CHAPTER 36 — The Sunless Canyons
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The transition from the Jagged Flats to the Sunless Canyons was like stepping from a forge into a tomb.
The sky vanished. High above, the vertical walls of the canyon leaned inward, leaving only a jagged ribbon of grey light that failed to reach the floor. The air here was stagnant, smelling of wet stone and the musk of things that never saw the sun.
"Light," Kael commanded quietly.
Serik tapped a jade pendant, and a soft, amber glow diffused around them. It wasn't bright enough to be seen from the rim, but it was enough to see the path.
"We're four miles in," Rovan whispered, his eyes scanning the ledges above. "The wind has died down. If anyone is following us, we'll hear them before we see them."
"Unless they're shadow-aligned," Kane countered, his spear-tip lowered to avoid snagging on the low-hanging moss. "This place is a playground for the Umbral Sect or lone cultivators with dark-aspected paths."
Ren walked at the rear.
He felt the weight of the storage ring on his finger. The dark crystal remained inert—cold, silent, and unremarkable. He checked his internal state; the Crescent Qi had settled back into his marrow after the fight on the Flats, but it felt... vigilant.
He looked at Kael's back. The Initial Core leader was moving with extreme caution.
"Kael," Ren said, his voice barely a breath. "The Sovereign didn't just let that Edict go to create chaos."
Kael slowed but didn't stop. "He let it go because it was a fragment. A broken rule. To a Sovereign, a false gate is a toy. But to the rest of the world, it's a reason to burn everything down."
"It's a filter," Ren realized.
Kael glanced back, a grim shadow of a smile on his face. "Exactly. He throws a bone to the dogs to see which ones are strong enough to kill for it, and which ones are stupid enough to die for it. It thins out the competition for the next decade."
"And we're the ones caught in the kennel," Kane muttered.
Suddenly, the fox stopped.
It didn't snarl. It didn't move. It simply froze, its head tilted toward a narrow fissure in the canyon wall.
Ren felt it a heartbeat later. Intent. It wasn't a scavenger's greed. It was cold, predatory, and ancient.
"Something is watching us," Ren signaled.
The group transitioned into a defensive circle instantly. No one asked for proof. After the Flats, Ren's word carried a different weight.
From the fissure, a pair of eyes opened. They weren't gold or red—they were a flat, matte white, like two coins of polished bone.
"Shadow-Stalker," Serik hissed, his hand flying to his formation pouches. "Level two, peak stage."
A Level Two Peak beast in its home environment was equivalent to a Core Realm cultivator. And in these canyons, they didn't hunt alone.
"Don't flare your qi," Kael warned, his voice low. "If you light up this canyon with flame or spirit energy, you'll call every stalker for ten miles. We take this down with physical refinement and suppressed strikes."
Ren tightened his grip. No Vein-Wind Traversal. No Blazing Sever. Just the raw, dense strength of his new body.
The Shadow-Stalker didn't roar. It simply blurred. It was a mass of obsidian fur and elongated limbs, moving with a liquid grace that made it look like the shadow of the canyon wall was detaching itself to kill them.
Ren stepped forward to meet the first lunge.
This wasn't an auction. This wasn't a duel. This was the silence of the canyons, where the only thing that mattered was whose blood hit the stone first.
The Shadow-Stalker's claws scraped against Ren's Ashen Guard, the sound like metal on slate.
Ren didn't push back. He used the beast's momentum, pivoting on his heel and driving a suppressed palm into the creature's flank. Without the "boom" of a full Blazing Sever, the strike felt like a muffled hammer-blow.
The beast let out a raspy wheeze, its white eyes flickering.
On his right, Rovan's blade moved in a silent arc, severing one of the creature's secondary limbs. Kane's spear followed, a blur of wood and steel that pinned the beast's tail to the shale.
They were working with a terrifying, quiet efficiency.
But as the first stalker fell, more bone-white eyes began to open in the fissures above. Five. Ten. Twenty.
"Kael," Serik whispered, his face pale in the amber light. "There are too many. We're in a nesting ground."
Kael looked at the sheer walls. "We can't climb out. We'd be picked off before we hit the first ledge."
Ren looked toward the pitch-black abyss further down the canyon. While Serik's amber light struggled to push back the shadows three feet ahead, Ren's perception was focused on the absence of noise.
To the left, the canyon walls thrummed with the greasy, frantic intent of the Shadow-Stalkers. Above, the ledges were heavy with hunger. But straight ahead—through a narrow gap in the stone—there was nothing. No life-force. No movement. Not even the presence of the stagnant canyon air.
It was a void of intent so absolute it felt unnatural.
"That way!" Ren called out, pointing toward the silent darkness. "There's a gap in the stone. Nothing is breathing in that direction—it's a dead zone."
Kael didn't hesitate. "Go! Move while they're still positioning!"
They ran, guided more by the sound of their own footsteps than by sight.
The Shadow-Stalkers descended like a black tide. They didn't lunge from the front; they dropped from the ceilings, their weight slamming into the group's formation.
Ren felt a heavy weight hit his shoulders. Teeth snapped inches from his throat, the creature's breath smelling of rot and wet fur.
He didn't panic. He reached up, grabbed the beast by its thick neck, and used his Initial Inner Realm strength to simply tear it away. The sound of snapping vertebrae was the only loud noise in the canyon.
They reached the choke-point just as the main pack arrived.
Up close, the gap revealed itself—not a cave, but two massive pillars of stone that had collapsed against each other, forming a triangular tunnel barely wide enough for two men. The transition was jarring; the moment they crossed the threshold of the pillars, the ambient noise of the canyon vanished.
"Serik! Seal it!" Kael ordered.
Serik slammed a heavy clay disc onto the ground at the tunnel's entrance. "Five minutes! That's all the time I can buy without drawing Sovereign-level attention to our qi signature!"
The pack of Shadow-Stalkers slammed into the invisible barrier, their bone-white eyes glowing with frustrated hunger, but they did not—or could not—cross the line of the pillars.
Ren leaned against the cool stone of the tunnel, his breath coming in steady, controlled cycles. He looked at his hands—they were covered in the black, oily blood of the stalkers.
He looked at the others. They were alive, but the pressure was beginning to show.
"We aren't just in a canyon," Ren said, his voice echoing strangely in the sudden, dead silence of the passage.
Kael followed his gaze, squinting as Serik's amber light finally stabilized.
The tunnel didn't lead to more jagged canyon rock. It led to a floor of perfectly leveled, seamless stone. The air here didn't smell like wet moss or beast musk anymore. It smelled like old ink and cold iron.
"The ruins," Kael whispered.
Ren didn't say anything. He just tried to look deeper into the darkness, wondering why a place so silent felt more dangerous than the pack of beasts they had just escaped.
Ren's steps slowed.
For the first time since leaving Frostmere, his instincts did not urge him forward or warn him away. They simply… went quiet.
That frightened him more than any beast.
Whatever lay ahead was not reacting to him at all.
As if it already knew he would enter.
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Chapter End