Fantasy Anthroterra

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan’s breath caught the moment Dogman’s hand moved for the dagger.

“Wait—!”

It came out sharper than he meant, but the urgency forced it forward. He stepped closer, not between them exactly, but far enough to slow Dogman’s reach. His voice dropped, low but clear.

“That’s not it. That’s not what we’re supposed to get.”

His ears twitched again, but this time not to listen—just to steady himself.

“It’s not a hyenakin. Not the same kind. Not kin. Look at it—gait’s wrong, limb structure, cranial shape… it’s feral. Wild-type. The scroll said a hyenakin tooth, not a hyena tooth. They’d know. The DNA wouldn’t match. It wouldn’t count.”

He let the words settle, eyes still fixed on the creature.

It snarled weakly, then choked on the sound. Its body sagged again, flanks heaving. The thick violet residue around the wound clung unnaturally to its fur.

Dylan didn’t move for a moment.

“I remember reading something about these,” he said quietly. “Some old field reports… edge-of-theory stuff. A long time ago—like, pre-scroll, pre-Lumenreach even—there were notes about how some ferals were… connected. Like, ancestor species. Like kin started out more feral, but something changed. Evolved. Shifted.”

He crouched slightly, not moving forward, just observing—studying.

“This one’s not like the others, but it’s still… related. Just a different thread.”

His gaze dropped to the wound. His brow furrowed.

“That cut, though…”

He trailed off. The gash wasn’t torn—it was too precise. Too unnatural. It didn’t bleed—it leaked, like something had carved into the body and left residue behind. And the violet hue—it clung like something alive.

“I don’t think this was a fight,” he whispered. “It’s not… normal. This isn’t from claws.”

He swallowed hard, ears twitching again as his stance shifted—more defensive now, hooves edging back with a subtle scrape through the moss. His eyes flicked nervously toward the trees, then back to the creature, then to the brush beyond.

“Whatever did that…”

His voice caught.

He looked over his shoulder, as if expecting something to be watching already.

“…it’s still out here. Somewhere close.”

There was no calm in his tone now—just tightness behind the words, the kind of fear that didn’t shout, just clung. He didn’t draw his weapon. Not yet. But his posture had changed.

He was listening for everything. And he didn’t like what he didn’t hear.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Dogman didn’t withdraw right away.

His claw stayed on the dagger’s hilt, thumb braced, jaw set like stone polished by habit. His eyes flicked from Dylan, to the creature, back to Dylan—and narrowed, not in malice, but skepticism worn like armor.

“You’re splitting hairs,” he said, flatly. “Kin, not kin—it’s got the fur, it’s got the fangs, and it’s not about to take a written language exam. The scroll wants a tooth. This thing’s got teeth. Simple.”

He took a step forward, slow but deliberate. The feral wheezed, but didn’t move.

“Look, I get it,” Dogman added, gesturing vaguely. “You’re twitchy, you’re trying to do it by the book. Real noble. But this is our first assignment, and they spawned us in the same area as it."

His gaze dropped to the wound—not with reverence, but calculation. The same way one might appraise a broken pipe or a rusted-out engine: curiously, but not sentimentally.

“…It’s weird, yeah,” he admitted. “Doesn’t smell right either. But weird gets archived, too. That’s what earns us a second day.”

He glanced back at Dylan again, expression unreadable for a beat. Not quite angry. But not convinced.

“You gonna write to the Enclave and explain how your gut feelings overruled their instructions?” he asked. “Because I don’t think that gets us a reschedule.”

Simon, meanwhile, stood half a pace behind them both, caught mid-breath.

His eyes were wide—not with fear, but uncertainty. He looked at the feral, then at the wound, then at the strange fluid still leaking slow and syrupy onto the moss. He didn’t speak at first.

Then, cautiously:

“…What if it is something else?” he asked, ears tipping back. “I mean—it doesn’t feel right. And Dylan’s kinda got that whole…” He gestured vaguely at Dylan’s ears. “...living antenna thing going on.”

---

​

Lumenreach Recall Check

As someone who’s studied late into the steam-lit nights for Lumenreach exams, Dylan might recognize the strange violet residue leaking from the creature’s wound.

If Dylan would like to attempt a Recall Check, you may roll a D4:

Roll a 3 or 4: Dylan remembers something useful—an academic reference, archived report, or obscure discussion—that might help identify or understand the nature of the substance.

Roll a 1 or 2: The detail remains fuzzy or eludes memory entirely for now.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan placeholder

 

[scantilycladsnail]

In certain fragmented timelines recorded across unstable scroll dives, violet residue has been identified in proximity to sites touched by primordial influence. This residue—neither elemental nor aetheric—defies conventional arcane taxonomy. It is not alchemical, nor biological. It clings to wounds and environments like memory itself—alive, shifting, and slow to fade.

According to reconstructed mythologies from the Forbidden Epochs, this substance is linked to a group of entities known only as the Seven Shadows.

These beings are not elementals. Not spirits. Not gods in the traditional pantheon. They predate Lumenreach taxonomy entirely—anomalies born not of natural forces, but of mortal excess. They did not inherit magic. They became it. Where elemental magic obeys laws—structured, finite, bound to predictable roots like fire, air, and time—the Shadows represent a rupture in that system. A primal rewriting.

Each Shadow embodies a singular, corrupted drive:
Wrath. Greed. Lust. Gluttony. Sloth. Envy. Pride.

They were not summoned. They emerged.

Legends say that the Shadows did not shape the world as the Primordials once did—but they shaped those who would shape it. Kin who came after inherited fragments of their hunger, their will, their chaos. Some scroll theorists believe that certain bloodlines—particularly those resistant to elemental calibration—may carry dormant markers of this influence.

The presence of violet residue is viewed as a signpost: either the creature has been touched by a Shadow’s will… or something near it has.

No recorded instance of direct contact with a Shadow has resulted in survivable transcription. Their forms, when glimpsed, are wrong. Their magic doesn’t cast—it infects.

The known rule among deep-field archivists remains:

Where violet stains the living, something old is stirring.

---

The jungle held its breath.

No birdsong now. No rustling leaves. Even the wind, so brazen moments ago, seemed to stall—caught behind some ancient instinct that knew when not to move. Moss beneath their feet felt damp and alert, as though it too had learned to listen. And somewhere between the bark and the mist, between heartbeat and silence, the air thickened. Grew sweet. Spoiled.

It didn’t announce itself.

The presence simply was.

A wrongness that pressed against the soul like a full stomach just before it turns—bloat tipping into dread. Invisible at first. Then undeniable.

The scent came first—faint, but curdled. Sweet rot. Like fruit left too long in the sun, sugared decay smothering something still alive beneath. It crept into the clearing, around their ankles, in their lungs, until it clung to the back of the throat like a memory that wouldn’t leave.

From the brush to the north, something stirred.

The vines bowed—not snapped, not broken, just parted as if something deserving had passed through. Something heavy and granted passage. Footsteps, soft but damp, sloshed through unseen puddles with a cadence too slow for walking, too steady for stalking.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan didn’t respond right away.

He stood just off to the side, shoulders drawn in, fingers flexing slightly at his sides as Dogman spoke. His ears stayed angled forward, but the longer Dogman talked, the flatter they pressed. It wasn’t anger—not really—but something close. Something quieter. A pressure building under the ribs. The kind of feeling you weren’t allowed to voice because it’d just be waved off as nerves or softness. Because that’s just how Dogman is, right?

Dylan’s tail twitched. Once.

He inhaled—sharp, through his nose—like he was going to say something, like he might actually push back.

Then he stopped.

Instead, he glanced at the creature again. The wound. The residue.

And that’s when it clicked.

His eyes widened—just slightly—and his ears lifted, rotating toward the strange violet smear with renewed focus. He stepped forward half a pace, slowly, as his brain flipped through pages of half-remembered lectures and archival footnotes. Then, softly, more to himself at first:

“…It’s not blood,” he murmured. “It’s not even real fluid.”

His voice took on a different tone now—uncertain, yes, but laced with awe. Like something rare had just crawled out of a textbook and died in front of them.

“I remember this. I—I read about this once. Only in deep scroll dives, though. The unstable ones. The violet residue—it shows up around wounds like this, or… places where the rules bend.”

He looked at both of them now, eyes darting between Simon and Dogman. “It’s not alchemy. It’s not aether. It’s not anything we know how to classify. They think it’s connected to the Shadows.”

He swallowed once, throat tight.

“The Seven. Wrath. Greed. Pride. All of them. Not spirits, not gods. They just… happened. Like reality cracked open and something awful crawled through. They don’t cast spells. They don’t follow magical laws. They infect.”

His voice faltered as the words settled.

“…If that thing’s leaking this… then it wasn’t hurt by an animal. Or a weapon. It was touched by something wrong.”

Then—

The smell hit.

It slithered in on the next breath—sweet and curdled, like overripe fruit mashed into rot. Dylan recoiled before he even registered it, hand coming up over his muzzle, face crumpling into a grimace.

He turned, fast—ears twitching hard now, rotating toward the north where the vines had just shifted. His whole frame stilled, every inch of him stretched taut as the brush bowed.

Slosh.

A slow, wet step.

His pupils narrowed.

“…We need to hide,” he said, low and urgent, barely more than a breath. “Now.”

He took a step back, not waiting for them to agree, eyes already scanning the thick fern clusters off the trail for something—anything—to duck behind.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

The air folded in on itself.

Sound did not precede the appearance. There was no great crack of magic, no warping of the veil. One blink, and he wasn’t there. The next—he was.

Gluttony stepped forward into the clearing like a thought you couldn’t unthink.

He towered over Simon, and not because of height alone—though he was tall. Distorted. Stretched in ways that defied ligaments. His limbs were wrong, impossibly long, fingers tapering into twitching tips that scraped the earth even as he stood upright. The fur that coated him was coarse and matted, patchy in places, oozing with faint traces of the same violet residue that marked the feral's wound. His feet dragged behind him like he’d forgotten how they worked. Or maybe they just weren’t meant to walk.

His mouth was too wide. The lower jaw hung like it had been dislocated on purpose, exposing teeth—rows of them—stacked like broken gravestones, others cracked and curved.

The stench hit hard—thick and syrupy, sugar poured over death. Simon stumbled back a step, a whimper caught in his throat, shoulders hunching as if trying to shrink from the force of that smile alone.

Dogman didn’t move. He couldn’t. His claws had already tightened around the hilt of his weapon, but he hadn’t drawn it. His breath had shallowed, his jaw clenched so tightly it clicked.

And then it spoke.

A voice like parchment left in rain.

“My my...” it crooned, the sound crackling with age, too gentle, too interested. “No need to be so… hasty, friends...” The voice came from deeper somehow, like it was bubbling up from its gut.

It took a step forward. Wet. Dragging.

“You smell… different than the usual catch…”

It inhaled through its chest. The ribs pulsed. Something within it squirmed.

“…And you look it too…”

The malformed hyenakin tilted its head with a twitchy jolt. Not curious. Intrigued. Studying. A butcher deciding where the meat began.

“In fact…”

Its fingers flexed.

“…I don’t recognize any of your forms.”

Gluttony stood wrong and patient, like a hunger waiting for permission. Like it could, but didn’t need to. Like it was tasting them through the air already.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan didn’t breathe at first.

His lungs forgot how.

The moment Gluttony stepped into the clearing, something inside him twisted—hard and primal, like instinct had grabbed his ribs and shoved. His ears flattened with a twitch. His knees locked.

The stench rolled in—sweet, wrong, living. He gagged without sound, one hand covering his muzzle like it could block whatever had already invaded his senses.

He didn’t move.

Not until Gluttony spoke.

That voice—it shouldn’t have had words. It shouldn’t have known how to form them. But it did, and the sound of it cracked through Dylan’s chest like a wet book tearing down the spine.

He turned his head—slow, mechanical—to glance at Simon.

Simon looked smaller than Dylan had ever seen him. Folded inward. Shaking.

Then Dogman—still as stone. Breathing like he’d forgotten how to exhale. Claws locked on the weapon but unmoving.

Dylan’s heart slammed once behind his ribs.

He turned back to Gluttony—and it was looking at him now.

Studying him.

Knowing.

Dylan’s voice cracked before it even formed.

“A-ha—” he started, the sound halfway between a laugh and a breath and a broken hiccup. “O-oh, d-don’t mind us, we’re, uh—just, y’know, a scroll group! Little—little morning stroll, bit of fresh air, just—hah—taking in the jungle...”

His hand fluttered up in a limp, useless half-wave.

His body shook all the way through it.

One foot moved back.

Then the other.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Don’t run.

His throat tightened. His eyes flicked back toward the violet wound behind them, the feral curled in the moss, and the memory of that residue—Shadow-born, primal, wrong—lit up behind his eyes like a scream without sound.

This was one of them.

It had to be.

The shape, the smell, the way it was looking at them.

He didn’t finish his sentence.

Didn’t need to.

His body had already started bracing for flight.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

The creature’s smile didn’t shift—it couldn’t shift, not really, not with that mouth—but something behind it changed.

Interest.

A ripple beneath the stillness. Not quite amusement. Not quite malice.

Just... hunger.

Gluttony’s elongated body tilted, spine popping as he leaned forward slightly—like a marionette pulled at the wrong angle. One of his long fingers curled up beside his own chin with exaggerated gentleness, bone clicking softly.

“A scroll...” he echoed, tasting the word like a foreign fruit. “My my... such strange little syllables. What a curious sound. Sccrroooollll.”

He rolled it again, slower this time, wet and crooked.

“Ssscroll... group,” he repeated, as though trying it on for size. “How charming...”

Then came the laugh.

A breathy, papery exhale. Barely sound at all. More like steam escaping from a corpse.

“Fresh air,” he crooned. “Yes... yes, I remember the idea of that. Air, untouched. Before it was seasoned.”

He took another step forward.

No threat in the movement.

Just patience.

“But tell me, clever little walking meal,” he rasped, voice trembling with interest, “why would you come here, all dressed up in your lovely skins, carrying thoughts I don’t recognize, speaking in ways that don’t belong?”

He tilted his head again, further this time—too far. A tendon snapped somewhere deep in his neck, and he didn’t seem to notice.

“You say you’re not part of this... jungle.”
A pause.
“But you know how to name it.”
Another pause.
“You say you’re just passing by...”
“...but you carry the scent of reasons.”

