The forest gradually thinned, giving way to sharp gray crags and thorny brush that snagged at our clothes. The air here was different—it felt physically heavy and dense. With every breath, a strange metallic aftertaste lingered in my lungs.
"Much further?" I rasped, putting one foot in front of the other on pure autopilot.
My internal calculator stubbornly spat out the numbers: an incline of roughly thirty degrees, bodily energy expenditures at their limit, and "Will to Live" running at a mere five percent capacity, barely maintaining my vascular tone.
"Endure it," Zeno said from ahead, barely breaking his stride or his breathing rhythm. How he managed that at his age remained a total mystery to me. "See how the air shimmers? That's the edge of the Pass. The mana flows up there are torn to shreds, slamming into one another."
I narrowed my eyes. Sure enough, the space above the rocky ridge rippled with a fine, localized distortion.
"Why are we going there?" I wiped the sweat from my forehead, smearing the grime across my skin. "It's dangerous."
"Dangerous," Zeno agreed without looking back. "But to Richter, that Pass is a wall of white noise. Their tracking spells go blind and deaf up there. If we cross into the zone of fractured ether, they'll lose us. It's our only shot at shaking the tail."
I nodded, trying to focus on anything other than the burning ache in my calves. As we hiked, I began to experiment.
I tried to "feel out" the vector of my own inertia. It demanded ferocious concentration—I attempted to slightly alter the density of the air directly ahead of me to reduce wind resistance while walking. For a fraction of a second, it worked. The air briefly turned "liquid," and my stride became noticeably easier, but the sheer strain immediately triggered a sharp, shooting pain in my temples.
And to think this used to be easier for me, I thought bitterly.
"Careful with that," Zeno said, slowing his pace to match mine. His gaze flicked over my face. "In the Pass zone, where the ether is already volatile, your magic could easily turn against us."
"I'm just trying to figure out what I'm capable of in this state," I exhaled. "If we get jumped, I don't want to be dead weight again."
"We'll find out soon enough." Zeno stopped dead and adjusted his grip on his staff. "Smell that? Rot. This ravine is the perfect habitat for things that hate sunlight and feed on fractured mana."
I listened closely. From behind the nearest rocky outcrop came a low, guttural growl that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.
"Get ready," Zeno commanded, his makeshift staff slowly beginning to glow with a soft, bluish light.
Out of the thick, sticky fog, they lunged into the attack. The Distorted.
Massive, knotty bodies covered in gray skin resembling a dead fish. Each possessed four powerful limbs ending in long, jagged talons, and atop their broad shoulders bulged two conjoined heads—noseless, but crammed to the brim with needle-like teeth.
"Back!" Zeno barked, shifting his stance.
I felt something click inside. "Will to Live" responded instantly. I activated the skill at its absolute minimum, knowing that at medium or full power, I would simply burn out.
I focused entirely on Zeno. His movements were incredibly fast, but I could make them flawless. As the first monster leaped, I clenched my fist, concentrating on Zeno's movement vector. I "pushed" the space behind his back, eliminating air resistance. The old man surged forward, slipping right beneath the creature's claws. At the same instant, I manifested a compressed cushion of air in front of him—an invisible shield that another Distorted's snout smashed into with a sickening crunch.
"It's working..." I rasped, feeling a dull ache begin to pulse in my temples.
But there were too many of them. One of the beasts, larger and swifter than the rest, flanked us while I was helping Zeno fend off three at once. I noticed it a fraction too late.
A massive, clawed limb raised directly over my head. In that moment, time seemed to grind to a halt. I could see every fissure on its yellowed talons, the strings of foul saliva flying from its maw, and I felt the grave-cold chill radiating from the monster. My mind dispassionately recorded: Impact unavoidable. Momentum sufficient for cranial penetration.
Was this really it? The end?
"Move!" Zeno's voice shattered the silence.
The flash was so bright it momentarily blinded me. His staff, saturated with humming magic, struck upward. First came the sound—then the aftermath. The blunt wood drove straight into the creature's chin and burst through the crown of its head, splitting both conjoined skulls cleanly in two.
Thick, dark blood erupted upward, coating the rocks and my face. I caught its foul, rancid taste on my lips. The monster's innards spilled out onto the sharp stones with a wet slosh, thick steam rising from the torn flesh. Zeno didn't miss a beat: with a sweeping, circular motion, he cleaved the beast's torso completely in half. The upper portion of the Distorted twitched for another second, scraping its claws desperately against the stone before finally going still in a pool of its own gore.
Zeno breathed heavily, his face splattered with the black blood.
"We move," Zeno muttered, catching me by the arm to keep me from collapsing into the bloody carnage underfoot. "The stench of this carrion will draw the rest. The Pass is close."
But the rest of them?.. There were more...
I looked closer and spotted several other carcasses already littering the ground nearby. When did he even have time to do that? the thought flashed through my mind.
An hour later, the silence of the ravine was shattered by the clatter of heavy armor and the low hum of tracking amulets. A squad of the Order's guards was pressing hard on the trail.
The vanguard commander, an officer with an Inquisition brand tattooed onto his neck, raised a sharp hand, ordering a halt. Ahead, on a narrow plateau between the crags, lay what was left of the Distorted.
"Mages to the front! Moving!" he commanded.
Two trackers in gray robes knelt over the mutilated carcasses. One of them carefully passed his palm over a puddle of dark blood that hadn't yet fully soaked into the porous stone. The amulet on his wrist vibrated violently and flared with a crimson light.
"This is a zone of anomalous concentration," the mage reported without looking back, his voice trembling slightly. "The magical signatures are incredibly powerful, raw. But there is something else."
"Speak plainly," the officer snapped.
"The etheric trail is highly unusual, Commander. The energy... it's too pure. Look at these cuts on the monsters' bones—they are perfectly smooth."
Heavy footsteps caused the guards to part. Richter stepped out of the mist, his face a mask of cold focus. He walked up to the remains of the largest beast—and contemptuously touched the edge of its severed carapace with a gloved finger.
"He's already begun manipulating motion vectors..."
Richter straightened up, wiping his fingers with a snow-white handkerchief. "So, Subject Alpha is adapting faster than we anticipated. How fascinating."
"They headed toward the Pass, Lord Richter," the officer reported. "But the background levels are too volatile there. Our amulets will start to fail. We might lose them in the etheric noise."
Richter turned toward the jagged peaks where space itself rippled with fractured mana. A thin, heatless smile touched his lips.
He spun back to the squad, his voice snapping like a whip: "All units—double the pace! Spare neither men nor mana reserves. We will pin them right against the ridge of the Pass. I will not allow my finest creation to dissolve into this garbage. Move out!"
The guards struck their chests in unison and surged forward, plunging along the bloody trail left by the fugitives.
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