The road did not welcome them.
It did not rise to meet their steps, nor did it narrow in challenge like the paths inside the Scantum. It simply existed—jagged, uneven, indifferent—stretching outward as if daring them to follow it for reasons they did not yet understand.
Harun felt the difference the moment they crossed the boundary.
Behind them, the Scantum's presence faded—not physically, but mentally. The subtle pressure that had always existed there, the invisible structure that guided movement and expectation, vanished all at once. The air felt looser. Wilder. Unaccountable.
Freedom, he realized, did not feel safe.
"Don't slow down," Harun said quietly.
The wind tore at his words, shredding them before they traveled far. The Broken Ridges rose ahead like the remains of a dead giant—massive stone spines jutting at impossible angles, cliffs split cleanly as if something had torn through them long ago and never looked back.
Team A moved in a staggered line, spacing deliberate, breaths measured. Every step sent small avalanches of gravel skittering down unseen slopes. Somewhere above them, rock shifted with a deep, groaning sound that made the ground vibrate beneath their boots.
Kunal glanced up, metal fingers flexing instinctively. "This place feels like it wants us dead."
"It doesn't," Mira replied. "It just doesn't care."
That was worse.
A sudden gust slammed into them from the side without warning. Harun reacted on instinct, dropping his center of gravity, grabbing the nearest outcrop. The wind howled through the ridges, not in a single direction, but spiraling—colliding currents tearing against each other like living things.
Ishan nearly lost his footing.
Harun moved without thinking. He reached out, caught Ishan's arm, pulled him back just as the ground where he had been standing collapsed into empty air.
No one spoke for a long moment.
The wind passed.
Harun released his grip slowly.
"This isn't terrain," he said under his breath. "It's aftermath."
They continued.
The higher they climbed, the more the ridges seemed to close in around them. Stone shadows stretched unnaturally long, bending in ways light shouldn't allow. The path narrowed, widened, then vanished entirely—forcing them to choose routes by judgment rather than direction.
Harun noticed something unsettling then.
The land did not repeat itself.
Every ridge was different. Every turn unfamiliar. No pattern. No symmetry.
Scantum-trained instincts searched desperately for structure—and found none.
By the time they reached the Low Silence, exhaustion had already begun to settle into their muscles.
The transition was subtle.
Too subtle.
At first, Harun thought his ears were ringing. Then he realized the problem wasn't sound disappearing—it was arriving late.
His footsteps echoed half a second after he took them.
Kunal stopped abruptly. "Did you hear that?"
Harun shook his head. "You spoke before the sound reached us."
They tested it. A single stone dropped. They watched it hit the ground.
The sound followed.
Delayed. Distorted.
Mira swallowed. "Dravillian residue?"
"No," Ishan said quietly. "Something older."
Voices began to feel heavier here. Saying words required effort, as if the air itself resisted being shaped by sound. When Harun spoke again, his own voice felt unfamiliar—like it belonged to someone standing just behind him.
He turned sharply.
No one.
The Low Silence stretched ahead like a shallow basin, the ground smooth, pale, almost polished. No debris. No wind.
Just wrongness.
They crossed it without incident.
And that terrified Harun more than the ridges had.
Because nothing had tried to stop them.
Boulderra appeared without warning.
No gates.
No walls.
One step they were alone—
—and the next, they were surrounded.
Noise crashed over them like a wave. Voices, metal clashing, animals crying out, vendors shouting prices in languages Harun didn't recognize. The air smelled of sweat, oil, cooked meat, and something faintly metallic beneath it all.
Buildings crowded in close, stacked atop each other without logic. Stone, wood, scrap metal, fabric—anything that could hold shape had been used. Balconies hung over narrow streets like they were ready to collapse at any moment.
People moved with purpose—but not urgency.
No one looked surprised to see armed outsiders.
No one looked relieved either.
Harun felt it immediately.
This place did not need them.
A man walked past wearing a Dravillian stone openly around his neck, its glow muted but unmistakable. Another argued loudly with a trader while sparks of power flickered briefly across his hands—and then vanished when the deal was done.
No guards intervened.
No law announced itself.
Kunal leaned in slightly. "This place is armed."
"No," Harun replied softly. "This place is decided."
They found shelter as night fell—not an inn, not a barracks, just a space that accepted coin and asked no questions. The walls were thin. The sounds outside never fully faded.
Harun sat on the edge of the floor, back against stone that still felt warm from the day.
For the first time since leaving the Scantum, his stomach growled.
Not loudly.
Honestly.
He closed his eyes.
Somewhere in this town, something was already watching them.
Not with interest.
With calculation.The night in Boulderra did not descend.
It accumulated.
