Riven had expected a threshold—a clean, logical step from the Academy’s rain into another world, like walking through a doorway.

  Instead, the Ascension threw him. The violent shove sent him stumbling forward, his legs buckling until he hit the ground on all fours.

  Riven’s palms slammed into scorching, fissured stone. The ground was a deep, bruised crimson--the surface webbed with cracks that felt like sun-baked clay. As he landed, his hands sank shallowly into a fine shroud of ash and dust that coated the entire floor.

  He pushed himself to his feet, chest heaving. For a heartbeat, a wave of relief washed over him--he hadn't been dissolved or torn apart by the violet vortex.

  He was whole and alive.

  But the relief was short-lived. He took a deep breath, and the air felt like a physical assault. It was searing and arid, rasping against the back of his throat and burning his lungs as if he were inhaling the breath of a furnace.

  Wow…What the hell is this heat?

  Riven squinted, his eyes stinging. He raised a hand to his brow, shielding his vision like a visor against the glare of a blood-red sun. It hung heavy in the sky, beating down with a blinding intensity that turned the horizon into a shimmering haze.

  Before him lay a vast, arid wasteland of jagged ridges and cracked stone—an infernal plain that seemed to stretch into eternity.

  But it was the stranger formations that made his heart skip a beat.

  Scattered across the plain were massive shapes of obsidian-black stone. They were hands—petrified wrists erupting from the parched earth as if a graveyard of giants lay buried beneath the surface.

  From the smallest, to the size of a house. Their palms were flat, level with the ground, while their elongated fingers clawed toward the crimson sky like silent, stone monuments.

  The silence of the wasteland was quickly shattered as the other climbers began to stir. A chorus of confused voices and panicked whispers rose into the scorching air.

  Where are the others?

  Riven’s gaze swept across the crowd, searching for the massive tide of humanity that had swept him through the portal. He looked for the sea of steel and the hundreds of sweating bodies he had been crushed against only moments ago.

  But as his eyes darted from one group to another, a cold realization settled in his chest.

  They were fewer--drastically fewer.

  About a thousand candidates had marched toward the violet vortex in the rain of Argel, but here, scattered across the cracked crimson stone, there were barely fifty of them.

  The small gathering looked pathetic against the vastness of the desert. The army he had expected to hide behind had vanished.

  The noise in the wasteland began to shift--no longer just a chorus of panicked voices, but a frantic and electric energy.

  A few paces away, a young man in polished, expensive armor stood frozen. He wasn't looking at the horizon—he was staring at his own palm with a look of manic greed, as if he had just unearthed a hidden treasure.

  Swirling around his fingers were clouds of midnight-blue particles. He looked revitalized, his face twisted into a grin of pure, intoxicated joy.

  What the hell is that thing?

  "Riven."

  The voice snapped him out of his trance.

  He turned his head and saw Lya standing right behind him, her eyes searching for him. Behind her, Ulric and Kellen were already several steps away, huddled together and far too absorbed in their own gear and the strange sensations in their own bodies to care about the slave.

  "You're here," she said, her voice sounding small against the rising chaos of the crowd.

  Lya leaned in, her voice a hushed whisper that barely carried over the growing commotion. "Take this."

  She pressed a basic, unadorned dagger into his palm. It was a simple tool of steel and worn leather--no match for the gleaming armor or the strange powers erupting around them--but to Riven, the weight of it felt monumental. It was a flicker of relief in the middle of the nightmare.

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  He wouldn't have to face the unknown with his bare hands.

  He looked up at her and offered a small, sincere smile. "Thank you," he said, his voice steady. "Truly."

  While the other climbers remained entranced by their burgeoning abilities, Riven had nothing to discover within himself. He was a hollow vessel amidst a sea of sparks. With no new power to distract him, he turned his gaze outward, scouring the jagged horizon for whatever this world intended to throw at them.

  What is that?

  A flicker of movement caught his eye, far out among the field of petrified hands.

  Dark silhouettes slipped between the rocks, silent and invisible to the cheering crowd. They blurred past the stone wrists, gaining ground with every passing second.

  Shit... It’s--

  Panic gripped him, his heart hammering against his ribs as the true nature of those shadows became clear.

  It’s monsters!

