The concept of "morning" in Kazakhar Prison was a cruel joke. There was no sunrise, only a shift in the artificial lighting from a dim, sickly yellow to a harsh, blinding white that buzzed like an angry hornet's nest.
The horn sounded at 1200 hours sharp, a bone-rattling bass note that vibrated through the metal floor and into the teeth of every prisoner on the block.
Adam sat up, his body stiff. The soreness from the beating yesterday had settled into a deep, bruised ache, but his mind was surprisingly clear. It was the clarity of a man who had already accepted his own death and was now living on borrowed time.
"Rise and shine, meatbags!" Panchenko chirped, hopping down from the top bunk. He did a quick stretch, his spine popping audibly. "The arena awaits! Try not to look so enthusiastic, Harry, you'll scare the guards."
Harry groaned from beneath his thin blanket, clutching his stomach. "I think I'm going to be sick."
"Save it for the floor of the armory," Jones rumbled, standing up and filling the cramped cell with his massive presence. He looked at Adam. "You ready?"
Adam stood, testing his legs. "Ready as I'll ever be."
The energy field blocking their cell flickered and died. Instantly, the corridor filled with the sounds of thousands of shuffling feet, coughing, and the shouting of demon overseers. It was a river of misery flowing toward a single destination.
"Move it! maggots!" a guard bellowed, swinging a stun baton into the ribs of a slow-moving elder.
They were herded down the spiral walkways, descending toward the prep level. The air grew colder the lower they went, smelling of ozone and damp earth an artificial scent that mimicked nature but lacked its soul.
They arrived at the Armory Gate. It wasn't a military depot; it was a scrap heap. Racks of rusted, chipped, and bloodstained weapons lined the walls.
"Weapons selection! One minute!" a demon roared from a raised platform, his whip cracking the air. "Grab steel or die with your hands empty!"
The rush was chaotic. Prisoners shoved and clawed at each other to get to the "good" gear.
Panchenko elbowed a man twice his size out of the way and grabbed a spear with a slightly warped shaft. He spun it experimentally. "Alright, demon-slayer, what's your poison? I prefer the spear. Keeps those nasty creatures at arm's length. I like my face the way it is."
Adam scanned the racks. He saw heavy mauls that he wouldn't be able to lift after an hour of fighting. He saw daggers that were too short to kill anything big. He needed something balanced. Something that felt like an extension of his will.
His eyes landed on a rack of swords. Most were rusted hulks, but one caught his eye. It was a bastard sword, hand-and-a-half grip with a simple crossguard. The blade was notched, but the steel looked tempered.
Adam grabbed the hilt. It was cold, heavy, and stained with old, dark blood that had settled into the leather grip. It felt right.
"A sword," Adam declared, testing the weight. "Simple. Direct."
Harry, trembling, managed to snag a recurve bow made of composite plastic and a quiver of arrows that looked like they had been scavenged from three different centuries. "I-I'm staying back. I'm better from a distance. If… if my hands stop shaking."
Jones pushed past a scuffle and returned holding a double-bitted forestry axe. It was a tool for felling timber, heavy and brutal. In his hands, it looked like a toy. "Nothing like a good swing to split a skull," he grunted, checking the edge with his thumb.
"Time's up! Into the slides!"
The guards forced them onto a massive freight elevator, a circular platform large enough to hold fifty men. The gears ground together with a deafening screech, and the floor dropped out from under them.
They descended past the sublevels, leaving the prison block behind.
When the elevator shuddered to a halt and the blast doors hissed open, the transition was jarring.
One moment, they were in a sterile, metallic box. The next, they were swallowed by the abyss.
Welcome to Level One: The Darkling Woods.
It was a vast, subterranean terrarium. The ceiling was miles high, lost in shadow, where distant spotlights roamed like the eyes of hungry gods. Below, a forest of nightmares stretched out in every direction.
These were not real trees. They were bio-engineered monstrosities of black carbon and hardened resin. Their branches were gnarled, leafless claws reaching for the dark sky. The ground was a soft, spongy moss that smelled of rot and copper. Fog curled around their ankles, cold and clinging.
"Well, isn't this cozy?" Panchenko quipped, though his grip on his spear was white-knuckled. "Perfect spot for a picnic, if the ants didn't have mandibles the size of bolt cutters."
"Stay close," Jones ordered, stepping off the platform. "Watch the shadows."
