The river cut a dark scar through the cavern, a rushing vein of icy water that chewed at the stone as if determined to carve its way to daylight. Mana light shimmered across its surface in shifting strips of blue and purple that dissolved into the current. Mist rose in thin ribbons that drifted through the air like slow moving ghosts. The sound of the water echoed under the cavern’s dome, a steady roar that spoke of hidden depths and concealed dangers.

  We approached the bank with wary steps. Every instinct in me wanted to take in every angle, every dark crevice, every shard of mana crystal reflecting light like a watchful eye. The cavern was too quiet. That was the part that bothered me the most. No skittering of Lesser Lizards, no distant screeches in the tunnels. Silence meant intelligence. Silence meant predators waiting for the right moment.

  I lifted my chin toward the far bank. “Gideon, Flynn,” I called out. “Scout the other side. Let us know what you see.”

  Gideon rolled his shoulders and tested his grip on the haft of his weapon. Flynn shot me a sharp grin, though the tension behind it betrayed how seriously he took the order. There was no hesitation from either of them.

  Flynn moved first. His form blurred at the edges until he resembled a heat haze rising off asphalt. The shimmer deepened, tightened, and then the air simply closed around the space he had occupied. He was gone, leaving only a faint ripple of mana behind.

  Gideon stepped back several paces, calculating the distance with a long, practiced look. His boots dug grooves into the loose gravel as he leaned forward and broke into a sprint powerful enough to make the ground tremble. His silhouette blurred past me, armor clattering, breath steady.

  At the lip of the riverbank, he launched himself into the air.

  For a suspended moment he seemed to freeze above the water, framed by rising mist and the glow of the mana crystals overhead. The river surged beneath him, dark and cold and hungry, but he sailed past it with room to spare. He landed on the far side with enough force to send stones flying in a wide arc. The impact echoed like a battering ram striking a fortress gate.

  A moment later Flynn materialized beside him, brushing imaginary dust from his shoulders. Gideon gave him a curt nod, then both of them scanned the tree line.

  I almost smiled. Their synergy made the stress of the cavern feel a little less suffocating.

  Almost.

  The chittering shriek that erupted from the far side of the cavern shredded every fragment of ease inside me. It echoed with an unnatural reverb, sharp enough to lance straight through the roar of the river. Every muscle in my body tensed. Jaws clenched. Hands tightened around weapon hilts. Even the mana crystals overhead seemed to pulse in response.

  Then came the crashing.

  Branches snapped like gunshots. Stone cracked. Heavy bodies surged through undergrowth with violent momentum. The sound doubled on itself, coming from two opposite directions on the far bank. Not a random encounter. A pattern. A coordinated flank.

  My breath caught in my throat.

  A pincer.

  “Move,” I snapped, but the order felt sucked away by the cavern’s wide silence.

  The tree line across the river erupted.

  Two Behemoths smashed through the foliage, each one towering nearly fifteen feet at the shoulder. Their scales were a mottled blend of black and deep green, slick with a strange oil sheen that reflected mana light in fractured streaks. Their heads swung low, jaws snapping in a rhythm that sent globules of green saliva spattering onto the stone. Their claws tore deep furrows into the ground as they advanced.

  They were positioned deliberately, boxes closing in around Gideon and Flynn. They had waited. They had watched us approach the river and sent scouts across. They had let us fragment our forces.

  I cursed under my breath. “FUCK. Form up on the far bank!” I roared, but even as the words left me, I knew the battlefield was already collapsing.

  Movement flashed in the corner of my eye.

  A slow, hulking shadow rising from the river itself.

  My heart lurched. The water churned as armored plating broke the surface—thick, layered, ridged. The creature’s massive, clubbed tail dragged through the water like a wrecking ball waking from a deep sleep. Its head emerged with terrifying calm, each plate gleaming black and wet.

  Ankylosaurus. And not the docile animal from prehistoric documentaries. This one pulsed with mana. Its plating shimmered with protective energy.

  “Ambush!” I shouted. “Upstream. Logan, you are with me. We take the left Behemoth. Everyone else focus your fire on the right. Shanira, keep that Ankylosaurus busy.”

  There was no time to hesitate.

  Logan was already running. He covered the water’s edge in a blur, mana surging through his legs until he resembled a streak of condensed light. He crouched low, then used Mana Leap to launch himself across the river. His body twisted midair, axe angled forward like the spear of a charging titan.

  He collided with the left Behemoth’s snout in a crushing, bone shaking impact that sent a wave of force rippling through the ground beneath my feet. The monster’s head cracked against the earth with a brutal thud as Logan’s boots dug into its skull.