The creature sniffed once. Loud. Wet.

Then again. A third time.

Something inside his chest moved. Slowly. Like a snake shifting in a broken drawer.

“I could taste your name if I wanted to,” he murmured, more intimate now. “I could drink your memory like soup and see where you’ve been.”

He paused, then smiled wider.

“But you’re funny,” he whispered. “So let’s not ruin the broth just yet.”

He turned his eyeless face toward Simon.

“Do the soft one’s bones click when he dances? I’d like to hear.”

Then Dogman.

“And the lizardkin—mm. Sour. But maybe it would surprise me.”

His body swayed, a little too like a puppet with a loosened string.

Then back to Dylan.

“But you. You with the listening bones. You smell like questions.”

A beat.

Long. Cold.

“And I’m getting... very hungry for answers.”

Gluttony’s movements stilled.

Dogman’s claws flexed, and the spell snapped to life—not flashy, not bright, but visceral.

Spell Level:	Spell Name	Spell Description
1	Toxic Metamorphosis	The caster transforms into a creature infused with poison, gaining increased attack power and toxic resistance.

A sickly shimmer rippled down his spine, scales sharpening, feathers darkening to an oil-slick sheen. The swamp reek of Lilyholt clung to him now—brine, rot, and caustic bloom. A shimmer of green fog curled from his shoulders like breath from a predator’s grin.

The hyenakin entity flared one nostril. His tongue—long, bone-colored—slid once along the edge of his ruined teeth.

Dogman bared his own.

“Yeah,” he said, voice low and rough. “We’re all like this. Me, them. Three flavors of poison stew. Go ahead. Take a bite. Find out if your insides survive the seasoning.”

He didn’t blink. His eyes didn’t flinch.

“Simon foams up like a tidepool if you cut him wrong. Dylan’s worse. He’s got that slow venom—the kind that clogs your thoughts. I’m the spicy one. Real burn on the way down. But you’d choke on all three before you got full.”

Simon’s ears twitched.

He opened his mouth to object—because none of that was technically true—but Dogman whipped one finger behind his back in a cutting shh motion that made the labrador visibly rethink every life choice that led to this moment.

Simon closed his mouth.

Swallowed.

Tried very hard to look toxic.

Gluttony didn’t speak.

He didn’t need to.

He sniffed again. Twice.

Then cocked his head slowly, joints creaking.

“Lies,” he said softly. Not angry. Not even disappointed. Just… curious. “But dressed well.”

A flicker of something passed behind his expression.

A different kind of hunger.

“You’ve tasted fear before,” he murmured toward Dogman. “And learned to mask it with vinegar. I like that. It gives a nice bite.”

But he didn’t lunge.

Didn’t move.

He just watched.

Dogman’s stance didn’t waver.

But his claws curled tighter.

And somewhere, deep in the trees—the jungle breathed again. (WRATH CUE, he had tracked gluttony here from the great war... which had actually consisted of him versus the shadows and the virtues, needing to eliminate them; Zru'gar was never the focus)

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan couldn’t breathe.

He didn’t know what to say. What to do. His paws stayed rooted to the moss like the jungle had grown around them. His shoulders trembled with every inhale, arms locked against his own sides as if his body was trying to collapse inward and vanish.

Dogman was ready to fight. Of course he was. Always was. But Dylan didn’t trust him.

Not here. Not now.

Not with this.

He stole a glance toward Simon—wide-eyed, paralyzed—and then back to Gluttony, who was watching him with that hollow curiosity. A grin carved from absence. An itch in the mind.

Then Dylan’s ears twitched. Not forward, not toward Gluttony—but back. Hard.

Something else.

Something else was coming.

It wasn’t scent. It wasn’t sound. It was pressure. A shiver that walked down the spine before the air even shifted. Dylan’s hands clenched involuntarily, fingers curling toward the backs of his own arms.

And then—

WHAM.

The jungle detonated.

An obsidian blade the size of a harpoon burst through the brush like a divine spear, trailing arcs of violet light behind it as it CRACKED into the tree trunk just beside Gluttony. Wood split down the center with a moaning scream, violet veins spiderwebbing through the bark.

It didn’t miss.

It wasn’t meant to.

“OH… GLUTTONY!”

The voice hit like a landslide—booming, guttural, a sound that scraped the inside of your bones. It rang with laughter and hate and ancient violence, the kind of voice that didn’t echo because it didn’t need to. It stayed.

Chains yanked taut with a metallic snarl, and the blade ripped backward—flesh, bark, and glowing mist trailing in its wake.

A claw caught it.

And Wrath stepped forward.

The ground shuddered.

He was massive. Not just tall—wrongly large, a creature of cracked power and predator posture. A hunched anthro form that melded lupine fury and hyena chaos. His skeleton helm snarled in silence, with glowing violet light burning in its sockets like eyes that had watched the world end. Veins of jagged purple light split down his limbs like molten scars. His fur was ash-black, thick and matted, bones hanging like trophies across his chest and arms, each etched with symbols too old for language.

Where he walked, the moss smoked. Branches browned and curled. A trail of scorched jungle followed him.

“DID YOU FORGET, FATASS? YOU’RE GLUTTONY. YOU THOUGHT YOU COULD RUN FROM ME?”

His breath steamed from jagged teeth. His grin was feral.

Wrath didn’t look at them—Dylan, Simon, Dogman. They weren’t part of this.

Not yet.

He looked at Gluttony.

“Wow,” Wrath laughed, one hand wide as he gestured mockingly. “SEE? YOU CAN’T EVEN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE WITHOUT HAVING TO STOP FOR A DAMN MEAL.”

His laughter was thunder. It rolled over the clearing, a mockery of joy.

“I AM THE TERROR YOU CANNOT HIDE!”

He stepped again. The air warped around him.

“In this hunt? THERE’S NO ESCAPE!!”

And then—he howled. A long, spiraling sound that tore through the trees, sending birds scattering from their nests, the canopy itself shivering.

He snapped forward, lifting a thick cord around his neck—a necklace. Bone tokens carved into the likenesses of entities. Of gods. Of monsters.

“Pride? GONE.” He shook one.

“Envy? OH HO HO, THEY BROKE UNDER ME.”

Another step. His claws dug furrows into the earth.

“Temperance?” He held up the bone. “TEMPERANCE SCREAMED.”

Then the last.

“I AM WRATH. DESTROYER. SCOURGE OF ALL THAT HIDES IN LIES. I DO NOT REST. I DO NOT FORGIVE.”

He tilted his head slowly, that skeletal grin never fading.

“And YOU—BAHHAHAHAH” Wrath shouted, voice crackling like thunder, “—you slippery little gut-sack, you thought the jungle would hide you? I’m here to burn it down. HAHAHAH! BAHAHHAHAH!!!!”

Dylan’s breath came in short, shallow gasps. His ears were flat, his knees locking just to keep from collapsing.

What… was this?

Wrath?

This… thing?

He remembered the scroll. 'Low-risk.' They said low-risk.

Dylan’s breath caught somewhere behind his teeth. His thoughts tangled in static.

Quick stroll, he thought numbly. Lovely jungle day. Nothing horrifying. Just—just breathe. Don’t collapse.

His legs locked. His throat wouldn’t open. He didn’t move.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Gluttony did not move.

He didn’t breathe. He didn’t blink. His warped body hunched ever so slightly—not in a crouch, not in preparation.

In terror.

The smile evaporated from his twisted face like breath off a blade. What remained wasn’t rage, or hunger, or madness. It was something older.

Recognition.

“…You weren’t supposed to find me,” he rasped, voice hoarse now. “Not yet.”

His elongated limbs twitched, clawed fingers flexing against the moss as if tasting the earth for a way to vanish into it. His mouth stayed open, twitching at the corners—but the grin never returned. Only that gaping hole of breathless disbelief.

The jungle steam wreathed his form like rot trying to hide, but it was useless.

Wrath had come.

The harpoon—no, the blade—wasn’t just violence. It was declaration. It was a herald’s scream, wrapped in obliteration.

“I wasn’t part of it,” Gluttony stammered, breath hitching in the back of his malformed throat. “I left. I left the fold—I hid. I never sided with them. With Pride, with Lust, with those vain damn gods—!”

He stepped back.

Once.

Twice.

Not toward the students. He didn’t even look at them now. They had ceased to exist. They were ants. Background.

This was ancient.

“I didn’t fight,” Gluttony hissed. “I fed! I never tried to be a god, I feasted! They crowned themselves—not me!”

But even as he said it, his voice trembled. His limbs shivered. That massive, stretched jaw hung open like a wound.

“You’ve killed the others,” he whispered. “I heard. I smelled it—in the marrow! In the threads!”

He wheezed once.

“You were one of us.” His gaze twitched up toward Wrath’s face—toward that helm, that seething light. “You were our rage. The weapon we all shared. You bled for us.”

A beat.

Then: “You were supposed to burn the Virtues.”

The word hung in the air like a curse. A filthy splinter spat from the mouth.

“I hated them more than you ever could,” Gluttony growled now—low, broken, trembling. “Those gleaming bastards with their holy chains and righteous eyes—I would’ve swallowed every one if you’d just let me!”

But there was no defiance left in his frame.

Only the creeping realization.

That none of it mattered.

Wrath had made his choice.

“You’re not purging,” Gluttony whispered. “You’re erasing.”

His back hit a tree. His malformed legs shook.

And for the first time in a thousand years—

Gluttony didn’t look hungry.

He looked small.

Dogman didn’t wait for a signal.

The moment Gluttony hit the tree, quivering like an overstuffed corpse finally realizing the oven was on, Dogman moved—a flash of sleek shadow and instinct. He grabbed Dylan by the back of the collar and yanked, not roughly, but urgently, hauling him away from the clearing’s center like someone dragging a candle out of a hurricane.

Simon followed just as fast—but peeled the opposite direction, skimming through the ferns with a surprisingly quiet gait for someone shaking in every limb. He didn’t yell. He didn’t bark. Just hissed, “Here—here—c’mon!” from behind the thick roots of a mossed-out banyan tree.

“Stay low,” Dogman snapped in a whisper, already crouched nearby, tail still, claws pressed flat into the jungle loam. “And when I say run—run.”

Simon peeked over a gnarled root, eyes wide, ears pinned.

“No, don't.”

Dogman’s head turned sharply, one brow already lifting in disdain.

Simon whispered again, “I’m serious. If that thing gets torn apart—and we bolt? He’s gonna think we know something. Or worse—he’ll decide we’re next.”

Dogman sneered. “Yeah? Or he’ll just decide to eat us first if we sit here and play moss statue.”

Simon’s jaw set, "Also, look at his necklace and clothing, those look like Hyenakin teeth, at least some of them do, what if he's who is supposed to give them to us? What if this is the test?"

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan froze, crouched low behind the gnarled root, breath caught in his throat like something alive. His pulse thudded so hard it echoed in his ears, but still—he heard everything. Wrath’s snarling voice. Gluttony’s shuddering breath. Simon’s whisper. Dogman’s tension.

His claws dug into the moss.

Run.

That word flared through his chest like a second heartbeat. His whole body itched with it, burned with it. He glanced at Dogman—coiled, ready, muscles twitching like a lit match waiting for the wind. It would be so easy to follow. So stupidly easy.

But something held him.

He didn’t know what it was at first. Just that it was heavier than fear.

Older.

Dylan turned his head—just slightly. Gluttony. Wrath. The chains. The bones. The... history.

Something about this wasn’t just wrong. It was ancient. Pre-wrong.

His stomach twisted, but his mind—his mind caught fire.

Briggs. The research. The unstable scrolls. The whole reason Dylan was pulled in. His thoughts churned with a thousand half-finished papers and redacted records and… and this. This. Right here. Whatever this was. He’d never been able to help Briggs—not really—not with the names that mattered. But maybe—

Maybe this was something else.

He swallowed hard. Quiet. Shaking. But still.

“No,” he said softly. Then again—firmer. “No. We stay.”

He didn’t even realize how loud it had been until the silence swallowed it.

He looked at Dogman.

"What—so now you want to run? Thought boldness was your thing."

The words were out before he could stop them. Dylan blinked, visibly catching himself, his ears twitching in discomfort.

"I—I just mean… maybe staying put makes more sense right now."
He ducked a little further behind the root. Shoulders tense. Voice lower now.

“Just stay quiet.”

He didn’t say it again.

He didn’t need to.

---

Wrath groaned loud enough to shake the leaves loose from a tree.

“OOOHHH MAAAN—WOULD YOU SHUT UP!” he barked, voice cracking like thunder off broken stone. “I swear, every century it’s the same whiny meat-drip with you.”

He took a step forward, dragging his massive obsidian blade behind him like a plow through bones. Then, raising it high—glowing etchwork blazing with violet light—he slammed it down into the earth.

BOOM.

The jungle bucked. Moss hissed. A ripple of heat and dark energy pulsed outward, making even the light around him flicker in protest. Purple flame rose in a hissing wreath where the blade struck—dramatic, taunting, loud.

He yanked it free with a satisfying KRKKHH, steam curling from the gouge.

“YOU BLOAT-BELLIED PISS-STAIN OF A FAILED GOD,” Wrath snarled. “You think anyone CARES that you ‘left the fold’? You think crawling off to suck fungus in a cave makes you noble?!”

He jabbed a claw toward Gluttony.

“You’re a half-digested footnote in the stomach of history. And you still think you're important? BAHAHAHA!”

He grinned—a gleam of violet lighting his skeletal fangs.

“Help you? You? You sniveling buffet blight?” Wrath hooted, doubling over. “You had your chance to matter, Glutt—but you used it to eat bricks and cry about metaphors!”

With a violent step forward, he pointed the obsidian blade directly at Gluttony’s chest. His next words hit like shrapnel:

“No, Gluttony. I’m not your Wrath.”

He tilted his skull just enough to show that glowing eye socket.

“I AM RATHIEL!”

And the moment the name left his maw—the air shattered.

His roar split through the clearing like a rift in the scroll itself. A sound made of jagged memory and death rattles, layered with a monstrous howl that wasn’t alone. Echoed inside were the dying screams of PRIDE. The last breath of ENVY. The crumbling wail of TEMPERANCE as the bones of her doctrine cracked beneath his claws.

