The Anomaly's Path

The ledges along the ridge were covered in blood, shredded flesh, black gunk, and torn limbs from dozens of dead beasts.

Morgana’s chest heaved in ragged, painful gasps. Her clothes hung off her arms in torn, bloody strips, showing deep claw marks that bled down her ribs. Her dark hair had come loose from its knot, strands stuck to her sweaty face.

Every time she swung her heavy sword, her torn muscles screamed. But she couldn’t stop. High above the ridge, the Grade 8 Gate sat in the sky like a bleeding tear in space.

A huge, blood-red eye hung in the center of the dark rift. It didn’t blink. It didn’t move. The massive eye just hovered there, pushing down a heavy, crushing pressure that made Morgana’s bones ache just standing under it.

Two huge, shadowy arms made of solid dark energy were gripping the edges of the tear, holding it open.

The monster wasn’t stuck... it was waiting.

It was slowly pulling itself through bit by bit, letting its dark power rot the valley before it stepped down. It was a ticking clock. Morgana knew with sick clarity that the moment that blood-red eye looked down, the whole ridge would be destroyed in an instant.

"Move, you ugly bastards..." she growled under her breath, her fingers bleeding through her gloves from how hard she smashed the handle of her heavy sword into a beast’s skull.

A pack of monsters surged up the narrow stone path, their jaws dripping burning spit.

She couldn’t leap into the sky to hit the Gate, and she couldn’t retreat down the mountain. She was stuck to this single stretch of rock, forced to turn her body into a killing machine just to keep the tide off the lower ground.

Boom!

A violent blast tore through the foggy air to her left. A Grade 5 beast that had been leaping toward her blind spot exploded mid-air, its body bursting into red mist and broken bone. The ground shook hard as a tall figure landed on the ground beside her.

Damon wiped a streak of dark blood from his chin with the back of his hand, his grey hair soaked with sweat.

"What the hell took you so long, you bastard?" Morgana spat, not even turning her head as she severed a Frost Titan’s ankle. "I’ve been knee-deep in guts for twenty minutes!"

"Hey, it wasn’t my fault," Damon rasped, wiping a streak of black blood from his jaw with his arm. His voice was raw, rough. "I got thrown three hundred yards into the rubble when the shockwave hit. What’s the situation?"

"It’s not good," Morgana snapped, pulling her blade free with a wet sound. "That monster in the sky is pulling the tear wider every three minutes. I can’t reach the rift without letting these beasts slide down to the city."

"Then we hold the ridge," Damon said simply, though a sharp, wet cough shook his chest. He spat blood onto the ground.

They stood side by side on the crumbling edge of the cliff, two bloody fighters ready to drown under an endless black wave. Then, the air shifted. It didn’t start with a loud crash. It began as a faint, paper-thin ripple in the air, a small thread of mana stretching across the sky above the valley.

Morgana’s sword stopped mid-swing. Damon’s head snapped up, his sense picking up the sudden change in the air.

The thin thread of mana flickered, then burst into a web of thousands of tiny, glowing points. It spread outward like liquid glass rushing across a frozen lake, crawling over the space between the valley, the mountain slopes, and the outer city wall.

It wasn’t an attack.

It was a massive, manual fixing of the old runes. The blue light locked together, forming a huge, humming dome over the basin below. The barrier wasn’t a weapon... it couldn’t kill the beasts crawling up the slope, nor could it destroy the Grade 8 Gate Boss.

But as the pale blue dome formed over the valley walls, it created a massive wall. It locked the high-grade monsters inside the basin, holding back the purple mist and making a physical wall that blocked the rift’s pressure from crushing the city below.

The purple mist hitting the ridge suddenly stopped, trapped under the newly stabilized ceiling. The heavy weight from the Gate Boss slammed into the barrier, sending huge ripples across its surface, but the dome held.

It was a gamble, it bought them time. Temporary, precious, desperate time.

"Is that...?" Morgana blinked, wiping blood from her eyelid.

"The barrier..." Damon muttered, his eyes wide as he stared at the glowing lines forming above them. "Someone’s fixing it from inside the relay tower."

"Helene is down at the central command," Morgana said, her voice dropping as her chest tightened. "She couldn’t reach the ridge tower through the fog..."

"Well, whoever the hell is up in that tower just saved our asses," Damon grunted, raising his hand as mana flared around his fist. "They just bought the whole city fifteen minutes."

