The earth trembled relentlessly, forcing Kael's body to sway violently as he struggled to maintain balance. Distant roars of magical beasts reverberated through the air, growing louder with each passing moment. Through the billowing dust and crashing timber, a thunderous rumble engulfed the forest.
Amelia's eyes widened as trees collapsed in rapid succession around them. "A beast tide?" she gasped.
The term sparked fragmented memories in Kael. Old Ethan had once mentioned such calamities in passing, his voice tinged with grim respect. Before he could dwell on the memory, Amelia's urgent command sliced through the chaos. "Climb that ancient tree! Now!" Her slender finger stabbed toward a towering giant among the woodland sentinels.
Kael reacted instantly. Two consecutive teleportation spells propelled him forward before his Starstep technique carried him the remaining distance. Scaling the rough bark with desperate speed, he hauled himself onto a high branch that offered newfound perspective - and horror.
The horizon writhed with an advancing black line, an undulating mass surging forward like floodwaters breaching a dam. What initially appeared as shadow gradually resolved into individual creatures: hundreds upon hundreds of magical beasts stampeding in unison. Flame-coated predators, hulking rhinoceros-like behemoths, scorpion-tailed manticores, and countless other species blurred into a single destructive wave.
Kael's breath caught. Ethan's understated warnings had failed to capture this apocalyptic reality. The ground now quaked with such violence that the tree shuddered beneath him, its leaves raining down like emerald tears. The thunderous cacophony of hooves, claws, and snapping timber hammered against his ribs.
"Damnation!" Kael spat, knuckles whitening against the branch. Through the chaos, he spotted Amelia and Finn still fighting their way toward safety. Though Amelia moved with her characteristic grace - leaping over roots and darting between falling debris - fifty meters still separated them from the tree's base.
The vanguard of the beast tide had already reached the forest's edge. Ancient oaks splintered like twigs before the onslaught, their centuries-old growth reduced to kindling in seconds. Amelia finally reached the trunk and began scaling it with spider-like agility, her boots finding purchase in the bark's deep crevices. But Finn lagged behind, his heavier armor clinking as he stumbled over the quaking ground.
From his aerial vantage, Kael watched the dark tide roll ever closer, each thunderous footfall shortening the distance between survival and annihilation.
The ancient tree lurched violently as another seismic tremor ripped through the earth. Amelia's grip faltered - for one heart-stopping moment, her boots scrabbled against empty air as she plummeted downward.
Kael moved before conscious thought formed. His hand shot out like a striking viper, fingers clamping around her wrist with bone-crushing force. Muscles screamed as he hauled her upward in a single desperate heave, her armored form crashing against his chest in a jangle of metal and labored breaths.
She smelled of steel polish and wild orchids. Raven hair whipped across his face as their eyes met - her widened pupils still mirrored fading terror beneath long lashes. The intricate silver filigree of her breastplate did little to conceal rapid breaths lifting pale skin flushed pink from exertion. For one forbidden instant, Kael registered the lethal grace coiled in her slender frame before icewater clarity doused such thoughts.
"Steady?" he rasped, releasing her waist as though burned.
"Gratitude," Amelia replied coolly, though the faint tremor in her voice and pink-tipped ears betrayed her. Their precarious balance shifted again as Finn's curses heralded his arrival, the burly warrior clawing onto their branch like a storm-tossed sailor.
"By the Nine Hells!" Finn bellowed, spitting bark fragments. "Since when do forest beasts march in cursed legions?"
No answer came. The beast tide had transformed into living quicksilver - a churning river of fangs and claws now mere stone throws away. Kael's knuckles whitened around the shuddering trunk as the vanguard hit.
Impact.
The world dissolved into splintering wood and bestial screams. A juvenile thunderbear collided with their tree in an explosion of sap and bone, its broken form instantly swallowed by stampeding horned wolves. The ancient giant groaned like a dying titan, lesser branches raining down to be pulverized beneath countless hooves.
Kael's teeth rattled as a scaled behemoth caromed off the trunk below, its spiked tail shearing through a wagon-sized bough. Amelia's dagger flashed, severing a falling branch that would have dashed Finn's skull. Through the chaos, Kael glimpsed the greater tide flowing around their arboreal island - a mindless flood where fallen beasts became stepping stones for those behind.
Magic burned through his veins as he reinforced his grip, the bark biting bloody furrows into his palms. Survival narrowed to simple calculus: hold fast or join the crimson slurry churning below. The tree shuddered with each new collision, its roots screaming protest from the tortured earth. Yet impossibly, the colossal trunk held - a stone breaking hell's current, if only for now.
The beast tide's thunderous passage lasted nearly an hour before dissipating into southern horizons, leaving behind churned earth and a scarred landscape where the Mist Forest once stood proud. Kael surveyed the devastation - splintered trunks angled like broken spears across crater-pocked earth, the forest floor reshaped by seismic violence into something alien and hostile.
"Natural migrations don't mix species like this," Kael observed, brushing wood dust from his sleeves. His gaze swept across the ecological massacre. "Something terrified every creature here into blind flight."
Amelia's nod sent sunlight glinting along her braid. "Predator or cataclysm. Either way..." She let the implication hang like sword steel being drawn.
Excitement kindled behind Kael's pragmatic mask. Where lesser men saw only danger, he recognized the siren call of power waiting to be claimed. Their eyes met in silent accord, twin sparks of ambition reflected between them.
"Finn!" Kael's call echoed through the broken timberland. Only the creak of wounded trees answered. Where the burly warrior had clung during the chaos now gaped an empty stretch of bark, claw marks scoring the wood where frantic fingers had lost purchase.
They combed the impact zone with methodical precision - Amelia's daggers clearing debris while Kael's magic probed beneath overturned boulders. No bloodstained armor fragments. No telltale shreds of Finn's crimson cloak. When their paths reconverged at the ravaged tree, hope outweighed dread.
"Alive then," Amelia concluded, sheathing her blades. "That oaf's too stubborn to die beneath hooves."
Kael shouldered his pack, adjusting the straps across fresh bruises. "He'll make for the heartlands same as us. We'll track while advancing."
The decision hung between them, heavier than their scant provisions. Two where there'd been three, venturing deeper into whatever nightmare could frighten an entire ecosystem into stampede.
They ate swiftly - dried venison and acorn bread passed in silence. When Amelia took point along a game trail barely visible through the wreckage, Kael noted her dagger remained unsheathed. His own palm rested on his sword hilt as they moved through the corpse of the forest, where carrion birds were already holding wake for the tide's casualties.
The true Mist Forest awaited beyond the destruction, its eternal fog banks swallowing their silhouettes whole. Whatever secrets lay coiled in that gray expanse would reveal themselves soon enough.