The voice came from the far end of the room, where the dim light hadn't reached and clearly hadn't been invited to.
They turned toward it slowly — the kind of slow that had nothing to do with calm and everything to do with not wanting to confirm what was back there.
Slouched against the damp concrete wall was a man.
His body was a map of brutal, jagged lacerations — dark blood soaking through a torn tactical vest lined with empty holsters, spreading slowly into the concrete beneath him. He looked less like a student and more like a rugged, battle-hardened hunter. Worn down to the essential components of someone who had survived too many things to count and was currently in the process of failing to survive one more.
His eyes were open.
Glowing faintly purple.
Adil held on those eyes for half a second longer than the rest of the man. The cloaked figure's eyes had been purple. The spirits' auras had burned purple. And now this — a bleeding stranger in a utility room with the same color living in his eyes as everything in this world that had tried to hurt them.
He said nothing. Filed it.
"Who the hell... are you two?" the man rasped, his voice a low gravelly whisper that barely carried across the room. He paused, coughing weakly, before his eyes narrowed. "But more importantly... how the hell did you two get here?"
Both Adil and Garu exhaled a shaky collective sigh of relief. They clutched their chests, their hearts hammering so violently against their ribs it felt as though they were sharing a cardiac arrest. Then reality snapped back.
Wait. He spoke.
Their brief relief evaporated instantly. Both boys whipped their heads toward the door in absolute alertness, shoulders tense, waiting for the shadowy ghost figures to burst through the walls and tear them to shreds.
The wounded man stared at their sudden panic, his brow furrowing. "What the hell are you two doing?"
"Keep your voice down!" Adil hissed, his eyes still darting across the ceiling. "The ghosts — they'll attack because you spoke!"
The man remained silent for a moment, watching them shift in terror. Then he let out a dry raspy breath that might have been a laugh.
"Idiots," the hunter muttered, leaning his head back against the concrete. "That rule only applies in the corridors. Not here."
Adil and Garu looked at each other, completely dumbfounded.
"Great," Adil grumbled, sliding down the wall to sit heavily on the cold floor. He rubbed his face, letting out a ragged breath. "You could've told us that before you gave me a synchronized heart attack."
Garu didn't sit. He kept his stance tense, his hands not quite steady from what the ghost attack had left behind in his muscles, but his eyes clear and already working. He studied the wounded man the way he studied everything — quietly, thoroughly, arriving at conclusions before most people finished forming the question.
"You're a native, aren't you? You're from this place."
Adil glanced sideways at his friend. Oh right. I still need to confirm that theory about his system. Later. When surviving isn't a full time occupation.
The bleeding hunter went completely still at Garu's words. The only sign of life was the ragged rise and fall of his chest and the slow spread of dark blood beneath his hand. Finally he tilted his head, his glowing purple eyes locking onto them through the gloom.
"You two... you're not from there, are you?" the hunter rasped, gesturing faintly to the space outside the room. "The other side."
Adil's eyes sharpened slightly. He answered a question with a question. Either he didn't trust them enough to confirm it directly — or he was buying time while he assessed how much to give away. Either way it was the move of someone practiced at controlling what left his mouth.
He dropped his hands from his face and looked at the man properly.
"Wow. Brilliant deduction," Adil said, gesturing at their ruined college uniforms — Adil's missing its jacket entirely, both of them decorated with corridor grime and ghost attack damage. "Was it the pristine college uniforms or the absolute look of pure terror that gave it away?"
The hunter stared at Adil for a long silent moment. Something moved in those purple eyes — assessment, recalculation, a quiet decision landing.
"So I was right. And to answer your question... yes. I am from here."
"You say that like people dropping in from another dimension is a normal Tuesday for you," Adil noted, leaning his head back against the wall.
"Have other outsiders come here before us?" Garu asked, his voice sharp and analytical.
The hunter let out a heavy painful sigh, his hand pressing harder against his bleeding side. "Yeah. You're right on that too." The pause that followed lasted exactly one beat too long. "Though, surprisingly, you two are the first ones I've seen stay alive this long without a single weapon."
The room went quiet in a way that had weight to it. The hunter's last words settling slowly like dust after a collapse.
"Wait," Adil said, his throat tightening. "Are you trying to say everyone else who came before us... died?"
"No," the hunter rasped, his hand moving to the glowing dagger at his waist, knuckles going white around the handle. "What I am trying to say is, how the hell did you two make it this far without a weapon? This is Goulizban territory."
He hadn't answered. He had redirected — cleanly, deliberately, with the efficiency of someone who had deflected that specific question before. Whatever had happened to the others lived behind those purple eyes and he had chosen to leave it there.
Garu's eyes had locked onto the weapon the moment the hunter's hand moved. "You mean that giant shadow tiger outside?"
The hunter unsheathed the blade with a faint metallic hiss, hands trembling from blood loss. The glow it cast painted the underside of his jaw in pale cold light. "Look at me. I'm a ranked tracker, and I got torn to shreds trying to hunt that beast." His eyes moved between them. "If it catches your scent, you're nothing but a snack."
Adil looked at the torn vest. The map of wounds across the man's body. The hollowed quality of someone running on the last reserves of something almost gone.
A ranked tracker, he thought. And this is what's left of him.
He didn't finish the thought. The math was already done.
Garu and Adil exchanged a single look — half a second, no words — covering the full conversation: Do we trust this? Do we have a choice? Does it matter right now?
Adil gave the smallest nod.
"I will give you a weapon and my gear, but in return, you have to take me out of here too."
Garu stepped forward, eyes still on the dagger. "You want us to fight that thing?"
Thank you, Adil thought. Someone finally asked the important question.
"No," the hunter muttered, letting his head fall back against the concrete wall as his energy drained. "I'm just giving it to you... in case."
His eyes drifted shut against the pain.
The room settled into the quiet of a place holding its breath. Somewhere outside, the building carried the faint ambient presence of the Goulizban in the mist — felt more than heard, a low vibration in the infrastructure that hadn't fully stopped since they'd entered.
Adil shifted closer to Garu, keeping his voice down to a barely audible murmur.
"Hey, Garu," Adil whispered, shifting his eyes toward the dark ceiling. "Back when we got pulled in... did you meet that cloaked man too? And did you get a normal system interface, or did yours glitch out?"
Garu blinked, turning his head to look at Adil with deep furrowed brows. "What do you mean by an error?"
Adil blinked, staring at his friend.
"Wait. You never got an error?"
Garu frowned — the specific frown of someone who had just realized a gap existed where they hadn't known to look for one. He opened his mouth to ask something —
BOOM.
A heavy violent vibration rattled the metal door, throwing a cloud of dust from the concrete ceiling. The floor trembled beneath them.
The hunter's purple eyes snapped open. Every trace of exhaustion left his face instantly, replaced by something that looked deeply uncomfortable wearing his expression — something that ranked trackers in a world like this apparently still felt regardless of experience or rank.
Fear.
"Hurry," he hissed, forcing himself upright against the wall as blood seeped fresh through his fingers. "We need to move. Now."