She did not remember falling. She barely remembered anything since she warped out of the hair salon and into this mad place.
One moment she had been running — mud tearing at her ankles, breath ripping through her throat — and the next she was on the ground beside her friend.
Her friend lay twisted in the reeds, clothes torn beyond recognition, skin marked by the violence of claws and horn. Not clean wounds. Not merciful ones. The kind that said the forest did not kill efficiently. It reduced. It drained. It hollowed out.
The girl stared.
Her mind refused to interpret what her eyes were seeing.
They had promised to stay together.
They had promised not to panic.
Now the promise lay beside her, unmoving.
She clutched her left arm, fingers digging into swelling flesh. A cut ran from elbow to wrist, shallow but angry. Every pulse of blood felt amplified. Her tears were weak — not dramatic, not loud — just small leaks of pressure from a body too exhausted to scream anymore.
She winced and tried to steady her breathing.
The forest did not react to grief.
It waited. It watched.
She wiped her face with the heel of her hand. Mud smeared into her lashes. Her shoulders trembled as she tried to push herself upright. Something cracked in the distance — not close, but not far enough to ignore.
She raised her hand instinctively, perhaps to balance, perhaps to curse whatever force had brought her here.
Her sleeve fell back.
The mark revealed itself.
Dark.
Coiled.
Breathing faintly beneath her skin.
The same pattern Pluto bore.
The same design carved into him by shadow.
It pulsed once.
Low growls answered from beyond the tree line. Like a chorus of trained animals.
Not random.
Not wandering.
Hungry.
Fervent.
Responding.
Her throat tightened as realization dawned.
They weren't tracking blood.
They were tracking the mark.
***
Pluto struck again.
His blade felt wrong.
Too heavy, yet too hollow at the same time.
Each collision against the rhino's plating sent a dull vibration through the fractured steel. It sagged at the midpoint where micro-cracks spidered outward from previous impacts. One more poor angle and it would snap entirely.
He adjusted grip.
Angle.
Distance.
Battle Master sharpened his perception again, but the clarity flickered at the edges, like a lens fogging.
Ronan leaned against a thick tree trunk a few strides back, trying to pull his vision into alignment. The previous impact had rattled more than bone. Ink pooled loosely around his wrists, unstable, reforming in uneven lines.
Khalifa stood forward of both of them.
Five beasts remained in addition to the rhino.
The smaller predators circled erratically — eyes wild, movements twitching between caution and frenzy. Their pack coordination had degraded into raw aggression.
The rhino lowered its head.
Mud scraped under reinforced horn.
It inhaled deeply, chest expanding beneath vine-layered armor.
Khalifa clasped her hands together.
Not to summon distortion.
To prepare herself.
Her shoulders trembled.
She was not at her limit yet.
But she was close enough to see it.
Suddenly her breath caught in her throat.
Her body stiffened.
For one terrifying half-second she thought she was blacking out.
Then the world slowed.
Not metaphorically.
Physically.
The air thickened as though submerged underwater. Sound deepened and warped. The splash of swamp water mid-impact stretched into syrup-like suspension.
Her distortion ability spread outward — not thin, not surface-level.
Dense.
Layered.
Batched in thickened segments that held space in place.
The rhino charged.
And advanced barely a few centimeters.
Its muscles strained beneath plating, legs trembling under restrained momentum.
The smaller beasts thrashed violently, claws scraping through air that no longer yielded properly.
Khalifa stepped forward.
Within the distortion, she moved at near-normal speed.
To the beasts, she was a blur.
A gray blade condensed in her hand — forged not from spectacle but compression.
She reached the first predator and sliced through its throat cleanly. No spray, no theatrics — just collapse.
Pivot.
Second cut along the hind limb, destabilizing its charge.
Third blade thrust beneath the jaw of another.
Fourth slice across exposed eye ridge.
She did not aim for elegant kills.
She aimed to thin numbers.
The distortion trembled violently around her, cracks forming in suspended space.
Her lungs burned.
Her vision swam.
She retreated a breath before it shattered.
Time snapped back.
Four beasts fell fully.
The swamp roared back into motion.
