"Eight weeks. Eight god-awful weeks these bastards managed to hide from me."
We were barely five hundred meters from the Shadow Hunters' main camp, and the air was thick with the stench of stagnant water, unwashed bodies, and rotting meat. It smelled like a literal cesspool. If there is a hell on earth, I've found its zip code. And let me tell you: these bastards are about to experience a special kind of torment for making me walk through this filth for two months.
Folia was beginning to lose his mind—or perhaps he was finally showing his true colors. He paced like a caged tiger, his eyes darting toward the camp with a mixture of boredom and homicidal irritation. I couldn't tell if the island had finally broken him or if this was just another layer of his manipulation. If it was the latter, what was the end goal?
"Stay hidden," Folia commanded, his voice a low, dangerous rasp. "We strike when the sun dips behind the ridge. Not a second sooner."
But my blood was boiling. I could sense Ilea nearby—her distress was like a frequency only I could hear. I didn't wait. In a moment of pure, reckless stupidity, I channeled my newly mastered Shadow Shaping. I didn't just summon shadows; I sculpted them into miniature dragons, dark phantoms of ice and ink, and sent them screaming into the camp.
Explosions of frost and darkness tore through the tents. Screams echoed as the first wave of hunters was obliterated. Why am I so damn impulsive? I thought as the camp erupted into chaos.
Folia was beyond livid. He appeared beside me in a blur of gold light, his face contorted in a mask of disgust.
"I told you to wait, you filthy street cur!" he hissed. I'm quoting him here, and believe me, he was much more colorful. "Now I have to kill these pathetic mongrels and get their shit-smelling blood all over my boots because of you! Do you have any idea how much this silk costs, you piece of trash, Celosia?"
He was being incredibly mean, wasn't he? I mean, sure, he wasn't technically wrong about the strategy, but Ilea's life is worth more than a thousand of his overpriced robes. I didn't give him the satisfaction of an answer; I simply dove into the fray.
We reached the center of the camp, where the elite hunters were waiting. One of them, a scarred giant with eyes like cold embers, lunged at me. He wielded Shadow Blade Magic—the ability to turn his own shadow into a razor-sharp extension of his steel. This was it. The prize I wanted. If I could absorb that blade magic, I'd be unstoppable.
But it was a desperate gamble.
"I'm warning you, Celosia," Folia's voice boomed over the sounds of battle. The psychopath was standing in the middle of a crowd of hunters, and as he looked at me with that chilling, murderous gaze, he obliterated thirty of them with a casual wave of his hand—probably by accident, the sick bastard. "If you started this fight just to play your little 'absorption' games to get stronger, I will end you before the sun sets."
I ignored him. I had to. I used my Shadow Binding to lock the hunter's feet to the obsidian ground, then followed up with a burst of Kyrokinesis to freeze his torso in a block of jagged ice. With a snarl, I grabbed his Shadow Blade and began the absorption. The power was slick and cold, like sliding a needle into my soul.
But my triumph was short-lived.
From the blind spot of the blizzard, another hunter lunged. I felt a cold sting in my side. I looked down to see a jagged dagger buried in my abdomen. It wasn't a deep wound, just a small hole, but the aftermath was horrific.
My blood began to drip. It splashed onto the hunter's hand, his blade, and my own feet. And then, the world began to hiss.
The blood wasn't just red; it was corrosive. I watched in a daze as the hunter's hand began to dissolve, the skin bubbling and blackening as if I'd sprayed him with concentrated acid. The ground beneath my feet sizzled. It burned like holy hell, a searing, white-hot agony that made me want to scream.
Then it hit me. The fang of the Shadow Snake.
I hadn't just absorbed the Shadow Shaping magic from that tooth. I had absorbed the serpent's hyper-toxic biology. My blood was no longer human; it was a lethal, corrosive venom. Part of me wanted to celebrate—I had become a living weapon—but another part of me was terrified. I was becoming something that shouldn't exist.
The hunter who stabbed me didn't even have time to scream before his entire arm was eaten away by my blood. He collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.
I didn't have time to process my new 'mutation.' I looked over at Folia, who had finished butchering the remaining sixty hunters. He was standing in a sea of corpses, his golden aura stained with red, staring at me like a total psycho.
Two minutes of deafening silence passed. He didn't move. He didn't blink. Then, he walked over to me. The way he spoke made me want to crawl into a hole and die.
"Listen to me, you arrogant, self-absorbed, narcissistic little shit," he whispered, his voice vibrating with a power that made my bones ache. "If you ever pull a stunt like that again, I will put you on a leash like the filthy street cur you are. I have been patient. I have been kind. But right now? I am seconds away from shattering your soul into a million pieces just for the inconvenience."
I felt my heart hammering against my ribs. "I thought you were smarter than those idiotic bodyguards," he continued, leaning so close I could see the golden flecks in his eyes. "But you're just another fool who thinks he's the smartest person in the room."
I looked him dead in the eye, my pride refusing to buckle even as my knees shook. "I don't just think it. I know it."
The atmosphere shifted. Folia didn't hit me. He didn't scream. He simply looked into my soul. For what felt like an eternity, he showed me the variables of my own death—thousands of ways he could end me, each one more painful than the last, and all of them entirely under his control. It was a psychological hell I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
I think I might have actually pissed myself. Just a little.
"Save the dragon, Celosia," he said, turning away as if I were no longer worth the effort. "And then get us off this cursed island. Or I'll make sure the Night Shadows are the least of your worries."
I stood there in the blood-stained snow, my stomach wound slowly sealing with a hiss of toxic steam. Ilea was somewhere in the dark ahead. And Folia... Folia was a monster I had to outrun.
Until next time.