The drone of the cry still sat in their bones.

  It hadn't been a mere sound that had swept across the clearing; it was a tremor that shook Krent to his very core, a reverberation that vibrated deep inside him—as though something ancient had briefly tugged at the world and strung it through him like a bowstring.

  The forest had gone silent again after that. But this silence was no longer the same as before. It wasn't the lurking stillness of a place hiding something—it was the silence that follows a verdict already spoken.

  "He… he looked at me."

  Valeria's voice was barely more than a brittle whisper. She stood perfectly motionless, her gaze fixed on the spot where the immense creature had just bent reality itself. Her fingers trembled so badly she could barely hold the bow. The string vibrated softly beneath her unsteady hand, as if even the wood mistrusted her grip.

  Krent said nothing.

  His heart hammered in a racing, uneven rhythm against his ribs. Blood roared in his ears so loudly that the last crackling of the dead embers reached him only like a distant memory. He forced his gaze to wander across the clearing.

  Empty.

  No shadow dancing between the trees. No massive imprint in the ground. No crushed stalks, no broken roots, no splinters to betray that something had just stood there—something large enough to make the world seem smaller.

  Only the smell remained—not of smoke or flesh, but of cold air, of something… foreign. A metallic tang that clung to the palate with every breath.

  Between the massive trunks of the oaks, a faint, almost imperceptible shimmer still hung, as though the chromatic sky of colours had left a fleeting imprint on existence. And yet there was nothing one could grasp or measure. No scorched traces on the moss, no broken branches where the wings had cut the wind.

  There was only the physical memory of the immense pressure on the skin, and of that sound that had been far more than just a cry.

  Valeria pressed her hand tightly against her ring, as though the cool metal could somehow ground her in reality. Her fingertips were icy, tinged blue beneath the skin. Her breathing came too shallow, too fast. Small white clouds formed before her mouth in the suddenly clammy air.

  "Was that real?"

  She opened her mouth as if to add something, but no words crossed her lips. She only shook her head slowly and pressed her lips together so tightly they formed a thin, pale line.

  Why… why me? stood in her gaze, so clearly that Krent almost heard it.

  Krent forced his shoulders upright. Sweat ran down his back despite the cold, cold as a finger holding him in place. He felt his hands give way briefly, his fingers involuntarily clawing into the grips of the twin blades, as though they needed to make sure something tangible still existed.

  "We report to Meryia. Immediately. You don't ignore something like this."

  He wanted his voice to sound harder than he felt in that moment. Iridium rank, elite, absolute control—that was the image the world expected of them, the foundation their reputation stood on.

  But his body refused to fully accept the lie.

  He remembered the total paralysis too well. The moment when even his thoughts had turned to stone. How his magic—usually so willing, so precise—had felt as though it were hiding inside him.

  Pull yourself together. You have a woman beside you who can barely bring herself to breathe.

  Valeria swallowed. Her throat worked as though fighting against something invisible. "I… I thought for a second I was going to collapse," she whispered at last. She forced herself to lift her gaze and look Krent in the eyes. There wasn't just fear—there was the raw incomprehension of someone who suddenly finds themselves in a game whose rules they don't know.

  "If that was an echo…" Her voice broke on the word. "Why was it so… close?"

  Krent looked into the forest. His eyes scanned the shadows, as if he might catch the trees moving. As if the world would make some mistake he could name.

  "Because something is going terribly wrong here." His voice was quieter, but steadier. "And because we're standing right in the middle of it."

  He didn't wait for an answer. He started moving—not hurried, not panicked. Just fast enough to give the thoughts no room to dig in.

  Valeria followed. Her steps were uncertain at first, as though the ground beneath her could no longer be trusted. Then she forced herself into a rhythm. Breathe in. Breathe out. Step. Step. She held the bow as though it were part of her, but her fingers gave her away.

  They began the journey back.

  But the atmosphere of the forest had fundamentally shifted.

  The air felt heavy now, charged with an electric tension that made the hairs on Krent's neck stand on end. Not like an approaching storm—more like a room in which too much magic had been pressed into too little air. It was as though the forest had been given a new skin, one that didn't quite fit.

  Sometimes the ambient magic grew so dense that Krent could taste it on his tongue like a metallic, damp fog. Then—so abruptly it almost physically hurt—the world went suddenly empty. In those moments, their footsteps on the forest floor sounded strange and hollow, as if they no longer belonged to this forest, perhaps no longer even to this world.

  Once, Valeria instinctively raised her bow when a shadow twitched unnaturally.

  Krent saw it too. Not clearly. Not like a shape. Just a wrong flicker between fern and trunk, a brief kink in the darkness, as though the dark itself had briefly slipped.