  That was my moment.

  Wind Step surged under my skin with needle sharp energy. The world blurred and stretched, then snapped back into clarity as I appeared on the Behemoth’s back. Armor plates shifted beneath my boots like tectonic plates trying to shed me.

  I activated Mana Blade.

  Both swords in my hands ignited with a sharp, crackling glow. The cavern’s ambient blue light seemed to bend toward the edges of my blades.

  Then I ran.

  My feet hammered across the monster’s spine, each step creating sparks as the mana soaked blades carved long, glowing streaks in its armor. Shallow cuts at first, but each one weakening a plate. Each one buying us an inch.

  The Behemoth bucked and twisted, its roar rolling through the cavern like thunder. I bent my knees and rode the motion, absorbing the tremors through my boots. Its tail whipped toward me in a blur.

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  I kicked off as it passed, momentum sending me high over the sweeping plates. I flipped, twisting my body midair, and redirected myself toward its underside as it scrambled back to its feet.

  Underbelly.

  A weakness.

  I struck.

  My blades carved deeper this time, biting between armor seams and leaving gashes that spilled glowing green ichor. The smell hit me with an acidic, chemical sharpness that burned behind my eyes.

  The Behemoth stumbled in pain.

  Logan answered for it.

  His axe came down on the monster’s front leg with the sound of a tree being torn apart. Mana coiled around the impact like an imploding shockwave. Bone and armor cracked. The leg folded inward. The monster collapsed, nearly rolling onto its side.

  Its massive head snapped toward Logan.

  Opening.

  I dismissed my gladius and gripped my Jian with both hands.

  My boots dug into the stone.

  I drove the blade into the creature’s neck.

  The resistance was brutal. Thick cartilage, bone, muscle. My arms trembled with the effort. Mana surged into the weapon, heating the metal until it felt like a living thing struggling to contain itself.

  Kinetic Burst.

  The explosion of force traveled along the Jian and detonated inside the Behemoth’s throat. The shockwave rippled inside its skull. Its eyes bulged. Green gore poured from every seam and opening in its head.

  It died instantly.

  My breathing came ragged. Sweat clung to my brow even in the cold cavern.

  The System flashed a kill confirmation.

  I dismissed it.

  And then something cold touched the back of my neck.

  The hairs on my arms prickled upright. A chill, sharp and electric, crawled down my spine. My skin tightened as if the air itself warned me.

  Danger.

  Pure, primal danger.

  My muscles moved before thought could form.

  I dove.

  Shanira’s voice cut through the air behind me, sharp with alarm. Then—

  A jaw snapped shut on empty space where my head had been.

  A wall of teeth and bone snapped shut where my skull had been a heartbeat before.

  The Ankylosaurus’s armored beak clashed on empty air with a sound like stone grinding on stone. The impact sent a shockwave through the ground, and shards of rock sprayed past my cheek.

  My forward dive turned into a roll. Gravel scraped my armor. Momentum carried me toward the edge of the bank. I reached for purchase, fingers clawing at wet stone.

  The ground vanished beneath me.

  For one weightless instant, I hung in a strange, breathless pause, eyes full of mana light and mist and the distant blur of Logan and the others still fighting on the far side of the cavern.

  Then the river reached up and took me.

  The cold hit like a hammer.

  It was not the clean, sharp chill of snow or a winter wind. It was a crushing, all consuming cold that punched through armor, clothing, skin, straight to the bone in one brutal rush. My lungs spasmed. The breath that had been halfway to my throat ripped out of me in a useless burst of bubbles.

  The water swallowed the sound.

  Darkness closed over my head. The roar of the river above turned into a muffled, heavy pressure that bore down from every side. Silt and grit exploded around me, turning the water into a churning, gray blur.

  Instinct shoved my arms wide, searching for the surface, for direction, for anything solid.

  A weight crashed down on my chest.

  The Ankylosaurus’s foot pinned me to the riverbed with the finality of a boulder dropping into a grave. The pressure was instant and absolute. My armor creaked under the strain. Stones ground into my back. Pain flared across my ribs.

  My swords were gone. I felt the absence like missing limbs. Somewhere in that first chaotic tumble, the hilts had been torn from my grip. Fingers grasped at nothing but icy water.

  Breathe.

  The command flashed automatically in my brain, but there was nothing to breathe. Cold invaded my nose and mouth. I clamped my teeth shut, forced my lips together, and swallowed panic instead of air.

  Get out. Move.

  I pushed at the Ankylosaurus’s leg. My hands slid across slick, scaled armor. The creature might as well have been the stone itself. No give. No shift. No mercy.

