They hit the ground running this time.
Not because they had a plan. Because the second they came through the portal the noise hit them like a physical thing and instinct took over before thought could catch up. Alice landed on her feet and her hand was already on her sword before her eyes had even adjusted to the light.
And the light was wrong.
They were outside. That was the first thing. After the cramped dungeon of Level 6 and the controlled comfort of Neutral City, outside felt enormous and disorienting. The sky above them was a deep bruised red, the colour of something that was either a sunrise or a warning, and it stretched in every direction without walls or ceiling to break it up. They were standing on a wide flat plain of dark grey rock that extended further than Alice could see, cracked and uneven, with deep fissures running through it like the ground had been split open a long time ago and never quite healed. In the distance on all sides were ruins. Old ones. Structures that might have been buildings once but were now just shapes, just suggestions of architecture, standing in the red light like teeth.
It was completely silent.
That was the second thing and it was worse than the noise somehow.
"Where are they," David said quietly. His Desert Eagle was already in his hand. His bird knife was also on his belt but nobody mentioned it.
"System said Level 8," CJ said, his aura already flickering green around his hands. "So there's a boss."
"There's always a boss," Ace said. His voice was flat and controlled. Alice glanced at him. His hands weren't shaking. She didn't know if that was because he was better or because he was holding himself together through sheer force of will but either way she was grateful for it.
"I don't like this quiet," Miriam said. She was turning slowly in a full circle, her blue flames low and ready in one hand, her spear in the other. "It's too quiet. Something knows we're here."
She was right.
Alice felt it too. That specific feeling of being watched by something that had already decided what it was going to do and was just waiting for the right moment to do it. She had felt it before. In the Fall Arena before the Black Knight. In Sahira's castle before the trials began. That electric stillness that existed in the seconds before everything went wrong.
She looked up.
The sky moved.
Not the clouds. Not the light. The sky itself seemed to shift and ripple in one specific spot directly above them, like the air was folding, and then something dropped out of it and Alice barely had time to scream move before it hit the ground between them with an impact that sent cracks spiderwebbing across the rock in every direction and threw all five of them off their feet.
Alice hit the ground hard and rolled, coming up with her sword already raised, and got her first proper look at what had landed.
It was made of stone. That was immediately clear. The same dark grey as the ground beneath them, textured like rock, heavy looking in a way that should have made flight completely impossible. But it had wings. Wide ones, stretching out on either side of a body that was shaped roughly like a man, arms and legs and a head, but wrong in every proportion. Too large. Too dense. The wings were made of the same stone as the rest of it, flat and angular like slabs, and they shouldn't have been able to carry something that heavy into the air and yet here it was, landing in front of them and already pulling itself back up to its full height which was somewhere around three meters, and the ground shook slightly under its weight.
Then more of them dropped out of the sky.
Not one or two. Many. Alice counted seven before she stopped counting because counting wasn't going to help her and moving was. They hit the ground around the squad in a loose circle, each impact sending another shockwave through the rock, and the sound of all of them landing together was like a small earthquake, a deep percussive boom that Alice felt in her back teeth.
The flying stone men.
They stood there for a moment, all of them, perfectly still, and the silence that followed their landing was somehow louder than the sound that preceded it. Their faces were featureless. Just flat stone where eyes and a mouth should have been. And yet Alice had the overwhelming and completely irrational feeling that they were looking directly at her.
Then from above, from somewhere higher than the others had come from, a single figure descended slowly.
Not fast like the others. Not dropping like something falling. Gliding. Deliberately. Like it had all the time in the world and knew it.
The 8 of Spades landed thirty meters in front of them and the ground didn't crack when it touched down. It was lighter than its soldiers somehow, leaner, built differently. Still stone. Still winged. But where the flying men were blunt and dense this one was precise. Every line of it looked intentional. Its wings folded behind it with the slow deliberate grace of something that had never needed to rush because nothing had ever required it to.
It looked at them.
And then it raised one hand and pointed directly at Alice.
No words. No speech. No arrogant monologue like the 6 of Spades had delivered from his throne. Just that single gesture that said everything it needed to say.
You. You are the one I need to deal with first.
Alice tightened her grip on her sword.
"CJ," she said quietly without looking at him. "Barrier up the moment they move."
"Already ready," he said.
"Miriam, the ones in the air, don't let them get above us."
"Understood."
"David."
"Way ahead of you," he said, and she could hear him already moving into position.
"Ace." She paused for just a second. "You good?"
A beat of silence. Then his voice came back steady and quiet and sure.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm good."
The 8 of Spades lowered its hand.
And the sky filled with stone wings.