Last signal. The stone he placed right at the perimeter mouth, only two hundred meters from this barracks door.

  Lit up.

  The uninvited guest was almost at his front yard gate.