CHAPTER 202: WEB AND NEEDLE

The ledge was treachery beneath his feet. Crumbling rocks, slimy moss, and serpentine roots that seemed to want to sort him out and trip him. Dylan ran. He ran like it was the first time in his life, driven by a terror so pure it burned like the core inside his chest.

The roar of the chasm was fading, replaced by the ragged thunder in his ears and the oppressive silence of the ancient forest closing in around him. A cathedral of shadows and monstrous trunks, where sunlight barely pierced through, filtered into pale spears by the canopy.

"Alive. The Master will want to interrogate him." The arbalester’s monotone voice echoed in his skull, more terrifying than a scream. He glanced back over his shoulder. The dark figures were already on the ledge.

One was climbing with reptilian agility, steel claws gripping the stone. The other, the arbalester, advanced with measured, implacable steps, a short, blackened javelin already in hand. No haste. The certainty of the predator.

Fear threatened to paralyze Dylan. Then, like a burn in his veins, the core pulsed. But not in an explosion this time. A sharp, directed jolt. It radiated to his neck, making him snap his head right. There, through a curtain of thick vines as wide as arms, he caught a flickering glow – the reflection of water on rock? The torrent? A way out?

"The web tears where you pull the hardest." Julius’s rough voice came to him, carried more by memory than by air. Fleeing straight was playing their game. He had to pull—and tear.

Dylan threw himself through the vines, shredding them like spider silk. Behind, a narrow clearing opened onto a fast-flowing stream, much smaller than the chasm’s torrent, but swift, wedged between steep banks and gnarled roots plunging into the dark water.

Beyond it, the forest seemed even denser, impenetrable. A dead end? The core pulsed again, insistently, pushing him upstream, along the slippery bank.

A sharp whistle cut the air. Dylan dove forward, rolling over the wet humus. The poisoned javelin struck a beech tree with a sinister thunk, exactly where his head had been a second earlier.

He saw the arbalester already on the opposite bank, a second javelin ready. The clawed soldier was descending the slope toward Dylan, cutting off the downstream escape.

Then he spotted what the core had been trying to show him: a dead, half-rotted branch, suspended above the stream by brittle vines like a hanging sword. Just below, the bank was a shaky mix of mud and roots. And beyond, hidden behind a curtain of giant ferns, a patch of black earth and stagnant water—the beginning of a marsh.

He had one chance. He feigned a stumble downstream, toward the clawed soldier who rushed forward, a feral grin on his lips. At the last moment, Dylan spun around. Instead of continuing, he leapt back toward the dead branch. He grabbed a thick vine dangling nearby and pulled with all his might, yelling—not in fear, but in defiance, the core dumping raw energy into his arms.

CRACK!

The vine snapped clean. The dead branch, thick as a child’s torso, broke loose and crashed into the stream with a wet thunderclap, sending up a geyser of muddy water. But that wasn’t the target. The impact violently shook the unstable bank just beneath the arbalester.

The impassive man staggered. His right foot suddenly sank into the treacherous mud up to his shin. He tried to pull free, but the abrupt movement threw off his balance. The javelin slipped from his hand and plopped into the stream with a faint splash.

"No!" roared the clawed soldier, momentarily distracted from his charge toward Dylan.

It was the tiny opening Dylan needed. He didn’t look. He had already plunged—not into the water, but through the curtain of giant ferns, straight into the marsh hidden behind. The ground gave way beneath his feet, cold, slimy mud rising to his knees. The stench of rot and swamp filled his nose.

Behind him, he heard the arbalester’s muffled curses, still trapped, and the clawed soldier’s growl as he reached the edge of the swamp, hesitating at the treacherous mire. Dylan, lighter, less equipped, and driven by terror transformed into raw energy by the core, moved with desperate speed. He knew where to step—not from knowledge, but from those searing impulses from the core that lit up in his mind, showing him the tufts of tough grass, the exposed roots, the hidden firm ground scattered within the muck. He was the needle threading through the rotten cloth of the web.

"Stop him!" the arbalester commanded, his voice still calm but now strained with the effort of freeing himself. "He’s headed northeast!"

The clawed soldier cursed and plunged into the mire anyway. Dylan heard the sickening suction, the grunt of the man struggling as the mud climbed to his thighs. He didn’t dare look back. He surged ahead, blinded by the ferns, his clothes torn by branches, mud clinging to his legs like a cold shroud. The core throbbed, overheated, giving him strength he never knew he had, but burning his veins from the inside. The forest closed behind him, swallowing the sounds of pursuit, leaving only the swamp’s sick gurgling and his own ragged breath.

He ran for a long time, guided by the core’s increasingly painful pulses, until the mud gave way to firmer ground, covered in a thick carpet of pine needles. The light here was even dimmer. He finally collapsed against a huge mossy boulder, half-buried at the base of a wooded slope. Shaking from head to toe, exhausted, coated in mud, sweat, and dried blood, he listened. Nothing. No clanking armor, no hissing javelins. Just the faint whisper of wind in the high branches and... the distant, subterranean growl of water.

"I pulled..." he thought, chest on fire. "I tore a thread..."

The relief was short-lived. A chilling tingle crept down his spine. The core vibrated—not in alarm, but in... warning. He looked up. In front of him, barely visible in the gloom, a dark fissure opened at the base of the rocky slope. A cave entrance. And on the flat stone at its mouth, hastily scrawled in charcoal or soot, strange geometric symbols, angular and unnatural, that seemed to absorb the meager light. They looked like nothing natural, nothing familiar. An ancient, deeply wrong sensation radiated from the opening.

As he stared at the markings, a sound reached him, carried by the descending wind: a deep bark, distant, then another. Nothing like normal hunting dogs. These were guttural, resonant, the kind that froze blood in the veins.

Dylan shrank against the rock, his gaze darting between the ominous cave and the dark depths of the forest from where the barking rose. The web was tearing... but its threads were endless, and the fangs of the Net closer than ever. Julius’s chasm had been swift. This one seemed slower, more torturous, and infested with dark symbols. Where to run? Into the wolf’s jaws... or into the Master’s lair? The core throbbed painfully, like a poisoned heart beating in his chest.

There was no choice. He crawled toward the fissure.