The air in the Dark World didn't just feel cold; it felt heavy, like the weight of a thousand forgotten souls pressing against one's lungs. Kaelen stood at the jagged edge of the Obsidian Crags, his tattered black cloak whipping in the soundless wind. Below him, the valley was bathed in a sickly violet hue, the only light provided by the pulsing rift high above—the Great Gateway.
It had been a hundred years since the sky fractured. To the humans on the other side, it was a tragedy. To Kaelen, it was an opportunity.
"Pathetic," Kaelen whispered, his voice a sharp blade cutting through the silence.
Below him, a group of seven scavengers huddled around a flickering Mana-Crystal. They were gaunt, their skin graying from malnutrition and Miasma poisoning. They were fighting over a scrap of dried meat, oblivious to the fact that they were being hunted by something far worse than hunger.
Kaelen didn't hate them. Hate was an emotion, and emotions were inefficient variables in a grand calculation. He simply saw them as fuel. In this world, you were either the player or the piece. And Kaelen had stopped being a piece a long time ago.
"The pulse is increasing," Kaelen observed, his glowing white eyes reflecting the rhythmic tremors of the Gateway. "The Aegis Guard on the other side must be testing a new stabilizer. They think their walls can keep the darkness out. They don't realize that the darkness is already among them. It's in the lies they tell, the fear they hide, and the greed that rots their leaders."
He adjusted the silver buckle on his shoulder and began his descent. He moved with a grace that shouldn't belong to someone living in a wasteland. He wasn't going down there to kill them. That would be a waste of resources.
As he stepped into the dim light of their dying fire, the scavengers scrambled for their rusted blades.
"Stay back!" their leader hissed, a man with one eye and a trembling hand.
Kaelen didn't stop. He wiped the cold, calculating look from his face and replaced it with a mask of sympathetic desperation. His posture slumped slightly, his eyes softened. He became exactly what they needed to see: a fellow survivor with a secret.
"I don't want your meat," Kaelen said, his voice warm and steady, vibrating with a fake sincerity that made the leader lower his knife just an inch. "I want to get you out of here. All of you."
"There is no way out," a woman groaned from the back.
"There is now," Kaelen lied, pointing a finger toward the southern sector of the Gateway. "I saw it. A breach in the Aegis perimeter. The guards are distracted by a High-Tier Shadow beast. For the next three hours, the path to the Human World is open. Food, sunlight, medicine... it's all there."
The air in the camp changed instantly. Hope—the most dangerous poison in the world—began to spread through them.
Kaelen watched them. He saw the greed ignite in their hollow eyes. He knew that in exactly two hours, these seven people would rush the southern gate. They would be slaughtered by the Aegis Guard's Hard-Light turrets. Their deaths would trigger a high-level alert, forcing the Guard to reposition their main forces from the North to the South.
And while the world looked South, Kaelen would walk through the North, unnoticed and unchallenged.
"Follow me," Kaelen said, turning his back to them, a slight, invisible smirk playing on his lips. "I will show you the way to paradise."
The first piece was on the board. The game had officially begun.