The morning sky was dark, heavy with thick clouds that blanketed the forest in a cold, gray gloom. The sun had risen somewhere behind those clouds, but its light could not pierce through—only a faint, diffuse glow that made the snow look dirty and the shadows look deeper. The temperature had dropped further during the night, and the air was sharp and bitter, burning the lungs with every breath.
The Graduate Noven humans began firing.
The tranquilizer darts cut through the dim light, their silver tips glinting faintly as they flew through the air. They embedded themselves in trees with soft thunks, in snowdrifts with soft hisses, in bushes with soft rustles. They whistled past Yuuta's ears, close enough that he could feel the wind of their passage, close enough that he could smell the chemicals on their tips—sharp, acrid, sweet, like rotting flowers.
Yuuta held onto Sophia's leg tightly, his small fingers digging into her ragged pants, his nails tearing through the fabric. He was afraid of the lab. Afraid of the doctors. Afraid of the needles and the knives and the endless, hopeless darkness. His body shook, and his teeth chattered, and his breath came in short, sharp gasps. He buried his face against her thigh, squeezing his eyes shut, waiting for the pain.
Sophia grabbed him.
She pulled him up against her chest, holding him tightly with one arm, her fingers pressing into his back, her palm flat against his spine. Her other arm swung at her side, pumping for balance. And she ran.
She ran like a mindless titan, her legs pounding against the snow, her feet sinking into the white powder with each stride, her breath coming in short, sharp gasps that formed clouds of mist in the cold air. Her bare feet left prints in the snow, deep and jagged, the edges crumbling, and her arms pumped at her sides, her fists clenched, her muscles straining.
She reached a speed of nearly fifty kilometers per hour—faster than any human or Elf, faster than any elf should have been able to run, faster than anything that had been broken and shattered and pieced back together should have been capable of.
Behind them, the Graduate Novens swung through the trees using their (Axiom Rig)—the cables hissing as they released and retracted, the metal hooks sinking into the bark, the gears whirring and clicking.
They moved like spiders, like monkeys, like predators. They fired as they swung, the tranquilizer darts flying through the air, barely missing Sophia's back, her legs, her head. One dart passed through her hair, cutting a few strands. Another embedded itself in the snow inches from her feet. A third struck a tree beside her, the shaft quivering.
She ran through the forest, her feet bleeding, leaving trails of crimson in the snow that glowed faintly in the dim light. The cold numbed her wounds, but she did not stop. She could not stop. If she stopped, they would take Yuuta. If she stopped, they would take him back to the lab, back to the doctors, back to the pain. Her lungs burned, and her muscles screamed, and her heart pounded in her chest like a trapped bird.
She ran.
"Wahhh... mm... raaa..." she growled, her voice raw, animalistic, desperate. The sound was not a word, not a cry, not a scream.
It was something else—something primal, something that had been buried deep in her chest and was now clawing its way out.
One of the Graduate Novens noticed. He swung from a branch, his Axiom Rig hissing, and stared at the fleeing elf. His mask hid his face, but his eyes were wide beneath his goggles.
"How can an elf be this wild?" he said, his voice filled with disbelief. "She is like a beast. Like something from the old stories."
"Is She Really an Elf."
The woman beside him, swinging from another branch, shook her head. Her ponytail streamed behind her, and her goggles reflected the gray sky.
"She is not a beast," she said. "She is mad. Crazy. Her mind is gone. Something destroyed her brain, but her body still remembers how to run."
Sophia did not hear them.
She did not care.
She ran.
She used the last of her mana—subconsciously, instinctively, without thought or reason, without knowing what she was doing or how she was doing it. The mana flowed from her core, through her veins, into her muscles, and her speed increased.
The world blurred around her, the trees becoming streaks of brown and green, the snow becoming a white blur beneath her feet. The wind howled in her ears, and her hair streamed behind her, and her breath came in ragged gasps.
She reached nearly 120 kilometers per hour, outrunning the Graduate Novens, disappearing into the forest like a ghost, like a dream, like something that had never been there at all.
