◇_ _
The blade came down fast.
Lothar rolled. Instinct, not thought. Dirt scraped his cheek. He gasped, lungs raw, blood thick in his throat.
The assassin's second strike split the ground where his skull had been.
"You're more awake than I expected," the voice said, light and amused.
Lothar coughed, tried to rise. His body refused. His limbs felt like sacks of stone—his nerves too raw to even scream.
"Don't bother," the assassin said, crouching low beside him. "You've reached the edge of what's left in you."
From his cloak, he pulled a scroll—ancient, sealed in old wax, lined with red glyphs that shimmered faintly in the dark.
"This isn't personal," he murmured. "Well—mostly. But that blood in you… it's too valuable to waste on chaos."
He unrolled the scroll slowly, with reverence.
"I'll drain it carefully. Strip it from the flesh while the body still flickers. Bit by bit. Drop by drop."
The air grew heavy as he whispered the activation phrase. The scroll hissed with life, binding glyphs lighting up in sequence.
He pressed it to Lothar's chest.
Light flared.
The forest held its breath.
The assassin exhaled, sitting back. "It worked."
He drew out a small obsidian vial, uncorked it, and held it above Lothar's body.
"Let's see what kind of being bleeds."
The vial remained empty.
Then—
A single crack, like splitting stone.
The scroll darkened.
And began to decay.
The assassin blinked. "No—"
The air collapsed inward.
From Lothar's chest, a curl of smoke twisted upward. Slow. Hungry. It expanded—eyes forming within the mass. Eyes that smiled.
Vauldrix rose.
"You really thought that would hold me?"
The assassin stumbled back, reaching for his blade.
"You weren't supposed to be conscious."
Vauldrix stepped forward—unhurried.
"I let you hope."
He raised one hand.
The scroll blackened completely, crumbling to ash. The vial cracked, spilling nothing.
The assassin bolted into the treeline.
And Vauldrix let him, too weak to even try to stop him.
◇_ _
The forest rushed past them in twisted, violent motion.
Burnt trees loomed like the scorched bones of forgotten giants, their branches curled into blackened claws. The ground bore scars—deep trenches, scorched craters, ruptured roots. Every few steps, a new fracture split the earth beneath their feet, as if the land itself had tried to resist what had passed through.
Even the air had weight. It pressed against their lungs, thick with cinders and the metallic sting of mana torn open and left to rot. Not even insects stirred—no buzzing, no rustle. Just silence and the reek of smoldering bark.
"He's ahead," the golden-eyed girl said. Her voice was hushed, but the certainty in it cut through the ash. "The mana field is warping. It's distorting space around him."
She darted forward, feet dancing over roots and ruined stone. Her cloak shimmered in the fading light—warding glyphs flickering like dying stars as they brushed against the forest's twisted residue. Magic pulsed faintly at her wrists with each step, reactive and alert.
Beside her, the masked protector moved without a word.
Where she flowed, he carved—precise, efficient, ghostlike. His footing never broke, his cloak didn't stir. Only the faint shimmer of condensed mana trailing in his wake betrayed just how fast he was moving. He didn't breathe harder. Didn't blink. He was a presence—coiled steel held in check.
The trees thinned for a moment—burned stumps opening into a narrow pass where fire had carved a natural corridor. There, the air thickened.
"Do you think he's still fighting it?" she asked. Her voice was tighter now, caught between hope and dread. "Is he still in there somewhere?"
The masked protector didn't hesitate. "No," he said. "But part of him hasn't surrendered. That's why we still have time."
They ran in silence then. The trees blurred past. Mana curled in strange eddies around them. The shadows no longer moved with the light. They waited.
Then—
A howl tore through the stillness.
Not one. Many.
They halted as one, instincts flaring.
From the ridge ahead, six shapes burst into view—massive, fast, and starved of reason. Direwolves. Their fur was matted with ash, claws blackened, muscles taut beneath thick hides. Saliva foamed at their mouths. Their eyes gleamed—pale silver ringed with red. Touched.
They descended the slope in a blur of motion, their howls fractured and erratic, like voices that had forgotten what it meant to be alive.
The golden-eyed girl stepped forward, instinctively reaching for the glyph-etched dagger at her hip.
"They're not just hunting," she whispered. "They're being drawn."
"To him," the masked protector confirmed, stepping to her side. "The scent of blood. The kind that doesn't belong in this world."
His eyes narrowed behind the mask. "They're not hunting. They're converging. Someone wants chaos."
The wolves veered—downwind of the clearing now.
The girl cursed. "They'll reach him first."
"Then we intercept."
And they moved.
The forest shifted again—smoke curling, trees leaning, as if nature itself hesitated. But the two cloaked figures tore through it anyway, blades and runes at the ready, racing the hunger of beasts—and something worse—toward the broken boy at the heart of it all.
◇_ _
They found the clearing in chaos.
Two wolves already lay dead—limbs severed, blood pooling beneath torn leaves. A third let out a ragged snarl before the assassin's blade caught it mid-charge, slicing its throat. He pivoted as a fourth lunged, barely dodging its fangs, then plunged his dagger through its spine.
Panting, cloak shredded, the assassin stood alone.
Lothar remained at the clearing's center—upright, but barely. His knees buckled with each breath. The molten light in his skin had dimmed to a faint glow, like the embers of a dying forge.
His head drooped. His hands hung limp. But his eyes—dark, unfocused—held something ancient still watching behind them.
The assassin wheezed, clutching his side, potion bottle shattered at his feet.
He turned toward the new arrivals.
"You're too late."
Neither the girl nor the masked protector spoke.
The assassin stepped forward, dragging his blade behind him.
"He's weak. But if you think that makes him safe, you're mistaken. You saw what he is."
The golden-eyed girl stepped in front of the masked protector, magic rising at her fingertips.
"He's not your kill."
"He's not yours either."
The assassin raised his blade.
Smoke from the wolves curled low through the trees. The wind died.
Three figures.
One fading. One burned. One barely contained.
And the forest listened.
"I drained enough," the assassin muttered, voice trembling now. "Enough to shatter the old order. That blood will reshape everything."
He pointed his sword toward Lothar.
"Let's end this properly. Let's see who the world wants more."
The standoff cracked.
◇_ _
The assassin took one step forward.
Then froze.
The ground shivered—barely noticeable. But enough.
A breath later, the trees groaned.
Not from wind. Not from movement.
From deep below.
Roots twisted beneath the earth. Cracks webbed outward from where Lothar stood, the scorched ground pulsing with dull crimson veins—not magic, but something older. Hungrier.
The masked protector's head tilted.
The golden-eyed girl's expression sharpened. She stepped back.
Even the assassin's grip on his blade faltered.
Then, from Lothar's lips, though he barely moved, came a whisper—not his voice.
"So many drawn by one heartbeat…"
The tone was mocking, not threatening. Faint. Tired. But sharp enough to cut the stillness.
"Let's make sure the forest knows where to find us."
The glow in Lothar's chest pulsed once, then faded.
But the damage was done.
A ripple of heat bled into the air.
Far off—too far to see yet—a distant roar answered.
Then another.
And another.
The assassin's eye twitched. "What did he just do?"
The golden-eyed girl didn't answer.
But her hand clenched around her dagger.
The forest wasn't just listening now.
It was coming.