The biting wind slapped Kael's face mercilessly the moment they emerged from the secret tunnel. The outside world was not as he remembered it; the night sky was choked with thick, ashen clouds that blotted out the moonlight, and the ancient trees of the Duskwood stood before them like deformed sentinels with twisted limbs.
Their pace was agonizingly slow. Faren leaned heavily against Kael, every step the old man took accompanied by a faint, wet rattle in his chest. Lyra, meanwhile, moved ahead with fluid, absolute silence. She blended into the shadows as if born from them, her silver eyes scanning the perimeter with lethal caution.
"We need to be clear of the mountain's base before dawn," Lyra whispered without looking back. "The Eclipse Cult's hounds have mana-trackers. And that thing walking next to me..." She jerked her head toward Kael, "is lighting up the magical spectrum like a cursed beacon."
Kael didn't answer. He was entirely focused on staying conscious. Every beat of his new heart sent waves of searing heat through his veins. The dragon's mana was heavy, turbulent, making him feel as though thousands of heated needles were piercing his muscles with every movement. His grip on his steel hammer's haft was white-knuckled.
Suddenly, Lyra froze.
She raised a hand in total silence, dropped low to the ground, and vanished into a nearby thicket. Kael froze in his tracks, gently propping Faren against a massive tree trunk.
"What is it?" Kael whispered, but Faren pressed a trembling hand over the boy's mouth to silence him.
In the pitch-black spaces between the trees, glowing red dots began to materialize, one after another. It wasn't the Eclipse Cult... it was something worse. From the thick fog emerged four massive beasts. They resembled wolves, but possessed the sheer bulk of bears. Their fur was coal-black, shedding hot ash with every step, and jagged bones protruded from their spines like serrated blades.
"Ash Wolves..." Faren coughed up blood, his voice a terrified rasp. "Beasts corrupted by dark mana. The scent of my blood drew them."
Before the old man could finish his sentence, one of the wolves launched itself at him with blinding speed.
Sshh-riiip!
Lyra burst from the void. Her black dagger tore through the wolf's throat in a flawless, deadly arc. The beast collapsed, thrashing in its own black blood, which hissed and melted the dead leaves beneath it. But its death was the starting signal for the rest of the pack.
Two wolves lunged at Lyra simultaneously. Thanks to her agility, she slipped past the first set of jaws and drove her dagger into the second wolf's eye. But the sheer difference in size and raw power was too great. The blinded wolf swatted her with a massive, clawed paw, sending her flying through the air. She crashed hard into a nearby tree and slumped to the dirt, gasping for air, her shoulder deeply gouged.
The fourth and largest beast—the Alpha—ignored Lyra entirely. Its demonic eyes were locked onto the wounded Faren. It opened its jaws, dripping with acidic, burning saliva, and coiled its muscles to end the old man's life.
"No!" Kael roared.
He didn't think. He didn't plan. All he knew was that this broken old man was the only family he had left.
Kael surged forward, raising his heavy blacksmith's hammer with both hands. In that split second, the Azura Core inside his chest responded to his rage and desperation. The silver pulse morphed into a silent, deafening roar within his mind.
Kael felt as if a dam had just shattered inside his body. A torrent of storm energy rushed from his chest, down his arms, and directly into the steel head of the hammer. The ambient temperature around him plummeted, and violent arcs of silver lightning erupted, coiling around the hammer like furious serpents.
As the Alpha wolf leaped toward Faren, Kael was already there.
He swung the electrified hammer with every ounce of his strength—not as a mage casting a spell, but as a blacksmith striking a red-hot anvil.
BOOOOOOM!
The electrified steel collided with the wolf's skull. The blast was deafening. Silver lightning detonated from the point of impact in a violent shockwave that tore through the clearing, reducing the massive beast to a charred, smoking carcass in a fraction of a second.
But the raw output was too much for a human body to endure. The kinetic recoil blasted back into Kael, shredding his tunic entirely and launching him backward to roll violently across the dirt. The steel hammer he had forged with his own hands was half-melted from the sheer, intense heat.
A terrifying silence fell over the woods, broken only by the crackle of residual electricity dancing along the scorched branches.
Lyra painfully lifted her head from the dirt, clutching her bleeding shoulder. Her silver eyes went wide as she stared at the charred remains of the Alpha, and then at Kael. The boy was on his hands and knees, coughing violently while smoke drifted from his slightly scorched arms. The azure glow in his chest throbbed with a savage, untamed rhythm.
"You absolute fool..." Lyra whispered, a mix of sheer disbelief and rising anger in her voice. "That wasn't magic... you just channeled the raw, unfiltered power of the Core! Are you trying to blow us all to pieces?"
Kael tried to stand, but his legs betrayed him. He looked down at his trembling, blistered hands, then at his ruined hammer. "I... I didn't mean to..." he rasped. "I couldn't stop it."
Faren offered a weak, bloodstained smile from his spot against the tree. "I told you, Witch's daughter... he is the anvil. But if we don't reach Cloud Peak soon... the hammer will inevitably shatter it. Move... that blast will attract things far worse than wolves."
Kael swallowed his agony and forced himself to his feet. The forest was dark and vast, but he now realized a far more terrifying truth: the greatest danger wasn't lurking out there in the shadows. It was beating right inside his own chest.