Behind her, the hunters stopped.
They landed on the ground, breathing hard, their chests heaving, their faces flushed beneath their masks. They watched her go, their eyes tracking her fading form until she was nothing but a speck in the gray distance.
One of them knelt and collected a sample of her blood from the snow, placing it in a small tube. The blood was dark, almost black, and it steamed in the cold air.
"We have lost her," he said, his voice flat, emotionless. "But we have some blood samples and Blood Track. We can start again. The project will continue."
The others nodded. They had already lost the lab. They would need to begin from the beginning, recapture all the escaped creatures, gather all the ingredients, rebuild their infrastructure. It would take years. Perhaps decades. But they had time. They were patient. They would not fail again.
Erza and Isvarn followed Sophia.
Sophia was now many miles away, far beyond the cave, far beyond the forest, far beyond anything she recognized. The trees were different here—taller, older, their branches heavy with snow, their trunks thick with age.
The ground was uneven, covered in rocks and roots and frozen streams that cracked beneath her feet. The sky was dark, the clouds thick, the sun hidden.
Her body was exhausted. The run had heated her muscles, and the sudden drop in temperature when she stopped had numbed her limbs.
Her feet were bleeding, the skin torn, the flesh exposed, the bones visible through the wounds. Her hands were bleeding, the fingers raw, the nails cracked and broken. Her face was pale, her lips blue, her eyes unfocused.
She fell.
Her body collapsed into the snow, her face burying in the white powder, her arms splayed out at her sides. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps, and her chest heaved. Her feet were still bleeding, the blood pooling around her, staining the snow dark red, spreading outward like dark wings in the gray light.
"Yu... Yuuta... hnnm... ko..." she growled, her voice weak, fading, barely audible. Her eyes were half-closed, her eyelids heavy, her lashes crusted with frozen tears.
Yuuta barely escaped from beneath her weight. She had fallen on her stomach, and he had been pressed against her chest, trapped between her body and the snow. He pushed himself free, his small hands sinking into the white powder, and scrambled to his knees.
He looked at her.
Sophia was lying in the snow, her body still, her eyes half-closed, her breath coming in shallow gasps. Her back was marked by a tranquilizer dart—the needle buried deep in her flesh, the shaft quivering, the liquid inside glowing faintly in the dim light. The chemicals were already spreading through her veins, making her drowsy, making her weak, making her slow.
"Sophia," he said, his voice shaking, his hands trembling. "Sophia, wake up. They are coming. We have to run."
She did not move. She was exhausted. The run had taken everything she had. Her mana was gone, her strength was gone, her will was gone.
Yuuta noticed the dart. He crawled toward her, his knees sinking into the snow, and reached out. His small fingers closed around the shaft, and he pulled.
Sophia screamed.
"Aaah... ahhh... Wahh... ahh..."
The sound was raw, animalistic, filled with pain. Her body convulsed, and her eyes flew open, wild and unfocused, and her hands clawed at the snow. The dart came out, the needle glistening with blood, and Yuuta threw it aside.
He hugged her head, pressing her face against his chest, his small arms wrapped around her, his fingers clutching her hair.
"Sophia got hurt because of Yuuta," he said, his voice breaking, cracking, shattering. "Sophia got hurt because Yuuta left the cave."
He did not know what to do. He was a child, alone in a frozen forest, with a sister who had lost her mind and hunters who were tracking them and a world that seemed to want them dead. Her feet were bleeding, broken, the bones visible through the torn flesh. The cold was killing her, and he could not stop it.
He looked at her feet. The blood was still flowing, staining the snow, soaking into the ground. The wounds were deep, the flesh torn, the bones cracked. She would not be able to walk. She would not be able to run. She would not be able to escape.
The scene was too much for a child. It was too much for any adult. The horror, the pain, the hopelessness—if this were a novel, every reader would be in tears.
Yuuta held Sophia's head and wept.
He did not know how long he cried. Minutes. Hours. The gray sky darkened, the clouds thickening, the light fading. His tears froze on his cheeks, and his breath came in short, ragged gasps, and his body shook with sobs.