  He spun around, his lungs filling with hot air to scream a warning to the crowd.

  But he stopped dead.

  The shout died in his throat as a cold, calculating thought emerged from the chaos in his mind.

  No one else had seen them. The nobles and the other climbers were too busy shouting, laughing, or huddled in groups to plan their next move.

  Ulric was only a few paces away, standing with Kellen and several others. They were bent over a leather scroll, tracing a path through the wasteland with arrogant confidence.

  Riven didn't say a word. He began to move like a shadow, keeping his center of gravity low as he drifted toward the group, making himself as small as he could.

  As he closed the distance, Ulric’s voice drifted back to him, sharp and biting with frustration.

  "What the hell is this?" Ulric snapped, shaking the leather scroll as if he could beat the truth out of it. "Where are we? I don't see anything on the map that matches this hellhole." He flipped the parchment over, then sideways, his fingers trembling with an agitation that bordered on rage.

  Kellen’s voice was high-pitched and grating like metal on stone.. "Are you sure the map is even right? Maybe we should check with the others... see if their charts show something else."

  Riven was now a single step behind Ulric’s back. His hand gripped the hilt of the dagger, his eyes locked on the glinting ring on the noble’s finger.

  Then, a scream shattered the air. It was raw, primal, and came from the far edge of the gathering.

  "Something's coming!"

  The argument between Ulric and Kellen died instantly. Every head in the group whipped toward the horizon, and for a heartbeat, the world went silent.

  The horizon boiled. A tide of dark, spindly shapes erupted from behind the obsidian hands, flowing over the crimson rocks like black ink. It wasn't a pack—it was a carpet of jagged limbs and snapping jaws stretching across the plain.

  Then came the sound: the deafening thunder of thousands of claws striking stone, pierced by high-pitched screeches. The shifting mass made the climbers look like mere crumbs on a blood-red plate.

  In a matter of seconds, the wave of starving predators would slam into the group. Most of the climbers stood frozen, their faces pale and eyes wide, their minds struggling to grasp the reality of the nightmare rushing toward them.

  Ulric was no different. He stared at the approaching death, his mouth hanging open, the map slipping from his trembling fingers. He was a statue of pure, unfiltered terror.

  Riven didn't freeze. He watched the distance closing, calculating the heartbeats remaining.

  Now.

  In one fluid motion, he sliced through the base of Ulric’s finger carrying the ring and followed through with a savage, deep cut across the back of his knee.

  Ulric crashed to the parched ground, clutching his bleeding hand as he let out a pathetic, high-pitched wail of agony. But no one turned. No one looked back.

  He was just a heap of meat on the ground, an obstacle under their boots as they scrambled to survive.

  Riven didn’t waste a heartbeat. He snatched the ring from the dirt, his fingers slick with warm blood, and spun away.

  He paused for a fraction of a second, looking down at the noble writhing in the ash. A jagged, cruel smile cut across his face—a look of pure, dark satisfaction.

  Without a word, he turned and dissolved into the rising frenzy. He became a shadow cutting through the panic, shoving past terrified climbers who were far too drowned in their own screams to notice him slipping between them.

  Then he saw her.

  Lya was standing frozen, her face drained of color as she stared at the wall of shifting black limbs and snapping jaws looming over the group. Terror had locked her joints, turning her into a statue in the path of a landslide.

  Riven didn't slow down. He passed her, his momentum already carrying him toward safety.

  Leave her. She’s just a burden. She'll only slow you down.

  The thought lasted less than a heartbeat, but to Riven, that split second felt like an eternity. He looked at the exit, then back at her small, trembling frame.

  Dammit.

  He skidded in the ash, pivoting on his heel. He reached out and grabbed her arm with a grip of iron, yanking her forward with enough force to snap her out of her trance.

  "Don't just stand there!" he roared, his voice cutting through the sounds of the approaching massacre. "Run!"

  Riven and Lya bolted into the wasteland, running in the opposite direction as fast as their lungs would allow. They left behind a chorus of nightmares—a visceral sea of agonized screams, the hungry roars of the beasts, and the chaotic sounds of a massacre they had no intention of joining.

  They didn't look back. They simply ran like two shadows swallowed by the crimson dust of the wasteland, fleeing one nightmare only to vanish into the unknown.