The nearest creature lunged before Cel could fully process. Its too-long limbs unfolded mid-leap, claws extended, eyeless head tracking him with impossible accuracy despite lacking the organs for sight.
Sylvaine's whip-sword cut the air between them - segments separating, blade flowing like water while maintaining its edge. The steel caught the creature across its torso mid-flight, opening it from shoulder to opposite hip. The body crashed past Cel in two pieces that hit the blood-slicked floor and slid.
Two more came in behind it.
One stayed low, cutting left. The other went high, straight for Sylvaine.
Cel moved right, drawing the low creature's attention. Silent Moon came around in a horizontal slash that lacked finesse but carried enough speed to compensate. The violet blade caught the thing across what passed for its face. The cut opened it from jaw to crown, splitting the eyeless head. But the body kept coming anyway, limbs still working despite catastrophic damage. Cel twisted, letting momentum carry him sideways. The corpse shot past, crashed into the wall hard enough to crack wood.
Sylvaine's whip-sword had extended fully now. The segmented blade wrapped around the airborne creature's limbs mid-flight, coiling like vines around prey. She pulled. The weapon's joints locked rigid for just a moment - long enough for her to redirect the creature's trajectory. It slammed into the floor with force that shook the room. Her blade unwound, segments snapping back into a single rigid length, then came down in a clean vertical thrust that pierced through the thing's torso and pinned it to the floorboards. It thrashed once. Then went still.
The fourth creature had circled during the exchange. Positioned itself near the doorway, cutting off retreat. Its burnt-leather skin caught the minimal light, bones piercing through in places that wept something dark and viscous.
The next moment, it charged at Sylvaine's back.
Cel intercepted from the side, Silent Moon rising to meet its limbs. The violet blade sliced clean through one outstretched claw, severing it at the joint - but the creature barely seemed to register the loss. The creature redirected mid-strike, another limb lashing out. Cel twisted but wasn't fast enough. Claws caught his side, tearing through Cinderward's leather, drawing a thin line of blood beneath.
Sylvaine's whip-sword came around low, segments extending. The blade caught the creature's legs, wrapping, pulling tight. It stumbled. Cel drove forward while it was off-balance, Silent Moon coming down in an overhead strike that had no technique behind it - just enhanced strength driving violet steel through the thing's back. The blade pierced easily through.
The creature went limp. Cel pulled Silent Moon free, let the body collapse.
Cel's breathing came too fast, chest heaving with exertion that his enhanced body barely registered. Beside him, Sylvaine stood with her whip-sword still extended, blood dripping from segmented steel in a steady rhythm that marked time passing.
Both waiting for silence to settle.
But the silence never came.
Instead… screams. Distant but clear. Multiple voices overlapping, raw with terror. Shouts of alarm. Combat sounds - weapons meeting flesh, impacts, things breaking.
Cel's head snapped toward the doorway as understanding crashed through.
The merchant's alarm. His shouts about creatures attacking. Nobody had come.
…because they couldn't.
The entire village was under attack.
Panic edged into Cel's chest, sharp and immediate. Lior and his parents were out there.
His feet moved before conscious thought caught up, carrying him toward the exit.
Behind him, Sylvaine remained standing in the blood-soaked guesthouse. Her gaze tracked toward the doorway where Cel had vanished, then swept back over the interior. The carnage. The bodies. The mercenary they'd found first, cut clean in half.
Her gaze lingered on the corpse a moment longer. Then she turned and followed him outside.
The village had transformed into a nightmare.
Fires burned in scattered locations - houses catching, maybe where fire pits had been knocked over during fighting. The flames threw orange light that painted everything in shifting shadows. Screams came from multiple directions at once, layering over each other until individual voices blurred into one sustained cry of terror.
Bodies lay in the street. Some still moving, crawling toward safety that didn't exist. Others already still, blood pooling beneath them in the dirt.
And creatures were everywhere.
The same type he'd just fought - burnt-leather skin, wrong-jointed limbs, eyeless heads with mouths full of curved teeth. But also others. Larger ones, built heavier, moving with different gaits.
Combat happened in pockets throughout the village. Isolated fights where residents tried to defend themselves with farming tools, kitchen knives, bare hands. Most losing.
Cel ran through it.
His enhanced speed carried him past a fight where three villagers struggled against a single creature. Past a woman dragging a wounded man toward a house. Past a child crying over a body that wouldn't respond.