Adam stepped onto the moss. It squelched. He scanned the perimeter. The lighting was terrible, an eerie perpetual twilight that played tricks on the eyes. Every shadow looked like a mouth.
They hadn't gone more than two hundred yards into the tree line when the ground began to tremble.
Thump... Thump... Thump...
It wasn't a heartbeat. It was footsteps.
"Something's coming," Adam whispered, raising his sword.
A low, guttural groan echoed through the petrified trees, vibrating in Adam's chest. Birds or things that looked like birds but had leathery wings and no eyes, took flight from the canopy, screeching.
Suddenly, thirty feet ahead, the earth erupted.
Moss and dirt sprayed into the air as a colossal mass surged upward. It wasn't an animal. It was part of the forest itself coming alive.
A Nightmare Treant.
It stood twenty feet tall, a hulking golem of twisted wood, black vines, and pulsating biological sacks. Its bark was mottled with glowing red veins. Its limbs were as thick as industrial pipes, ending in massive, gnarled fists. Where a face should have been, the wood had split open to reveal a vertical maw lined with razor-sharp thorns and dripping with amber sap.
"By the Void!" Harry yelped, stumbling back. He loosed an arrow in panic. It flew wide, bouncing harmlessly off the creature's shoulder.
"Looks like our welcoming committee!" Panchenko shouted, leveling his spear. "Spread out! Don't let it stomp you!"
The Treant roared a sound like a collapsing mine shaft and swept a massive arm forward. A black tree snapped like a twig upon impact.
"Move!" Jones roared.
Adam rolled to the left, feeling the wind of the creature's swing ruffle his hair. He scrambled to his feet, adrenaline flooding his system, washing away the fear.
Just as the Treant prepared to crush Jones, a blur of motion shot from the undergrowth to their right.
"Well, hello there, handsome," a sultry voice purred, cutting through the din of battle.
A woman with raven-black hair and striking emerald eyes vaulted off a protruding root. She moved with the grace of a dancer and the intent of a viper. She was wearing modified prison rags that allowed for maximum movement. In her hands, two serrated daggers flashed.
"Astrid, at your service!" she yelled, winking at Adam even as she was mid-air. "And it looks like we've got a party!"
She landed on the Treant's knee, driving both daggers into the softer tissue between the bark plates. The monster shrieked, distracted.
From the shadows behind the beast, another figure emerged. He was a short man with quick, darting black eyes and hair cropped close to his skull. He held a pair of nunchaku made from steel piping and chain.
"Always the charmer, Astrid!" the man shouted, his nunchaku spinning a defensive web around him. "Don't let her fool you, new guy! She's as deadly as she is distracting!"
"Less talking, Lee!" a deep, commanding voice boomed.
A tall, muscular woman with blonde hair braided tight against her scalp and an eyepatch over her right eye strode into the clearing. She wielded a massive two-handed warhammer with effortless strength. This was Ylva. Her presence dominated the space.
Behind her, a chubby man with a round face and wide, somewhat vacant eyes ambled out of the bushes. He was clutching a massive, rusty meat cleaver that looked like it had been stolen from a giant's kitchen.
"Mmm, wonder if Treants taste like stewed bark," the chubby man, Pao, mumbled, licking his lips.
"Focus, Pao!" Lee yelled, dodging a falling branch.
The battlefield was chaos. The Treant, enraged by Astrid's sting, thrashed wildly.
"Attack now!" Ylva commanded.
Jones didn't need telling twice. He charged, a juggernaut of muscle. "Raaaaagh!" He swung the forestry axe with all his might. The blade bit deep into one of the Treant's root-legs, chopping through the thick wood.
The monster shrieked, lashing out. Jones tried to dodge, but a stray vine whipped him across the chest, sending him skidding backward into the dirt.
Adam saw his opening. The fury he had felt in the mines, the image of Xy'lar falling, surged back. He wasn't mining ore anymore. He was mining death.
He sprinted forward. "Harry! The eyes! Shoot the glowing nodes!"
Harry, shaking but determined, notched another arrow. He took a breath, held it, and released. The arrow flew true, piercing a pulsating red sack on the creature's chest. The Treant recoiled, black sap spurting out.
Adam slid under a sweeping limb, the bark scraping his shoulder. He came up right under the beast's torso. He gripped his sword with both hands and thrust upward, aiming for the gap in the armor that Astrid had opened up.
The steel sank in. He twisted the blade.
"Panchenko! The leg!" Adam screamed.
"On it!" The one-eyed man lunged, driving his spear into the knee joint that Jones had weakened.