Gluttony would hear them. He would know them.

“I am the HARBINGER OF ENDINGS! THE MOUTH THAT EATS THE NAMES OF CITIES!”

He stomped forward, sparks bursting from his paws. His tail whipped like a brand, setting moss ablaze behind him.

“I AM THE BLACK HOWL IN THE WIDOW’S CRADLE! THE UNBURIED FANG IN THE FIELD OF SAINTS! THE—”

He stopped. Blinked with his skull.

“BAHAHAHA—OH LOOK AT YOU.” His voice dropped, still loud, but thick with dripping mockery. “You look SO STUPID right now.”

Wrath tilted his head—sideways, slowly, with a creak of tendonless bone—and crept forward one more step. His voice dipped to something low. Terribly quiet.

Soft enough to stain the spine.

“What is it, Gluttony?” he purred.

“Lose your appetite?”

His grin twitched. Then erupted again.

The laugh hit like an avalanche. He threw his head back, arms outstretched—then let loose another devastating howl, louder than before. The sound rolled through the trees like a collapsing mountain, filled with the discordant cries of souls long ground to ash. Pride. Envy. Temperance. Drowned in fury.

And it wasn’t done.

The jungle screamed with it.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Gluttony convulsed once.

His spine arched like a breaking branch, ribs expanding outward, cracking audibly beneath his fur. His jaw distended wider than any mouth should—wider than the structure of a normal body could support. Wrath’s insults echoed off his flesh like spit off stone, but Gluttony wasn’t listening anymore.

His mind had flattened to one word: Survive.

His eyes rolled back, whites going yellow, pupils sinking into void. His limbs trembled, twitching with twitch-born muscle spasms as his massive belly ballooned outward like a rotting wineskin. The air around him warped—humid, syrupy, thick with the scent of bile and meat.

He inhaled.

Deep.

And deeper.

The jungle groaned.

Vines snapped. Branches bent inward like drawn toward a sinkhole. A pulse of grotesque suction bent the trees toward his gut, a vortex of gluttonous magic pulling in light, sound, and warmth. Even the flame around Wrath’s obsidian blade guttered for a moment, as if uncertain which way reality leaned.

Wrath knew this move.

Gluttony had used it before. At the temple gates. Wrath would remember: the creatures Gluttony stored inside his belly weren’t always dead. They were stored. Trapped. Changed. He used them like a butcher’s spellbook.

But this time—Gluttony smiled.

Because he knew Wrath remembered.

Which meant Wrath would expect monsters.

But Gluttony had no intention of spitting out anything.

Instead—

SPLURCH.

His tongue lashed from his throat like a spear of wet muscle, shooting forward with impossible speed, arcing high—then down, slamming directly into Wrath’s open skull-maw.

The tip of the tongue hooked.

Deep.

Fast.

And caught something Wrath wasn’t ready for:

His own tongue.

Gluttony let out a gurgling snarl of triumph as the muscular, mucus-slick length of tongue twisted, tangled—and yanked.

Hard.

His grotesque form staggered as the tension snapped into place—pulling Wrath’s massive body forward, step by vicious step, as the tether of flesh and fury locked between them. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t graceful.

But it was anchored.

Gluttony’s claws sank into the moss, widening his stance as his arms jutted outward like an anchor. The distended stomach heaved. His chest ballooned. Veins popped along his neck. The magic wasn’t flashy—but it was rooted, and Wrath was part of it now.

Spittle ran from both maws.

Gluttony’s back legs shook with the strain.

But he didn’t let go.

Dogman stared, unblinking, muzzle twitching like it couldn’t decide between a snarl and a scream. His whole body was coiled tight—every muscle yanked toward the idea of run, but he couldn’t move. Not yet.

Instead, his gaze snapped sideways toward Dylan, teeth bared in disbelief.

“Oh, now we’re staying?” he hissed, voice sharp and rising. “Now we’re playing archaeologist while two walking extinction events try to slurp each other’s souls out their throats like cursed spaghetti?!”

He threw a clawed hand toward the clearing, gesturing wildly at the grotesque tug-of-war playing out in front of them. “That thing—that,” he barked, eyes wide, “if it eats the other, we are next!"

His voice cracked slightly—too loud, too afraid to care. The pressure of the moment caught in his chest, his claws flexing again and again as if they might grab some kind of solution out of the air.

Simon flinched as the ground shook again—dirt shivering beneath their paws, the air thick with the scent of bile, smoke, and something unspeakably ancient. His eyes darted toward Gluttony and Wrath, jaws locked in grotesque tension, that horrible tongue still latching, pulsing.

Then—he blinked.

And something in his posture changed.

“Wait—waitwaitwait!” Simon whispered, then louder—more urgent. “Dylan! Cast a spell with me! We can help! We can use a spell fusion!”

He didn’t wait for permission.

Simon lunged forward and grabbed Dylan’s hand—tight, instinctual, like they were tethering themselves to the only safe thing left in the world. His fingers interlaced with Dylan’s, paws warm and trembling—but focused.

“My mentor told me about this!” he breathed, tail bristling with arcane magic and wagging, “If I focus, I can loan you runic magic for a stronger spell,"

As their hands touched, a sudden surge flooded through Dylan’s arm—a pulsing, living current of magic. Bright. Wild. Spirited.

Simon’s Summoning Runes were awake. And it had opened a second gate.

Dylan could feel it now.

(Simon grants Dylan two summoning runes for a spell cast, since Dylan has a painter rune, it will be PAINTER + SUMMONING + SUMMONING automatically.)

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Dylan flinched when Simon grabbed his hand, but didn’t pull away. The contact jolted something into motion. His ears twitched sharply at the word “fusion,” and then—he felt it.

It wasn’t just magic. It was connection. Like being handed a second pulse. His knees nearly gave.

The moment crashed over him in parts: the grip of Simon’s trembling paw in his, the bellowing chaos of Wrath screaming something about intestines and family bloodlines, the wet slap of tongues in unnatural war, and the ground pulsing underfoot like it was breathing backward.

Dylan stammered—no words, just the soft blurting static of someone trying to pick which feeling to respond to first. His eyes flicked from the grotesque tug-of-war between Gluttony and Wrath, to the wild, hot shimmer of rune magic now climbing up his arm.

It burned—not painfully, but vividly. Like all the lights at once had turned on inside him.

He lifted his other hand.

The spell didn’t erupt.

It swirled.

Spell Level: Spell Name Spell Description 1 Spiral and Frame (1st) Spiral: A looping swirl of paint that spirals around a target. Can trap, disorient, or suspend a creature into the air (2nd) A floating gilded picture frame. Anything within the visual bounds of the frame becomes “frozen” for a few seconds—locked in time and motion, as if painted on canvas.

Paint—real and not—began to spin from his fingertips, colors merging from nothing. Spirals of orange and indigo flowed like thick smoke, catching light as they twisted mid-air. The air around Dylan seemed to slow as the spiral thickened, becoming a swirling cyclone of luminous pigment. It floated forward—widening, looping, and then striking.

It hit Gluttony.

The spiral struck just behind the hyenakin’s hunched shoulder, whirling around him like a living lasso. It didn’t pull—it confused. Disoriented. Reality itself bent around the stroke, pulling Gluttony into a spin of paint that seemed to suspend him just slightly, just briefly, like the world had been tilted sideways.

And then—the Frame.

It appeared mid-air: a large, ornate rectangle trimmed in dripping gold brushstrokes, turning slowly until its face angled toward the vortex.

For a second, everything inside the spiral—Gluttony’s twisting form, his warped limbs, that horrid, slathering mouth—froze.

Locked.

Like a painting.

Dylan exhaled a sound that wasn’t quite relief. More like a sob that hadn’t been told what kind.

His hand trembled, suspended in the air where the last streaks of color still faded like mist.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

The spiral snapped into place like a snare set by a divine artist.

Gluttony’s bloated frame twisted mid-swing—flesh rippling, mouth wide—only for his entire body to lurch and stutter as the spell took. Color smeared across the air like oil on water, and then the golden frame hit.

Click.

A perfect stroke. A painted horror.

The jungle hushed.

In the shimmer of the picture-frame’s spell, Gluttony was no longer a creature—he was a still life. Stuck mid-snarl, mid-writhe, his eyes frozen in grotesque bulge, the tendons in his jaw rigid and trembling beneath the sheen of locked motion. His grotesque tongue recoiled backward like it had been snapped mid-whip, severing the gruesome bond from Wrath’s maw.

The harpooner was free.

The connection broke with a wet snap, and Wrath’s body recoiled with a growl deep enough to make the moss peel from nearby trunks. Whether from shock or rage, it was unclear—but the clearing shook with it. The violet fire around his obsidian blade flared once—hungry.

Gluttony couldn’t move.

He couldn’t scream.

His own magic, rooted in excess and motion, flailed uselessly beneath the temporal lacquer now coating his body. The pulse of his stomach slowed, his limbs jittered in stilled angles, his massive maw caught just shy of a guttural bellow.

It was like being flayed by beauty.



Simon gasped, audibly and unfiltered. “Dylan! D-Dylan, you did it! You locked him!” His tail wagged once—then twice—then outright flailed as his free hand clapped over his muzzle in delighted disbelief. “That was AMAZING—”

Dogman didn’t say anything at first—he just stared at Dylan like he’d grown horns and a second spine. He then looked toward the painting again—toward the trapped monstrosity spinning in slow, stately torment inside the gilded rectangle. “…Is it gonna stay like that?”

But the spell already flickered.

The edge of the Frame shimmered—once.

Cracks formed, fine as brushstrokes splitting under heat.

Time was ticking.

Wrath still stood free. Just a few feet away. One breath away from the chance to finish what he started.

And Gluttony—

Was helpless.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Wrath’s head snapped back as the tongue finally tore free—his jaw wrenching open with a guttural snarl, spittle and heat cracking the air around him.

“REALLY, GLUTTONY? YOU—” He stomped forward, claws splitting bark and soil alike. “You tried to bind me?”

Then—he saw it.

The painting.

Gluttony, stilled in spell-borne oil and gilded frame, caught mid-snarl like some grotesque museum piece. No motion. No breath. Only the trembling shimmer of magical stasis.

Wrath’s posture changed. Slowly. His burning eyes lingered on the frame—then ticked sideways.

Toward them.

Dylan froze.

Wrath’s gaze was brief—just a flicker—but it landed like a tombstone thrown from orbit.

Then back to Gluttony.

“Ohhhh, you should not have done that,” Wrath hissed.

The ground groaned as he leaned down and gripped the hilt of his obsidian blade. The purple energy in the weapon flared—not as a flash, but as a pulse of wrath made visible, arteries of radiant fury crawling across the steel.

“The hunt,” Wrath snarled, low and rich with anticipation, “has been fun… hasn’t it, Gluttony?”

He reached up—fingers gnarled, claws gleaming—and lifted the necklace from his throat again, letting the carved remains of the others clack softly together like bones in a reliquary.

Then he laughed.

Not a chuckle. Not a bark.

A scream of a laugh. Unhinged. Victorious.

“BAHAHAHAHA!” Wrath roared skyward, his howl ripping into the air with such force that flames peeled out from under his feet. They climbed him like serpents—twisting and flickering purple and black, flicking across the spines along his back without ever searing him. His skeleton head radiated with heatless fire, his eyes now full orbs of smoking violet rage.



And then—he dropped.

Onto all fours.

The jungle scorched beneath him.

He lunged like a cannon shot, teeth bared, blade low. A warbeast reborn in ruin. The trees split from his wake, shadows bending around him, flame trailing like the tail of a falling god.

“No mercy—JUST DREAD INSTEAD!”

Wrath slammed into the portrait.

The frame cracked with a celestial scream—paint exploding in all directions, violet and black and red spilling across the air like the canvas had burst an artery. Gluttony’s form spasmed inside the spell—a silhouette shuddering under the pressure of flame, then warping, unraveling, shredding.

A hiss.

A howl.

A final rupture.

And Gluttony ceased.

The portrait fell away in ashen ribbons, flaking apart like scorched paper. All that remained of the Shadow was vapor and magic and dread—and a slow, snaking thread of black mist that curled upward, toward Wrath.

The beast stood motionless.

Breathing hard.

Watching.

Then he raised one claw—and opened his palm.

The mist twisted, convulsed—and sank.

A low glow surged across Wrath’s necklace as the final remnants of Gluttony solidified: a jagged, new carving—sharp and warped—tucked neatly beside the other conquered bones.

Another trophy.

Another Shadow devoured.

Wrath let the necklace fall back against his chest. He inhaled, slow and deliberate, body still wreathed in smoke.

Then he turned.

Not quickly.

Not dramatically.

Just… inevitably.

And now Dylan saw him.

Fully.

That towering form. That skeletal face. Those burning, pupil-less eyes.

Wrath didn’t speak at first.

He just stared.

Dylan’s blood turned to glass.

His body locked—shaking in place, throat too tight for breath, vision tunneling from fear. His heartbeat thundered in his ears, a helpless, internal scream.

Then—

A low, guttural chuckle.

Wrath took a slow, deliberate step forward. The flame curled at his feet.

He tilted his head, one claw flexing.

Wrath’s grin twitched—not in mirth, but in that slow-burn disgust only a predator can muster when someone else touches their kill.

"So," he said, voice flaked with scorn, "someone wants to be bold. Step in. Play hero."

He prowled forward, claws dragging furrows through the burned earth, the flame still whispering at his heels. "Interrupt my hunt… with glitter. And glue."

His skeletal head tilted—half curiosity, half insult. "Bold move. Let’s see if the ending’s worth the brushstroke."

Another step.

Then, softly—too softly to be anything but threatening:

"Cute."

 

[scantilycladsnail]

The jungle cracked with silence.

It was the kind of hush that came not from absence, but from held breath—like the world itself had paused to listen. Even Wrath, firelit and monstrous, halted mid-step as something brighter surged above them.

A flare of light.

Not flame.

Not rage.

Not war.

But something else entirely.

A second sun blinked into being above the canopy—soft, golden, immense. It cast no heat. It burned nothing. Yet it turned the entire clearing to brilliance, scattering the shadows and silencing the smoke.

Then—

A ring descended.

Made of light, etched in woven gold and old script that shimmered just beyond understanding. It floated—untouching, untouched—hovering an inch above the air as it came to rest between Wrath and the students.

