Kael vaulted over a massive, protruding root, barely evading another lunge from the monstrous fox at his heels. His boots scraped against bark and soil as he landed hard, staggering for a heartbeat before catching himself and surging forward again.
His lungs screamed with every gasp. His legs had long since gone numb—cramped, leaden, running purely on instinct and adrenaline. His body was past its limit, burning from within.
But the beast behind him was far from spent.
Each swipe of its claws carved grooves into the ground, each snapping maw promising instant death. And yet… it didn't pounce. Not fully. Not yet. It was toying with him.
Kael felt it in every breath, every second the thing didn't go for the kill.
It was playing.
And that wasn't just humiliating—it was terrifying.
'This… overgrown fox bastard,' Kael growled in his mind, cutting hard left and ducking beneath a low branch as another claw sliced the air just inches from his back.
Then—his instincts flared.
Something tugged at his senses, subtle and strange. A shimmer in the air, a pressure he couldn't see but felt down to his bones. Without even knowing why, Kael veered toward it.
He saw it.
A nearly invisible wall, thin as glass and infinitely tall, like the air itself had turned solid. His eyes barely registered it, but his gut screamed it was there—something powerful, something ancient.
Was it salvation… or just another death trap?
Kael didn't think. He couldn't afford to. With a final surge of desperation, he sprinted toward it—and shut his eyes just before impact.
CRACK!
He didn't hit a wall. He hit a tree.
The jarring collision knocked the breath out of him, sent him tumbling backward into the dirt. Groaning, he pushed himself up, swaying—but he'd made it. Somehow, he was through. The shimmer was behind him now, faint like a dream already fading.
A flicker of hope stirred—until he heard the thudding steps.
The beast didn't slow. It passed through the barrier like it wasn't there at all.
"No... no no no," Kael muttered, chest tightening. He staggered backward, blood pounding in his ears. This was supposed to be it—the break, the line that gave him even one second to breathe. But now, the red-furred monster stood just a few meters away, its jagged maw split in a grin that dripped with saliva and sadism.
Kael's hand trembled as it reached for the dagger at his waist.
He wanted to run. Gods, he wanted to run—to curl up somewhere dark and wait for the nightmare to pass. But life had never given him that mercy. He'd been forced to endure, to fight, to suffer without reprieve.
And now?
Now he was thrown into a place where survival demanded everything and gave nothing back.
'Heh… how cruel.'
A breeze rolled through the forest, soft and slow. His hair shifted with it. For a moment, everything was still—except the cold steel in Kael's grip and the fire igniting in his chest.
If he was going to die, he'd die standing.
He braced his feet, lifted his chin, and stared the beast down.
And then—the fox froze.
Its grin vanished. Its eyes narrowed, and it jerked its head toward the sky, ears flicking as if sensing something unseen.
Swish...
A gust cut through the air.
THUD!
Something colossal crashed into the fox from above like a meteor from the heavens. Kael didn't even see what it was—just a flash of motion, a thunderous impact, and the forest erupting into chaos.
The shockwave blasted through the trees, uprooting smaller ones, shattering thick vines, and tossing Kael like a ragdoll.
He flew.
For a second, the world spun around him—branches, sunlight, dirt, blood. Then—
SNAP!
He slammed into a net of vines hanging from a high branch, the impact nearly knocking him unconscious. His body swung violently, twisted, tangled—until gravity dragged him down again.
He fell hard.
The ground rushed up to meet him, and when he landed, his knees buckled beneath him. He collapsed onto all fours, chest heaving, arms shaking.
Every breath felt like fire. Every bone screamed protest.
"Ugh… Damn it." Kael hissed through clenched teeth as a fresh wave of pain surged through his body. Gritting down, he forced himself upright, his hands trembling as they pushed against the dirt. His head pounded, and every muscle ached like he'd been thrown through stone.
Propping himself against a thick root, he turned his gaze back toward the direction he had been flung from.
Roughly a hundred meters away, the forest was no longer recognizable.