And the rhino answered.
Its roar was different now.
Higher.
Sharper.
Less growl, more declaration.
Pluto exhaled through clenched teeth.
"Absorb the cores," he ordered.
Ronan nodded immediately, pushing himself upright despite dizziness.
Khalifa did not move.
"They won't be enough," she said. "You're the one it's reacting to."
The rhino lunged again.
Pluto stepped into its trajectory and kicked hard against its horn, redirecting its forward angle just enough to avoid being gored. He rolled, came up fluidly, and darted toward Khalifa.
He snatched two cores from her palm without asking.
Ronan forced ink together again.
It pooled reluctantly but formed a spear.
Thinner than before.
Unstable.
He launched it at the rhino's exposed flank.
The impact didn't pierce.
But it staggered.
The delay was small.
Enough.
Pluto crushed both cores in his hands.
Energy detonated inward.
Not gradual.
Violent.
It flooded muscle and bone too quickly, searching for containment.
He inhaled sharply as the mark flared white-hot.
Battle Master ignited again — cleaner, sharper.
Angles aligned.
Weak seams illuminated.
He moved without hesitation.
Sliding beneath the rhino's horn, he drove the fractured blade into a joint line Khalifa had weakened earlier.
The plating cracked deeper.
The rhino staggered and reared.
He pivoted for another strike—
And the clarity flickered.
The precision dulled.
The sharpness that defined Battle Master wavered like a candle in wind.
Nausea hit instantly.
His vision blurred at the edges.
His chest tightened violently.
He tried to inhale.
His lungs moved.
But something inside did not respond.
His heart—
Skipped.
Beat once erratically.
Then stopped.
Silence.
Not external.
Internal.
The world muted.
Sound drained away.
The blade slipped from his grip and snapped in the mud.
His knees hit first.
Palms next.
The Battle Master presence vanished entirely, like it never existed.
He couldn't feel his pulse.
Couldn't feel his breath.
Only pressure.
Darkness crawled inward from his periphery.
Ronan shouted his name, but the voice sounded impossibly distant.
The rhino's shadow loomed over him.
It raised its horn high.
Khalifa staggered forward, distortion flickering weakly.
Ronan forced two more ink restraints outward, wrapping around the rhino's foreleg and shoulder.
They strained.
Trembled.
Slowed the horn by inches.
Khalifa pushed outward with both palms.
The air thickened just enough to skew the downward thrust.
The horn slammed into mud beside Pluto's skull instead of through it.
The impact shook the swamp.
But Pluto remained still.
Inside his chest—
Nothing.
Then the mark flared.
Not controlled.
Not precise.
Chaotic.
Energy surged violently through him, unstructured and overwhelming. It tore across pathways Battle Master had refined, but without guidance.
Pain returned first.
White-hot and blinding.
His chest convulsed.
Air slammed into his lungs involuntarily.
His heart restarted with brutal force — a violent thud that knocked breath from him.
He gasped sharply.
Alive.
But not stable.
The energy inside him did not settle into clarity.
It churned.
Overloaded circuits with no regulation.
He forced himself upright, but his vision swam.
His eyes were no longer sharp.
No longer analytical.
They burned unfocused.
The rhino tore free from Ronan's failing restraints.
Khalifa's distortion collapsed entirely.
Pluto swayed on his feet.
If he tried to channel again—
It might destroy him.
If he didn't—
They would die.
***
Elsewhere, the girl with the mark tried to crawl backward.
The first predator stepped into view between reeds.
It did not pounce.
It approached slowly.
Deliberately.
Its gaze fixed on the glowing pattern beneath her skin.
Recognition.
Her mark pulsed faintly again.
Another growl answered from deeper in the trees.
More shapes emerged.
Not charging.
Converging.
The forest was not randomly cruel.
It was responsive.
Selective.
The girl's tears stopped.
Fear sharpened into something colder.
Understanding.
Her friend had not been targeted.
She had.
And somewhere far away—
Pluto's unstable pulse beat again.
Two signals.
Same frequency.
Answering the same call.
The forest felt it.
Measured it.
And began adjusting to it.