The Rank #1 notification hung in the air like a neon executioner's blade.

  Twenty meters behind them, they could hear an Asian teenager shouted in protest, "Fourteen thousand? Impossible! I charted the entire Iron-Oak perimeter! I bled for every point!”

  This statement sparked sudden commotion among Martyrs around the extraction point. Some were amazed with this achievement, but more were whispering, their eyes narrowed in envy.

  Marcus himself stood frozen, his three hard-won Hearts looking like dim, flickering embers against the sun-bright dominance of Valentin's bag.

  The group that had surrounded and praised him was no longer visible.

  But Val barely noticed. For him, the supposed euphoria never arrived.

  Something else was haunting his mind.

  The system ping he’d been waiting for, the elimination confirmation of Chigurh. It never came.

  Before he could finish the thought, his HUD flickered.

  [SENSOR DESYNC]

  [THERMAL VARIANCE DETECTED]

  Not a warning. Not an alert.

  A stutter.

  Static crawled across the edges of his vision. The temperature dipped just a few degrees, but enough for breath to fog in the air.

  Someone laughed nervously. “You feel that?”

  The violet mist at the edge of the clearing began to move.

  The commotion was drowned out by a thundering rhythm rising from deep within the Primeval Jungle.

  Elena’s hand tightened around Val’s sleeve.

  “This isn’t Abyssal behavior,” she said quietly.

  The jungle answered her.

  Not with sound, but with absence.

  Birds went silent. Insects cut off mid-chirp. Even the distant hum of the extraction gate dulled, as if swallowed by thick fabric.

  Then footsteps. Like stampede.

  Chigurh stepped out of the fog, iron-wood fingers digging into the soft loam.

  He didn't just feel the vibration; he was inciting it.

  "If you think a Quagmire can stop me..." Chigurh hissed, his voice cracking like dry timber. "You're dead wrong, Martyr."

  With a roar that tore through the canopy, Chigurh slammed both fists into the dirt. The ground buckled.

  From the treeline, the shadows began to scream. It started as a frantic rustle of leaves, then transitioned into the bone-deep thrum of claws and hooves hitting the earth in unison.

  Then more shapes emerged behind him. One by one.

  Ten figures in broken armor and scavenged plates, the Blacktooth Gang crews. Each Halo scarred. Each posture relaxed in the way only killers had.

  “Don’t let any of them escape!”

  Between them skittered low. Drakes no larger than motorcycles, claws clicking wetly against stone, eyes glowing predator-green.

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  “Each one of these cattle worth more than 10 Hearts! Get ‘em!”

  All the Martyrs rushed toward the swirling gate.

  “Everyone to the Wormhole now!”

  Panic detonated.

  Martyrs surged toward the Wormhole in a single, screaming wave. Those without Hearts were shoved aside, scattered into the fringes of the extraction zone.

  Val’s stomach dropped.

  The flare. It hadn’t just called Chigurh.

  It had called the pack.

  A wall of iron-skinned Skitter Drakes burst through the brush. They didn't run; they collided with the world, leveling the ground as if they were wheat.

  Every step was a massive acceleration of pure muscle, sending shockwaves through the clearing that knocked the Martyrs off their feet.

  The "Extraction Point" was no longer a sanctuary; it was a tidal wave. Trees shattered. Martyrs were swept aside by sheer kinetic energy.

  The swirling of the event horizon beginning its slow, grinding descent echoed across the valley. It was a deep, gravitational groan that sounded like a funeral bell.

  "It’s moving!" Elena screamed. "They’re closing it early!"

  "Emergency seal!" Marcus choked out, his face pale. "The attack, it triggered a lockdown!"

  They hit the clearing. Three hundred yards of open, flat grass. No cover. No trees. Just a dead sprint. From the treeline, three flashes of mottled brown and gray darted out. The Skitter Drakes were no longer screeching; they were in a full-tilt gallop, their sickle claws clicking against the rocks.

  "Go! Go! Go!" Rafa barked, firing a shell into the brush to force a momentary flinch from the lead predator.

  The gap was down to twenty feet, and the red digital timer over the gate hissed: 00:30.

  Dan felt the air change.

  The static charge of a Drake’s leap. He looked at the Wormhole, then at ten Blacktooth Gang closing the distance like feathered bullets. He made the calculation in an instant. It was simple subtraction. If he moved now, the Drakes would catch the tail end of the group.

  “You go doc. This is where we part ways. You, me, Rusty.”

  Chigurh stood at the epicenter, a stationary point in a cyclone of beasts, his face twisted into a grin of feral triumph.

  “Dan what are you doing?”

  “Go!” Dan shouted, shoving Val and Elena toward the closing aperture with a wide reassuring grin. “Someone has to entertain them.”

  He didn't have a gun. He didn't even have a Rungu. He just had his tattered Hawaiian shirt and a grin that looked wider than ever.

  “Dan, don’t be a fool!” Val yelled, his hand reaching out.

  “Keep these greenhorns safe will you doc.”

  In the chaos, Dan caught Lysa’s panic-stricken eyes. A lightbulb of inspiration hit him. “Kiss on the cheek for the Heart?”

  Lysa didn't hesitate.

  Val saw her eyes flutter for a fraction of a second. A brief collision of shock and calculation, before her survival instinct took over.

  She lunged.

  Her lips hit Dan’s cheek with the frantic precision of a woodpecker. One. Two. Three. She snatched the Heart from his hand and vanished back into the fray.

  It was all over in a single heartbeat.

  Dan savored the moment. Closed his eyes, chest heaving, hand raised into the sky like nothing else mattered. Not even in face of death.

  He saw the Blacktooth leader, a scarred man with a rusted Halo leveling a high-frequency blade at Dan’s chest.

  Dan didn't flinch. He didn't even blink. He just started to snap his left fingers, right hand on his fanny pack.

  The rhythm echoing against the metal walls.

  “Wow! I feel good!” Dan bellowed, his voice soaring over the sound of the closing gate.

  The blade pierced his shoulder, but Dan didn't scream. He used the momentum to throw his weight against the gate's manual override, jamming his own body into the gears to keep the door from locking the others inside.

  “I knew that I would, now!” He looked back at Val, Elena, and a stunned Rafa. There was no fear in his eyes. There was only a terrifying, beautiful peace. He had finally found a world where he was the boss of his own fate.

  “So good! So good! I got you!”

  The gate hissed shut. The last thing Val saw through the narrowing slit was Dan’s bloody hand rhythmically snapping to the beat as the Blacktooth gang swarmed over him.

  The silence that followed was heavier than any explosion.

  THUD!

  The landing wasn’t pretty. Some people broke. Some people wept of joy. Some were just happy to be alive.

  Val didn't speak.

  He took a singular, aggressive breath. The violent hiss of his manual reset.

  But for the first time, his logic didn't provide an answer. His hands were still shaking.

  ‘Amalgamation of stress... dopamine override... psychological break...’ Val listed the reasons in his head.

  But a single face came to every Martyr who survived the crucible.

  They knew. This world, their new reality was never pretty.

  “Dan... he...” Elena whispered next to Val unable to finish her sentence. “He was just... happy.”

  Val looked at the closed Wormhole, “No.”

  “He was free.”