The ring pulsed once.

Then again.

And from its center, she stepped through.

Mercy.

She did not fall. She did not charge. She simply arrived, like she had always been there and the world had only now remembered to notice.

Her hooves barely stirred the moss beneath her. She stood straight—tall, unshaking, the glow of dawn coiled across the soft contours of her armor. Her eyes burned golden, but not with fire—with clarity. With burden. With knowing.

Her mane was braided with quiet purpose. Her brow furrowed not in anger, but in sorrow. Her every movement hummed with restraint.

The ring around her wrist spun slowly—its arcs and sigils glowing soft and sharp in the space around her.

She didn’t raise her voice.

She didn’t need to.

Her hand lifted—fingers open—and the arcane light surged forward, forming a barrier between Wrath and the students. Not a wall. A line. A single gesture of refusal.

Enough.

The golden flash struck the earth like a heartbeat made solid, and where it touched, Wrath’s fire buckled—curling backward, steam rising from the clash.

Dylan gasped, barely registering it was happening. His body felt slack with relief, but only barely.

Mercy didn’t look at them. She didn’t ask who they were. She didn’t seem surprised by their clothes, or their shaking forms, or the panic stitched into Dylan’s posture like torn thread. She didn’t know what a “scroll group” was. But she knew this: They were not enemies.

So they would be protected.

Finally, she spoke. Her voice was low, but it stretched through the clearing like a balm on an open wound.

“You have taken what you came for, Wrath. Do not let the pride you so newly wear upon your neck deceive you into thinking it fits like a title. Or shall I call Temperance—whose bones you hollowed—for counsel, if only to remind you what balance once meant?”

She paused, her fingers brushing the braid over her shoulder like it held the answer she never received.

“You are no Sin.”

The words struck quiet and final.

“No Sin would do what you have done. What cannot be undone.”

She stepped forward, voice low and laced with ache.

“And yet, they say you are mine. My counterpart.”

Her gaze burned with something ancient—sorrow, fury, doubt.

“Is that what this world needed?”

“Was Mercy not enough?”

“Did the cosmos decide that existence alone was suffering enough to summon you instead?”

Her breath caught, but her voice did not falter.

“My sisters had balance. Companions. But I—” she gestured toward him, the flame and ash—“I was paired with a harbinger. A hollow thing that kills both Sin and Virtue without pause.”

She shook her head.

“If this is fate, then it is a cruel one. Not balance. Not justice. Only the promise that Mercy walks alone… and ruins follow.”

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Wrath’s body stiffened as the barrier of light seared into the ground between him and the students. A low snarl ripped from deep within his chest—a grinding, guttural vibration that echoed through his ribcage and out from his skull-like maw.

"IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE—?" he barked, his claws flexing as flames crackled along his spine. "First some stupid painting—now this?"

He turned, tail lashing, obsidian blade dragging through the scorched jungle floor as he faced the new presence.

Mercy.

He didn’t interrupt her. Not once. He watched. That glowing, gilded form. The braid. The restraint in her posture. The ache hidden behind the light.

When her words finally fell silent, Wrath stood still.

Then—

A chuckle. Not his usual roar. A slow, almost amused rasp, low and curling like smoke.

"Well, well, well..." he murmured, taking a deliberate step forward. "Look who decided to show up."

He let her name stretch with venom and familiarity.

"Mercy."

His voice cracked with mock sweetness. "Don't you love making my job easy? Or did you just get tired of running? Decided to show up and hand-deliver yourself like a wrapped gift at the end of a long day."

He straightened his back—taller now, teeth bared in a shadowed grin.

"Of course I'm not a Sin. Of course none of you noticed. Not Pride. Not Lust. Not your precious Council. Because you never think to look up at the thing waiting to shut the door."

His body hummed with tension—like a beast leashed by his own legend.

"You soothe the wound," he growled. "I cauterize it. You were meant to buy time. I was made to run out the clock."

The obsidian blade lifted slightly—dragged with lazy menace across the earth beside him.

He raised the necklace from his chest—bone talismans clacking softly. Gluttony. Envy. Pride. Temperance. Sins and Virtues, reduced to grim ornaments.

"You like my trophies? Pretty, aren’t they? Everyone I’ve ended becomes a little louder in my collection." He looked directly at her now, voice dipping into something darker. "Don’t worry, Mercy. I’ll carve yours with extra care."

His skull tilted slightly, a feral mimic of affection.

"Out of all the Virtues, you've always had such a... presence. Would be a shame not to bottle it."

Then, sharper:

"Fate. Suffering. Balance." He almost spat the words. Then came the roar.

"BAHAHAHA!"

His head dropped, violet fire dripping from his jaw like venom. Flames rippled out from his shoulders, dancing up into the twisted air.

"You speak to me as if I am yours." His voice burned. "I was forged by something far older than you. Far older than your Virtues. Older than the concept of compassion. I am Rathiel."

He lifted his blade.

"I was made by a god who doesn't just create time—he creates everything. The realms, the scrolls, the cycles your kind calls destiny. My brother builds the beginnings. And when he tires of them? When it’s time to wipe the slate? He sends me. You think this world runs on mercy? On hope? We built the stage you’re all dancing on. We are Chronogods."

A smile cracked wide beneath the bone.

"You all think you’re divine. I'm the one who ends divinity."

Behind the light wall, Dylan gripped the fabric of his coat. His thoughts spiraled. That word. Chronogods. Briggs. Research. The pattern of dying scrolls. Collapsing timelines. None of this was just a battle—it was a reveal.

Wrath’s attention snapped back to the group for a heartbeat—then twisted back to Mercy with a sneer.

"WELL—" he rolled his shoulders with theatrical joy, "—I was going to enjoy a little post-Gluttony celebration. Nothing like a few roasted interns to finish the evening."

He chuckled—wicked, amused.

"But you, Mercy. You're a VIP. Very Important Prey. Or is it... Virtue In Pieces?"

He cackled, letting the obsidian blade swing low, the chain at its hilt unspooling as he slowly swung it beside him. Sparks flashed purple wherever it struck the dirt.

Then his voice dropped low, cruel and certain.

"So come on then. Let’s add some symmetry to my necklace."

The swing slowed.

The fire built.

And then—

With a howl that split the canopy and made the moss recoil from the earth, Wrath dropped to all fours.

His limbs twisted with monstrous grace, claws sinking into the scorched dirt like anchors to a storm. The violet fire crawling up his spine flared—violent, feral—casting snarling shadows through the trees. The obsidian blade scraped low behind him, carving molten streaks through the jungle floor as the chain wrapped tighter around his forearm, drawn taut by the wrath of its wielder.

The skeletal maw opened wide, and from its depths came not just a roar, but the chorus of everything damned. A werewolf’s warcry warped by something far older. Angrier. A voice echoing with the sound of collapsing thrones and broken timelines.

Wrath lunged.

A blur of claws, blade, and flame. A comet of destruction—hurtling toward Mercy like fate itself had snapped its leash.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Mercy did not flinch.

The forest peeled inwards from the pressure of Wrath’s descent—roots split, light twisted, the canopy shrieked—but she did not move.

Not an inch.

Not even to raise a shield.

Her eyes—golden, unblinking—remained fixed on him. Not defiant. Not afraid.

Still.

Present.

Open.

And just as his final bound closed the space between them—his obsidian blade a violet blur of annihilation—she spoke. Quiet. Even. Clear.

“Then I grant it to you.”

Time stuttered.

Her voice did not rise. It did not ripple with force or fury. It carried no edge. And yet, it rang with such perfect clarity that it pierced through his howl like a blade of silence.

“Mercy, for what you were made to be, Rathiel.” Her gaze softened—not in pity, but in understanding. “You were forged by design. Called forth not to rule, but to reset. You are not a villain. You are not a failure.”

She tilted her head slightly, braid catching the flicker of his firelight.

“You are a response.”

A pause.

She stepped forward—not around the blade, but toward it. So close it might burn.

“If this world ends by your hand, it will not be because you hated it.” Her voice thinned, quiet but resolute. “It will be because it was time. And for that—I do not hate you.”

She reached up.

Not fast.

Not glowing.

Just one slender paw—graceful and still—placed against the jagged edge of his blade.

“I forgive you, Rathiel. You are not my counterpart... though, I wish in another time, you were."

Her eyes met his. No barrier. No magic. Just truth.

“You are my end.”

And she smiled.

Not cruelly.

Not sadly.

Gently.

“So let it be me.”

Simon didn’t understand everything that had just happened—but his body did.

It knew enough to stop moving. His ears twitched once, then dropped back, pressed flat like a child watching a thunderstorm from beneath a table.

He stared at the scene—Mercy’s golden form against Wrath’s obsidian fury, her calm voice peeling back the roar like light through fog.

Dogman hated it.

He hated how quiet it got. Hated how still she stood.

And yet he couldn’t move either.

His claws hovered just above his own weapon.

“You don’t stand there when death’s coming at you,” he growled under his breath, voice thick and brittle. “You don’t let it get that close. That’s not how this works.”

He clenched his fists. His jaw. His entire body. Every instinct told him to grab Dylan and Simon and run—now— while there was time.

But he didn’t.

He just stared.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Wrath roared as he surged forward—obsidian blade raised high, flame and shadow trailing behind him like a comet of pure ruin. His skeletal maw gaped with fire, a cracked snarl wreathed in violet smoke. The ground split beneath his claws, the forest howling in his wake as he descended like a force of extinction itself.

But then—

He stopped.

Not by magic.

Not by force.

Just—stopped.

Crouched low in a feral stance, the jagged edge of his obsidian weapon hovered a mere inch from her chest. His flames crackled around them, licking the air like angry tongues, yet she stood untouched. Unmoved. And Wrath… did not strike.

Slowly, the beast uncoiled, rising to his full height. His blade remained leveled with precision, still aimed directly at her heart. But now, he towered above her—not like a god about to conquer, but like a question waiting for an answer. Every muscle remained taut, every breath thick with fire, his silhouette trembling with withheld annihilation.

A low growl simmered in his throat as the fire in his hollow sockets narrowed. The violet glare of his eyes locked with hers. Not past her. Not above or below her.

Through her.

Wrath's grip on the blade tightened. He could feel the strike waiting—demanding—to be made. His sinews screamed for it. His instincts begged for the end to come crashing down.

And yet…

Still.

A beat passed. Then another.

His tail lashed once behind him, cracking the ground in a burst of ash. Steam hissed around his ankles. The edge of the blade twitched—but did not fall.

He leaned in.

Inches now. The jagged fangs of his skeletal face hovered just short of hers. His burning breath licked the space between them, smoke curling in slow spirals.

"You..." The word dragged low from his chest like gravel across obsidian. His voice wasn’t shouting now—it rumbled, curious and dangerous.

"You would really stand here. And take it."

His voice was like thunder through smoke. Not mocking. Not confused. Just...barely comprehending.

He straightened slightly, and the blade lowered—just enough to scrape the earth. Still ready. But not aimed.

"All of them. The sins. The virtues. They scream when I come. They break. They beg. I have seen kingdoms collapse from the echo of my steps." His claw flexed. "Their faith, their pride, their lies—gone in a breath. And you…"

He studied her.

"You don’t fear me."

It wasn’t a question. Not anymore.

His growl didn’t sharpen—it softened, like fire rolling low through a canyon.

"Not like they do."

A sound rumbled from his chest—dry, dark. A tired exhale that could almost be mistaken for laughter. Almost.

The blade fell fully now, tip gouging into the cracked earth with a hiss.

One slow step back.

He tilted his head just slightly, the arcane glow dancing along the bones of his face, catching in the deep cracks like veins of starfire. His voice came again—low, dangerous, and almost... amused.

"You should go."

A pause.

Then, a slow drag of claws across the hilt of his weapon. His tone changed—less command, more consideration.

"Unless... you’d rather make it interesting."

His voice lingered now, weightless in the smoke between them.

"Let the end stretch itself a little longer. Let it wander. Chase. Coil."

Another step back. His eyes never left hers.

"You call me your end," he said, voice low and edged with something almost playful. "But who says the end has to be now?"

He grinned—a flash of curved bone, half-threat, half-invitation.

"Run, Mercy."

He didn’t turn away. Not this time.

He stood there, still and massive, like a storm watching the sea.

"Let’s see how far the world lets you go."

And though he didn’t move, the way he watched her said enough.

The hunt was not over.

It had only just begun.

---

From behind the shimmer of the light barrier, Dylan trembled—but didn’t blink. His claws dug softly into the earth, ears twitching, unsure if he was still breathing.

He glanced at Dogman, as if to ask something—anything—but no words came.

What could he say?

Instead, instinct took over. His satchel was already open. A slim, worn sketchbook slid into his lap, his claws working fast. No time for polish. Just movement, gesture—capturing what was. The flare of flame. Mercy’s silhouette—still, golden. Wrath, towering, cracked like molten stone. Something eternal had happened in front of them, and he had to mark it.

Quick charcoal lines. Flicks of motion. A swirl of smoke and steel and stillness. He didn’t think. He recorded.

Wrath’s blade. Mercy’s paw. The breath between.

Dylan swallowed hard.

Whatever this was... he knew one thing for certain.

It wasn’t over.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

The auxiliary outpost near the Bellowline Tunnels didn’t look like much. Rusted shutters, busted floodlights, a roof that moaned every time the wind remembered to push.

Inside, it smelled like vinegar, solder, and wet rope.

Zac stood in front of an old kettle, whistling something tuneless as he poured hot water over a chipped mug. The table behind him was cluttered with wax-paper sandwiches, open toolkits, and a small field radio spitting static in patient bursts.

A couple of kin sat nearby—one mousey-looking foxgirl nervously stripping and re-stripping copper wire, and a batkin who hadn’t stopped chewing the same piece of licorice for the past hour. Tension hung in the air, thick and unsure.

“Your hands are shaking,” Zac said casually, without turning around.

The foxkin flinched. “No they’re not.”

“Mm.” He sipped his tea. “You tied that crimp four times. It’ll break if you sneeze too close.”

The batkin snorted, but didn’t speak.

Zac turned then, smiling faintly as he leaned back against the counter. Today he was dressed in just a dark shirt, sleeves rolled, collar open. His coat was folded over the back of a chair. His gloves were still on the hook.