He didn't stop for any of it. His focus narrowed to a single point - finding Lior and his family.
But the streets had become a maze of chaos. What should have been a straight path was blocked by collapsed structures, by fires, by creatures that forced detours. He scanned every cluster of people he passed, looking for wheat-blond hair, for Lior's slight frame, for his parents' faces.
Nothing.
Panic built with each passing moment. Each second where they remained unfound felt like confirmation of the worst possibility. What if they were already dead? What if he was running toward corpses instead of people who needed help?
A voice cut through the chaos. Female. Commanding.
"Hold formation! Do not break the circle!"
Instructor Saren.
Cel's path shifted. Drew him toward the source of that voice with desperate hope burning in his chest.
A defensive circle materialized through the smoke and darkness. Perhaps fifteen students arranged in a ring, weapons out, facing outward. Inside the circle, villagers huddled together, some wounded.
Instructor Saren stood at one point of the formation, her posture rigid with command. She moved with practiced efficiency, calling out threats, directing students to shift position. Beside her, Instructor Calder held another section, his scarred face grim as he cut down a creature that got too close.
On the third side, Owen Peakscale stood like carved stone. His warhammer rose and fell with methodical precision, crushing anything that came within reach.
And on the fourth side - Cordelia Tidecall. Cel's cousin. Light blue hair catched firelight as she moved. Her dual swords moved with defensive precision that kept her section of the formation intact. She fought with obvious skill despite the terror visible in her expression.
The other students struggled to hold their ground. One near the gap between Saren and Owen fumbled his defense. A creature got inside his guard. Its claws opened his throat before Saren could intervene. The student went down choking. The creature died a moment later under Saren's spear, but the damage was done.
Cel's gaze swept across the huddled villagers. Scanning faces with desperate speed.
Not there.
Lior wasn't there. His parents also.
Relief and terror mixed in equal measure. Relief that they weren't among the wounded inside the circle. Terror at what their absence meant.
"Celvian!" Saren's voice cut toward him. "Get inside the formation!"
He didn't respond. Didn't even look at her. Just turned and ran.
Away from the defensive circle. Away from relative safety. Toward the hut where Lior's family lived.
The streets narrowed. Houses pressed closer together here, built with less space between them. The chaos felt more concentrated, more immediate. Screams echoed off walls. Combat sounds multiplied.
Silent Moon's glow shifted. The three moon phases that had been lit along its spine receded until only the outer crescent remained lit - pale and steady, casting minimal light.
Cel's breathing had gone ragged. Not from exertion. From fear that pressed against his lungs and refused to ease.
'Please…' The word repeated in his mind without direction. 'Please let them be alive. Please.'
The hut came into view.
Still standing. No visible damage. No creatures immediately around it.
Hope flared sharp enough to hurt.
His feet carried him faster. Across the final stretch of open ground. Up to the door that stood closed, untouched.
He hit it with his shoulder. Wood exploded inward, the simple latch breaking. Cel stumbled into darkness that swallowed him immediately.
"Lior!" The name came out too loud, too desperate. "Lior!"
Silence answered. Horrible and complete, meaning everything he feared might be—
"C-Cel? Is that you?"
Lior's voice. Scared and uncertain, but alive. Undeniably, unmistakably alive.
Relief crashed through Cel with force that nearly buckled his knees. His eyes adjusted gradually to the darkness, shapes resolving in increments.
Lior stood at the room's far end. Dagger gripped in both hands, blade pointing toward the door with shaking determination. Beside him, his father held a wooden chair raised overhead like a club, his weathered face set with the particular desperation of a man prepared to do anything to protect his family.
And behind both of them, pressed against the wall, Lior's mother. Her face was stricken with terror, hands covering her mouth, whole body trembling.
They were alive. All of them.
Cel's mouth opened. "Yeah, it's—"
Something hard crashed into his back.
The force lifted him off his feet, sending him flying forward with momentum he couldn't control. Silent Moon tore free from his hand as his body crashed through the far wall, wood exploding around him. He hit the ground outside, rolled twice, came up empty-handed.
Pain radiated from his back where the impact had landed hard enough that normal human bones would have shattered.
He turned, looking back at the hut.
In the destroyed entrance, silhouetted by the faint light from inside… stood a creature.