"Damn it—get down!"
Freya hears me, but her first move is to look up.
The scythe rises with her arms. Ice starts to cover her shoulders as she searches for the shape hidden among the leaves, trying to turn an ambush into a fight before she’s even located the enemy.
The forked jaw is already dropping.
I cross the distance and throw myself against her.
My shoulder hits her back. Freya loses her footing and falls between the roots, out of the main line of the attack. I’m still on top of her when a camouflaged mass tears free of the canopy.
The Reef Stalker’s front claw catches my left arm.
The Horizon soaks up part of the force. The reserve drops in a single chunk, and the rest of the impact runs through the wrist guard up to the shoulder.
I feel a dry shock inside the arm.
Then the pain comes.
It climbs my neck, crosses my chest, and blots out the forest for an instant. My body hits the ground beside Freya. I try to plant my left hand to get up, but the arm stays behind, dragged through the mud without answering.
The Reef Stalker vanishes among the trees before Kraken can reach it.
The messages open.
[Horizon Impact Absorption activated.]
[OXI: 2,091 → 1,642/2,500]
[Critical Limb Trauma detected.]
[Left Arm — Motor Function Lost.]
The arm hangs at my side. The shoulder still holds it in place, but everything else swings without strength when I try to rise.
A second notification appears.
[OXI Bleeding detected.]
[Current Loss: 4 OXI/s.]
The number starts to fall.
[OXI: 1,638/2,500]
[OXI: 1,634/2,500]
Freya comes up on her knees.
Her eyes go from my face to the arm and stay there. The guilt reaches her before she says anything.
"I heard you."
"Then next time, get down."
The answer comes out through my teeth. The pain pulses near my heart, along with the cold feel of OXI escaping through a point the body can’t close.
Freya moves closer.
"Let me see."
"Don’t touch the arm. Stabilize it at the shoulder."
She obeys at once.
The ice starts on the left side of the Horizon. Freya builds a thin structure around the shoulder, runs it down the side of my torso, and pins the arm against my body without trying to set it in a perfect position. Her hands shake as the layer passes the elbow.
The counter doesn’t stop.
[OXI: 1,594/2,500]
"The ice isn’t closing it," she says.
"Doesn’t seem to be an ordinary bleed."
A wet click comes from the trees.
Click.
Kraken leaves my right hand on its own and turns between us, blade pointed at the sound.
Freya is still looking at my arm.
"It was my fault."
"You can blame yourself later."
She lifts her eyes.
"Right now, you fight."
The camouflage breaks to our right.
The Reef Stalker didn’t pull back to set up another ambush. It pushed its hind legs against a tree trunk and crossed the passage in a diagonal leap, using its own fall to build speed.
Freya raises a tilted plate of ice.
The Stalker’s front paw hits the surface. The claws don’t try to break it. They lock onto the ice.
The creature uses the point of contact as a pivot.
Its body swings around the trapped limb, and the jaw comes from the opposite side, correcting the attack after it has already left the ground.
"Drop the barrier!"
Freya breaks the ice.
The paw loses its hold. The Reef Stalker drops a few centimeters, but it still manages to close the jaw where her neck had been. Freya throws herself back and slots the scythe’s haft between the two halves of the mouth.
The impact shoves her through the mud.
Kraken comes in from below.
The sword strikes the front paw’s joint and redirects the creature’s weight. I don’t try to overpower the Stalker with one arm. I use the flat of the blade, Kraken’s own movement, and the direction the monster already chose.
Freya frees the scythe from the jaw and spins.
The blade passes across the predator’s throat.
Its body folds backward before the contact completes. The spine flexes into a curve that would have broken an ordinary animal, and the scythe only touches the outer layer of skin.
The Reef Stalker lands on all four paws and disappears against the color of the roots.
"It shouldn’t be able to correct twice in the same leap," I say.
Freya is breathing hard.
"Maybe you don’t know it as well as you think."
Another click comes from behind us.
Kraken shifts its guard before I turn.
The Stalker comes out of a trunk almost against my left side.
The creature had figured out the arm.
I use Pressure Step.
The push takes me out of the jaw’s reach, but the acceleration jars the limb strapped to the splint. The pain crosses my chest and narrows my vision to a thin band.
Kraken stays behind.
The sword blocks the paw following the attack, turns under the claws, and cuts the skin of the forearm. The Reef Stalker pulls the limb back, but it can’t stop Freya from coming in on the side.
The scythe hits its ribs.
The blade opens the chromatophore skin. A dark blue liquid rises along the cut line, threaded with black filaments that move alongside the fibers.