---

Brasshollow was buzzing—steam hissing from shaded carts, gears clinking in the overhead rail line, and music piping from a brass gramophone perched on a flower vendor’s canopy. This part of town didn’t traffic in urgency—it pulsed in rhythm, slow and sun-warmed.

Kehlani walked with an easy sway, her ears bobbing slightly with each step, catching soft breezes between the woven awnings above. She wore a modest linen dress—cream with sunflower embroidery along the hem—buttoned to the collar, cinched at the waist with a soft brown belt. Her sleeves were cuffed just above the elbows, revealing a thin gold bracelet that glinted each time she reached into her tote bag.

She passed a street mirror and paused—not to check her reflection, but to fix a hair clip that had slid loose from the gentle tumble of her long, dark curls. In her other paw, she carried a small wicker basket already half-full: fresh herbs wrapped in parchment, two small jars of colored clay paint, and a packet of lemon wafers tied with copper string.

A tabby child tugged at his mother’s sleeve near a toy stall and pointed excitedly at her. “Look! It’s a bunnykin!" he squeaked.

Kehlani smiled gently.

The mother offered an apologetic smile. “Sorry dear, he was practically raised by Bunnykin."

---

The street outside Lumenreach Academy was unusually quiet—too quiet for a building that housed the brightest magical minds and their noisy, overfunded experiments. Somewhere deep in its vaulted interior, a boiler released a low, sibilant hiss like a sigh from the bones of the structure itself. The tower’s brass veins glowed softly in the fading daylight, runes flickering along conduits like sleepy eyelids not quite shut.

A city tram clattered away from the curb, wheels screeching faintly as it pulled into the northern loop.

Charlotte stepped down from the platform, her figure marked by none of the usual sharpness she carried.

No armor. No mask.


Tonight, she wore a modest gray traveling cloak, hood drawn just low enough to break her silhouette. The weight of it shifted as she moved, the interior lined with pocketed folds designed for concealment—not weapons, not tonight, but scrolls, notes, and miniature tech rigs. Things you could plant, things you could steal.

She paused on the edge of the pedestrian crosswalk, scanning the plaza without moving her head. Her fur had been dulled with powder—not a perfect shift, but enough to soften the telltale shine of polished panther-black.

Nobody stopped her. Nobody asked her name.

The Lumenreach gates loomed ahead, humming with residual static.

---

The real estate office was too nice for paperwork. Floor-to-ceiling windows overlooked the Brasshollow skyline—smog-streaked towers and tangled rail lines shining in the dying orange light like gold drowning in oil. Inside, everything was clean, sleek, polished. A room designed not for comfort, but for impression. That rare mix of decadence and dominance.

Soda sat behind a marble desk far too large for a jackalkin his size. He was slouched deep into a velvet-backed chair, his feet kicked up lazily on the edge, claws tapping against the rim of a crystal tumbler half-full with something the color of old gods.

His sunglasses were still on—indoors, of course. The light didn’t matter. The performance did.

A crisp folder lay open on the desk. No frills. Just thick pages lined with cold, sharp facts.

“Property Transfer – Snarlin Cove: Vacant Lots 2B, 2F, 2H — Purchased Under Proxy Bid”
“Authorization: Bellarus Quinthorn, Executive Proxy (Deceased).”

Beside it, clipped neatly to a yellowed newsprint sheet, was a small obituary. The headline was plain:

“Local Assistant Found Dead Near Snarlin Cove Shoreline"

No photo. No ceremony. Just a two-sentence blurb.

Soda’s tongue clicked softly against his teeth. Once. Then again.

“Damn shame,” he muttered, barely loud enough to break the silence.

He leaned forward with a sigh—not out of grief, but because his drink was slightly out of reach. He grabbed it, swirled it once, and took a measured sip.

He looked at the folder again.

Then closed it.

---

The venue wasn’t glamorous—but it was honest.

A narrow subterranean chamber tucked behind a collapsed junction of Whistletrain Line Seven, the “SOLOVENUE” was more rumor than real estate. Word of mouth brought wanderers and whisperers here: musicians, experimentalists, and broken things looking to rattle their cages through noise. No formal bookings. No lights unless you brought your own. Just rusted scaffolding, a jury-rigged amplifier rack, and a stage made from reclaimed maintenance platforms.

Tonight, it belonged to TVhead.

Their screen flickered softly in the dark—a warm, amber pulse like a dying CRT sunset. On stage, they stood alone: a gangly frame of mismatched limbs, torso ringed with repurposed speaker dials, one hand cradling a battered bass sequencer modified to look like a broken remote control.

The audience was small. Quiet. Mostly kin in tattered layers, slouched across broken crates and salvaged benches. A few glimmerkids in the back passed around glowfruit and cheap stimulant drops. No one spoke.

They waited.

TVhead didn’t introduce themself. The screen shifted once—a blink, then a minimalist heart symbol, pixelated and lopsided.

Then came the thrum.

Low. Grainy. The sound of regret turned inside out and pressed through a thrifted vocoder. It wasn’t music in the way others played it—it was feeling, converted into glitch. Echoing samples of laughter bent into harmonics. Distant train whistles, warped like sobs underwater. Chord structures that threatened to resolve but never quite did.

TVhead moved slowly as they played—twitching like a signal fighting static. Every slide across the fretboard made the speakers stutter, and yet... it held.

It always held.

---

“You’re both ready,” he said simply. “You’ve been ready.”

The foxkin opened her mouth, then closed it again. She reached for a sandwich instead. Her teeth left nervous marks in the wax before she even got it unwrapped.

A lanky striped mutt came in through the side door, boots muddy from the tunnels. He gave Zac a nod—nothing said—but his fingers brushed twice against the wall in passing. A signal.

Zac raised his mug in return. "Appreciate the check-in."

Another Auxie sat slouched by the back exit, flipping through a grimy old book about early station code. She didn’t look up when she asked, “You think anyone’ll remember what today was really for? Ten years from now?”

Zac thought about that.

Then shrugged.

“Probably not,” he said. “But they’ll remember the day. And the quiet after.”

The room fell still for a moment. Not heavy. Just full.

Zac finished his tea and set the cup aside.

"Clock’s not waiting on us," he said, almost lighthearted. “You all know your parts. Run them clean. Don’t blink too loud.”

---

Briggs leaned gently against the wide-pane window of the TailQuarters atrium, arms loosely crossed, his tail twitching once—half from focus, half from nerves. The skyline of Brasshollow loomed beyond the glass in soft golds and iron greys, haze curling like brushstrokes over the clockspires. Morning light filtered down the rails in segmented ribbons, and despite everything rumbling beneath the surface of the city, it looked peaceful. Stable. For now.

The student sitting across from him—a wiry raccoonkin in layered canvas and a half-zipped rune-jacket—rattled off details about their propulsion array design, stumbling a bit over terminology. Briggs nodded slowly, listening intently, offering the occasional soft hum or "mhm" of encouragement.

“Okay,” he said at last, voice gentle but earnest, “I think I get what you’re going for. You’ve got the concept right—it’s the sequencing that’s backwards. The tether spells have to initiate before the burst, not after. Otherwise you’re just kicking off a magical backfire loop. Like trying to light a fuse underwater.”

He gave a sheepish grin, thumb tapping his stylus against the datapad clutched to his chest.

“I mean—it’ll still launch,” he added, “but more in the ‘explodes sideways into the professor’s desk’ kind of way. Trust me on that one.”

---

The office of Dhar’va Korr was not designed to comfort.

It was a converted fermentation chamber—high ceilings veined with exposed copper stills, rivets catching the low light like watching eyes. The scent of aged fruit hung thick in the air, warm and acidic. Barrels lined the walls like sleeping giants, and a single black flag bearing the gilded seal of Korr Spirits fluttered above her desk.

Dhar’va didn’t sit behind that desk. She stood in front of it, flanked by silence and steam, her arms crossed, gold chains hanging like verdicts from her shoulders.

The penguinkin’s glare was sharp enough to chill casks.

Across from her, a nervous lynxkin in a half-buttoned vest shifted from foot to foot, mouth opening with the beginnings of another excuse.

She raised one flipper.

“No.”

One word. Heavy. Flat. Final.

The lynxkin flinched. Tried to speak again.

She didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t need to.

“I said no.”

She stepped forward once—boots hissing slightly on the metal floor, voice low and molten.

“You diluted my Amarinthe batch to stretch shipment weight. You lied about it. You got caught. And then you lied again about how it happened.” She pointed—not at him, but at the clipboard in her other flipper. “You cost me three deals, two investors, and a shipment embargo from the East District board.”

---

The wind tugged softly at Ephraim’s braid as she sat cross-legged near the edge of the cliff, her cloak pooled around her like a patch of moss against the stone. The sky was wide above them—pale blue streaked with wisps of cirrus, the kind of light that made everything below feel just a little smaller, a little more distant.

In the distance, Brasshollow shimmered with a nervous kind of beauty—its towers catching the late morning sun, its rails glinting in thin lines that snaked between districts like silver veins. From up here, it looked peaceful.

Rhea nestled close to her mother’s side, clinging to a half-woven bracelet of colored twine, her little fingers busy but her ears tilted toward every word. Castara stood a few feet away, balanced on a rocky outcrop with the confidence of a child who feared nothing but boredom. Her hands were out, catching the breeze, pretending she could command it.

“He’ll be back soon,” Ephraim said gently, eyes not on the city but somewhere just beyond it—where the rails vanished into fog and possibility. “Your father always finds his way.”

---

Ashen lay sprawled in the half-hammock, half-nest that someone had strung between two twisted coralwood trees near the edge of Cactus Funk Point’s eastern cliff. His tail dangled low, twitching now and then like it had a few opinions he hadn’t authorized. The breeze rolled in from the sea, thick with salt, incense smoke, and the tang of grilled mango.

His ribs still ached, though they’d stopped making that wet glass sound whenever he moved. The puncture wound along his side had mostly closed—Jasper had whispered over it for an hour, pouring eucalyptus tea and babbling about karmic splinters and “the empathy of lizards.” Somehow, it worked.

Ashen hadn’t asked.

A bird sang off-key nearby. A bamboo wind chime thunked once against a ceramic skull someone had hung for luck. Somewhere deeper in the village, a drum circle debated rhythm with the sincerity of a religion.

Ashen’s head tilted slightly. His eyes were open but distant—half-watching the clouds, half-watching the inside of his own mind.

He wasn’t used to being still. Not like this.

The hammock swayed. The sea crashed below.

---

The sun had barely crested the soot-hung roofs of Brasshollow when Helvirr limped back into the world.

His coat had been replaced—cleaner, newer, though the lines still fit like armor over bruises that hadn’t fully healed. His right paw still trembled if you looked close. He kept it shoved in his pocket. The scar across his muzzle had faded from raw to silver, a quiet seam of memory he didn’t acknowledge.

He moved like someone still getting used to walking again. Still getting used to being again.

The rendezvous point was quiet—just a garden behind a decommissioned furnace tower in the Braid District. It used to smelt rail spikes. Now it was all cracked concrete and blooming moss. A few vegetables pushed through between the old iron teeth.

Helvirr leaned against the garden’s perimeter post, half-squinting up at the slanted sun.

Zac was already there. Of course he was.

Sitting on a crate, one leg crossed over the other, coat open like it was the first real breeze he’d tasted in weeks. He was reading a newspaper—The Brass Beacon, folded neatly in half. His expression didn’t flicker when he spoke.

“You look like shit.”

Helvirr let out a soft snort, barely a laugh.

---

The upper corridors of the Ascendant Spire were quiet in the way only deeply magical places could be—where silence wasn't absence but density. Sound here folded in on itself, softened by enchantments meant to encourage contemplation, discourage panic. Every footstep along the velvet-lined walkways fell with a muted hush. Crystalline sconces pulsed faintly along the walls, each one a steady breath of amber and blue, mimicking natural rhythms.

Somewhere, a bell chimed. Not a warning. Just time changing its shape.

A pair of Spire attendants—robes swaying with every precise step—moved down Hallway 3-Vault Sector, their arms full of folio binders and rune reports. One of them, a rabbitkin with wire-rimmed glasses perched halfway down her snout, paused.

Sniffed.

Wrinkled her nose slightly.

“…Do you smell that?”

Her companion, a stooped pangolinkin in senior Archivist garb, paused mid-sentence.

“Like… metal?” he offered. “Old copper, maybe.”

“No…” she frowned, “more like singed cloth. Or—no. Wet paper?” Another sniff. “And something… sweet?”

---

The forest did not forget.

Long after the echo of Wrath’s voice faded into ash, the scorched earth still smoked, the blackened trees leaned with a reverence that no wind had caused. Birds did not return. The undergrowth refused to stir. It was as if the very roots had been commanded into silence.

But the shimmer flickered.

And then the spell thinned.

They moved—slow at first. Dylan with his sketchbook still clutched to his chest like a talisman. Simon glancing backward one final time, quiet and unreadable. Dogman leading now, more by feel than by strategy. Mercy—gold-pelted and tall, her presence still radiant with something silent—walked for a time at their side. N. But the ground bent differently where she stepped.

They didn’t speak much as they traveled. The trees blurred into low hills, the hills into broken stone fields littered with carved sigils and half-sunken ruins. Everything out here whispered—forgotten wards, fractured ley lines, the discarded breath of old empires.

The group passed through them like shadows learning to walk again.

Mercy said little.

But at the edge of a shallow ravine, under a windless sky the color of bruised lilacs, she stopped.

Turned.

Said nothing.

And went.

They didn’t follow.

Just watched until she vanished into the low reeds and memory.

Later—somewhere farther west—the hyenakin arrived.

Drunk on bravado, dressed in patchwork leather and talismans that clacked together like bones in a cup. Six of them, loud and wide-grinned. One claimed he’d seen Wrath once and lived to talk. Another said he had no fear of things that couldn’t bleed.

Simon knocked out two teeth in the first minute.

Dogman took a club to the ribs, snarled, and broke a jaw in return.

Dylan, breath caught between panic and improvisation, flung a burst of illusion that turned one attacker’s shadow into a shrieking eel. It didn’t win the fight, but it bought time.

It ended in a mess of fur, bruises, laughter, and blood spat onto dry grass.

They didn’t linger. Didn’t celebrate.

Just limped their way onward—wounds shallow, pride intact.