Morgana didn’t answer. Her purple eyes stayed locked on the sharp, precise patterns weaving across the sky. The clean angles, the layered balances, the way everything fit perfectly... a single name hit her mind like a drop of ice water.

Vance.

"That fucker..." she whispered, her fingers going numb around the grip of her sword.

_

Inside the main room of the relay tower, the air was thick with the smell of burnt metal and blood.

The walls were cracked, glowing with faint purple lines where the corruption had seeped in from the outside. Near the entrance, the bodies of three guards lay twisted against the ground, their armor torn open by beasts before they had managed to kill them.

Vance was kneeling alone in the center of the room, surrounded by fading light. His brown hair hung in wet, tangled clumps over his forehead. Blood dripped from both nostrils, pooling on the cold floor between his knees.

He was terrified. His whole body was shaking so badly his teeth chattered.

Every person raised in this world knew what power was. It was as natural as breathing air. Under normal conditions, a fighter’s core soaked up mana from the air on its own, cleaned it, and sent it through their body like blood.

But when your core ran completely empty, the body was forced to rip raw, dirty energy straight from the air, a process that felt like dragging broken glass through your veins. That was what was happening to Vance.

He had no mana left. His core was completely empty.

"Shit... it hurts..." Vance gasped, his voice breaking into a wet, painful cough. He stared at the main pillar in front of him. The main board was scorched black, its inner paths clogged with thick purple corrupted mist.

The automatic system was dead. If the barrier was going to work, someone had to do it by hand, pulling clean mana from the air through their own body, cleaning it as it flowed, and pushing it straight into the tower’s main board.

It was a job meant for a strong fighter with thick, tough channels. Vance was a Master Mid rank researcher who spent his days at a desk reading books.

Everyone around me always had to carry my weight, he thought, a bitter, blood-stained smile pulling at his lips.

Helene scolded him for staying up late, yet always left warm food on his desk. Vega grumbled about expense reports, but signed off on every material Vance ever asked for.

And Morgana... she called him a useless pencil-pusher, yelled at him for being weak, but every time danger came close, she was the one who threw herself in front of him. She had guided him, pushed him, and helped him without hesitation.

They all had.

He didn’t have their strength. He couldn’t leap into the sky or cut through a horde of monsters.

But he had never backed down when his work was on the line. He knew mana patterns better than anyone in this academy. He knew how the mana flowed, where the paths cracked, and how to force a broken array system back to life.

He didn’t hesitate. He slammed both bare palms flat against the burning stone. The backlash hit him like a punch.

Without a drop of mana left to protect his nerves, the raw corrupted mana surged straight into his arms. The thin channels inside them shattered instantly under the pressure. Pain ripped up his shoulders, a wet, tearing feeling, like hot metal being dragged through cold flesh.

"AGHHAAAGH!"

His scream echoed off the walls of the tower. His skin blistered where his palms touched the slate. Dark veins bulged along his neck and arms as the raw, corrupted mana from the tower’s base fought against his control.

Vance gritted his teeth, forcing his mind to ignore the feeling of his flesh burning. He closed his eyes and saw the pattern in his head.

He forced the dirty, corrupted mana surging into his hands through his broken channels, straining to filter and purify it inside his own body before shoving it into the slate’s core node. He locked the first connection. Then the second. Then the third.

Every time he locked a connection, a blast of force slammed into his chest. His ribs cracked with a faint snap. Dark blood burst from his mouth, splattering across the glowing slate.

He kept pushing. He didn’t have the strength to fight, but his mind held every single step of the pattern with perfect clarity. He worked around the burnt parts, bypassed the broken paths, and forced the purified mana to feed the dome.

Outside, the barrier pulsed once, bright and strong, forming a solid ceiling over the valley. Inside the quiet room, Vance’s hands finally slipped off the slate.

He fell forward, his forehead hitting the bloody floor with a dull thud. His arms hung limp at his sides, completely useless, the skin on them turned a dark purple. His core inside his chest felt cracked, cold, and empty, like a pot that had been burned over a fire until it split.

His chest rose and fell in short, painful gasps. Dark blood still trickled from his nose and ears onto the floor. He couldn’t feel his fingers. He couldn’t feel his legs. The burning pain in his arms was slowly fading into a numb, cold quiet.

Did it... work...? Vance thought, his vision darkening as the edges of his consciousness began to crumble. Morgana... the lines... are hold...ing...

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