  Valeria drew the string back with trembling fingers and prepared a small flame arrow—only a tiny portion of fire, enough to test the darkness, nothing more.

  The spark leapt.

  And died.

  The fire flickered pitifully for a single heartbeat and went out immediately, as though an invisible hand had smothered the spark. The arrow stayed cold. Nothing on it glowed. Only Valeria's gaze lingered on the spot, as if she could see the missing smell of burning.

  She released the string without having fired. Her gaze was empty.

  "It's… gone."

  Krent nodded curtly. He could feel his own mana beneath the skin, the familiar electric tingling—but it was as though it didn't dare step outside. As though someone were holding the air shut before it.

  "I know." His voice sounded raw. "And when it comes back, it'll come back too strong."

  Valeria glanced at him, as if wanting to ask whether that was a joke. But Krent's face left no room for humour.

  They walked on.

  The forest swallowed the last remnants of light for good. Stars were visible only in tiny gaps between the canopy, pale, distant, as though deliberately looking away. The wind shifted. One moment it was warm, as if rising from the earth itself, then icy again, as if it had touched the sky.

  Then came the smell.

  A cold, acrid stench crept into Krent's nose—like scorched stone mixed with the sharp bite of sulphur. Not natural. Not like a campfire. Not like lightning in a storm. Something chemical. Sick.

  Krent froze where he stood.

  Not because he saw something—but because his instincts, honed in countless battles, screamed at him that the next step could be his last. He raised his hand to stop Valeria without taking his eyes off the dense fern ahead.

  Valeria froze instantly. As much as she was trembling—that discipline was written into her flesh.

  Just before the forest's edge—where the starlight should have been guiding their way—there was a rustling.

  It wasn't an animal fleeing.

  It was the sound of someone positioning themselves at leisure.

  "Don't move," Krent breathed.

  His voice was so quiet it was barely more than air. Yet Valeria felt the words like pressure on her skin. She held her breath. A shiver crept slowly down her spine, vertebra by vertebra.

  She could feel it now too.

  Something dark. Abyssally hostile. Not wild like a predator—deliberate like hatred.

  The wind shifted suddenly, as though it had fallen into this world from an entirely different direction. The moss on the massive roots of the oaks looked suddenly grey and lifeless, as though an invisible force had drained every trace of life from it. And somewhere, deep in the dense undergrowth, there came a soft cracking.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  Not the sound of a branch breaking under weight.

  It sounded like a joint stretching after a long stillness.

  The undergrowth erupted.

  A shadow stepped from the darkness, so suddenly it seemed to have materialised rather than walked. Horns jutted black and sharply curved from a narrow, pallid skull. The eyes held an unnatural spiral iris that stared in a toxic, pulsing green and violet—as though the gaze itself were turning, boring, scraping.

  Tattered, leathery wings unfolded with a dry sound. Not majestic. Not powerful. More like old cloth pulled over bones. A repulsive, far too wide grin twisted the creature's visage.

  A demon.

  The air around it was wrong. It didn't crackle—it reeked. Sulphur, scorched stone, and beneath it something sweet, as though death were a perfume.

  Valeria's eyes went wide with horror. Her lips moved before her voice arrived—and when it came, it was a strained, barely credible whisper.

  "A… Greater Demon…"

  "Damn."

  Krent shoved himself in front of her with a sharp, jerking motion. Not heroic. Instinctive. His twin blades slid into his hands, and blue sparks flickered restlessly along the edges—but they seemed weaker than usual, irregular, as if the magic were stumbling.

  His fingers cramped around the grips. The leather wrap creaked under the pressure.

  This was no ordinary dungeon beast. No animal fighting for territory or food.

  In this creature's aura lay a will.

  A malicious will.

  And that will smelled of sulphur and death.

  The demon laughed.

  A sound like rusty chains being slowly dragged across rough stone. It didn't just vibrate in the air—it vibrated in Krent's teeth. Its sheer presence pressed the air from their lungs, as though the world itself trembled beneath its gaze.

  Krent felt his knees trying to buckle under the sheer weight of that malice.

  But he forced himself with everything he had to stay standing.

  I can't falter. Not in front of Valeria.

  Slowly, almost languidly, the demon leaned forward. Its grin widened, as if it were elastic. The glowing spiral eyes were full of horror, but also filled with a deep, sneering mockery—as though it had seen them a thousand times before and knew exactly what sounds they would make when they broke.

  Then a single word hissed across its pale lips, sharp as a blade:

  "Play?"

  For one heartbeat, everything was utterly still.

  Then the world tipped.

  The demon's scream was not merely a sound—it was a tear in reality. Black lightning, laced with flickering, unnatural flames, tore through the night. They shredded the surrounding trees as though the centuries-old oaks had never existed, turning wood into flying splinters.

