Chapter 5: Ghost Path

Acrid smoke stung Mei Nguy's eyes, her tongue coated in copper and burnt herbs as ash crunched beneath her boots.

Five figures cut through the haze.

Black-and-gold uniforms. Purple flame crests. Blaze.

Behind them, a dozen Ghost corpses dissolved into a sweet, rotting tar. Scorched walls radiated brutal heat. Mei knew this scene—in her first life, Shadow Squad entered this corridor and left eight dead, three crippled.

These five hadn't just survived. They had annihilated it.

At their center stood Joshua Chen. Rifle slung, not a scratch on him. His cold gaze swept her—boots, hands, weapon, stance—and stopped. Her heart hammered against her ribs in a sudden surge of defensive panic.

"Got company."

"Shadow Squad?" Rook, one of Blaze's heavy gunners, squinted through the haze, his face contorting into instant, bitter hostility. "Ethan's crew? Tell me he isn't still whining."

"Probably here to scavenge our kills," Mara, their sharp-eyed strike specialist, spat, her gaze burning with deep-seated resentment as she adjusted her rifle strap.

Joshua didn't laugh. "Leave her." His eyes passed over her again. "Unawakened."

Mei swallowed a bitter laugh, a cold dread twisting in her gut. Seventeen ways to kill everyone here flashed in her mind. Joshua included. But killing him changed nothing—she knew his future. He'd die a hero, and months later, a Ghost King would return wearing his face.

She backed away, letting darkness swallow her as she slipped deeper into the tunnel.

The passage narrowed. Water dripped ahead. A junction: cold air washed from the left, sulfur heat rolled from the right. She picked left.

Scrape of boots. Blaze had caught up.

Joshua paused at the split, eyeing the heat. "Blaze didn't make history by taking the easy way out." They surged right.

Idiot. Mei turned left. One step. Two—

BOOM!

A blast punched through the stone. Grit slammed her face, pinning her against the wall.

RAT-TAT-TAT-TAT!

Gunfire tore through the dark, punctuated by a raw, agonizing scream.

"THEY'RE COMING FROM THE LEFT!"

Her safe route. Wrong. A spike of icy terror shot through her veins. Instinct screamed to run—the same calculating self-preservation that had kept her alive for years.

"Fall back! Keep the wounded moving!" Joshua's shout echoed ahead, strained with desperate urgency.

Mei froze. The formation was collapsing. Shot counts spiked. They were being driven back to the junction, choking into a narrow bottleneck. Three seconds before someone died.

Walk away, her inner assassin hissed. But the memory of her old squad dying in the dark surged up, choking her with a wave of hot, suffocating guilt.

"Damn it." She turned and sprinted back toward the gunfire, her blood boiling with fierce resolve.

She burst into a massive cavern. A jagged fissure split the floor, spewing pale vapor while boulders hovered in midair. Overhead, a monstrous mass of oily black flesh unfolded dozens of skeletal arms, each wielding a rusted blade.

Blaze was already locked in a desperate rhythm.

"Mara! Upper limb!"

Bang. Mara brought her rifle up in a fluid arc, taking off a writhing arm.

"Rook! Right!"

Rat-tat-tat. Rook ducked three steps back as heavy blades shredded the stone, returning heavy fire to suppress the right flank. Behind them, Jian dragged a bleeding teammate behind cover, planting himself as a shield.

They were good. Flawless. But the creature's severed limbs instantly regenerated, pulling black flesh straight from its core.

"Stop shooting the center!" Mei yelled over the roar, her voice cutting through the panic.

Joshua's rifle dipped, his eyes widening with sharp surprise. "Why?"

"Watch its torso!"

Rook and Mara shattered both sides simultaneously. The creature convulsed, its rib plates separating to reveal a pulsing, pale tissue before snapping shut.

"It's shifting mass!" Mei snapped, her spatial ether crackling at her fingertips. "Strike both sides together—it exposes the core!"

Joshua's eyes sharpened, a flash of intense focus replacing his doubt. "You heard her! Mara left, Rook right! Controlled damage!"

They split. Mara unleashed a precise volley on the left, while Rook poured heavy suppressive fire into the right. The double impact forced the rib plates wide open, exposing the pale network, but it was suspended too high to reach from the floor.

Mei eyed the floating boulders. "Make it face you!"

"Give her three seconds!" Joshua stepped directly into the monster's line of sight, his jaw set with absolute, suicidal trust.

Mei moved. A surge of adrenaline hit her system. She leaped onto the first floating stone, the rock sinking under her weight, then launched off a second as a rusty blade clipped her sleeve.

She plunged her sword straight beneath the open rib plate, driving steel into the pale core and twisting hard.

The network snapped. The creature shrieked, limbs spasming as it crashed hard onto the cavern floor.

Mei ripped her blade free, black blood dripping from the steel. Static silence filled the air—Rook, Mara, and the rest of Blaze staring at her in stunned, unblinking disbelief—until the fissure beneath them cracked wide, and the ceiling began to cave in.

"Move!" Joshua roared.

Mei didn't wait. Blaze ran, the cavern collapsing right at their heels.