High, thick, rubbery roots pressed against James’s boots, forcing him to cling to Ser Loran’s cloak as the aethermare picked its way through the ancient forest. The rift known as Sylvan Grove was once a realm of gentle green light and softly luminescent plants, suitable for cautious mid-tier adventurers at best. Yet everything about this place felt off-kilter now—edges too sharp, shadows too deep, energies too volatile. It seemed to grow more ominous by the second.
He tried to still his pounding heart, leaning lightly against Ser Loran’s broad back. The knight held the aethermare’s reins with a kind of effortless control born of decades spent on battlefields and open roads. Even so, the mare snorted at the faintest motion in the undergrowth, ears flicking, her mana-infused mane shimmering with nerves. If the mount was uneasy, James felt something truly awful lay in wait.
Up ahead, Marcus rode his own aethermare—a large, sturdy beast —carrying Joey behind him. Marcus’s broad shoulders and massive sword strapped to his back gave him the look of an unstoppable bulwark, while Joey clung to him with a mixture of trust and white-knuckled fear.
Elia kept to Marcus’s back left, guiding her smaller aethermare with sure hands. A swirl of faint, turquoise light occasionally flickered around her fingertips—a sign that she was scanning the forest with her wind-and-water magic, presumably checking for hidden threats. Her blond hair, normally tied back in a crisp ponytail, hung loose around her shoulders. The rift had undone her careful grooming, leaving her looking both wary and fatigued.
The only person not wholly visible was Jackson who drifted in and out of the gloom, his cloak blending almost seamlessly with the mottled shadows beneath the colossal trees. Sometimes James would catch sight of his face—a gaunt slash of cheekbones and sharp eyes—before Jackson faded away again. His Aether mare seemed especially adept at the task. His specialization in stealth, infiltration, and general cunning, was invaluable for scouting . But James never quite knew what to make of the man.
Branches arched overhead like the ribs of a giant beast, bristling with vines that glowed in the strange lighting of the rift. The gentle light might have been beautiful under ordinary circumstances, but now it cast everything in an eerie half-glow, exposing the twisting shapes of brambles and knotted trunks that seemed to shift whenever one wasn’t looking directly at them. As James’s eyes adjusted, he noticed smaller, flickering motes drifting among the leaves—motes that occasionally glimmered like predatory eyes.
He swallowed hard, forcing a small wave of nauseating dread back down. Focus on breathing. Calm… calm. With a silent exhalation, he invoked the mental hush that was {Aura Control} By reining in the outward flare of his essence, he hoped to avoid attracting any more curious beasts than necessary. At the same time, he layered that hush with {Strategic Tranquility} That kept the panic at bay and allowed him to analyze the situation with clearer eyes. It felt like pressing a cool compress against the fevered thoughts in his mind, steadying him just enough not to freak out.
Ser Loran must have felt the adjustment; the knight glanced over one shoulder. He had an uncanny awareness of James’s aura, a sense James could neither fully comprehend nor replicate. “You’re settling well,” Loran murmured under his breath. “Keep it up, lad. The forest might sense fear.” Though his voice was mild, it carried a weight of confidence that eased James’s chest.
A short distance ahead, Marcus lifted a hand to signal a halt. The entire line slowed. James peered around Loran’s shoulder, trying to see the cause. Among the thick tangle of roots up ahead, the forest path split in two, both routes disappearing into twisted vines. A faint hush fell, broken only by the clop of hoofbeats and the far-off rustle of something in the canopy.
Jackson emerged from behind a trunk with that silent grace that always startled James. His aethermare more incorporeal than not. “Left route’s barricaded by some weird, pulsating vines. They might be alive, or at least magical. The right route is clearer—but I can’t promise it’s safe.”
Marcus grunted, rubbing his square jaw. “We’ll go right, then. The less tangling with living vines, the better.”
Elia flicked her gaze around, uneasy. “Should we check for illusions? This rift feels… unstable.”
She raised one hand, weaving threads of watery light through the air. James watched, half-fascinated, as droplets of mana condensed and swirled, forming a faint scanning pulse that rippled through the clearing. The reflection that came back caused her brow to furrow.
“There’s… a lot of interference,” she muttered, glancing at Marcus. “I can’t get a clear reading. We should keep moving. The longer we sit still, the more likely we’ll attract something.”
A silent agreement seemed to pass among them. They nudged their mounts forward, taking the right-hand path that curved around towering roots and overgrown ferns. James’s shoulders tensed at every crackle or whisper from the underbrush, but no immediate threat emerged.
For perhaps the next ten minutes, they pressed on, weaving around mossy stumps and half-collapsed logs that glowed faintly with spore colonies. The hush grew oppressive. Even Joey, who sometimes cracked jokes to break tension, stayed quiet, arms wrapped around Marcus’s waist. James kept activating {Essence Sight} But didn't really know what to be looking for. The only real noise came from the soft shuffle of the aethermares’ hooves and the occasional grunt from Elia whenever she encountered an obstacle.
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Then, the ground shook. A mild tremor at first, enough to make the horses snort and sidestep in alarm. James’s stomach lurched. Ser Loran hissed a warning. A breathless hush, and then another quake—a little stronger, as though something massive had stirred deeper in the rift.
Jackson cursed under his breath. “That felt like a wave forming, or maybe the rift is shifting boundaries.”
Marcus shot him a grim look. “We need to find an exit fast.” He glanced over at Elia. “You sense any stable boundary?”
Elia shook her head, expression tight. “Not so far. If the wave intensifies, we might be fighting in a choke-point with no fallback.”
