"Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!"
Zane's breath came in ragged gasps as he sprinted through the forest, his boots hammering against the charred earth. Smoke stung his eyes, filling his lungs with each desperate inhale. Behind him, an inferno raged, devouring everything in its path.
This wasn't supposed to happen.
A simple mission—an easy, routine patrol with a hundred trained men—had turned into a nightmare. How could he have forgotten? War never went as planned. Especially not in this cursed world.
But still... who the hell had a Saint to spare?
Saints were legends. Beings who had conquered the abyssal rifts known as Gates and emerged stronger than humanly possible. They weren't warriors; they were walking catastrophes. A single Saint was enough to turn the tide of a battlefield, enough to render a hundred men utterly insignificant.
And they had run into one.
A Draconian Saint.
The bastard had burned the entire forest just to eliminate them.
Zane dared a glance back. Through the fiery haze, he glimpsed the silhouette of the enemy—horned, winged, wreathed in flames. The Draconian stood at the edge of the blaze, watching with those eerie, slit-pupiled eyes. It wasn't even chasing him anymore. It didn't need to. The fire would do its work.
Heat pressed against his back like an invisible force shoving him forward. He could barely think past the survival instinct screaming at him to run.
Then—
"Shit!"
The ground vanished beneath his feet.
A cliff.
Zane skidded to a halt, teetering on the edge as loose gravel tumbled into the abyss below. His heart slammed against his ribs. He was trapped. The fire roared behind him, rolling closer with each second. There was no way back.
His gaze darted downward. A sheer drop into darkness. Except…
A glow.
A faint, eerie shimmer beneath the water far below.
His stomach clenched. Could it be…?
Gates.
They were the great unknown. Rifts in space, anomalies no one truly understood. Some took you to other worlds. Some brought beings like the elves and draconians from the other side. Most were one-way tickets to oblivion.
But they were also the source of power. Every Saint had stepped through one to become what they were and survived whatever lay beyond.
But it was very rare to return from a Gate. But then again, Zane was about to die anyway.
A dry, humorless laugh escaped him. "Hah. Is this fate or just dumb luck?"
Behind him, the fire closed in. He could feel his skin blistering, the air itself burning.
Zane could feel the pain from the burns but still he grinned. A chance to become a saint!
And then, he jumped.
The wind howled in his ears. The heat disappeared, replaced by a cold rush of air as he plummeted. His body twisted midair, limbs flailing. The glowing rift loomed closer. The water's surface was barely visible around it.
Then—impact.
Icy water swallowed him whole. His skin screamed in relief, the burns instantly soothed. But something else pulled at him.
The Gate.
A force, impossible to resist, yanked him downward. The shimmer grew brighter, wrapping around his body, dragging him into the unknown. His vision blurred, his lungs burned, his thoughts scattered.
And then—
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