He did not hear the footsteps approaching. He did not see the figures emerging from the trees.
The Graduate Novens swung from tree to tree, their Axiom Rig hissing and clicking, the cables sinking into the thick bark of the ancient trees with sharp, percussive thuds.
They moved with practiced precision, their bodies cutting through the gray morning air like arrows loosed from a bow, their silhouettes dark against the heavy clouds. The clouds hung low and oppressive, pressing down on the forest, muffling sound and light alike, turning the world into a silent, gray tomb.
They were closer now than before. Much closer. The blood had given them away—Sophia's footprints, frozen and crimson, had led them through the forest like a trail of breadcrumbs, each step a beacon, each drop of blood a signal. The snow had preserved the evidence, and the cold had kept it fresh, and the hunters had followed without hesitation.
There was no hiding now.
The laboratory was destroyed. The nightmare creatures had torn through it in the night, smashing walls, shattering tubes, devouring everything in their path. Many of the creatures that had been kept in the lab had escaped, running wild into the forest, their cages broken, their chains snapped. Most had been killed by the nightmare creatures, their bodies torn apart and left to freeze in the snow, their blood staining the white ground dark red. But some had survived. Some had fled into the deeper forest, disappearing into the shadows.
The scientists who had escaped had waited for sunrise. The nightmare creatures could not withstand the sun; they had retreated into the shadows, back to the dark places where they slept, back to the cracks between worlds. As soon as the first light touched the horizon—pale and weak through the thick clouds—the doctors had sent out their senior staff and the surviving guards.
Their orders were simple: find the ingredients. Find the subjects. Find everything that had been lost.
They did not know about Yuuta and Sophia. To them, the child and the elf were just more escaped experiments—more lost property to be recovered, more assets to be returned to the lab. They did not know that they had been thrown into the death well to die. They did not know that they had crawled out of the darkness on their own. They did not know that they had survived against all odds.
Sadly, if Sophia had been in her right mind, she would have been as strong as fifty Graduate Novens. Elves were among the most powerful beings in Nova, their bodies honed by centuries of evolution in the high-density forests, their magic woven into the very fabric of their existence. A single elf could tear through a squad of Graduate Novens like tissue paper. But her mind was gone, shattered by the wolf's death roar, and her body was broken, bleeding, freezing.
She was a shadow of what she had been.
The Graduate Novens stopped swinging. They landed on the ground, their boots crunching in the snow, and began to walk. They had spotted the elf.
She was lying in a small clearing, half-hidden beneath a thick layer of giant leaves that had been carefully arranged over her body. The leaves were enormous—each one the size of a small boat, their surfaces dark green and waxy, their veins thick and pulsing with residual mana. In Nova, the air itself was thick with power, and the plants grew to match. The leaves had been stacked in layers, creating a crude shelter, a makeshift blanket.
They were cautious. Elves were dangerous, even mad, even broken. They approached slowly, their weapons raised, their eyes scanning the clearing for any sign of movement. Their boots crunched in the snow, and their breath formed clouds in the cold air, and their hearts pounded in their chests.
The leaves stirred.
One of the Novens—a man of average height, 5'10", with the bearing of someone who had been trained to kill—stepped forward. His hand closed around the edge of a leaf and pulled.
Sophia's face was revealed.
She was breathing heavily, her chest rising and falling in shallow, uneven gasps. Her eyes were closed, and her skin was pale, almost blue, and her lips were cracked and bleeding. The snow had begun to freeze her, the cold seeping into her flesh, turning her extremities white. Her silver hair was spread around her like a frozen halo, tangled with ice and blood.
One of the Novens handed over a scanning device—a small, handheld screen that glowed with pale blue light, its surface covered in runes and symbols that shifted and changed. The man held it over Sophia's face.
The scanning device beeped softly, its pale blue light casting strange shadows across the snow. The man holding it stared at the screen, his brow furrowing behind his goggles. The others gathered around him, their breath misting in the cold air, their eyes fixed on the glowing text.