  The ground shook. Air became pressure. Krent felt his ears ache, as though the scream wasn't being heard but pressed.

  "Cover!" Krent roared.

  Valeria leapt back in a desperate bound, throwing her arms up as though they could shield her from the wooden shrapnel. Leaves, bark, earth—everything flew. A tree beside them burst open, as though someone had detonated it from within.

  But Krent charged forward.

  He knew that fleeing wasn't an option. Not in these close quarters. Not with this presence at their backs. Not with Valeria.

  The twin blades flashed in the darkness. Sparks danced around him, pale blue, as he moved through debris and dust. His stride wasn't reckless—it was calculated.

  He fought the way he had learned: with the cool precision of an Iridium adventurer.

  One step set deliberately too deep, one slash intentionally pulled short—only to break the opponent's rhythm. He forced his body into sequences he had practised a thousand times. Not because they were guaranteed to work here. But because he had nothing else to hold onto.

  The second cut came lightning-fast from below.

  The third was a targeted thrust that would have forced any normal monster to abandon its guard or dodge.

  But the demon didn't simply dodge.

  It didn't move like an opponent of flesh and blood; it was like the wind itself. Not visible in its movement, only in what it left behind: a tug in the air, a shadow in the wrong place, a shimmer that Krent's eyes accepted as "position" a beat too late.

  It was as though the demon had already seen the strike long before Krent had even thought it.

  Krent cut into nothing.

  The blade whistled. Magic crackled weakly. And then the demon was suddenly somewhere else—close enough that Krent could smell the sulphur, that he could hear the wet sound of that grin.

  With a speed that overwhelmed Krent's senses, the demon's fist came crashing down.

  The ground beneath Krent shattered with a deafening crack. Earth and stones splintered in every direction. A crater ate into the moss. Krent leapt aside—just early enough that the impact didn't hit him directly.

  Even so, the shockwave tore through his legs, up into his hips. It felt as though the earth itself had struck him.

  "Fast," the demon laughed, and its voice dripped with deep, lacerating scorn. "But so weak."

  Krent clenched his teeth so hard he tasted chalk in his mouth. His breath came in bursts. He forced his shoulders down, forced his arms to hold steady.

  Steady. If you get too fast, you get sloppy. If you get sloppy, you're dead.

  He swung again. Not at the body. At the space the demon would need to use if it wanted to dodge. A cut that punished retreat. A cut that closed the angle.

  The demon glided away.

  Krent felt a draft across the back of his hand—and knew it had been the fist that could have shattered him. He snapped the blades up, crossed them, fed magic into them as best he could. A brief flash leapt across the steel.

  The demon's aura tore at it, as though it were a viscous fog forcing itself between Krent and the world.

  Krent pressed the attack. A feint. A step left, the blade only half committed to draw the eye—then the second blade at the last moment in the other direction, aimed at the throat.

  A normal opponent would have reacted. Somehow.

  The demon only smiled.

  And then it was gone again.

  Krent felt his heart hammering against his ribs. He felt the burning in his forearms. The magic in his blades flickered, reluctant, and part of him wanted to scream, because this wasn't supposed to happen.

  I have to push it back. Just far enough so that Valeria—

  He heard Valeria's breathing behind him. That quiet, controlled drawing in of air, as though she were clinging to her discipline with the last of her strength. He knew she had raised the bow. He knew it without looking, because he knew her.

  She was desperately searching for a weak point—throat, eyes, joints.

  But when she tried to draw the string, the magic in the air flared again. Too dense. Too wild. Uncontrollable. It was as though the demon's aura itself were pulling at her flame, twisting it, devouring it.

  A lone spark leapt from her arrow, shot uncontrollably in the wrong direction, and merely scorched the bark of an overturned oak. A pathetic, laughable scorch mark—in a fight that was devouring everything.

  Valeria froze. Her eyes went wide, but not with fear.

  With realisation.

  The demon slowly turned its head toward her, as if this pitiful attempt had genuinely amused it.

  "Oh." A soft rasp. "Another toy."

  Krent felt something clench in his gut.

  No.

  He tried to turn. Tried to throw himself between them. Tried to do anything to make the distance between demon and Valeria his responsibility again.

  But he was a heartbeat too late.

  The demon's fist struck him in the chest.

  It wasn't a blow. It was a wall. A force born not of muscle but of malice. Pain exploded like liquid fire through his upper body. Krent heard the distinct crack of his ribs—a dry, brutal sound that robbed him of breath for a moment before the pain even arrived.

  He staggered.

  A second hit came immediately.

  Devastating.

  He was hurled through the air like a ragdoll. Pieces of armour splintered away, metal tore apart under the immense force. Dark blood sprayed into the darkness, wetting the withered leaves as though they had always been meant for it.

