Chapter 5 Silent Step
Ren activated Silent Step — and the world lost its sound.
Not ordinary silence. This was absolute emptiness beneath his feet, as though the ground he walked on had never existed. Every step felt like treading over nothing — light, unnatural, and a little terrifying.
But fear was a luxury he couldn't afford right now.
"Follow me," Ren whispered. "Don't stop."
They slipped past darkened tents, past Scavengers sleeping with knives in their hands, past campfires burned down to embers. Kael moved behind him — slower, louder. The footsteps of a Healer, not an Assassin.
Thirty meters from the edge of camp, Predator's Instinct flashed red.
One of the watchers had moved. Cutting across their path.
"They know." Ren pulled Kael behind a stone pillar. Too late — a sharp whistle tore the silence of the night apart. The other two signals shifted immediately. The triangular formation tightened.
Three Grade-C Awakeners. Sentinel Corps recon unit. Professionals.
"Kael, listen to me." Ren spoke fast, his eyes calculating distance and direction. "Ravine Point — the big gorge, six kilometers northeast. Meet me there."
"Ren—"
"Kael. Run. That's an order."
Kael stared at him for one full second — long enough to swallow the protest already sitting on his tongue. Then he turned and vanished into the dark.
Ren faced the direction of the nearest scout. Drew a breath. Let it go.
Then he ran — not away, but toward.
The scout didn't anticipate an attack.
A Grade-C Ranger with a mana bow and eyes trained to read movement in the dark — but Ren didn't move like a human. Silent Step erased sound. Shadow Claw merged with the shadows. All the scout saw was emptiness. All he felt — black claws tearing across the side of his arm.
"What—?!"
The scout fell back, bow raised. A mana arrow flew — military precision, straight for Ren's chest. But Predator's Instinct had read the trajectory before the scout's fingers ever touched the bowstring. Ren rolled left. The arrow struck the rock behind him and burst apart in a spray of blue light.
The gap between their Grades was massive. Grade-C against Grade-E — this shouldn't have been a fight. It should have been an execution.
But Ren wasn't fighting like a warrior.
He retreated into a dead dungeon passage gaping open nearby — narrow, dark, full of blind corners. Terrain that stripped a Ranger's distance advantage down to nothing.
The scout followed him in. First mistake.
Ren struck from the side — Shadow Claw raking across his back. The scout spun, fired wild. Missed. Ren was already gone.
From behind. Claws slashing a shoulder.
From above. A kick to the head.
Every hit was small, not fatal — but cumulative. Death by a thousand cuts. The strategy of a predator bleeding its prey dry.
"You're just Grade-E!" the scout roared, blood running from four different wounds. "Why won't you die?!"
Ren didn't answer. Answers wasted energy.
Shadow Claw came down one final time — shredding the tendon behind the scout's knee. The leg buckled instantly. The scout dropped, his bow slipping free, his face slamming into the dirt.
Ren stood over him. His breathing was heavy. His hands trembled — not from exhaustion.
Because Devour wanted.
The emptiness in his chest pulled, whispered, asked. A Grade-C Ranger Core — power he needed. All he had to do was reach out, and—
「Devour him,」 Lyra said. Flat. Pragmatic. 「Grade-C Ranger Core. You need it.」
Ren looked down at the scout beneath him. The man was young — early twenties, maybe. His eyes were wide, a mixture of pain and pure terror. His lips moved without sound, maybe praying, maybe begging.
This was a human. Not a monster.
For the first time, Devour felt wrong.
"No." Ren pulled his hand back. "Not today."
He reached for the communication crystal on the scout's belt, crushed it under his heel, and walked away without looking back.
「…You have morals. That's sweet. Also stupid.」
A long pause.
「But… not entirely stupid.」
Ravine Point split the Fractured Lands like a wound that was never stitched — a colossal gorge with sheer stone walls plunging into darkness too deep to measure. Wind rose from its floor carrying the smell of old metal and mana gone to rot.
Kael hadn't arrived yet.
Ren sat at the edge of the ravine, letting his legs hang over the void. His body ached everywhere. The scout's blood was still drying on his claws.
Then he saw it.
Carved into the gorge wall, half-hidden behind moss and time — a symbol. Lines forming a circular pattern with emptiness at its center. Identical to the one he'd found scratched into the floor of his grandfather's house. Identical to the one that pulsed behind his eyes every time Void activated.
But this carving was ancient. Thousands of years old.
"Lyra."
Silence.
"Lyra, what is this?"
「…This wasn't made by Gareth.」 Her voice was different — quieter, heavier. 「This is far older. From before The Collapse.」
"Do you know what it means?"
「No.」
One word. No sarcasm. No sharp remarks.
「And that's what scares me.」
Ren said nothing. But something shifted inside his understanding. All this time he'd assumed Lyra knew everything about Void — that this entity was a guide holding all the answers. But Lyra was just as blind as he was. Void had a history longer, darker, and deeper than anyone knew.
They were both just walking its surface.
Kael arrived fifteen minutes later — gasping for air, knees bloodied, but alive.
"Two scouts… chased me… all the way to the dry river…" Kael coughed. "Lost them… in the ruins."
"You alright?"
"No. But I'm alive. That's enough."
Ren helped Kael to his feet. "We need to—"
An explosion.
Golden light erupted from the bottom of the ravine — bright, searing, carrying a pressure of mana that made the air shudder. Enchanter magic. Powerful.
Then a scream.
A woman. Young. Full of pain and something worse than pain — despair.
Ren activated Predator's Instinct. The world became a heat map: one human life signature at the bottom of the gorge, surrounded by six monster signatures closing in. The human's mana pressure… Grade-B.
Grade-B, alone, at the bottom of a ravine, and losing.
"Ren." Kael recognized that look. The same look from the EX dungeon. The look that said I'm about to do something stupid. "Ren, don't tell me you're—"
But Ren had already jumped.
The darkness of the ravine swallowed him whole.