Test Subject: Blood Supplier
Age: 134
Purpose: Supply blood to Karma Project for the awakening of the dead
Disposal: 3 years ago
Reason for Disposal: Rise of failed. Subject survival rate: 0.1%
Disposal Site: Death Well
The Graduate Novens exchanged glances. The silence between them was heavy, thick with disbelief. One of them—a man with a scar running down his cheek—spoke first, his voice low, almost a whisper.
"What is this?" He looked at the others, then back at Sophia's frozen form. "She was reported dead. Three years ago. How is she alive?"
A woman beside him shook her head slowly. Her ponytail swayed with the motion, and her goggles reflected the gray sky. "Unless..." she began, her voice trailing off, her eyes narrowing behind the lenses.
"Unless she defeated the beasts in the well," a third finished, his voice hard, flat. "With her own hands. Without using magic. The entire lab was covered in an anti-magic barrier, but she still killed them. She killed the hydra dogs. She survived."
Fear flickered across their faces—not the fear of amateurs facing danger, but the fear of professionals who understood exactly what they were dealing with. They knew what the hydra dogs were. Massive creatures, bred for slaughter, their hides thick enough to turn aside blades, their jaws strong enough to crush steel. Even Champion Novens, fighting at full power with the best equipment and the backing of their teams, struggled to bring down a single hydra dog.
This elf had killed them. Not one. An entire pack. Without magic. Without weapons. With nothing but her bare hands.
She had done it while trapped in a well, in the dark, with no food and no water and no hope.
The Novens raised their guard. Their weapons shifted subtly, their stances changing from capture to kill. Their eyes scanned the clearing, searching for any sign of an ambush, any hint that this was a trap.
One of them—the man who had pulled back the leaf—stepped forward cautiously. He reached out, his hand trembling slightly, and touched Sophia's shoulder.
His hand was repelled.
He jerked back with a sharp hiss, cradling his palm against his chest. Blood welled from a gash across his skin, as if he had touched something red-hot, something sharp, something alive. The wound steamed in the cold air.
"What the hell?" he said, his voice tight with pain and confusion.
The woman beside him sighed, long and exasperated. She pinched the bridge of her nose beneath her goggles.
"How can you be so dumb?" she said. "Do you not know that men cannot touch an elf unless she allows it? Even if you are a hero from Eden, even if you have killed a thousand monsters, even if you have the blessing of the gods themselves—you cannot touch an elf without her permission. It is the law of the forest. It is the law of her blood."
"Shit," the man muttered, stepping back, cradling his bleeding hand. "I almost forgot."
The woman knelt. She reached out slowly, deliberately, and touched Sophia herself. Her hand did not recoil. She slipped her arms under Sophia's body—one under her shoulders, one under her knees—and tried to lift her.
She stumbled.
Her feet slipped in the snow, and she nearly dropped the elf's body. Her face flushed red with effort, and her breath came in short, sharp grunts.
"Fuck," she gasped, straining against the weight. "How can a woman be this heavy? It almost made me piss myself."
Sophia's body was dense, far heavier than it should have been. Her bones felt like iron, her muscles like stone. The woman's arms shook, and her back ached, and her boots dug into the snow as she struggled to find purchase.
One of the other Novens—a man with cold eyes and a quiet voice—had not been watching the struggle. He had been scanning the clearing, his gaze moving slowly over the leaves, the snow, the trees. His hand rested on his weapon, and his body was tense.
"Wait," he said.
The others turned to look at him.
"I saw something," he continued, his voice low, measured. "When we first spotted them. She was holding a child. A boy. Black hair. Red eyes." He paused, his eyes narrowing. "Did anyone see where he went?"
The clearing fell silent.
The Graduate Novens froze. The woman holding Sophia stopped struggling. The man with the bleeding hand stopped cradling his wound. They looked at each other, then at the snow, then at the trees.
"Oh yeah," another said slowly, his voice cautious, his eyes wide. "Where is he?"
To be continued...