The wind that swept down from the Northern peaks had changed. It no longer just carried the bite of frost and the scent of ozone from the rifts. It carried silence.

  It started in the Whispering Pines.

  A squad of five from the Flying Wind Sect was moving through the treeline as they approached a rift. They were disciplined and well trained. The group was moving in a tight wedge formation and had their weapons raised.

  Their spiritual senses expanded outward to keep track of the situation around them. The leader raised a fist to signal a halt. He opened his mouth to give a command.

  He simply fell forward.

  There was no sound of impact and no grunt of pain. He hit the snow like a puppet with its strings cut. Before his second-in-command could react, she fell too. Then the third. Then the fourth.

  Within seconds, five strong cultivators lay face down in the snow. Their hearts stopped, their eyes wide with sudden and absolute terror.

  Ten minutes later another team arrived. They found the squad lying in formation. There were no tracks. No residual Qi signatures. Just the wind howling through the trees and five empty husks.

  It happened again at Iron-Pass.

  A supply caravan was crossing the bridge. The guards were alert and scanning the sky for harpies since a rift had opened up near them. The drivers were chatting about dinner but were on high alert.

  Suddenly, the chatter stopped.

  When a team that came to handle the rift came minutes later, they found the caravan sitting in the middle of the bridge. The beasts of burden were waiting patiently, their breath misting in the cold air. The drivers were slumped over the reins. The guards were lying on the wooden planks with their weapons still gripped in their hands.

  No blood. No struggle.

  The reports began to flood into Central Command like a tide of freezing water. It wasn't just one location. It was everywhere along the Northern Front. It started off small but then exploded within just a few days. All a similar story. Small teams, isolated patrols and merchant guards were being killed when encountering a rift. There were no traces of anything.

  Li Yu sat in the war room of the Frost Iron Sect. The mood, usually loud and boisterous, was subdued. Torben sat on his bone throne and was staring at a projection map that was slowly filling with red markers indicating "Silent Zones."

  Li Yu’s slate-grey Command Token vibrated on the table.

  Notice to all units: Priority Alpha. Threat: Unknown Class. Stealth Type. Directive:. All squads must merge immediately. Minimum combat personnel: 100. Be careful and take caution.

  Torben read the message and scoffed. It was a harsh sound in the quiet room. "They are scared. Central Command hasn't issued a general merge order since the Great Beast Tide fifty years ago."

  "Can you blame them?" Krell asked from the corner. "People are dropping dead without seeing an enemy. Fear makes people want to hold hands. Li Yu and I encountered a similar scene but we couldn’t figure anything out either."

  "It makes them clumsy," Torben grunted. "A hundred men together is just a bigger target for whatever this is. If it can kill a small group in such a way. It can surely do so to a slightly larger group. We need to understand what we are facing."

  "But it might be safer against a stealth assassin," Li Yu countered thoughtfully. "If this thing picks off stragglers, then a herd is the logical defense. At least, that is the hope."

  "Hope," Torben muttered. "Hope is what you have before you draw your weapon. After that, you just need steel."

  The effects of the order were immediate.

  Later that afternoon, the Crab Claws responded to a rift alert. So far, this would be a quick cleanup job.

  When they arrived though, the battlefield was a mess of shouting and confusion.

  Three different groups had banded together under the new directive. The Iron Hawks, whom Li Yu had helped before, were shoulder-to-shoulder with a squad from the Glacier Sect and a local militia.

  They weren't fighting with the fluid and aggressive confidence Li Yu was used to seeing in the North. They were fighting huddled together, backs pressing against each other and eyes darting to the shadows rather than the enemy in front of them.

  A swarm of Shadow Panthers and Fire Lizards poured from the rift. The merged group fired a chaotic volley of Qi techniques. The militia fired too early; the Glacier Sect fired too late. The attacks overlapped and canceled each other out.

  "Focus!" Li Yu shouted as he landed in front of them. "You are tripping over each other! Iron Hawks, take the left! Glacier, focus on protecting the people."

  He stepped forward and his staff swept through the air. A ripple of water-attribute Qi manifested and froze a leaping Shadow Panther in mid-air before shattering it.

  "Tekton, sweep!"

  The centipede chittered and surged forward. The battle ended quickly but the tension remained. It was clear that everyone was on edge even if they were still brave and fighting. The captain of the Iron Hawks wiped sweat from his brow. He looked exhausted.

  "Thank you, Lord Li Yu," the captain said. "We... we were jumpy. The reports... they say squads are just dropping dead with no cause."

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  "It is understandable. The unknown is the worst of all. However, you are bunching up too much," Li Yu critiqued gently. "You limit your mobility. If a heavy beast had charged you, you would have all been crushed."

  "Safety in numbers," the captain replied but his voice was tight. "That's what Command said. If we stay together, maybe it won't take us. Maybe it can't eat a hundred of us at once. There’s some limit to the techniques it uses?"

  "Has anyone seen it?" Krell asked as he was looming over them. "The thing taking the souls?"

  "No," a Glacier Sect disciple whispered. He was clutching a talisman, perhaps his good luck charm. "You don't see it. You just... stop."

  Li Yu watched them as they prepared to move out. They didn't separate to go home. They marched together, a massive, clumsy column moving through the snow and looking constantly around them.

  "Fear is a heavy armor," Li Yu noted to Krell. "It protects but it slows you down. It’s understandable though. So many groups are dying because of this."

  Two days later the slow dread turned into sharp panic.

  The news didn't come as a vibration on the token. It came as a frantic, continent-wide broadcast that lit up the sky with projection arrays in every major city.