The creature leaps to the nearest tree.
A membrane opens between the front paw and the torso.
It catches the air and changes the angle of its body mid-leap, letting the Stalker reach a branch that was off its original path.
Freya follows the climb.
"Is that part of the creature?"
"Not of the ones I know."
The counter keeps dropping.
[OXI: 1,423/2,500]
[OXI Bleeding active.]
The Horizon had absorbed the first impact and part of the acceleration on the arm. The leak does the rest.
I can’t let the creature control how long this fight lasts.
I hold out my right hand.
Kraken returns, but I don’t take the hilt. I point at the canopy on the left.
"Cut the route."
The sword shoots between the trunks.
The Stalker moves before the strike reaches its position, dropping the camouflage for an instant. Kraken doesn’t try to chase it. It cuts the branch the creature would leap to.
The wood falls.
The predator has to choose the ground.
Freya is already waiting.
She sweeps the scythe flat along the mud, forcing the Stalker to jump over the blade. I’d used the same logic against this species before. The first attack didn’t need to wound. It needed to make the dodge predictable.
Kraken comes from above.
The creature lowers its head to keep its skull.
Freya changes the arc mid-rotation and hits the shoulder.
The scythe goes in a few centimeters and stops.
Under the skin there’s a dark plate, flexible, formed around the joint.
The Reef Stalker traps the blade between the bone and its own body. It turns using its hind legs and makes Freya’s weapon a lever against her arms.
"Let go!"
Freya opens her hands before the movement wrecks her shoulders.
The scythe vanishes into the inventory. The Stalker loses its anchor point and finishes the rotation off balance.
I come in.
I use Pressure Step on the diagonal, shielding the left arm against my torso. Kraken returns to my hand during the advance.
One arm is enough.
The sword nearly does half the work on its own.
I cut from low to high, aiming at the throat Freya exposed. The Reef Stalker tries to pull its head in, but Kraken alters the angle at the last instant and finds the open line in the skin.
The strike doesn’t go through.
The dark layer under the tissue contracts and spreads the force across the neck.
The creature answers with a hind paw.
I tilt the Horizon to take the impact on the right side. The armor soaks up part of the collision, and my body is thrown against a root.
[OXI: 1,401 → 1,248/2,500]
The air leaves my lungs.
The dead arm strikes the inside of the ice splint. For a moment the pain is strong enough that I can’t draw a breath.
The Reef Stalker runs to finish it.
Freya appears between us.
"Permafrost!"
The word leaves her low and even, and the ice answers. It covers her legs and climbs her back, forming the first structures of the wings. She doesn’t open Pegasus Wrath. She draws only enough to gain mass and acceleration.
The haft of the scythe materializes in her hands.
Freya meets the creature with a short rotation. The blade hits the side of the jaw, turning the body away from me, while the haft strikes the front paw and destroys the leap’s footing.
The Stalker falls.
Kraken leaves my hand and crosses the space before I get my feet back. The point finds the open wound on the shoulder and deepens the cut.
The creature makes a different sound.
The wet click gains a second vibration, lower, produced somewhere hidden in the chest. The skin around Kraken shifts to the same blue as the blade, trying to erase the sword inside its own body.
Freya pulls Kraken free using the haft of the scythe.
The sword comes loose and returns to me.
"Can you keep going?" she asks.
I use the root to get to my feet.
"I can."
"Your OXI’s leaking."
"I still have OXI."
The Reef Stalker vanishes again.
Freya looks at my arm.
"I should have gotten down."
"Yes."
She takes it without defending herself.
I pull an LDP from the inventory. With one hand, I can’t open the vial before the next attack. I catch the cap between my teeth, twist the glass, and spit the seal aside.
I drink.
[LDP consumed.][OXI: 1,197 → 1,847/2,500]
The warm feel runs through my body. The reserve comes back, but the relief is short.
[OXI Bleeding persists.][OXI: 1,843/2,500]
"The potion didn’t close it," Freya says.
"It bought time."
The Stalker clicks from three different points.
The roots, the pools, and the trunks scatter the sound. Hunting for the source would mean following the information the predator wants to offer.
I watch the water.
A pool on the left trembles without taking a single drop.
"Three o’clock."
Freya doesn’t turn her body. She keeps the scythe low and sets her feet.
Kraken goes first.
The sword crosses the space above the pool. The Stalker breaks from the camouflage and leaps to avoid the blade. The membrane between the paw and the torso opens again.
"Above it!"
Freya raises a wall of ice behind the creature, not in front of it.