The area where he'd just been moments ago was now blanketed in a swirling haze of dust and glowing particles. The air shimmered with strange energy, and the particles moved with an eerie elegance—like glowing fireflies caught in a slow, deliberate dance.
Kael's breath caught in his throat.
He had never seen anything like it. These weren't just flecks of light. They weren't natural.
Unlike the chaotic, spreading dust, these tiny lights moved with purpose—trailing in loops and arcs, orbiting around a singular invisible point in the center of the devastation. Sometimes they formed flowing paths like streams of water, other times spirals that pulsed with quiet intensity. They obeyed something—some will, or force, or presence.
The longer Kael stared, the more he noticed the color shifting.
They started off a soft green. But as he focused, the hue changed—sometimes blue, sometimes gold, sometimes a shade he didn't even have a name for. And the deeper he focused, the stronger his connection with them became.
It was subtle at first. A tickle in the back of his mind. But soon, he felt them. Each and every one of the shimmering motes hummed with its own energy, like tiny stars with sentience—drawn to him, aware of him.
The pain in his body dulled, numbed down by the sensation. It was as if the very particles were soothing him. Their presence was intoxicating, comforting. Warm.
And then he felt it—pull.
Not from the particles… but from within him.
A tether.
They didn't just notice him—they were answering him.
Kael couldn't move, but somehow, that didn't matter. As if responding to a silent call, the glowing stream of particles began drifting toward him, weaving through the heavy dust cloud like fish through water. The world around them remained suspended in time, quiet—almost reverent.
Then—
WHOOSH!
A sudden, violent gust of wind ripped through the clearing like a tidal wave of force. Trees groaned and bent under the sheer pressure, branches snapping and scattering. The haze of dust was torn apart instantly.
And the particles—gone. Just like that. As if they'd never been.
Kael was caught in the blast, flung back once more, rolling through the underbrush before slamming into another knotted root. He gasped, choking down air as he clawed at the dirt to keep from being dragged further.
His vision swam. His ribs screamed. But he forced himself upright, bracing against the gnarled root like a crutch.
'What the hell was that?'
His head throbbed. A sharp, insistent pain pulsed behind his eyes—his body rejecting the sudden surge of connection he'd experienced with those strange motes. But beyond the pain, there was something else—knowledge. He'd touched something ancient. Something alive.
Even now, a faint glow flickered at the edge of his perception, like echoes of what had just been.
And then he saw it.
The dust had cleared.
The trees that had once stood tall were nothing but shattered stumps. The ground itself looked torn open, scarred from impact, and yet—right at the heart of the devastation—something stood.
Kael's breath caught.
"…Holy—"
He wasn't even sure what word was meant to follow. Was it reverence or profanity? He didn't know. Maybe it was both.
Towering in the center of the crater was a creature unlike anything he had ever seen—majestic, terrifying, divine.
It was at least four meters tall, its wings slowly folding against its sides with a grace that belied their immense size. Its body was powerful, built like a lion's—lean, corded muscle rippling beneath golden fur that shimmered like burnished sunlight.
Its forelimbs ended in massive talons, sharp and hooked like an eagle's. And above its regal neck sat the head of a bird of prey—an eagle, proud and fierce. Its golden eyes scanned the world with the weight of a creature that had seen too much, and judged most of it unworthy.
A Griffin.
Kael had only ever heard about them in whispered stories and half-remembered tales told to children by old men around fading fires. He'd never once thought those stories could be real.
But this—this was real.
Its mane flowed as if caught in a wind of its own making. Every step it took crackled with latent energy, the earth trembling slightly beneath its talons. Light caught on its feathers like metal catching flame.
Kael's mouth hung open.
Despite everything he'd seen in this cursed forest—the rabid dogs, the twisted beasts—nothing compared to this.
This was something ancient.
Something sacred.
As Kael stared, entranced by the majestic creature before him, the Griffin slowly turned its head.
Its golden eyes locked onto him.
Kael's body seized instantly—his breath hitched, limbs turning to stone. A crushing weight slammed down on his mind, far beyond the physical. Just maintaining eye contact with it felt like a thousand hammers pounding against the inside of his skull.
