Perfectly placed in a depression of land—near water, partially covered by hanging vines, camouflaged by thick moss and bone-like driftwood.
Too perfect.
Reika noticed the firepit first.
"Still warm. Someone left an hour ago. Maybe less."
Yuren ran Trace Sense, careful not to show his reaction when the footprints came up glowing and complex.
Patterned gait. Layered trails. Looping deception.
It was made to confuse trackers.
They know my skill.
They're toying with me.
He masked his tension.
"Either they're real good," he muttered, "or they want us to think they are."
Mason stayed quiet, scanning the air. "It's weird. I'm not getting strong heat signatures. But something feels… displaced. Like a thermal echo."
"Trap?" Reika asked.
"Decoy," Yuren said carefully. "No one builds a perfect camp and walks away without a reason."
They left quietly, erasing their own trails as best they could.
Back at camp, Yuren avoided the firelight.
He waited until after nightfall, then slipped into the old ravine east of the main clearing—the place no one visited, where the ground dipped sharply and the canopy made it feel like dusk even at noon.
He raised his hand.
Focused.
A single glass shard shimmered into being.
He didn't fire it.
Just stared.
It was sharper now. Cleaner. He'd shaved off the drag in the air. Reduced the hiss when it formed.
He was learning.
But he couldn't afford to show it.
Back in camp, Reika sat near the fire.
Watching where he should have been.
Her expression unreadable.
The jungle changed past the ridge.
It wasn't just the flora. The trees grew taller, twisted inward like skeletal fingers, and the ground dipped into long, uneven trenches half-covered in moss. The air smelled different here—colder somehow. Less like rot, more like stone.
Yuren moved alone, slowly, carefully.
He'd left camp before sunrise, giving Chloe an excuse about mapping terrain and checking water runoff from the stream after the last storm.
She didn't question him.
He'd earned that much.
He didn't bring Mason. He didn't bring Reika.
This wasn't a group excursion.
This was instinct.
Because yesterday, when he'd doubled back from the false camp trail, Trace Sense had lit up.
Not from a person.
From a structure.
It took two hours of hiking before he found it.
Half-buried beneath a collapsed shelf of earth and roots was something too straight, too even to be natural. Stonework. Fitted. Faded carvings etched into the surface. Ancient, but not eroded.
The roots above it had been burned away recently.
Not by fire. By something else.
Pressure-based. Clean.
Yuren ran his hand along the largest slab, brushing away debris.
Symbols.
Circles connected by lines.
A vertical column of repeating glyphs—like a timer.
One sigil resembled the power-rank badges floating over people's heads.
Another had ten rings around it—each ring touching another. Linked. Connected. Echoed.
It looked like a power.
Or a ritual.
Or maybe… both.
He didn't know what it meant.
But whoever carved it was speaking to someone who came after.
He moved deeper into the trench and found a partially open stone hatch. Just enough space to slip inside.
No light. No sounds. Just the cool, dense hush of untouched space.
The inside walls were smooth—like obsidian or jet. Black glass that reflected nothing.
In the center of the chamber was a stone pedestal.
Empty.
Something had been here.
Recently.
Trace Sense flickered as he focused—
And then surged.
Trails. Old ones. Not footsteps. Not prints. But something heavier.
A pressure trail. A resonance. As if a power itself had passed through this place like a storm leaving behind wind patterns.
He stood there for a long time, breathing shallowly.
Then a new line appeared—fresh.
Human. Medium build. Precise steps.
He froze.
Someone else had been here.
Within the last twelve hours.
And they weren't from camp.
He didn't stay.
Yuren moved quickly but silently, backtracking without crossing his own trail. It took longer, but he knew the value of not being followed.
By the time he reached camp again, the sun was nearly gone.
Chloe was checking inventory. Reika was sparring near the edge with Mason, flicking glass blades low to test his footwork.
Yuren gave them a nod, kept walking.
He ducked behind the tool tent, circled around, and slipped into the half-collapsed crate shelter he'd claimed weeks ago.
Inside, in the dirt beneath his sleeping pad, he uncovered a palm-sized slab of stone he'd pried from the ruin wall.
He turned it over in his hand.
The glyph etched there was identical to the EX-tier marker he'd seen the day he arrived.
Except… the one on the slab had three small dots below it.
One dot. One copy.
Two dots…
Who the hell came before us?
The theft was small.
Just two ration pouches. Dried protein, a sealed fruit bar. Enough to make someone desperate, but not enough to make someone risk getting caught.
But it was the third time this week.
And Chloe had reached her limit.
She stood near the center of camp, surrounded by a half-ring of people—Reika on her left, Mason pacing nearby, Tyrell crouched in the shade with arms folded. Everyone else hovered on the edge of the conversation.
Except Denzel.
He stood dead center, looking just a little too amused.
"You want to run a trial?" he asked. "For two packets? You planning to set up a jury too? Maybe a constitution while you're at it?"
"It's not about food," Chloe said evenly. "It's about safety. Someone's crossing boundaries and hiding it. That means they're scared—or planning something worse."
Denzel smirked. "So you're saying we should start strip-searching everyone who walks too quiet?"
"I'm saying someone's lying. And we can't afford that."
His grin vanished.
"Say it, then. You're accusing me."
"I'm not accusing anyone," Chloe said. "Yet."
Yuren stood to the side, arms crossed, eyes low. Observing.
Not participating.
It was his default now.
The smart place to be.
Because once people noticed him too much—asked how a D-rank could survive this long, why he was always near whoever was strong next—everything would collapse.
Reika's voice cut through the noise.
"We have two choices: lock down rations and accept a higher risk of fights… or we let it slide and wait for something worse. No third option."
Someone mumbled, "Unless we catch them."
"We won't catch them," Denzel said. "You know why?"
He turned toward the crowd.
"Because whoever it is, they're better than you think. Probably the same one who keeps slipping out of camp at night. You all think nobody's sneaking around?"
Chloe's eyes narrowed. "You know something?"
Denzel shrugged. "I know someone was out past the east trail three nights ago. Came back dirty. Damp. That doesn't happen if you're walking loops."
All eyes shifted.
To Yuren.
He didn't move.
Didn't blink.
Reika glanced at him—brief, uncertain.
Chloe frowned. "Is that true?"
Yuren spoke evenly. "I check the water table. After the last storm, the stream level shifted. We could lose access if it dips or floods. You told me to track supply risks."
He wasn't lying.
He just wasn't telling all of it.
Denzel stepped closer. "You're a D-rank. You gonna tell us you're singlehandedly securing our water source now?"
"Didn't say that," Yuren replied, voice calm. "I said I tracked it."
"You know what I think?" Denzel said. "I think you've been too useful for someone who's supposed to be a background character."
A pause.
Tension climbed like a weight up everyone's spine.
Then Chloe stepped between them.
"That's enough," she said sharply. "We don't run witch hunts here."
Denzel leaned in slightly.
"Maybe we should."
That night, Yuren didn't sleep.
He didn't train.
He sat with the stone glyph slab in his lap, watching the faint shimmer of the three-dot EX symbol under the moonlight.
The dots were evenly spaced.
Deliberate.
And recent.
Someone—maybe centuries ago, maybe weeks—left it as a record.
Not just that EX-tier powers had existed before…
But that they were counted.
One dot: discovery.
Two: mastery.
Three… replication?
He turned it over again. Ran his thumb across the smooth surface.
Someone had known how to use powers in combination.
And now Denzel was watching him. Reika had started noticing his hands. Chloe was trusting him too much. The window was closing.
He needed to go deeper.
Not just into the jungle.
But into himself.