"So nothing from Loria?" Deimos asked, eyeing the man in black across the circle.
Phobos snorted. "Reinforcements from Loria? No. That would've been generous. I got a commendation and reasons why they can't give me steel."
His tone made it clear what he thought of that.
The Blackfyre knights kept their silence. They watched instead.
The newcomer looked like he'd been carved out of old stone and then left in bad weather. Long silver hair fell in a messy curtain over a craggy, oddly striking face. His blue eyes were bloodshot, narrowed as if he was always squinting through smoke. A neat mustache framed his mouth and somehow softened the severity of his cheekbones, but only a little.
Everything about him said: cautious, and very familiar with awful things.
"He bends a knee to Laufferk," Phobos said gruffly. "They'll hire the Order to kill what's clawing at their doors. But when we come back bleeding and ask for steel, the oath turns to ink. The Duke wants his vineyards quiet. That's all.
Deimos grunted. That tracked.
"Right," he said, turning to the Blackfyre Guard. "Names. Ranks. Then we plan."
He gestured to the knights.
"Knights of Bren," the silver-haired man said, giving them a single, deliberate nod. "Sir Phobos. Order of the Demon Hunter."
"I am Sir Rycharde Cindimere," the hammer knight answered, tapping a fist to his chest. "Captain of the Reavers, first platoon of the Blackfyre Guard."
His black hair gleamed even in the dim forest light, cropped close above a ruggedly handsome face—wind-chapped at the edges, but still cut with the clean lines of nobility. The warhammer strapped across his back looked like it had broken more things than most men had seen."I am Sir Evered Ashward, Lieutenant of the Reavers," said the mace-wielder, bowing his head.
"Sir Galwell Ironbale, of the same," the archer added.
"Sir Oswyn Holtstead."
"Sir Dynham Wharfend."
One by one they gave their names, all in the same matte black plate, all radiating the quiet, heavy confidence of men who'd killed for their lord and expected to again.
Phobos inclined his head.
Landed knights, Phobos thought.
"My thanks to Lord Blackfyre for sending his best," Phobos said.
"Aye," they answered together. The word wasn't loud, but it carried.
"Good," Phobos said. "Now that we know each other, we plan."
He walked to the edge of the bare circle and glanced out into the trees, as if measuring something only he could see.
"We rest. Here. At daybreak we cut through the inner Grove. This circle is a Ward—sleep inside it and nothing crosses. No felbeast. No preacantae. Step outside after dusk…" His mouth tightened. "Then you're prey."
He turned back to the group.
"Watches are two hours. Mine first. Then Rycharde. Deimos. Evered. Oswyn. Dynham. Galwell."
Rycharde nodded once. He had the look of a man who'd slept on worse rotations.
"We eat tonight. We carry nothing. After sundown, Deimos and I snare felboars, lash the bear-flesh to them, and loose them wide."
He jerked his chin at the bear carcass.
"As for the meat—we eat some tonight, but we don't keep any. Deimos and I will run a sweep and capture felboars after sundown. We tie the meat to them and send them in different directions."
Rycharde frowned. "As… moving bait?"
"Exactly," Phobos said. "Felwolves and felbears loathe one another. They devour each other given the slightest excuse. Once felwolves smell felbear flesh, they abandon any pursuit to tear it apart. Our boars will carry that scent away from our path."
Oswyn let out a low whistle. Dynham just grinned.
"Clever," Evered said quietly.
"Old," Phobos said. "The Grove teaches. Survivors listen."
With that, the briefing ended.
Dynham and Oswyn dragged the heavy cuts of bear meat toward the firepit and began roasting thick slabs over the growing flames. The smell of fat and char filled the circle. Galwell moved in and out of the ward line, gathering fallen branches and deadwood, careful not to break the perimeter. Evered and Rycharde leaned together over a rough map drawn in the dirt, murmuring about formations and how their hammer and mace would fare against felboars on a narrow trail.
Deimos and Phobos slipped back into the trees with ropes and knives, shadows among shadows.
The camp settled as the light bled slowly from the sky.
Ezra's heart would not calm down.
He crouched on a branch well above the circle's edge, hidden by leaves and distance. From up here, the ward's perfect ring was obvious: grass and undergrowth up to a razor line, bare soil within. The knights below were busy, voices a low murmur. Firelight flickered.
He should have felt secure.
Instead, his pulse hammered in his throat. His skin buzzed. Every sound seemed too loud, too sharp. His muscles felt coiled, too ready.
That's odd, he thought. My adrenaline should have settled by now.
He pushed a little mana toward his heart and lungs, checking himself the way he'd done a hundred times in the nursery. The rhythm was fast and hard. His breaths were deep and steady, but his body acted like he'd sprinted for miles.