But it wasn't just looking at him.
It was looking through him.
Kael felt it—like cold talons piercing into his very soul, peeling back the layers of his being. Memories flickered unbidden: the chains, the hunger, the pain, the rage. He wanted to scream, to fight back, to look away—but he couldn't.
The Griffin's gaze delved deeper, past thought, past feeling… until it stopped.
Something within him reacted. He didn't know what—but the creature did. Its pupils constricted ever so slightly.
And the pressure grew.
"Agh—Kugh!" Kael doubled over, blood spilling from his lips. His vision blackened at the edges as the weight of its presence rendered him limp. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, hitting the forest floor with a dull thud.
His mind teetered on the edge of consciousness, balancing between existence and oblivion.
Then, just as suddenly as it came, the pressure vanished.
The Griffin lifted its head skyward, wings curling inward like a spring loaded for flight. In one fluid motion, it launched into the air with a deafening roar of wind. The ground quaked under the sheer force of its departure, the resulting shockwave obliterating the surrounding air.
Boom!
Kael was airborne again, flung like a rag doll into the thicket. His body tumbled through the underbrush before being caught by a cluster of vines. They halted his motion with a jolt, the impact rattling his bones even further.
He hung there for a second—groaning, coughing blood—before finally untangling himself and slumping down onto the forest floor.
For a long moment, he didn't move. His breath came in shallow rasps, his hands trembling as he leaned against a thick trunk. The pain pulsing through his ribs was agonizing, but duller now—like it was distant, or fading altogether.
Above him, the sky stretched clear and cloudless. There was no sign of the Griffin.
Gone.
Kael wiped the blood from his mouth and stared blankly upward. His mind struggled to catch up to everything that had just happened.
'Why… did it let me live?'
He replayed the moment in his mind again and again. That creature—so powerful it had casually shattered a monster in a single blow—had spared him. It hadn't even tried to kill him. Not once.
If it was like the other beasts in this forest—mindless, bloodthirsty, unrelenting—it should've torn him apart.
But it hadn't.
Why?
He turned back toward the center of the clearing, where the dust had mostly settled. Amid the ruined terrain, a mangled, unrecognizable corpse lay crumpled in a wide crater.
Red fur still clung to its shredded flesh in clumps.
The fox-beast.
The monster that had hunted him like prey now lay reduced to little more than bloodied meat and fractured bone. Its limbs were shattered, its skull pulverized, and its body half-sunk into the cracked earth beneath it.
Kael couldn't look away.
'That wasn't strength. That was something beyond strength.'
His gaze dropped to his own injuries. His body was covered in cuts and bruises. Blood dripped steadily from a gash near his ribs, but none of it compared to the raw brutality the Griffin had just unleashed.
The pain was nothing new—he'd suffered worse back when he was a slave—but still, his instincts screamed that something fundamental had changed.
"Did it… save me?" he whispered, unsure whether he meant it as a question or denial.
There had been no connection. No recognition. The Griffin hadn't acknowledged him—at least, not until Kael's link with the strange particles had intensified.
Was that the trigger?
His thoughts shifted to the barrier—the one he'd passed through before the fox-beast caught up to him. It had been subtle at first, nearly invisible.
He turned, eyes scanning the air just ahead.
The shimmering veil was still there, but it had changed. It was thinner now, nearly transparent, like a mirage clinging to the air. Yet its presence was undeniable.
'I need to find Zarek,' Kael reminded himself, shaking off the ache settling into his limbs.
He staggered forward, toward the wall.
His hand reached out—pressed forward—
And stopped.
His fingers didn't pass through. Instead, they met something solid. Invisible. Immoveable.
He tried again.
Nothing.
He braced both hands and shoved harder, then backed up and ran forward, trying to push his shoulder through. Still nothing. Even closing his eyes and willing himself across didn't work.
It was like the air itself had turned to stone.
A quiet dread settled over him.
"No…"
His breath caught. A slow, bitter realization dawned as his hands slid down the unseen wall.
He hadn't been saved.
He had been caged.