"Down you go!" Ylva yelled. She capitalized on the monster's instability. She spun the warhammer once to build momentum and brought it down on the Treant's other foot.
CRACK.
With its structural integrity compromised, the colossal plant-monster toppled. It hit the ground with an earth-shaking thud.
Lee was there instantly, his nunchaku cracking against the creature's "face," smashing the thorns. Pao waddled up, surprisingly fast for his size, and brought the cleaver down in a messy, hacking chop that severed a flailing limb.
"Finish it!" Astrid yelled, flipping backward off the creature's chest.
Adam pulled his sword free from the torso and scrambled up the creature's heaving chest. He looked into the glowing red maw.
"For Elena," he whispered.
He drove the sword down, straight into the central core of the monster.
The Treant shuddered violently. A high-pitched whine emitted from its body, and then the red glow faded to a dull grey. It collapsed into a tangled, inanimate mess of splintered wood and dying roots.
Silence rushed back into the clearing, broken only by their heavy breathing.
Adam pulled his sword free, wiping the black ichor on the moss. He was shaking, not from fear, but from the adrenaline crash.
"Well," Panchenko panted, leaning on his spear like a cane. "That was… invigorating."
"You call that invigorating?" Harry squeaked, lowering his bow. "I nearly peed my pants! Did you see the size of that thing?"
Astrid sheathed her daggers and sauntered over to Adam. Up close, he saw the grime on her face, but her eyes were sharp and intelligent. "Not bad for a new guy. You've got good instincts, handsome. Most people freeze the first time a Treant tries to eat them."
Adam looked at her, then at the others. This group Lee, Pao, Ylva they moved like a unit. They were survivors.
"I'm Adam," he said, extending a hand to Ylva, recognizing her as the leader.
Ylva clasped his forearm, her grip like a vice. "Ylva. This is Lee, Pao, and the trouble-maker is Astrid. We saw you drop. We figured we'd see if you were worth saving." She looked at the dead monster. "You pulled your weight."
"We survived," Jones grunted, picking himself up and brushing dirt off his chest. "That's what matters."
For the next four hours, they fought. They didn't encounter another Boss-level threat like the Treant, but the woods were full of horrors—wolves with exoskeletons, vines that tried to strangle them, and insects the size of dogs.
They fought as a pack. Adam learned quickly that in Kazakhar, solitude was suicide.
Finally, the horn sounded again. A deep, resonating hum that signaled 1800 hours. The "sun" dimmed further, signaling the end of the combat shift.
They made the long trek back to the elevators, stepping over the bodies of prisoners who hadn't been as lucky, or as skilled, as they were. The camaraderie of the battlefield carried them back to the sterile misery of the cellblock.
Back in Cell 7-3-4, the door hummed shut. They collapsed onto their bunks, exhausted, bruised, and alive.
Adam stared at the ceiling. His body screamed in protest, but his mind was racing. He replayed every mistake he made in the fight. Every missed block. Every hesitation.
"We did it," Harry whispered into the dark.
Panchenko sat up, dangling his legs. "Indeed we did. And now comes the question of the hour, gentlemen. The guards will ask us at the weekly review. Do we stay on Level One? Or do we request transfer to Level Two: Crimson Lake?"
Jones looked at Adam. "You're the Slayer. You led the kill on the Treant. What do you think?"
Adam closed his eyes. He thought about the boiling lakes. He thought about the desert worms. He thought about Malakor and the vengeance he had promised.
If he went down now, he would die. He wasn't strong enough. His swing was too slow. His endurance was too low. He had killed a Treant, yes, but only with help. To kill a High Justicar… he needed to be something else. Something more than human.
He needed to master this hell before he descended to the next one.
"We stay," Adam said, his voice firm in the quiet cell. "We stay on Level One."
Panchenko raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Not eager to see the sights?"
"I'm not ready," Adam admitted. "And neither are we as a team. We need to learn these woods. We need to harvest the cores from these monsters. We need to get stronger." He sat up, his eyes burning with a cold, blue fire. "I'm not just trying to survive the prison, Panchenko. I'm going to conquer it. Level by level."
Ylva's group had been strong. Adam needed to be stronger.
The others looked at him. They saw the shift. He wasn't just a victim of injustice anymore. He was a man with a plan.
"Level One it is," Jones agreed, nodding slowly. "Let's conquer the damn woods."
Adam lay back down. Vengeance would wait. Training began now.