Sounds layered over each other instead of fading—arguments bleeding into laughter, metal striking metal somewhere distant, footsteps passing too close to the thin walls and never slowing. Light seeped through cracks that shouldn't have existed, flickering shadows across the room even when no one stood outside.
Harun lay back against the stone, eyes open.
Sleep did not come easily here.
Every instinct trained inside the Scantum told him to rest when he could, to recover before the next test. But Boulderra did not feel like a place where rest was earned. It felt like a place where awareness was the only currency that kept you alive.
Across the room, Mira sat with her back straight, methodically cleaning her gear. Each motion was precise, controlled—almost ritualistic. Ishan leaned against the opposite wall, eyes closed, but his breathing was too measured to belong to sleep. Kunal sat near the doorway, mechanical limbs disengaged, fingers tracing idle patterns against the stone.
No one spoke.
The town filled the silence for them.
A scream echoed somewhere nearby.
Short. Sharp. Cut off too quickly.
Harun tensed.
No one reacted.
Not inside the room.
Not outside either.
The scream did not repeat.
Harun waited—counting heartbeats, listening for the sound of running feet, raised voices, anything that suggested consequence.
Nothing came.
Kunal glanced at him briefly, then away.
Mira's hands paused for half a second before resuming their work.
Harun swallowed.
This was Boulderra.
Not a place where violence was rare.
A place where violence was unremarkable.
He sat up slowly.
"Did you hear—" he began.
Ishan opened his eyes. "Yes."
"And?"
"And we stay here," Ishan finished quietly.
Harun frowned. "Someone—"
"Someone always is," Mira said without looking up.
Her voice wasn't cold.
It was practiced.
Harun leaned back again, jaw tight.
He understood strategy. He understood restraint. He understood that rushing blindly into danger was how people died.
But understanding did not make it easier to do nothing.
Another sound reached them then—not a scream, but laughter. Loud, careless, close. A group passing by, voices thick with alcohol and bravado.
Harun's knuckles tightened.
Scantum would never allow this.
The thought surfaced uninvited.
And just as quickly, he realized how useless it was.
Scantum rules did not apply here.
Sometime later—he wasn't sure how long—hunger began to press against his focus again. Not sharp enough to distract him, but persistent. Honest.
He hadn't eaten since before the Broken Ridges.
"You should eat," Mira said suddenly, as if sensing it.
Harun shook his head. "Later."
"There may not be a later," Kunal muttered.
Harun let out a faint breath that might have been a laugh.
Sleep eventually claimed them—not all at once, not peacefully, but in fragments. Harun drifted in and out, waking every time a new sound joined the chaos outside.
When dawn finally came, it didn't bring relief.
It brought clarity.
Morning in Boulderra revealed what night had hidden.
The streets were narrower than they had seemed, crowded with bodies moving in practiced patterns. Traders laid out goods with casual efficiency—blades, cloth, food, and Dravillian stones displayed side by side without distinction. Children ran through the gaps, bare feet slapping against stone slick with yesterday's spills.
No one stared at Team A.
No one welcomed them either.
They were noticed—and dismissed.
Harun walked slowly, eyes scanning everything without lingering too long on any one detail. He noticed the way people positioned themselves instinctively—backs never fully turned, hands always within reach of something dangerous. He noticed how disputes flared and extinguished in seconds, resolved not by force, but by calculation.
Power was everywhere.
But it was rarely used.
That, Harun realized, was the real rule.
They turned into a wider street—a market artery thick with movement. A heated argument erupted near one of the stalls. Two men stood chest to chest, voices rising, hands twitching near weapons.
A third man watched from a distance.
A guard.
He wore no uniform—just a muted Dravillian stone set into a metal band on his wrist. His expression was bored. Assessing.
One of the arguing men shoved the other.
The crowd leaned in slightly.
The guard didn't move.
The shoved man stumbled, caught himself, and—after a tense pause—stepped back.
The argument dissolved.
The guard turned away.
Harun stopped walking.
"That's it?" he murmured.
Kunal followed his gaze. "What were you expecting?"
"Intervention," Harun replied.
Mira shook her head. "That would require investment."
Harun frowned. "In what?"
"In outcomes," Ishan said.
They continued on.
A few streets later, it happened.
A scuffle broke out near a cluster of storage buildings—shouts, a crash, someone falling hard against stone. Harun's attention snapped to it instantly.
A man lay on the ground, clutching his side, blood darkening his clothes. Three others stood over him, arguing loudly.
The crowd watched.
No one stepped in.
Harun felt his body move before his mind caught up.
"Harun," Mira said sharply.
He stopped—but only barely.
A guard stood nearby again. Same bored posture. Same assessing eyes.
The injured man groaned, trying to stand.
One of the others kicked him back down.
The guard shifted his weight.
And then—
Nothing.
No arrest.
No warning.