The membrane catches the air, but the correction ends against the frozen surface. The Reef Stalker hits it sideways and tries to use its paws to grip.
Kraken strikes one of the front hands.
I use Pressure Step and come in from the opposite side.
The sword returns to my hand mid-advance. I cut the open membrane, taking from the creature the ability to correct that direction.
Freya comes right after.
The scythe drops onto the predator’s back.
The plate under the skin takes part of the blow, but her weight drives the Reef Stalker into the ground. Ice spreads through the roots around it and locks two paws.
"Neck!" I shout.
Kraken leaves my hand and goes in under the jaw.
The creature turns its head. The blade scrapes the dark bone and opens another line in the skin.
One of the hind paws breaks the ice.
The Stalker lifts its body and throws Freya to the side. Before I can follow her, I toss the territorial gland to the ground between us.
I don’t rupture it.
The organ hits the mud, releasing only the smell that leaks through the intact membrane.
The reaction is immediate.
The row of muscles along the creature’s neck contracts. The snout turns toward the gland, split between the wounded prey and the concentrated signal of a Magnatos.
That’s enough.
Kraken changes course without my order.
The sword enters the shoulder wound and twists the inner plate. The Reef Stalker loses the front paw for a fraction of a second.
Freya recovers her footing.
The Permafrost wings flare open behind her again, two of them, still incomplete. A single push puts her in front of the monster.
She doesn’t use a long rotation. She runs the haft under the wounded paw, lifts the limb, and cuts the side of the torso while the body is locked in a stance it can’t hold.
The Stalker breaks its attention off the gland and tries to bite her.
I come in between them.
Kraken returns to my right hand. I use the guard to parry the lower jaw and turn my body, letting the creature’s weight pass along my healthy side.
Freya continues the motion.
The scythe hits the same line Kraken opened.
The cut finally crosses the inner plate.
The camouflage fails across the whole body.
Different colors run over the creature without finding a pattern. Blue, white, green, and black mix through the skin. The dark filaments inside the wounds spread, filling parts of the damaged tissue.
The Reef Stalker backs off.
It doesn’t flee.
It climbs a tree using only three paws and disappears again, even with the skin unstable.
Freya and I stand side by side.
She’s breathing through her mouth. One of the wings has lost its shape, and there’s a deep mark where the scythe’s haft was torn from her hands.
My arm still hangs inside the ice.
[OXI: 1,512/2,500]
[OXI Bleeding active.]
The Stalker should be losing mobility. We’d cut a membrane, opened the shoulder’s protection, and crossed a lateral plate.
The clicks come back at the same speed.
Something moves in the canopy.
Freya raises the scythe.
"I’m Rank C."
"I know."
"A Reef Stalker should be dangerous. It shouldn’t be taking all of this and still pressing us like this."
The creature’s skin shows during a leap between two trees.
The cut on the torso is closing.
Not by ordinary healing. The black filaments pull against one another, drawing the edges of the wound together while a new plate grows underneath.
Freya sees it.
"That isn’t normal."
I remember the message I got at the palace.
[Current Status: Targeted by the Riptide.]
[New Passive Effect: Anomalous Event Generation.]
That Stalker had structures I’d never seen, mimicked OXI with the chromatophores, and caused an energy leak the LDP couldn’t stop.
"Use the Tracker," I say.
Freya follows the movement in the trees.
"We already know what it is."
"Analyze it again."
She understands from my tone.
OXI gathers in Freya’s eyes. A thin blue light crosses her pupils as Ocean’s Law hunts a signature that keeps changing position between the branches.
Kraken hovers in front of her.
The Reef Stalker appears above us.
I intercept the first paw with the sword. The impact slides me through the mud, but I keep the blade between the creature and Freya.
She doesn’t break the analysis.
The Stalker tries to get past Kraken with its jaw. I turn the sword, trap one of the mouth’s plates on the guard, and let the weapon take part of the force. The creature tries to drag me up.
Freya finishes.
The screen appears between us.
[OCEAN’S LAW TRACKER]
[Target Signature acquired.]
[Corrupted Reef Stalker]
[Rank: C — Reef]
[Classification: Apex Predator]
[State: Corrupted]
[Threat Evaluation: Unstable]
I share the weight with Kraken and shove the jaw aside. Freya strikes the trunk under the predator, forcing it to abandon the attack before it loses its footing.
It disappears again.
I keep looking at the word in the center of the screen.
[Corrupted.]
The forest goes back to producing the wet clicks, mixed now with the sound of my reserve dropping.
I let out a breath.
"Shit... starting to mess with me already, Chaos Theory?"
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