The Journey to the Forgotten Fort

"You ever wonder if we were born just to fill the background of someone else's story?"

– Jhon Miles

The deserts beyond Zone 37 weren't on any map.

Satellites refused to scan them.

GPS signals bled static when you got too close.

And the few who entered…

Didn't come back.

Because this was the place where things that didn't belong were buried.

Where mistakes were abandoned.

Where secrets festered under the sand, waiting to be found.

It was also the place where Erwin Wail would be reborn — or die.

He didn't walk like a man on a mission.

He walked like a man with nothing left to lose.

A single bag.

A single canteen.

And a stolen, half-cracked energy blade he couldn't use.

The sandstorm started on Day 2.

By Day 3, the sun was nothing but a mocking presence behind a curtain of gold.

By Day 4, his lips were cracked, and his skin peeled raw.

He passed old wrecks — system transport drones torn apart by something far too large.

A shattered testing site — burned runes scrawled with blood over its doors:

"WE WERE NEVER CHOSEN."

At night, the temperature dropped low enough to make him hallucinate.

At least, he thought it was a hallucination…

Until the hallucination spoke back.

"Still think this was a good idea?"

"You know there's no ending here that isn't death."

Erwin stared at the dark.

The voice wasn't his.

It was Jhon's.

He didn't reply.

He just kept walking.

Because walking forward hurt less than standing still.

On Day 6, he collapsed.

No dramatic moment. No final scream.

Just a soft thud as his knees gave out.

And before the darkness took him, he saw something moving through the storm.

A figure cloaked in black.

When he woke, he expected the afterlife.

Instead, he awoke to pain.

Pain meant he was still alive.

And the ceiling above him wasn't heaven.

It was stone, scorched and cracked.

He was in the Fort of the Forgotten.

A woman sat nearby. Dark silver eyes. Long, uneven hair. Fangs poking beneath her lip.

She looked like someone who had survived a thousand years of war and still didn't trust peace.

"You shouldn't have made it here. And yet you did."

"Erwin Wail?" she asked.

He nodded.

"I'm Vel Sari. I'm your handler now."

Vel Sari, part vampire, part elf.

A hybrid the Upper Society tried to erase when she exposed their experimentation on half-blood civilians.

Now, she was an Outcast General — one of five.

And she did not believe in mercy.

Erwin sat up. Pain screamed through every rib, but he didn't show it.

Vel threw something at his chest — a rough, blood-stained cloth.

"That's your new uniform. If you survive the next seven days, you get to wear it."

He frowned.

"And if I don't?"

"Then you die like the rest."

She stood.

"The last person who came here lasted four days.

He cried when the illusions started.

Bit off his own tongue to escape them.

Died by Day 5.

You look weaker."

Erwin clenched his fist.

But he said nothing.

The Fort wasn't built for comfort.

The walls were cold, scarred from old explosions.Hallways were littered with rusted weapons and shattered data-chips.The Outcasts trained in silence — no banter, no cheering.

Just grunts, broken bones, and warcries drowned in sand.

His first test came an hour later.

No warm-up.No explanation.

They threw him into a pit.

At the far end was a beast — a twisted dungeon hound, blind in one eye, its spine lined with broken, glowing bone.

Vel dropped a blunt sword at his feet.

"Last ten minutes," she said."Survive. Or don't."

The door closed.

And the monster charged.

The pain came fast.

His shoulder cracked when he misjudged a roll.

The beast bit deep into his thigh.

He screamed — not out of fear, but frustration.

He was tired of being weak.

He fought back.

Not smart.

Not skilled.

But like an animal with nothing left.

He stabbed the hilt into the beast's jaw.

Grabbed a bone shard and drove it into its throat.

Time: 8 minutes, 42 seconds.

Before it collapsed, it shattered two ribs and crushed his wrist.

They dragged him out.

He was smiling.

Blood smeared across his face.

Vel scowled.

"Should've lasted ten."

That was Day 1.

The rest were worse.

They called it "training."

But it wasn't.

It was destruction.

And Erwin welcomed it.

Because every time they tried to break him,something inside him held on harder.

They gave him mentors.

Each from a world that no longer claimed them.

Ragor, once Murim Grandmaster, exiled for refusing to execute a child.Now, he taught Erwin pain through motion.

"There is no elegance in battle.You kill. Or you get buried."

He broke his bones so often, Erwin stopped counting.

Kairos, Techno-prince gone rogue.Brain laced with corrupted AI fragments.He showed Erwin how to think without emotion.

"Your pain is noise. Silence it. Weaponize it."

Isa, a fallen goddess.She had burned her own divinity to flee divine manipulation.Now she taught him how to meditate inside cursed fields that whispered suicide into his soul.

"Either your mind is yours… or it belongs to the voices."

Nameless, once a System-Blessed Hero.

Now a ghost of the code.

"You will never be compatible with the system," he told Erwin.

"So we'll build something worse."

They stitched together an alternative.

A patchwork feedback loop of forbidden fragments, parasitic code, and rituals banned in every known realm.

It hurt more than it helped.

But it worked.

And Erwin endured.

Weeks passed.

Then months.

Then a year.

Erwin no longer questioned if he belonged.

He no longer doubted his path.

Because the person who once feared rejection had become something else.

A man who had nothing to lose.

A man who laughed as he killed.

A man whose every scar was a memory of survival.

A man who no longer asked "why me?"

He only asked:

"Who's next?"

[End of Chapter 3 – The Journey to the Forgotten Fort]