Chapter 6: ​Anchor Breaker

The stone floor exploded beneath Mei's boots, sending a bone-rattling shockwave straight up her spine. Cracks webbed across the chamber like black lightning, splitting ancient foundation stones apart as the cavern ceiling caved in.

A piercing screech filled the room—the colossal Ghost entity was tearing its way through the rift, its glassy, skeletal claws erasing stone where it touched.

"The exit is sealed!" Rook yelled, panic lacing his voice as he slammed his fist against the solid wall of shifting rock in pure, helpless frustration. "We're trapped!"

Heavy footsteps crunched through the dust behind them. Ethan stepped out from the shadows—six-and-a-half feet of brutalized muscle in dented plates, reeking of sulfur and dried gore. Beside him slunk Fei, Team Shadow's dagger specialist, her twin blades dripping dark venom. After trailing Blaze through the upper tunnels to scavenge their kills, they had shadowed Mei's every step through the split passage, using the chaos of the monster's ambush to slip into position unnoticed.

"Ethan! Over here!" Joshua shouted, desperate hope flaring in his eyes as he called toward the newcomers. "Use your kinetic rifle to blast through the debris! We can bridge a line out!"

Ethan didn't raise his rifle. Instead, a grim, calculated sneer spread across his face, cold and devoid of remorse. Beside him, Fei twirled her venomous daggers with a cruel, malicious chuckle.

"Sorry, Vice-Captain," Ethan called back, his gravelly voice dripping with mocking arrogance. "Looks like Team Blaze is taking the hit today. Less competition at the top."

With a sudden, violent strike driven by pure malice, Ethan slammed his heavy boot into a critical load-bearing column at the edge of the cavern, while Fei sliced through the support cables holding back the upper rockfall with sickening glee.

CRACK.

An avalanche of heavy stone crashed down directly between Team Shadow and Team Blaze, completely blocking the secondary escape route and sealing Blaze in with the looming Ghost. Ethan and Fei slipped back into the shadowy tunnels behind them, satisfied and utterly unbothered as they left Blaze to die.

"Those bastards!" Mara cursed, her throat raw with fury as she raised her rifle, but the falling dust obscured their cowardly escape.

"Focus on the creature!" Joshua roared, his heart hammering against his ribs as his armor clattering as the Ghost's heavy psychic pressure hit his defenses. His wrist display flashed critical red: WARNING: SPATIAL COLLAPSE IMMINENT.

"Cover me!" Mei barked, raw determination slicing through the mounting panic.

She caught the desperate, agonized look in Joshua's eyes—and for a split second, the chamber melted into a haunting memory: a burning fortress under a blood-red sky, Joshua kneeling in the ash during her first life after Team Shadow had betrayed them both. Grief and fierce protectiveness surged in her chest.

Not this time.

The towering Ghost pushed fully through the dark, its hundreds of crimson and milky-white eyes locking straight onto Joshua and the paralyzed squad with hunger. It opened its massive, jaw-unfolding maw to wipe Blaze out in a single blow.

Eclipse Step.

Reality folded. Sound vanished. Mei materialized directly above the Ghost's colossal main eye, her mind dead-set on survival. Instead of striking its physical form, she targeted the spatial anchor binding the Ghost to the chamber—the very rift Team Shadow thought would destroy them.

Her shortblade, glowing with intense spatial force, swung in a violent, wrathful arc.

SHNK.

She sliced clean through the Ghost's dimensional anchor. The monster let out an otherworldly shriek of agony as the breach forcibly inverted, sucking its spectral form backward into the void.

"Joshua! Grab the squad!" Mei screamed, landing hard on the cracking stone, her pulse thumping wildly. She rammed both daggers into the floor, pouring her spatial ether directly into the crumbling architecture.

Spatial Fold.

She forcibly bent space, tearing open a glowing rift directly behind the Blaze Hunters that bridged straight through the collapsing mountain to the surface outside the Gate.

"Go! Move now!" she ordered, blood trickling from her nose from the sheer, excruciating strain of holding the portal open.

Joshua hauled Rook and Mara to their feet, staring at her in absolute awe and terror for her safety. "Mei—what about you?!"

"I'm right behind you! MOVE!"

Joshua shoved the last of his squad through the portal, turning back to grab Mei's hand in frantic desperation just as the dungeon roof completely caved in. With a final, agonizing pull, Mei snapped space shut behind them.

The chamber smashed into dust—completely burying Team Shadow's sabotage beneath hundreds of tons of rock—but Blaze was gone.

Mei tumbled onto the sunlit grass outside the Gate entrance, gasping for air in profound relief as the dungeon portal behind them shattered into harmless glass shards.

Joshua collapsed beside her, staring at the clear sky in stunned disbelief before looking at Mei with fierce respect and overwhelming gratitude. "Shadow tried to bury us..."

She wiped the blood from her lip, shearing her daggers back into their sheaths with a cold, terrifying calm. "They can try. But we're settling that tab next."