The injured man was dragged away by his companions, bleeding streaks across the stone.
The crowd dispersed.
Life continued.
Harun exhaled slowly.
"This place isn't neutral," he said.
"It is," Kunal replied. "Perfectly."
Harun looked at him.
"Neutrality here means the system doesn't care who suffers," Kunal continued. "Only whether the balance is disturbed."
Harun said nothing.
But something in his chest hardened.
They walked on.
Unnoticed.
Unwelcomed.
Accepted.
The road into Boulderra had tested their bodies.
The town was testing something else entirely.
And Harun was beginning to understand why this place broke people who tried to change it.
Not because it fought back.
But because it made you complicit simply by surviving it.
They didn't plan to intervene.
That was the lie Harun told himself as they moved deeper into the lower districts of Boulderra—areas where the buildings leaned too close together, where light struggled to reach the ground, and where the smell of rot and oil clung to the air no matter how clean the morning tried to pretend to be.
This part of the town did not trade.
It consumed.
Team A walked in silence, their presence drawing glances now—quick, measuring looks that lingered just a second too long. These weren't the indifferent stares of the market. These were the eyes of people who knew exactly how much trouble four armed outsiders could bring.
Harun felt it building in his chest.
Not anger.
Pressure.
A sound cut through the noise then—high-pitched, panicked, wrong.
A shout.
Then another.
Harun stopped.
This time, no one tried to stop him.
The sound came again—closer now. A child's voice, cracking, desperate. Fear stripped of any attempt to sound brave.
Harun turned the corner and saw them.
A man lay on the ground, curled inward, arms raised uselessly over his head. Two others stood over him, kicking with bored precision—not rage, not excitement. Routine.
Around them, people watched.
Some leaned against walls.
Some pretended not to see.
No one moved.
Harun stepped forward.
The man looked up, eyes wild with relief that shattered almost immediately into terror.
"Don't," he croaked. "Please—"
Harun didn't wait.
He moved fast.
The first attacker barely had time to turn before Harun's fist connected, the impact sharp and controlled. Not enough to kill. Enough to end the motion. The second man stumbled back, reaching for something at his belt—
—and stopped.
Not because Harun threatened him.
Because a presence had entered the space.
A figure stood at the edge of the alley.
A guard.
This one was different.
The Dravillian stone at his throat glowed faintly—not with raw power, but with something heavier. Denser. Its light didn't flicker.
It asserted.
"Enough," the guard said calmly.
Harun stepped back half a pace, hands open. "He was being—"
"I saw," the guard interrupted.
The attackers straightened immediately.
The injured man tried to crawl toward Harun.
The guard raised a hand.
The stone pulsed once.
The man froze—body locking, breath hitching, eyes wide with sudden, invisible pressure.
Harun's blood went cold.
"What are you doing?" Harun demanded.
"Maintaining order," the guard replied.
The attackers stepped away, already disinterested.
The guard's gaze shifted to Harun—cool, evaluative.
"You interfered."
"He was going to die," Harun said.
"Possibly," the guard agreed.
The word hit harder than denial.
"And now?" Harun pressed.
"Now," the guard said, "there will be procedure."
Two more figures appeared at the far end of the alley—enforcers, their stones dim but active. They moved with practiced efficiency, lifting the injured man first.
Harun stepped forward again. "He needs help."
"He will receive it," the guard said. "After testimony."
Harun clenched his fists. "Testimony for what?"
The guard looked at him as if the question were strange.
"For disruption," he said.
The crowd was watching now.
Not with fear.
With interest.
Kunal moved to Harun's side. "This is going bad."
Mira's voice was tight. "Harun—"
The guard turned slightly, addressing all of them now. "You will accompany us."
"To where?" Harun asked.
The guard's expression did not change.
"To the court."
The word landed like a verdict already passed.
Harun felt something twist in his chest—not panic, not regret, but a sharp, dawning understanding.
This is how it works.
You stop violence.
You become the problem.
They were escorted through streets that narrowed as they walked, the architecture changing subtly—less chaotic, more deliberate. Symbols began to appear carved into walls: geometric patterns, lines intersecting with absolute precision.
Order imposed on chaos.
The building rose ahead of them without grandeur.
No towering columns.
No banners.
Just stone.
Heavy. Final.
The doors opened inward without a sound.
Inside, the air was still.
Too still.
Harun took one step forward—
—and felt it.
Pressure.
Not physical.
Not crushing.
Judgment.
At the far end of the hall, elevated above the floor, sat a single figure.
Robed.
Unmoving.
A Dravillian stone set before him, embedded into the structure itself.
The judge.
Rehman.
The doors closed behind them.
Harun looked up, meeting the man's gaze.
And for the first time since entering Boulderra, he understood completely.
This town did not punish evil.
It punished action.