  The cold seeped deeper, wrapping around my limbs like lead. My muscles responded slower. Fingers felt thick, clumsy. Even panic seemed to move through syrup.

  Then time changed.

  A familiar sensation crawled over my skin, threading through muscle and bone. A subtle tightening, like a wire being pulled just a little too taut. My awareness widened and sharpened all at once.

  Flow State.

  Of all the times for it to trigger, it chose now.

  The river slowed.

  Individual bubbles of air rose around me in a lazy ascent, each one wobbling and spinning as it climbed. Threads of silt drifted in intricate spirals, catching the faint light from the cavern in ghostly strands. The Ankylosaurus’s foot shifted slightly with the movement of its massive body above, and I felt each tiny tremor in excruciating detail through my armor. My own heartbeat pounded in my ears, a thunderous, slow drum.

  Flow State had always been an edge in combat. A way to see attacks coming, to thread through danger, to make impossible choices in slivers of borrowed time.

  Down here, it was a curse.

  I felt every second of suffocation stretch twice as long.

  My lungs spasmed again, demanding air. Fire sparked in my chest and spread outward in slow motion, licking up my throat, down into my gut. I clamped my mouth tighter, jaw aching with effort. Small trails of escaped bubbles drifted from the corners of my lips, each one a tiny fragment of the life I was bleeding into the river.

  Think. Tools. Solutions.

  My mind raced through options with the cold, ruthless speed Flow State always brought.

  I could try to shove mana into my arms and chest, try to force my way out with raw strength. But there was nowhere for the force to go. The Ankylosaurus was anchored by its own weight, the river, and the stone beneath us.

  I could try to Wind Step, but there was no ground to push from, no clear line of sight, no open space to reappear into that would not be directly under the creature’s body. If I misjudged even slightly, I would rematerialize halfway inside a slab of stone or under the same crushing weight.

  Could I blast it off with Kinetic Burst?

  No. I had no blade in my hands, and even if I did, triggering a burst point blank against that much mass while pinned beneath it was as likely to break my own ribs as it was to free me.

  Every path I mapped in my head led to the same result.

  Not enough time. Not enough leverage. Not enough air.

  My fingers scrabbled against the Ankylosaurus’s scales again, not because it would work, but because the body refuses to accept that it cannot struggle its way out of death. Nails tore. Warmth bloomed in my gloves as my skin split. The heat was swallowed immediately by the freezing current.

  Sound filtered down from above. Distant, distorted.

  A muffled explosion of noise that could have been Logan shouting or the other Behemoth roaring. The Ankylosaurus’s body vibrated faintly, as if struck by something heavy. Another tremor followed. I felt the shift through the pressure on my chest, subtle changes magnified by Flow State until they seemed huge.

  They are still fighting.

  They might be trying to get this thing off me.

  The thought flared with bitter, desperate hope that tasted like metal.

  My lungs cramped again. The urge to inhale became a physical presence inside my chest, a clawing animal that raked at my ribs. My vision narrowed. The edges darkened, not quickly, but with agonizing slowness, like ink slowly poured into water.

  Just hold on.

  Just a little longer.

  My body did not care about tactics, or Flow State, or the System. It cared about oxygen. It cared about survival in the most primitive sense.

  The next spasm broke me.

  My jaw cracked open on a helpless, betrayed gasp.

  Freezing water flooded my mouth, my throat, my lungs. The shock was beyond pain. It felt like a thousand knives of ice drove inward all at once. Every nerve screamed. Every part of me recoiled.

  The world went white at the edges, then back to gray.

  Flow State forced me to feel every detail.

  The way the water stripped heat from my core with ruthless precision. The way my chest heaved, trying to cough, trying to force the fluid back out, only to drag more in. The way my throat burned, as if I had swallowed pure acid.

  No air. Only water. No relief. Only more burning.

  The roar in my ears shifted from river and blood to a strange, rushing emptiness that felt like sound being sucked away. The pain in my chest changed, not lessening, but becoming distant, as if it belonged to someone else.

  Above me, the Ankylosaurus’s weight shifted again.

  A heavy blow landed. Then another. The tremors passed through my armor in slow waves. Somewhere far away, I knew my team was doing everything they could.

  I wanted to help them.

  I could not even move.

  The tunnel vision closed further. Only a tight circle of gray remained in the center of my sight. Shapes flickered at the edges, blurred by the water and the dim light.

  I thought I saw mana, faint currents of soft blue drifting even down here, swirling around my hands, curling past my face. For a moment, it felt like I could reach for it, do something impossible with it.

  Then that thought, like everything else, slipped away.

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