And then—

The scrollroom.

The rupture flickered open in the side of a hillside ruin. The pedestal’s glyphs were pulsing, but slower now. Weary. The return was not elegant. They tumbled through—Simon first, then Dylan (clutching a bruised side), then Dogman, holding his cracked shoulder with grim defiance.

The pedestal greeted no one.

No lights flared.

No announcer voice.

Just the low hum of containment magic still in the process of unspooling itself. Safeguards blinked on and off in staggered pulses. Preservation locks hissed as though unsure they wanted to open.

The scroll chamber was in decommission mode. Safety features still engaged. As of right now, it was still a vault in itself.

---

The island was not meant to be landed on.

It didn’t reject them, exactly—just offered nothing. A slab of coastless stone adrift in a corner of the Archipelago’s breath, sunburned and brine-swept, its scrubgrass clinging like scabs across cracked red dirt. No name. No song. Just silence and rust.

The portal snapped shut with a shimmer like a sigh—barely heard, barely real—folding in on itself with the dignity of a paper lantern collapsing in the rain. It left behind only the stink of ozone and old magic. Nothing followed. No bridge. No return.

The world took a moment to breathe.

There were no buildings here. No markers. Only salt-scarred wreckage piled in crescent heaps along the ragged southern shore—debris from other ages, other failed crossings. A gutted hover-sled twisted into itself. Half a mast bound in black rope. A shattered vending core still blinking “HOT / COLD” with patient confusion. Bones, too—some animal, some maybe not.

Wind stirred the canvas of old sails. The tide reached for them but never touched.

And the three stood in it—Miles with his coat billowing like he expected applause, Riversong quiet and full of moonlight, and Avarice, fur already gathering flecks of windborne grit, squinting at the chaos with a frown that said what the hell is this.

The world didn’t answer.

Instead, a gull screamed overhead—hoarse, lonely, furious at the sky. Somewhere inland, metal groaned softly under its own forgotten weight.

So they began.

Not with magic. Not with grandeur. Just hands. Rope. Splinters.

Miles found half a hull and declared it “promising.” Avarice found a cracked glass pane and threatened to throw it at him. Riversong said nothing, but pointed toward a patch of tangled driftwood that looked vaguely like a keel waiting to be believed in.

The day aged slowly, sun dragging shadows across the crooked ground as they worked. Nails were fashioned from scrap. Cloth ripped and retied into makeshift sailcloth. A wheel was unearthed, still embedded with runes that sputtered weakly, refusing to die even now.

The boat took shape not because the island wanted it, but because they did.

By dusk, it stood awkward but real—patched and ugly, held together by ambition and clever hands. It wouldn’t win races. It wouldn’t impress the gods. But it would float.

And in the gathering twilight, with gulls shrieking overhead and the tide finally daring to reach them, they stood back to survey their crooked masterpiece.

---

The trash behind the bakery still steamed slightly—warmth rising off half-burnt rolls and yesterday’s overcooked custard like it missed being appreciated. Fishbones didn’t mind. The scent was familiar. Comforting, even. He hummed to himself, elbow-deep in a tilted crate of flour-dusted wrappers and half-peeled fruit stickers, tail flicking absently behind him.

“See, the trick is—” he started, paw pulling out something glistening and suspiciously jellied, “you gotta feel for the personality, y’know?”

He turned slightly, grinning wide at someone just out of frame—maybe a person, maybe a pipe. Maybe both. “Most folks just look at trash. That’s where they mess up. Gotta listen to it. Smell it. Respect it. This muffin stub?” He held up a mangled chunk of something vaguely banana-colored. “This muffin’s seen things. Had dreams. Probably had a name.”

He paused to sniff it.

Then bit it.

Then gagged.

“Oh gods—nope, nope, not Banana Benji, he’s DEAD,” he hacked, tossing it behind him without remorse. “Ugh, betrayal!”

He dove back into the bin with renewed energy.

“Anyway, you ever find a whole undrunk bottle of Slurpitine behind the tram station? Because I did. Three days ago. Still fizzy.” He leaned closer to the listener, lowering his voice as if sharing state secrets. “Soda flavor. Not grape. Soda. That’s rare, that is. Practically a prophecy.”

---

Zac scratched under his chin, then glanced toward the far alley. The wind shifted faintly. Not enough to carry anything strong, but enough to notice. He didn’t comment.

Instead, his eyes landed on a half-finished chalk line scrawled low across the base of the furnace wall—just a circle, unfinished. Most wouldn’t see it unless they knew to look.

He spoke without shifting.

“I made that Jellybop vid sloppy on purpose. Ears too slow. Blink pattern inconsistent. We gave them breadcrumbs, not a warning.”

The paper fluttered once in the breeze. Zac caught it with a knee.

“They were supposed to follow it.”

No accusation in his tone. Just observation.

He finally looked at Helvirr—just a glance. The scar, the tremble. All of it noted, none of it commented on.

---

The train eased into Snarlin Cove like it was trying not to wake the sea.

Its gears hissed in long, softened exhales—each brake a breath held too long. Seagulls scattered from the posts as the platform began to emerge from fog and morning salt, and that peculiar hush of arrival settled over the tracks. Not quiet. Not still. Just... listening.

Metal touched wood.

Steam curled around the undercarriage, slow and lazy, drawn upward by the shifting sun above. It painted the water with amber and pearl, casting ripples across the tideflats that mirrored the train’s glinting windows. Somewhere far off, someone was frying onions. Somewhere closer, a windchime tangled itself in its own harmony.

Snarlin Cove did not hurry. It never had. The town existed in a kind of sideways time—wound tight with brine and bone, lived-in by kin who didn’t need clocks to know when to move. The boards of the dock had warped just enough under the years to hum underfoot, groaning as the first passengers disembarked. Not many. Fewer still stepped off with intention.

But two figures did.

The goat-headed skull mask. The gold-winged woman. The pressure in the air shifted faintly as their boots met the salt-bleached dock. The tide pulled once. Then again.

Wrath’s coat fluttered like a storm had brushed its edge. Mercy’s feathers drank in the light like they’d earned it. And together, they moved—not fast, not slow. Just forward.

The sea watched them.

---

Somewhere in the underground lattice beneath Brasshollow—below the rattle of trams, below the gears and floodpipes, below even the forgotten vaults where the old founders buried their regrets—Zac adjusted his earpiece with two fingers and said nothing for a long time.

He was alone in the signal chamber. Not because he had to be. But because he preferred it.

The brass panel in front of him hummed faintly, runes glowing low under layers of dust and disuse. It wasn’t a control station. Not officially. Not anything anyone tracked on a ledger. Just… a relay point. An echo hub. Somewhere the system still remembered how to listen.

His reflection in the screen was dark, amber-lit—ears twitching faintly, coat collar still undone. He hadn’t slept. Didn’t need to. There wasn’t anything left worth dreaming about.

The city above was louder now. Sirens, then silence. Then voices—distant, muffled, like a choir trying to find the right note in a collapsing cathedral.

He pressed a thumb into the groove of the dial.

Rotated it once. Click.

Then once more.

Click.

The light in the room didn’t change. The air didn’t shift. But somewhere, across the district, a low-frequency pulse began threading its way through dead wires and dormant vents.

Zac exhaled, quiet.

Not relief. Not regret.

Just an exhale.

Then he spoke, flat, no emphasis, like he was confirming a lunch order:

“Run it.”

---

The stone underfoot felt wrong.

Charlotte paused just past the arch of the main gates, one step into Lumenreach’s shadow. The plaza sprawled out before her—quiet, trimmed with gently swaying steamlanterns, the towers humming low with stored energy. From a distance, it could’ve passed for peaceful. Normal. An academy prepping for dusk rotation. A lull between invention and ambition.

But the air—

It didn’t shift the way it should. The breeze felt wrong against her whiskers. Thick. Not with smoke, not yet—but with pressure. Weight.

Her hood remained low. Her hands stayed hidden. She moved with discipline, cloaked in the ritual of quiet violence—scan, pace, posture, listen. Not for the usual threats. But for the unusual silences.

That’s when she caught it.

The scent.

Faint. Beneath the hot-brass tang of conduit grease. Beneath the iron-rot of the rusted sculpture near the entry arch. A sweet, acrid burn—something chemical. Something meant to hide beneath the nose. But she’d smelled it before. On a downed tram in the northeast quadrant. In a locked crate in the Deeprail yards Lucian made her torch without questions.

Gas. But not just gas. A hybrid of fuel additives and fast-reacting arcane accelerants. Designed to coat structures from within.

Charlotte’s steps halted.

She turned her head—not fast, not slow—her eyes sweeping to the nearest storm drain just beneath the Lumenreach causeway.

It was trembling.

No... breathing.

There was a pulse.

Her claws tensed, curling through the lining of her cloak. Her lips parted, a breath taken to speak—to warn, to run—

Then the world snapped open.

A howl erupted beneath the courtyard. Not from a beast, not from a machine—from the earth. A roar of igniting chemical foam, pressure-locked for hours beneath campus stonework, detonated in a chain. The first explosion blew through a row of supply sheds near the southern dormitories—before the rest followed.

Vents screamed.

Furnace grates launched.

Sewers tore open like mouths gasping to speak truth too late.

And then came the light.

White. Then red. Then a wave of colorless heat that carved up through every crack in the campus. The central tower—once a proud spine of magic and memory—shattered from its base like a tree struck from below.

Charlotte turned toward the gate—but it was already a wall of fire. She flung the cloak aside, legs bracing for a sprint, instinct kicking in like muscle memory— For a moment—just one—her silhouette stood carved against the inferno, cloak whipping backward, claws outstretched as if trying to grasp time itself and hold it still.

---

The raccoonkin laughed—a nervous, hiccupped sound—and scratched behind one ear. “Right, right,” he mumbled. “Tether before burst. Got it. That… yeah, that explains a lot.” He began scribbling furiously into his notebook, muttering mnemonic gibberish under his breath.

Briggs smiled, ears lifting slightly. He liked this part—this little window where fear gave way to understanding. When students realized they weren’t stupid, just… new. New to magic. New to building. New to trying. It made the whole system worth it, even if half the academy staff still didn’t take him seriously. Even if Lucian only saw him as a resource.

He leaned his shoulder a little harder into the glass, glancing back toward the skyline.

The warmth in his chest dulled.

There it was again—something distant, something wrong. A faint vibration that didn’t match the rhythm of the tower’s pulse systems. Not seismic. Not mechanical. Living, almost. Breathing through the stone.

He furrowed his brow. His bibblecore implant twitched behind one eye—an old ghost signal flaring in a pattern he hadn’t seen since… since the Deeprails. Since the ruptures.

His grip on the datapad tightened.

Behind him, the student kept talking. Something about bracket nodes. Something about flight trajectory.

Briggs didn’t turn around. He didn’t even move. His pupils dilated just slightly as his breath caught in his throat.

The light shifted.

Not dimmed.

Tilted.

From below the floorboards, a single, distant pressure change rolled up through the walls—a hiss, like something unsheathing.

And then—

A boom.

Low. Wide. Underneath them.

Briggs had just enough time to twist toward the student. His arm shot out, shoving the raccoonkin backward—hard—with all the strength he could muster. The boy yelped, tumbling over the bench and landing in a tangle of notebooks and limbs.

The floor split.

Not cracked—peeled. Like paper under fire. A molten vent of pressurized gas and arcane compound tore through the atrium floor with a scream, shattering the marble tiles, sending sheets of glass cascading inward like glittering knives. The explosion hit Briggs dead-on, hurling him upward in a storm of metal shards and superheated air.

There was no time for magic.

No time for shielding.

No final words.

Only instinct.

Only that last motion—his body turning, positioning himself between the blast and the student, a barrier of fur, flesh, and courage.

And then—

Light.

The entire eastern wing of the TailQuarters erupted, a fiery blossom blooming from its core, swallowing the rooftop observatory and the adjacent lecture halls. Concrete screamed. Girders curled. The storm punched through the upper floors, obliterating the rune labs and crash-testing bays.

---

The metal grate beneath Fishbones’ foot let out a faint wheeze—air pressure shifting where it shouldn’t have. He didn’t notice. Too busy rummaging. Too busy talking.

“But y’know,” he continued brightly, paw-deep in a pile of coffee filters and wonder, “prophecies got a real short shelf life these days. City don’t like 'em much. Chews 'em up, spits 'em out. That’s why I stick with leftovers. Way more honest—”

He stopped.

His ears perked.

A low, muffled thoom rumbled beneath the cobblestones. Not thunder. Not distant.

Below.

The vent beside him exhaled sharply—hot, chemical breath laced with something sulfurous and wrong. His nose wrinkled.

He looked up.

And saw it.

A bloom of fire punched through the bakery’s chimney, riding a geyser of pressure that erupted straight from the street. Flames and debris unfurled upward like a reversed waterfall, splitting the sky with a noise like every kettle in the city screaming at once.

---

The moment came without warning.

A hush rippled first—not sound, but the absence of it. Like the city itself took a breath and forgot how to exhale.

Kehlani had just turned the corner near a spice vendor’s cart, admiring the way the sun caught the glass jars of saffron and dried citrus peel. The light glinted in her eyes. She didn’t notice the faint tremble underfoot, the metallic click that shouldn’t have echoed through cobblestone.

A single pigeon took flight.

And the world split open.

The explosion surged upward through the storm drains like a monster learning how to scream. Sewer vents blew wide in succession—pop-pop-pop—until the main blast ruptured the avenue itself. Steam, debris, fire—everything—shot into the sky with a howl that swallowed the square whole.

Kehlani’s basket fell before she did, lemons and herbs flung midair like tossed confetti at the wrong kind of celebration.

---

The fermentation chamber buckled before the sound reached it.

One breath, Dhar’va Korr was standing—outlined in copper steam and verdicts, her shadow long against the stills.

The next—

Light.

Pure, obliterating light surged through the vents beneath the floor, ripping the reinforced grates from their moorings in a scream of shrapnel and pressure.

It hit her from below.

There was no time to react. No command barked. No final glare.

---

The blast reached the office in silence—just light first, pure and white and wrong, blooming upward through the floor like a god cracking its knuckles. Soda barely turned his head. Buzz, perched on the desk with a ledger in her lap, looked up just in time to catch his last shrug. Then the windows shattered inward, the marble desk lifted like paper, and both were gone—vaporized mid-thought, mid-pose, mid-smirk—leaving only heat, glass dust, and the final taste of old gods curling in the air.