  Alert: Obsidian Shield Clan - Status: Lost.

  Li Yu, Torben and Krell were eating in the mess hall when the projection appeared. The room went deathly silent.

  "The Obsidian Shield?" Torben whispered. He was stunned by the news. "That isn't a patrol team. That is a fortress."

  "I know them," A nearby elder said. "They specialize in defensive arrays. Their walls are supposed to be extremely strong. They can hold out against most."

  "Communication?" Li Yu asked one of the elders nearby.

  "Silence," the elder replied. He was going through all of the information that Central Command was sending out. "Central Command says a scout team did a flyby an hour ago. The walls are intact. The gates are closed. The arrays are still active."

  "Then how are they lost?" Torben demanded.

  "The bodies," the elder swallowed hard. "Hundreds of them. In the courtyard. At the posts. Thousands of cultivators dropped dead instantly. No alarm was raised."

  Li Yu leaned back with his eyes narrowing. ‘What is going on here.’ Li Yu thought.

  "It walked right through the walls," Li Yu analyzed. "Or the walls didn't matter. It ignored the physical barriers entirely. Perhaps it can attack from long range and nothing can stop its attack? I haven’t heard of such a thing."

  "Thousands!" Torben slammed his fist on the table. "Gone. In the blink of an eye. And not a single distress signal?"

  "It jammed them?" An elder said. "Or it killed everyone at once."

  "This isn't a predator," Krell said darkly. "Predators eat one or two. This is an exterminator. And still no one has any idea what it is."

  The mood in the hall shifted from shock to a palpable and vibrating fear. The disciples looked at the thick stone walls of their own fortress and were wondering if they were truly safe.

  The destruction of the Obsidian Shield Clan shattered the illusion of safety.

  Widespread panic didn't look like screaming in the streets. In the North, panic looked like preparation on overdrive.

  Sects stopped sending out patrols entirely. They merged into armies. Instead of squads, battalions moved through the snow. The logic was simple: More was better. Even if that wasn’t true. What else could they do?

  "They are terrified," Torben said a few days later. He was standing on the ramparts of the Frost Iron Sect and looking out at the grey horizon. Li Yu stood beside him.

  "The markets are empty," Torben continued. "Everyone is hiding in the main cities. The smaller clans are abandoning their outposts and flocking to the Great Pillars."

  "Concentrating the population," Li Yu murmured. "It makes sense strategically. Defend the strongholds for now. Until things are figured out. It’s not worth dying a pointless death."

  "Does it?" Torben asked. "You don't look convinced."

  "If you are fighting an army, you build a wall," Li Yu said. "If you are fighting a plague... crowding together is a death sentence. We don’t know what we are facing so it is hard to know what the right move is. I have tried flying around and seeing if I can catch it. I have found nothing each time."

  Torben grunted while looking at his own disciples patrolling the walls below. "So what do we do? Send them out alone to die in the snow?"

  "I don't know," Li Yu admitted. "We don't know what it is yet."

  Four days after the fall of the Obsidian Shield, the escalating pattern reached its terrifying conclusion.

  Li Yu was in the quartermaster's office with Bjorn. They were negotiating a trade. A batch of healing pills for another batch of cores they have collected during this period.

  Every Command Token in the room lit up simultaneously. They were casting a harsh red glow on the stone walls.

  Critical Alert. Sector: Central Plains. Target: Thunder Echo Sect. Status: Silent.

  Bjorn dropped the crate he was holding. It shattered and spilled the pills across the floor.

  "The Thunder Echo?" Bjorn breathed. "No. That's a mistake. That's a reporting error."

  Li Yu grabbed his token and was reading the stream of data coming in from Central Command.

  "Reconnaissance units report total silence. No life signs detected within the sect boundaries." Li Yu slowly said.

  Torben burst into the room with Krell right behind him.

  "Did you see it?" Torben roared. "The Thunder Echo Sect!"

  "That is one of the Five Great Pillars!" Torben shouted while pacing the small room like a caged animal. "They have three Soul Formation elders! They have the Thunder King! Their defensive formation is linked to a strong underground leyline!"

  "It didn't matter," An elder said quietly.

  "Five thousand cultivators," Torben whispered with fury and defeat. The fight seemed to drain out of him. "Five thousand. In an instant. How? How does something kill an upper Soul Formation expert and his entire sect without a single spell being cast?"

  Li Yu looked at the map on his token. He looked at the location of the Thunder Echo Sect. Then he looked at the Obsidian Shield. Then the smaller incidents.

  "It's escalating," Li Yu said.

  "It's getting stronger," Krell realized. "Whatever it or they are.”

  Li Yu looked at Torben. "The merge order. The order to gather everyone into the big cities. To group up for safety."

  Torben’s eyes widened as the realization hit him.

  "We served them up on a platter," Torben whispered. "The Obsidian Shield... The Thunder Echo... they were all grouped up inside their walls. Waiting."

  "It didn't struggle to eat five thousand," Li Yu said coldly. "It feasted. Grouping up just makes it easier for it to feed."

  "If it can eat the Thunder Echo..." Bjorn’s voice trembled. "Then the Frost Iron..."

  "We are next," Torben finished. "Or someone like us. Any place where thousands of souls are gathered in one spot."

  The room fell into a terrified silence. The strategy that was supposed to save them. The walls, the armies and the unity. It had turned them into easy targets for whatever this thing is.

  "The walls won't save the people," Li Yu said. "We need to rethink everything. The war just changed."