The thirteen days passed faster than any of us wanted.
We trained like the tournament was the only thing that mattered because for those two weeks of pretending, it was easier than sitting with everything else. Dario drilled positioning until Sana could land a heal blind, with eyes closed, with nothing but sound cues. Tommy finally, *finally* learned how to stop pulling three packs at once, mostly because Alex threatened to let him actually die the next time he did it. And me? Well, I learned just how far I could push Last Stand before it stopped being a clutch play and started being reckless. It was a thinner line than I thought.
Mira didn't vanish after she turned in the logs. She kept in touch, careful, cautious, sending us whatever new she discovered without ever asking to come along. I got the feeling she wanted to. I could feel that she was scared of what it would mean if she did.
The morning registration for Stage Two finally opened up. She messaged, **"Be careful in the Gauntlet.It's not the last stage. But it's not nothing either. Whatever it was to my brother, the signs began to appear before the last, not only at it."
I read that message four times before I logged on.
---
The Gauntlet was not kind to us, as opposed to the qualifier. One minute we're in the registration hall with three hundred other qualified parties, name tags glowing gold over heads that got here the hard way. Then the floor disappeared beneath all of us at once, and the world re-formed into something that made the wave-survival platform from the qualifier look like a tutorial zone.
We were at the mouth of a canyon. Stone the color of dried blood. Sky roiling with storm clouds that never rained. Somewhere ahead of us, low and steady, a sound like something huge breathing.
Gauntlet Stage – Trial of Astia. Goal: Get to the Keep. Live through it between you and it."**That's all?" Tommy said. '"Outlive what's between you and it? "That's not even a goal, that's a threat with extra steps.""Focus up," Dario said, already scanning the canyon walls with the sharp, narrowed look he got right before a fight. Ken's right about one thing, whatever this is, there's no going back. So we go in with a plan.
Sana was already mentally ticking off a list, out loud, mostly to us, mostly to herself. Positioning like we trained. Ken draws aggro, Rally on my mark, Tommy peels anything that flanks / Alex controls range--"And if it's not a normal fight," I cut in, thinking about the logs, about *guys I think it's aware*, "if it talks, if it does something that doesn't look like a monster attack pattern — we pull back. No hero stuff. Me deciding on my own that I've got this.""Agreed," Dario said, and the rest of the party said it fast enough that I believed they meant it.
We started walking. The breathing sound ahead grew louder. The canyon narrowed around us as if to funnel us on purpose, leading us to whatever was making it. My HP bar was full, stable, green. The flickering behind my eyes – the thing I'd learned to recognize as *not normal, not a game bug* – had started again, the second we crossed into the canyon, faint and rhythmic, almost like it was keeping time with the breathing ahead.
It knew we were coming, whatever it is.
**"Warning: Elite-Class Encounter Detected."**
Boss: The Hollow Warden
Before us the canyon opened into a broad stone amphitheater. Standing in its center, easily twenty feet tall, armor fused directly into scarred gray flesh, a weapon that seemed less forged than grown, turned its head toward our party the moment we stepped into view, slow and deliberate, as if it had been waiting.
They were silent for a while. Then Tommy, in the smallest voice I'd ever heard from him, said exactly what we were all thinking. ""Yeah, that's a fight scene.
*To be Continued…*