  Krent hit the ground hard.

  The remaining air was cruelly ripped from his lungs. His vision blurred, stars burned into his sight—not the clear symbols of a ranking system, but those sparkling lights that pain leaves behind when it's too great for words.

  He tried to breathe.

  Only a hoarse rattle came.

  His fingers clawed into the cold ground. Moss tore beneath his nails. Earth stuck to his palm. His body wanted to give in. Wanted to stay down. Wanted to shut everything off.

  Get up. Get up. Not now.

  "Krent!"

  Valeria's scream tore through the night.

  Krent lay on the ground, struggling to breathe, as blood ran from a gaping wound at his side. He felt the warmth of it—and the cold that followed immediately, as his body understood that something was open that shouldn't be.

  His vision fought. His eyelids were heavy. The world became a grey fog, flickering at the edges.

  He held her outline in view, barely.

  Don't… cry… run…

  His lips shaped the words, but no sound emerged. Only another rattle that degraded him.

  The demon took a slow step toward him.

  Savouring it.

  Relishing every moment.

  Each of its steps made the leaves tremble beneath its claws, as though the forest itself were afraid to breathe too loudly.

  "You wanted to protect," the creature rasped. Its voice sounded like metal being drawn across bone. "Sweet."

  Krent felt the pressure of its presence like a hand on his ribcage, as though the demon didn't merely want to hurt him but to own him.

  He tried to raise the blades. His arms barely obeyed. A blue spark jumped, weak, almost insulting.

  The demon laughed again.

  Then something happened that Krent didn't immediately understand.

  Not to the demon.

  To Valeria.

  It was as though something inside her tore.

  She simply let the bow fall.

  The heavy wood struck the ground with a dull thud—a sound that held something final in the silence. No hesitation. No deliberation. As though the bow had suddenly become a foreign object that no longer belonged to her.

  A loud crack rang across the clearing as she jerked her head sharply to one side. Not like a person loosening their neck. More like an animal aligning itself before the leap. Her muscles tensed to their limit. An unnatural vibration emanated from her, so fine it was felt more than seen.

  The magic in the air… changed.

  For Krent, it remained a viscous fog that choked him, that made his lightning energy stumble.

  But around Valeria, it was suddenly different: it was as though all mana, all flow of the world, had dried up for her. As though the connection had simply been severed.

  Her red eyes began to burn with a dark, controlled fury that had nothing left to do with fire.

  It wasn't an exhaustion of her powers. Not a lack of mana. It felt more as though she were actively pushing the world's magic away. As though she were saying: Not you. Not today.

  What… are you doing…? Krent thought, but his body wouldn't let him speak.

  Valeria breathed in once, deeply.

  And with that single breath, she no longer drew on the world's magic.

  She drew blood.

  Krent tasted the iron in the air before he truly understood what was happening. His own blood, which had seeped into the greedy earth, suddenly began to tremble, as though following an invisible, commanding rhythm.

  It was not a gentle flowing.

  It was an order.

  Thin, dark red threads crept across the grey moss and the damp earth. At first slowly, like searching veins. Then faster, more purposeful. They gathered at Valeria's hand, condensed, grew thicker, heavier, glossier.

  The demon paused.

  For the first time since it had appeared, its smile was not just mockery.

  It was interest.

  The threads took shape. Layer upon layer. Like coagulated life being forced into a form. A blade emerged—not of metal, but of depth. Of warmth. Of something that had been alive.

  It shimmered in a menacing red, as though it had been forged from the core of a heart.

  The demon grinned broadly. Viscous saliva dripped from its maw onto the ground.

  "Play?"

  Valeria's lips twisted into something that was no longer a smile. It was a mask of pure fury. Her voice was deeper now, sharper, as though a second, ancient breath were speaking through her.

  "Yes… then let's play."

  A single beat of the heart—and she was gone from where she had stood.

  Not run. Not jumped.

  Gone.

  In the next instant, the ground directly beneath the demon's feet exploded. Earth burst in a massive geyser, blood sprayed upward, and the sneering grin on the demon's face froze in an instant.

  "What—?"

  Valeria now stood close before it.

  So close that Krent could almost see the tension between them—like an invisible cord about to snap at any moment. The pulsing blood blade lay in her hand, and a vicious, red light burned in her eyes.

  Individual strands of her silver hair were turning deep red, as though the blood itself were soaking through from the roots. It wasn't a pretty effect. No elegance. It was a mark.

  Valeria snarled.

  A sound that came from deeper in her throat than anything Krent had ever heard from her. Raw. Unmasked. Like an animal that no longer asks but takes.

  "The way you played with my husband…"

  She was no longer the elegant huntress Valeria.

  She was a berserker who had finally smelled blood.