The copper bell rang once — a single, shrill note slicing through the dead of night.
Dren gripped the rusted railing of the watchtower, his breath fogging in the cold.
Three figures.
Fast.
Low to the ground.
Moving like predators, not men.
Southeast approach.
Three hundred meters and closing.
He slammed the hammer down again.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
The camp exploded into motion.
Elara was already on her feet before the third ring, boots laced, coat fastened, mind sharper than any blade.
"Seal the outer gate! Mira, get the wounded underground — now!" Her voice cut through the panic like a whip.
No hesitation.
No wasted breath.
The remnants of a fallen empire ran in her blood, and in this broken world, that meant survival.
Mira dragged the last stretcher into the bunker, glancing back only once.
The Temple — a half-collapsed mine shaft glowing faintly with inner light — sat at the heart of their fragile sanctuary.
And inside it, on a slab of smoothed stone that barely qualified as a bed, Kael lay sprawled, one arm dangling off the edge, snoring like a hibernating bear.
She wanted to scream.
Elara followed her gaze.
Jaw tightened.
She stormed into the Temple, boots echoing against stone.
"Enemy at the gates," she hissed, crouching beside him.
"Three hostiles, fast movers. Dren says they're not stragglers. They're hunting."
Kael shifted.
One eye cracked open, hazy with sleep.
"Mmm. Wake me when they're inside the line."
"You idiot," Elara snapped, voice low but sharp.
"You think this is a game? They could be elite scouts. Blood Skull remnants. If they breach the perimeter—"
"They won't." He rolled onto his side, back to her.
"And when they do… I'll be extra rested."
Her fingers twitched toward his shoulder, ready to shake him awake — but she stopped.
She'd seen it before.
The way the air hummed when he finally opened his eyes.
The way the ground cracked beneath his feet without him moving a muscle.
The reports from the last raiding party — three men, found dead with their weapons fused to their bones, faces frozen in terror, no wounds.
She exhaled. Cold. Controlled.
"Fine. Sleep. Be useless." She turned, cloak flaring.
"But if we die tonight, I'm haunting you loudly."
Outside, the wind howled.
The outer gate groaned shut, reinforced steel panels sliding into place with a final, metallic clunk.
Watchfires flared.
Archers took position.
Mira handed out stim-injectors to the few who could still fight.
Dren manned the crossbow, bolt loaded, finger steady.
And beyond the fence, shadows moved.
Garrick stopped at the tree line, nostrils flaring.
His two companions fanned out behind him — Veyra, lithe and silent as a wraith, and the brute known only as Rask, whose arms were thick with mutated sinew.
"Smell that?" Garrick murmured, red eyes scanning the compound.
"Rot," Veyra said.
"Sweat. Fear."
"No." Garrick shook his head.
"Under it. Energy. Faint. But… clean. Like ozone after lightning." He narrowed his gaze on the mine entrance.
"That cave. Same signature as the last two squads. The ones who didn't come back."
Veyra frowned.
"You think it's a trap? There's no guards. No patrols. Just… a lamp. And a guy snoring."
Garrick's lips curled.
"Exactly. No outpost in the Red Wastes sleeps this deep. Not unless it's already dead. Or too confident."
Rask grunted.
"Confidence gets you killed."
"Agreed," Garrick said.
"So we go quiet. Veyra, cut the comms line. Rask, cover the rear. I'll take point. Remember — the Skull King wants the artifact. Doesn't care if the locals are breathing when we take it."
Veyra nodded, scaled the outer wall in three silent leaps, daggers between her teeth.
She landed on the roof, crouched, and reached for the wire that ran from the watchtower to the command post.
Then she froze.
Her limbs — suddenly heavy.
Like wading through tar.
She looked down.
Beneath her boots, the rooftop's cracked tiles shimmered.
Faint golden lines — thin as spider silk, glowing like buried embers — pulsed across the surface.
They spread outward, connecting to the ground, to the gateposts, to the very soil beneath the camp.
"A field…" she whispered.
"But not mechanical. Not magical… alive?"
She tried to jump back.
Too late.
Her foot lifted — but the air resisted.
Dragged.
Like the world itself had thickened around her.
And then she saw them.
The lines weren't just on the roof.
They covered everything.
Extending in a perfect circle from the mine shaft.
Fifty meters.
One hundred.
A dome of invisible power, humming just below hearing.
"Domain…" she gasped.
"This isn't just a shelter. It's a nest."
She threw herself backward — tumbling off the roof, rolling across the dirt, heart hammering.
Garrick caught her by the arm.
"What did you hit?"
"Something old," she panted.
"Something smart. There's a field. Passive. But it reacts. I felt it… watching me."
Garrick's eyes narrowed.
Then, slowly, he smiled.
"Then we go slower."
He stepped forward — one foot into the perimeter.
The air didn't resist.
No alarm. No shock. Nothing.
He took another step.
Two hundred meters out.
One hundred fifty.
The camp remained still.
Silent.
Inside the Temple, Kael's chest rose and fell, slow and even.
But beneath the stone, buried deep in the earth, three crystalline cores — black as obsidian, pulsing with stolen stormlight — began to tremble.
And in the space between breaths, a single thread of consciousness — thin as a whisper, sharp as a scalpel — unspooled from the sleeper's mind.
It didn't attack.
It simply… waited.
The wind howled through the cracked stone spires of the Wastes, carrying with it the stench of scorched earth and rotting flesh.
Three days.
That's all they had.
Seventy-two hours until the bloodthirsty hounds of the Crimson Skull King arrived at their doorstep.
Inside the Lazy Temple, no one was training.
No one was sharpening blades or stockpiling explosives.
Instead, the air hummed with a strange, soft energy—one that pulsed like a heartbeat beneath the soil.
Vines curled lazily around newly erected wooden watchtowers.
A spring had bubbled up overnight in the center of the camp, clear and warm, as if the land itself had exhaled in relief.
And in the heart of it all, on a pile of furs atop a stone dais that hadn't existed yesterday, Kael slept.
Snoring. Loudly.
Elara stood at the edge of the Temple's boundary—the invisible line where the cracked, red-stained earth of the Wastes ended and the anomaly began.
Green grass.
Real grass.
Not mutated, not glowing.
Normal.
She clenched her jaw as she watched the horizon through a salvaged imperial scope.
"Three hostiles," she said, voice tight.
"Riding fast. Scouts."
Behind her, Dren, the one-eyed ex-sentinel, spat into the dirt.
"Told you we should've evacuated. This place… it's unnatural. He's unnatural."
"He's our only chance," Elara shot back.
"You saw what happened to the Razor Maw. One flick of his finger. Poof. No blood, no scream. Just dust."
Dren grunted but didn't argue.
He remembered.
They all