---

The sound didn’t stop—it just snapped. One moment, TVhead's amber pulse shimmered across the dark, a heartbeat barely holding the shape of a song; the next, a lightless shockwave tore up from the city’s undergut, incinerating the venue in a single, silent burst. The rusted beams collapsed inward with no time for echo. Audience. Stage. Signal. Gone. The last thing the dark saw was a flicker on the screen—one lopsided pixel-heart, blinking once before vanishing into static.

---

The world blinked.

One moment: stillness. Preservation seals hissed their uncertain lullabies across the scroll vault, runes blinking like tired eyes on the edge of sleep. The containment chamber pulsed low and slow, its heartbeat calm. Worn. Processing. The trio inside—Dylan, Simon, Dogman—had just begun to breathe again, the kind of breath that shakes loose from the bottom of the lungs after danger passes and adrenaline forgets its footing.

Then—

Impact.

Far above, far outside—Brasshollow ruptured.

A sound like gods slamming shut a furnace door cracked through the strata of the world. Not thunder. Not explosion. Collapse. The kind that didn’t echo, only arrived. The kind that rewrote gravity in its wake.

The scrollroom felt it too late.

The pedestal twitched—an amber blink. Then the entire chamber lurched.

A faultline somewhere above gave out, and the vault—its foundation already cracked from the years—snapped free. Runes screeched against themselves, sparks spilling across the glyphwork like panicked ink.

And then—it fell.

The scroll chamber, its walls still humming with half-cast wards, plunged from what remained of the Lumenreach structure, tumbling like a sacred egg wrenched from its cradle. Down through rubble, fire, smoke, and air split too fast to scream.

Inside:

Silence, first.

Then motion. The world tipped.

Gravity fractured.

Simon slammed into a wall. Dogman crashed backward, his paw bracing instinctively against a runeplate that seared his palm. Books, charms, fragments of bottled spellwork flung themselves from shelves and cracked open mid-air—colors bled into the air, distortions rippling briefly before winking out.

Dylan floated for a beat. Not graceful. Not controlled. Just briefly lifted by the sudden absence of down before the chamber rolled again, and everything went sideways.

Cracks webbed across the containment glass. But the chamber held.

The runes stuttered, dimmed—then stabilized. A thrum. Then another. Whatever magic had been etched into the bones of this place long ago refused to fail quietly. Even in freefall, even ripped from its anchors, the scroll vault remained sealed.

It hit the earth like a bell with no tone.

The crater it carved hissed steam, ash curling around its edges.

Inside, floating amid books and bruises and the weight of survival, the three figures remained.

Not unharmed.

But alive.

---

The boom reached Cactus Funk Point like a storm remembering where it left its anger.

Ashen’s eyes flicked open just before the sound hit.

There was a light—brief and blinding—somewhere along the horizon where the sea met the idea of land, and for a moment, it looked like the whole continent had hiccupped in flame. Then came the tremor—not enough to knock anything over, but enough to jolt every drumbeat in the village a half-second off rhythm.

Ashen didn’t sit up. He didn’t need to. He felt it.

His jaw clenched.

Something ancient inside him—the part that survived the panther, the part that didn’t die under Charlotte’s boot—recognized it. That scale. That violence. That depth of loss.

“...Shit.”

---

The sky changed.

It didn’t roar. Not at first. It brightened—a sudden, unnatural flare, like the sun had fractured behind the mountains and forgotten its timing. Ephraim’s ears twitched, her breath catching in the stillness. She turned her head slowly, instinct first, mind second.

And then she saw it.

Far beyond the ridge and the fog-laced horizon—Brasshollow bloomed.

Not with light. Not with life.

But with fire.

A bloom of heat and violence tore upward from the heart of the city like a wound forced open, columns of smoke coiling like questions no one had time to ask. The light wasn’t gold. It was wrong. It was final.

Rhea looked up at her.

Castara stopped spinning.

Ephraim didn’t speak. Her lips parted, but no sound came. Just a slow, horrified exhale that pulled her forward to her knees, one hand bracing against the cliff’s edge.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

The office at the top of the Whistletrain Central Hub had always been too quiet.

Lucian didn’t sit. He never had. Not during moments like this.

He stood with his arms clasped behind his back, shoulders drawn and still, staring out the grand arched window that overlooked the soot-lined skyline of Brasshollow. The horizon was jagged now—buildings half-mended, scaffolded spires reaching like broken fingers toward a smoke-blurred sky. The city crawled below in recovery. Plumes of dust still rose from reconstruction sites. The metal veins of rail lines twisted through the wreckage, some now rerouted, some rusting where they’d snapped.

And beneath it all—what lay unseen, what no blueprints could restore—was the weight of the dead.

Mass casualties. That’s what the reports called them. Blunt, cold. A body count. But Lucian had never needed numbers to understand loss.

Charlotte.

The word—no, the name—moved through his mind like a blade through silk. Clean. Silent. Final.

She had been a constant. Efficient, discreet, immaculately dressed in her sharp tongue and sharper precision. She never left his side without intent. And now—now she was nothing but smoke in the wind, taken in that anarchist firestorm that shattered the lower districts. Taken by them. By the ones clawing at the walls of order, painting slogans over the charred bones of the city.

Lucian didn’t cry. Not when the explosion tore through the tunnels. Not when the reports filtered in, name by name, until hers landed like a dropped coin on marble. Not even when he saw the ruin with his own eyes.

But his silence shifted. Not the elegant kind he wielded like a dagger in conversation—but a deeper stillness. The kind of silence that wrapped around his chest and never let go.

His tail flicked once, slow and deliberate, the only movement in the room. Behind him, a stack of ledgers, missives, and intelligence reports waited on the desk like obedient ghosts. Seven years of political rebalancing. Seven years of holding this city together by its collar while the undercurrent gnawed at the seams.

Let them gnaw.

He was still here.

No grand speech. No public display of vengeance. That was not his style. No fireworks, no fanfare. Let the rats believe they’d knocked the king from his perch.

But he had not fallen.

Lucian’s green eyes narrowed slightly. His gaze drifted to a part of the city that once held traction—once held him. The trail had gone cold. Someone vanished through the smoke, and he had not yet been able to pull the thread. That, more than most things, vexed him.

"You're careful," he murmured under his breath, voice smooth as glass. "But I do wonder… when it’s time for the velvet guillotine to fall—will you draw the curtain… or will I?"

A pause. His whiskers twitched with disdain.

"The Auxies do so love a mess. Spray paint, screaming, lighters in the dark. Sloppy little statements dressed as revolution." His claws flexed once, a slow kneading against the polished glass. "If you're going to slit a throat, at least have the decency to do it clean."

He turned from the window.

Soda. Dhar’va. Charlotte. Names that once formed a structure. Now, just absences. And yet, Lucian still stood. Still Chairman. Still breathing. The fire hadn’t taken him—it had only burned away the false parts.

He crossed the office floor, footsteps silent against the marble, and stopped beside the modest bar cart. A crystal decanter caught the light, half-filled with dark bourbon. He poured without ceremony, the liquor catching against the glass like molasses, and raised it to his lips.

A deeper drink than usual. It lingered in his throat. Burned against old instincts.

Not just nerves. Something else stirred now. Primal. Hungry. Steady.

Lucian exhaled softly through his nose. Then he turned, moving back to his desk.

There, atop the brushed steel surface, sat a single object. A black metal mask. Her mask. Charlotte's. It had once gleamed beneath gaslights, a symbol of structure and presence—her quiet armor in the chaos of this place.

He reached out and picked it up with a measured hand, holding it in the dying light.

He stared at it for a long moment. No words. No sentiment. Just memory.

Then gently, deliberately, he set it back down.

Lucian smoothed the front of his waistcoat, squared his shoulders, and turned toward the window once more.

“Let them mourn the fire,” he said, voice velvet-wrapped steel. “I intend to survive it.”

And the city below, broken but stirring, breathed on.

---

The sea was still.

Not glassy, not serene—just old. As though the water remembered silence before the world did, and now refused to betray it. Fog curled in thick bands across the horizon, smothering the stars and bleeding the moonlight down to a weak gold haze. From the shore, Snarlin’ Cove slept undisturbed, its few lights flickering behind shuttered windows far inland. No waves crashed. No gulls cried. The world held its breath.

And from the mist, the Witherwild came.

It moved without sound—only weight. Massive, overgrown, and ancient beyond reckoning, the beast emerged not like a monster but a landmass. A forgotten island dragging itself toward the edge of knowing. Its gnarled limbs stirred the deep only slightly. No ripples reached the shore. It did not breach the beach. It stopped just offshore, well beyond the reach of any lantern. The waters between it and the land remained untouched, like the space between two memories not yet ready to connect.

Then, with the same slow reverence it had always shown him, the Witherwild lowered its head.

The creak of its neck was like the groan of old earth—trees bending, moss peeling, dirt shifting. As it bent down, its skull—shaped like bark and crowned in coral-like horns—pressed into the water. No splash followed. Only stillness. The creature's face now formed a sloped ridgeline of turf and stone, seamlessly blending into the sea’s edge. From any distance, it would appear simply as another hump of island rock. Nothing special. Nothing moving. Nothing alive.

From the summit of its head, Mordecai began to descend.

He was not regal. Not triumphant. Not even whole. Wrapped in a ragged cloak, bones thin beneath his robes, he walked with the aid of a worn wooden staff—each step tapping quietly against moss-laced stone. His hooves were wrapped, cracked with travel. His left eye was clouded, unseeing, and his expression unreadable beneath the graying fur of his face. But he did not pause. Not once.

Beside him, Cerberus followed.

Three forms in perfect synchronicity—Cer, Ber, and Rus—the massive skeletal wolves padded down the slope with him, black fur bristling around ancient bone. Their spines curved like grim armor, skulls expressionless but alert. They had followed him for years. They would follow him now.

At the edge of the Witherwild’s head, Mordecai stepped off.

The water welcomed him like it had never left. Just to his ankles. Cold, but not biting. Real. His staff touched down with him, wetting the tip. The wolves entered beside him, making no splash. Their paws disturbed nothing. The ocean was simply... there—part of the crossing.

When his hooves finally met the sand of Snarlin’ Cove, he stopped.

The silence stretched. No emotion rose to his face. No recognition. No fear. But something unseen passed through his posture, a small shift in the ribs, the weight behind the shoulders. He was not on the island anymore. This was land. This land. Somewhere beneath all the years and curses and hallucinations, a thread in his chest trembled. But he did not speak.

He turned—slowly—his head tilting toward the sea.

The Witherwild lifted its own head in answer.

Its motion was ponderous, a slow creak of effort and eternity. It gazed at him, eyes unreadable beneath overgrown ridges and moss. Then, with a faint dip of its head—a bow, almost imperceptible—it acknowledged him. Not as a master. Not as a burden. Just as one who had walked it.

The titan began to retreat. Fog licked at its limbs like ghosts made of breath. Its mossy shell rose higher, floating back into the shroud of sea. In moments, it was nothing more than a shifting silhouette, then an outline, then just another island on the horizon.

Mordecai watched it vanish.

At his back, something stirred. A throb beneath the scar tissue. The Hollow Veldt curse—still lodged in his third chakra like a buried ember—pulsed with faint violet light. He shifted slightly. A tilt of the head. A soft exhale. The pain wasn’t sharp, but it was constant. Present. Known.

The wolves stood beside him, waiting. The shore was empty, the homes of Snarlin’ Cove distant, no eyes yet upon them. The land had not noticed him. But his chest had.

He turned his gaze to Cerberus, voice dry and nearly gone, low as wind through brittle leaves.

“...Find her.”

There was no fanfare. No final glance. He turned away, walking toward the treeline with slow, steady steps, disappearing into the brush like a ghost who had no need to haunt—just to watch.

Cerberus did not hesitate.

The wolves turned as one and ran, silent and dark, splitting into the shadows of the Cove. Not hunting. Not tracking. Guided.

And somewhere beyond the still horizon, the Witherwild was already gone.

---

Night had settled thick over Snarlin’ Cove, the kind that silenced birds and softened even the tide. The moon hung swollen above the hills, casting pale light across the worn rooftops and low grasses that bent in the windless dark. Somewhere in the distance, a gull cried once in its sleep, then did not cry again.

The houses on the bluff sat still—scattered like forgotten shells in the dune-swept quiet. Beyond them, the trees whispered only to themselves. But something had entered the Cove that did not belong to it.

From deep within the tree line, a sound rose.

Not sharp. Not predatory. Not the wail of something wild and untamed—but low. Controlled. Carried with intent. A wolf’s howl—drawn out and haunting—but distorted beneath the surface. As if the throat that sang it was carved of old bone and hollow marrow. The sound did not screech or roar. It called. Summoned.

Then again. Louder. Closer.

It curled around corners, slid through cracks in the siding, reverberated faintly through the still glass windows of homes not meant to hear it. It was impossible to ignore. Not monstrous. But unmistakable.

At one home—further from the others, nearer to the tree-laced ridge where the shore curled tight to the land—the silence broke again. This time not with sound, but motion.

Outside the door, a dark shape sat crouched.

It scratched.

The motion was rhythmic, low and persistent. One paw against the wood. Then a pause. Then another. Not tearing. Not frantic. But insistent. With every movement came the soft clatter of bone beneath thick black fur—subtle, like dry beads shifting in a pouch. The skeletal plates along its forelimbs caught the moonlight just enough to glint.

And then it whined.

Not sharp, like a starving dog. Not theatrical. Just soft, pitiful, aching. A sound made only when one has waited too long to be seen. The kind that slips under doors and presses into chests. It did not stop.

The scratching continued. A quiet, steady plea. Not a threat.

A request.

A call to be noticed.

A call to come outside.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Simon stood just outside the door to the Chairman’s office, the air still as if the whole room were holding its breath.

He entered quietly, the door clicking shut behind him like a punctuation mark.

“Chairman Lucian,” Simon said, the word soft but steady.

He crossed the marble floor with practiced grace, his boots no longer the scuffed, mismatched things he wore fresh from Lumenreach. He looked older. Sharper. But the light hadn’t left his eyes. Just matured into something watchful.

