Scattered between the civilians and the Knights, never too close to either, and never too close to one another, were the lone wolves.

Maybe a dozen of them. Most looked young.

A girl in a hoodie crouched by the kerb, drawing a dagger back and forth across the stone with slow, patient strokes. A boy stood with a sports bag hanging from one shoulder, the shape of heavy objects pressing against the fabric. A woman in a waxed jacket sat on the bonnet of a Ford Focus, a bow laid across her knees, her face shut tight as a locked door.

None of them held each other’s gaze for longer than a second.

Some of them looked at Finn and Nyx for longer.

Finn felt it the moment they crossed into the crowd—that subtle shift in the air when one head turned, then another.

Nyx had her hood up. Her scarf was wrapped high, hiding her mouth and chin. But it couldn’t conceal her crimson eyes.

From beneath the shadow of her hood, all anyone would see were two crimson points staring back at them.

That was probably why every head she passed seemed to turn.

’Bearer.’

’Yeah.’

’I believe I am being watched.’

’Yeah.’

’I had thought this disguise might suffice. I take it I am not sufficiently blendable?’

’...That seems to be the case. Just ignore it. They’ll lose interest.’

He hoped.

They kept walking until he found a patch of wall at the edge of the car park, tucked between a stack of plastic crates and a wheelie bin—a narrow slice of shade where the Safe Zone’s blue glow fell softest.

He guided Nyx down with a hand beneath her elbow.

She lowered herself elegantly.

Finn dropped beside her hard enough to send pain straight through his tailbone.

For a moment, neither of them said anything. They just sat there and breathed, letting relief wash through them in slow, unsteady waves.

Finn glanced down at himself. Most of the cuts and bruises he’d picked up were already knitting shut. His health was still climbing. Inside the Safe Zone, his body was regenerating without issue.

He leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and listened.

You could learn a lot from a panicked crowd if you kept your mouth shut and your ears open.

He found the first useful thread in under thirty seconds.

"—I’m telling you, it’s like an MMO. It is literally like an MMO—"

The voice belonged to a man in his late thirties, breathless and frantic. Finn cracked one eye open and found him easily enough: overweight, glasses slipping down his nose, clutching a Tesco basket half-full of crisps like it was a life preserver.

He was speaking to a woman in her sixties who looked like she had not, at any point in her life, come within ten feet of an MMO.

"A what?"

"A type of online game. Massively multiplayer online. You make a character, they have stats, they level up—"

"I don’t have a character, Michael. I have asthma."

"But that’s what I’m saying. You have stats now. Look—just pull up your status interface."

"How?"

"Think about it."

"I am thinking."

"Think harder!"

Finn closed his eyes again.

He shifted his attention to a second conversation, farther off. The leader of the Marshals was explaining something to a woman with a bandaged arm.

"—The announcement, yeah, love? You heard the announcement, same as everybody else. We’ve got seven days until the first trial. They didn’t say what it is, but we need to be ready. We need to get organised, and that’s what we’re doing here, see? We’re getting organised."

’Announcement.’

Finn’s eyes snapped open.

"Nyx."

"Mm?"

"Did you hear some kind of announcement?"

"I have heard many things since waking in your world, Bearer."

"No, I mean a system announcement. Something from the same thing that summoned you."

She was quiet for a beat.

"...No. I do not believe I did."

Finn frowned.

He hadn’t heard anything either.

Then again, he’d spent most of the journey to the Safe Zone getting the absolute hell kicked out of him. Missing a notification wasn’t exactly impossible.

He pulled up his interface and opened his message log.

Sure enough, there it was.

[GLOBAL NOTICE — delivered 11:32 GMT]

[Welcome, Participants of Earth-7741.]

[The Integration has begun. You have been connected to the System as a developing world. Your species will be assessed.]

[A First Trial will commence in 6 DAYS 23 HOURS 11 MINUTES.]

[All Participants are advised to prepare. Further details will be provided as the countdown approaches.]

[Good luck.]

He read it once.

Then again.

The contents themselves didn’t surprise him much. Not really.

There had been trials in the beta of Fracture Online—large-scale events meant to test players, punish mistakes, and thin out the unprepared.

If this trial was anything like those, a lot of people were going to die.

No, the part that caught his eye was something else.

Your species will be assessed.

That wording was new. The forums had never mentioned anything like that. Neither had the old beta trial notes.

In Fracture Online, humanity had never been alone. The game world was full of other races—elves, beastfolk, demi-humans—woven into the cities, the quests, the story. They coexisted with players as naturally as NPCs and factions ever did.

But Earth was different. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

Earth had humans.

Just humans.

And that single line opened up more questions than he had any way to answer.

So Finn did what he always did with dangerous mysteries he couldn’t immediately solve.

He filed it away.

Then he went back to listening.

The next few conversations were mostly noise. Panic, denial, bad ideas, people asking questions no one could answer. But the fourth thread he caught was different, quiet enough that he almost missed it.

It came from three cars over.

Four people sat in a loose circle on the tarmac with takeaway coffees between them, as if this were some meeting they’d all agreed to attend before the world ended.

A brown-haired woman with sharp, alert eyes. A man in a waxed jacket. Two younger adults who looked as though they’d been in the same undergraduate seminar that morning and were now, very quietly, discussing the apocalypse.

"—and he said Ashenmere," one of the younger two whispered.

The word dropped into the circle like a stone into still water.

"He used the name. That guy definitely knows about the game."

"Well, it did smash the popularity charts when it was announced," the brown-haired woman said. "I’m more surprised there aren’t more people here who recognise it. The fanbase is huge."

Finn didn’t turn his head. He kept his eyes shut and let his face slacken, like he was half-asleep.

"—the four of us know the game," someone else murmured. "Probably more who just aren’t saying anything. That knowledge is valuable. But that Marshal bloke is going around telling everybody."

"Well, it would help their survival if they knew the truth—"

"And what? We don’t even know these people. Who cares about their survival?"

There was a brief moment of silence.

Then someone spoke up. "So what do we do?"

"We watch. We keep quiet. We don’t give anything away until we know who else here has useful information worth trading."

Their voices fell lower after that, too low for him to make out clearly.

Finn opened his eyes a fraction and looked down at the tarmac.

His hearing had definitely improved.

That had to be the achievement bonus—the five point stat boost he’d gotten from killing the Hollow Knight was doing work already.

Which reminded him—

He still had unspent stat points from levelling up.

’I should probably—’

’Bearer.’

Nyx’s voice cut through the thought at once.

’Yes?’

’The loud one with the sword is coming over.’

Finn looked up.

The Marshal leader had stepped away from his crate and his crowd and was heading straight for them, two men at his back.

One was short and wiry, with a boxer’s broken nose and a long dagger hanging at his waist.

He wasn’t looking at Finn.

He was looking at Nyx.