The trembling subsided. The group pressed on. A thick canopy overhead blocked out all sense of time—whether it was day or night outside, James couldn’t guess. The surreal glow of the rift gave everything a timeless quality. At last, they reached a small clearing ringed with twisted brush. Marcus called a halt, letting the aethermares breathe. James appreciated the pause; his knees ached from clinging to Loran’s saddle.
Elia dismounted with a weary sigh, rummaging in her satchel for a canteen. She took a careful sip, then offered it to Joey. Marcus swung down too, hand never straying far from the hilt of his massive sword. Jackson lingered near the perimeter, scanning for threats. Ser Loran and James remained on the aethermare—Loran likely wanting to keep vantage in case they had to move fast.
That was when it happened: a sudden shift of magical energy so potent James felt goosebumps explode across his skin. A wave of invisible force rippled through the clearing, and all the bioluminescent fungi briefly flared in brightness. Bark crackled, sap wept from nearby trunks, and the ground quaked with enough violence that Elia fell to one knee, canteen rolling away. A swirl of ephemeral text flashed in James’s peripheral vision—a system prompt not for his personal stats, but the rift itself:
Sylvan Grove Forest – Essence Instability Detected.
Recalibrating…
James froze in shock as the others read their status as well, their expressions turning to dread. Marcus muttered a curse. Elia’s eyes darted, searching for more data. Joey grabbed hold of Marcus’s sleeve, face pale. Ser Loran tensed, scanning the surrounding gloom.
Then another line of ephemeral text appeared, hazier, as though the rift’s very fabric stuttered:
Sylvan Grove Forest is now Essence Level 22.
Wave Frequency Increased.
Clear Conditions: Unchanged.
For a heartbeat, no one spoke. Then Joey whispered, “It… jumped from fifteen to… twenty-two?”
Elia’s face blanched, lips parted in disbelief. “That’s insane,” she breathed. “Rifts… don’t jump seven levels. Something’s corrupting it, or fueling it.”
Ser Loran’s jaw clenched. “Whatever the cause, it means the monsters we’ll face are far stronger than we anticipated.”
Marcus released a slow breath, trying to steady himself. “Then we find an exit or a sub-rift gate, or we die trying.”
Jackson, stepping into the clearing’s center, kicked a stray mushroom aside. He looked spooked, too, though he tried to hide it with a forced grin. “Yeah… let’s not stay here any longer.”
They had no more time for fear. Something snarled in the undergrowth—low, wet, scraping sounds that signaled a wave approach. The group snapped into readiness, weapons and spells at hand. James’s stomach twisted in knots. He prepared to slip off the horse if needed. Loran placed one reassuring hand on James’s shoulder, murmuring, “Steady.”
And then the wave arrived.
From the brush, half a dozen forms lurched forward—each shaped vaguely like a hunched humanoid made of knotted vines and thorns, their limbs elongated and tipped with barbed claws. James used {Essence Inspect} and revealed them as briarsnatches (Level 10) but that was all the information he got. They looked twisted like sappy corruption bled from cracks in their wooden flesh, glowing in purplish streaks. Their eyes glowed a dull red.
Marcus bellowed a warning and met the creatures head-on, sword swinging with lethal power. The first briarsnatch flung itself at him, shrieking, only to be cleaved diagonally. Joey, behind him, lashed out with his metal arm, punching another that tried to flank them. The creature barely moved but it was enough to keep them moving and away from it Joey resettling on his ride. Two more skittered around their left. Elia flicked her hands, conjuring swirling arcs of water-laced wind that slammed them back, ending them with a shriek that hurt the ears. Jackson ducked behind a trunk off his Aethermare, then dashed forward to drive a dagger into one briarsnatch’s exposed back and quickly followed up on the one that Joey hit seeming to deal more damage to the creature than would be expected of a tiny dagger.
James tried to keep the horse steady, but the aethermare reared at the flurry of motion. Ser Loran’s skill in horsemanship was the only thing preventing them from being thrown. With a curse, Loran reined the beast around so James had a better angle. A briarsnatch with a half-torn face lunged at the horse’s flank, claws outstretched. James felt a surge of terror. He jabbed with his trident, scoring a shallow thrust across its side. Sap spurted, and it recoiled, hissing.
Loran finished it off with a brutal slash of his sword, the prongs of James’s trident sliding out in a spray of blackish fluid. The wave seemed to pass as quickly as it began—within thirty seconds, all the briarsnatches lay in heaps of writhing, dissolving vines. James’s chest heaved with shallow breaths.
Elia pressed a hand to her heaving ribcage. “That was… a minor wave?” Her voice shook. The group exchanged grave looks. This was only the beginning, presumably. The forest hush returned, though a tense undercurrent remained.
Ser Loran turned the horse, scanning the clearing. “We can’t linger. Another wave will come.” He glanced at Jackson. “Check for a path forward—some sign of an exit or boundary. Quick as you can.”
Jackson nodded silently and vanished into the underbrush. The rest of them reorganized. Marcus wiped sweat from his brow, stooping to examine the briarsnatch remains. The vines left behind were coated in that purplish sap. “Never seen them so twisted,” he muttered. “They reek of corruption.”
Joey offered James a shaky grin. “At least we survived.”
James tried to return it. He still felt rattled, but he forced a nod. Ser Loran urged the horse to step carefully around the corpses. Some part of James wanted to linger, to see if a special item manifested—he had that unusual title that guaranteed loot if he made the final kill. But everything happened so fast, he wasn’t sure if he’d delivered any finishing blows. Even if something did drop, staying still risked more trouble.
Marcus gestured. “We’ll keep going. Level twenty-two is no joke. We cannot let our guard down for a second. It's only going to get harder from here”
And so they moved on, pushing deeper into the forest’s stifling gloom.