He held a folder in one hand—creased from being clutched too tightly.

“I have the information you asked for,” he said, placing it on the desk beside the bourbon glass, just inches from Charlotte’s black mask. He didn’t stare at it. But it was there. Always was. “We're awaiting additional confirmations... but it's more than we've had in sometime..."

Simon exhaled, then opened the folder with fingers that hesitated just once.

“Misty Valley,” he said. “It's one of the new island developments farther west—off-map until recently. It's supposed to be a utopia build: eco-spiritual, internal water-powered transit systems. But we’re seeing movement. Cargo routed through third-tier docks, and more than one name tied to the Auxie registry."

He flipped the first page. Images. Blurred, long-lens captures. One showing a cheetahkin waving orders at a dock.

“Three officials. Possibly five. All believed to have been involved in the planning of the Brasshollow Arcane Fires."

---

Ephraim had been awake already.

She didn’t sleep much these days—the silence of Snarlin’ Cove suited her, quiet as it was. There, wrapped in a black shawl and her hair bound into a long, silver-streaked braid, she could listen to the rhythm of nothing.

She looked different now—older, yes, but not worn. Polished. The soft country green dresses were long gone, replaced by robes of darker cloth traced with gold embroidery. Glasses for feigning vision. Her horns, still proud and curled, framed her face like punctuation marks. The girl in the grass had become something else.

But tonight, something stirred.

Not in the earth, not in the tide—but in the air.

Her ears twitched at the first sound. A howl—drawn and thick like mist in the lungs. It vibrated against something old in her bones, something she hadn’t heard in seven years but would never forget.

She rose without hesitation.

Mordecai.

The scratching began outside the door. Rhythmic. Low. Persistent.

Not threatening. Just… present.

She opened the door slowly.

The wind didn’t rush in, as it might have once. It merely curled past her like an old friend, brushing the edge of her braid, tugging at the gold-stitched hem of her robe. Moonlight bathed the porch, catching on her spectacles, painting her in soft outlines of memory and night.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Lucian did not speak at first.

He stood perfectly still before the wide pane of glass, one hand loosely cradling the bourbon glass as the city sprawled beneath him—its fractured bones now scaffolded in iron and ambition. The word Misty Valley had shifted something behind his eyes, but he did not turn. Not even as Simon laid the folder beside Charlotte’s mask.

It wasn’t until the image surfaced—that blurred long-lens photo of the dock—that the silence rippled. His breath, though quiet, pulled deeper. His ear flicked once. Then, smoothly, he turned.

His paw reached forward with a measured elegance, claws glinting as they touched the edge of the photo. He didn’t lift it immediately. He merely stared. The cheetahkin in the frame, issuing orders like a ghost unaware it had been seen. Lucian recognized him instantly. The memory was precise—light catching off a weapon’s barrel, Ephraim’s hand over his wound, blood barely staining his coat. The crackling smell of ozone as the other two attackers collapsed in twitching silence. And this one—this one ran.

Lucian’s gaze did not harden. It cooled.

He picked up the image between two claws and turned it toward the light, studying the grain like a wine he had already memorized.

“Familiarity,” he murmured, more to the window than to Simon, “is a currency with a curious shelf life.”

He let the photo hover for another moment, then set it down—quietly, with the care one gives to a loaded pistol.

His eyes swept to the folder, and then, at last, to Simon.

“You’ll keep this between us,” Lucian said. “No copies. No peripheral eyes. For now, it’s just mist on the valley. Let it stay that way.”

He walked to the desk with his slow, predatory grace, the weight of his silence dragging behind him like a train of velvet. He did not sit. He simply reached forward, fingertips tapping once on the corner of the folder.

“Verify when Misty Valley’s development was first acknowledged by any regional commission. Public archives only. I want to know which bureaucrats decided to turn a blind eye before there was something worth seeing.”

He reached again for his drink and sipped this time, slower, heavier. The bourbon coated his throat like heat-stained memory.

“And while you’re doing that—quietly cross-reference westbound private car usage from the last two months. Focus on recurring names. Preferably the sort who don’t like to leave a footprint.”

Another pause. He rolled the glass between his fingers, staring not at Simon but at the mask beside the folder.

“See if any whistlepoint traffic links to that region. Donations, payments, sudden shifts in funding. Off-the-books investment patterns. I’m not interested in what they report. I’m interested in what they forgot to hide.”

Lucian’s tone never sharpened. It was silk stretched over steel, smooth enough to drink, dangerous enough to bleed.

“If there are more images of that cheetah,” he added, “bring them to me.”

He did not explain why.

His gaze, still feline, lingered on the image as if it had just spoken to him.

Then, without raising his voice, he closed the folder with a soft snap. The room exhaled around it.

“Let them gather,” he said. “The deeper the nest, the easier it burns.”

---

Outside the door, Rus waited—large and black-furred, skeletal plates etched beneath his skin like living armor. But in that moment, he wasn’t a beast of bone and shadow. He was movement. Joy. Purpose.

The instant the door cracked open, his front paws lifted in excited rhythm, tapping the porch in tiny hops—one, two, one-two again—as if he couldn’t hold still. His tail wagged in wide, uneven swings, thumping against the wood, his whole body quivering with a tension that wasn’t fear. It was recognition.

A long whine escaped him as he shook out his fur, shedding whatever weight he'd carried in getting here. Then, without pause, he bounded down the short steps—agile despite his skeletal limbs—and turned to face the doorway again.

He barked once. Sharp. Urgent. Not a warning, but a beckoning.

From somewhere farther down the ridge, the same eerie howl rolled through the night. Low and hollow, touched with a resonance that didn’t sound entirely alive—like wind through bone, or a voice trying to remember what lungs felt like.

Rus’s ears snapped toward the sound. He paused, head tilted slightly, then raised his own and let loose a returning howl—higher, shorter, a reply made of faith and instinct.

When it faded, he looked back to her.

His tail swayed again, slower now, and he dropped into a playful crouch—front legs low, rear end lifted, tail arched in the air. Another bark. A flash of wild joy.

He sprinted forward, just a short distance, kicking up sand as he darted down the sand like a creature caught between two worlds. Then he stopped, turned sharply on his paws, and barked again—sharper this time. A call, a question, a plea.

He whined, glancing down the distant path that curved toward the water, then back to the open door.

Another bark.

Another whine.

Follow. Please. Follow.

 

[scantilycladsnail]

Simon nodded. Too quickly at first. Then again—slower, like he was trying to absorb the weight of every syllable Lucian uttered and realizing halfway through that it was already too much.

“Yes, sir. Absolutely,” he said, eyes flicking down to the folder as if it might rearrange itself into something simpler. “No copies. No... peripheral vision. Eyes. I mean, I won’t let it leak.”

He offered a strained smile, then rubbed the back of his neck as Lucian’s list continued, unfurling with the precise cadence of a blade being sharpened. The words came dressed in velvet, but each one lodged somewhere between Simon’s shoulder blades. Verify regional commission acknowledgments. Cross-reference private car usage. Westbound. Two months. Whistlepoint traffic. Investment patterns. Names. Names that don’t like footprints.

He was nodding again. His ears twitched. His hand reached for the folder instinctively like it might anchor him, but he didn’t pick it up. Not yet.

“Right,” he said. “Public records. Bureaucrats. Probably... several of them. Possibly complicit. Or just confused! Happens a lot with new developments, right?”

Lucian didn’t answer. Not directly.

Simon shifted his weight.

The mask beside the folder caught his gaze again. Charlotte’s.

Simon’s expression faltered for a beat. He straightened up.

“I’ll get it done,” he said. Then, after a pause: “Just might take me a bit to, uh... coordinate all this,"

Lucian’s silence was not cruel. Just... complete. The kind of silence that didn’t need to acknowledge confusion. The kind that made you feel like an intern in your own shoes.

Simon cleared his throat.

“I’ll start with the regional commission records....check for early mentions. Then move on to train manifests. Well, not actual manifests, but... y’know, the shadowy money trains. Um—yes. I’ll see myself out.”

He picked up the folder. Too fast. Nearly dropped it. Managed to recover with a spin that looked almost intentional if you were the forgiving sort.

Just before slipping out, he turned halfway back.

“If, uh... if there’s anything else. Or if I mess any of that up, just... let me know? I learn fast.”

---

Ephraim looked back to the house.

The warm lamplight still glowed from within—steady, undisturbed, cradling the shape of a quiet life. Her teacup still sat half-full on the sill. Her shawl still hung on the peg. All the things she’d built in his absence.

She stood framed in the doorway, hand on the post, watching Rus bounce and dart like some haunted memory that had remembered how to dance.

A flicker crossed her features. Not fear. Not hope. Something older. Worn.

She opened the door again and stepped inside just long enough to lift a long overlayer from its hook—dark wool lined with sea-gray trim, something between a scholar’s robe and a traveler’s wrap. Her fingers lingered on the fabric, smoothing it at the shoulders, then fastening it at the throat with a brass pin shaped like a sleeping bird.

When she stepped outside, she did not close the door fully behind her. Just a crack. Just in case.

Rus barked again. That playful crouch. That insistence. That ache.

Ephraim descended the steps slowly, letting her hooves settle into the sand with deliberate care. She didn’t run, but she followed. As the wind caught the edge of her coat and the moonlight touched her silver-streaked braid, her eyes remained fixed on the ridge ahead.

It looked like Wrath’s familiar. Gone silent when Wrath retired... if you could call it that.

So then—was this him? Was Mordecai their master now? Had he taken Wrath’s place fully, tethered these beasts as his own?

Or...

Her breath caught. The thought chilled her from the inside out.

Had Mordecai died, and were they now carrying her to what was left?

Or worse still—was this some god's game? A trick? The kind she had no shield against?

The questions pressed in, thick and fevered.

Seven years. Seven years of silence, of scanning crowds, of watching train manifests and dream signs and prayer fields for any trace of him. Of listening for creatures that didn’t call anymore.

She had believed, at one point, that he was dead. Truly. Fully. And worse—she had believed it was her fault. That when the bibblecores crashed—somehow her choices had led him into it.

Or maybe he had survived. And had simply chosen to vanish. Chosen not to write. Not to return. And that... that was heavier than death.

Her hand brushed the side of her coat, the motion half-involuntary—seeking reassurance in its texture, in the feel of a life she had rebuilt without him.

What would he even see, if he saw her now?

Not the girl in the green dress. She had aged. Not only in years, but in spirit. In sorrow. She had carried the weight of her own forgiveness for too long.

Yet still—when Rus looked back, panting with that broken joy in his eyes—she followed.

Her stride lengthened, faster now as she crested the first hill after him, cloak fluttering around her like a shadow torn free. She didn't call out. She didn’t ask questions. Not yet.

 

[ThieviusRaccoonus]

Lucian watched the folder disappear into Simon’s grasp with the same scrutiny he gave high-speed rail couplings—observing not the function, but the margin for failure. His gaze didn’t follow Simon to the door. It lingered instead on the mask.

Charlotte’s.

She had never fumbled a file.

He adjusted the mask’s angle by a fraction—just enough to center it again. His claws clicked softly once against the metal, a whisper of thought sharpened into ritual.

Simon’s nervous half-turn came like the final swing of a pendulum—predictable, but not without consequence.

Lucian spoke before the silence could settle into something awkward.

“You won’t need to learn fast,” he said, eyes still on the city beyond the glass. “You’ll need to remember well.”

There was no bite. Just that velvet hush he wore like a tailored coat—cool, close, and suffocating if you weren’t careful.

He turned slightly—just enough to trail a single fingertip along the edge of the black metal mask once more. The motion wasn’t sentimental. It was deliberate.

“Some roles,” he murmured, more to the mask than to Simon, “are not easily replaced.”

Then, as if the thought had never been spoken aloud, he returned to the window, lifting his glass again but not drinking—just letting the weight of it settle in his palm.

“And Simon,” he added without turning, voice a thread of stillness through the air, “do take care not to mistake nervous movement for progress.”

He let that hang, before finishing:

“Close the door.”

The words carried no venom.

Just judgment—waiting.

---

Rus bounded ahead, all energy and joy—his steps light, nearly dancing as his paws pattered over the sand. He moved with purpose, but not urgency, resisting the instinct to sprint. Every few strides he stopped, glancing back over his shoulder, tail wagging in wide, eager arcs to make sure she was still there. Then he was off again—zigzagging down the moonlit path like a shadow that had remembered how to play.

At one point, he veered off toward the shoreline, splashing briefly into the frothy edge of a small wave. He barked at the water like an old rival, leaping back as foam lapped at his ankles, then shook himself out with a satisfied huff. The wind carried his joy in bursts—small echoes of something once lost, now resurfaced.

Another howl pierced the air—distant, hollow, resonant. Rus froze mid-hop, ears lifting, spine straightening with recognition. Without hesitation, he pivoted from the sea and galloped up the next dune, a hilly ridge brushed in pale grass, leading toward the treeline. The woods beyond were not dark—bathed instead in silver light that softened their edges, making the branches look like veins of moonlight stitched into the earth.

From the slope ahead, a second figure emerged.

He moved with more control—Ber, dark and skeletal like his kin, descended in a clean, easy glide, paws sure against the slope. Rus yipped with excitement the moment he saw him, rushing forward, tail wagging furiously. He bounced, circled, barked—snapping his jaws in harmless play, trying to clamber over Ber with too much affection.

Ber let out a low, rumbling growl—not aggressive, just enough to ground the younger wolf. A warning, a sibling’s rebuke. Rus dropped off him with a playful hop, still buzzing with energy but chastened. His tail kept swaying, slower now, flicking at the sand.

Ber turned his gaze toward the figure behind them. A slow tail wag. A kind of acknowledgment.

Then, without prompting, he looked forward again—toward the path that wound deeper into the trees.

From deeper in the woods, a third howl echoed back—closer this time. Not from either wolf beside her, but from somewhere just out of view. Another waited there.

Ber’s ears perked, and he lifted his head in answer. Rus mirrored him. Together, they howled—not mournful, not savage, but clear. Calling back.

When the sound faded, Ber didn’t pause. He trotted forward into the trees, confident and unshaken. Rus followed with a bounce, looking back over his shoulder once more. One bark. One final nudge.

Then they vanished around the bend, moving like black flame through silver wood, never quite out of sight—but never slowing down.