Ever since they'd come deeper into Irriton, something had been… off.
It wasn't just nerves. It was like a low static under his skin, a warped, constant awareness that filled his head and wouldn't shut up. Certain patches of the forest tugged at him, like magnets. His eyes kept snagging on dark gaps between trees as if something important was always just out of sight.
What is this? he thought, irritation edging into his confusion. Environmental mana? Some kind of field?
He shifted his weight restlessly.
A flicker of movement below caught his eye—a rabbit nosing through the undergrowth at the very edge of the ward.
Before he'd fully decided to act, he was already moving.
He dropped from the branch, caught the trunk with one hand to bleed some of the fall, hit the ground in a crouch, and lunged.
The rabbit barely had time to twitch.
His hand closed around its neck. A sharp squeeze. A snap.
Warmth flooded his fingers.
Ezra froze, the small body hanging limp in his grip.
…What?
A moment ago he'd been thinking about magic fields and neurochemistry. Now he was standing ten paces outside the circle, clutching a dead rabbit, breathing hard.
He swallowed.
Why did I do that?
He forced himself to look at his own hands. They were steady. Too steady. His whole body felt like a bowstring drawn back to the point of snapping.
I… want to kill something, he realized. Right now.
The thought didn't come with guilt. It came with a bright, ugly surge of satisfaction.
His jaw clenched.
"This is wrong," he muttered under his breath.
He tried to brute-force calm into himself the way he had with motion sickness in the wagon. Mana flowed into his nerves, into the little chemical synapses he could half-feel with practice. He tried to dampen the flood—push down whatever was spiking his fight response.
Nothing happened.
The static under his skin only got louder.
Altered state of consciousness, he thought, clinging to the words like a handhold. Heart rate elevated. Agitation. Impaired impulse control. This feels… serotonergic? Dopaminergic? My serotonin levels feel like they're in freefall.
He shaped mana again, more carefully, trying to cradle his own brain in a buffer, to blunt whatever was being done to him from the outside.
The magic slipped.
Not away—aside.
His thoughts began to smear at the edges.
It took him a moment to realize he'd stopped noticing the knights' camp behind him at all.
He looked up—and realized he'd wandered further from the circle while he was thinking, feet carrying him deeper between the trees.
"Shit," he whispered.
A branch snapped somewhere to his right.
He turned.
The felbear that lumbered into view was smaller than the one Deimos had killed, but only by a mercy. It was still huge—bulk like a wagon, head swinging, eyes a flat, furious yellow. Its fur was mottled with old scars and something darker that might have been dried blood.
It saw him.
It roared.
Ezra's first clear thought was very simple.
Run.
He braced to sprint.
His body didn't listen.
Instead, his legs bunched and drove him forward.
"GRRAAAAAGH!"
The roar that answered the bear sounded nothing like a human boy. It sounded like something had torn a wild animal out of his ribs and given it control of his lungs.
Ezra sprinted toward the charging felbear, dagger in hand.
I can't run away, he realized, half terrified, half numb. I literally can't. The rage wants a target. If there isn't one, it just… eats me.
He forced himself to think in the gaps between pulses of fury.
Fine. If I can't stop the anger, I can aim it.
The bear's massive paw came for him in a sweeping left that would have flattened him like a doll. At the last instant, his feet dug into the dirt and he kicked sideways.
AMP flickered on in a narrow tunnel.
A thin line appeared in his vision, marking the path of the paw and the angle of his jump—just enough to clear it. A little number popped up almost lazily at the bottom of his sight.
[≈ 45 km/h]
That's not me, he thought distantly, even as he rolled out of the way. That's the bear. I am fighting something moving forty-five kilometers an hour and I'm thinking about speed.
The bear's claws gouged a trench where he'd been. It spun, roaring again, saliva flying.
Ezra tried to back off.
His legs refused.
They dug in, turned, and sprinted straight back at the beast, rage snapping through his nerves like a whip.
This is going to kill me, he thought. Unless I make it kill something else first.
The bear charged. Ezra darted in at an angle, jumped, caught a clump of fur on its shoulder, and hauled himself onto its back.
From there, everything narrowed.
The world shrank to fur, heat, and the rhythmic thunder of huge muscles moving under him. The bear bucked and twisted, trying to dislodge the weight it barely felt.
He drove the dagger down.
Once. Twice. Again.
Steel punched into thick hide and muscle. Blood soaked his hand, hot and slick. The bear howled, dropped its shoulder, and rolled, trying to crush him under its bulk.
Ezra let go, jumped free, hit the ground, and rolled to his feet, lungs burning.
Its patterns are simple, he thought in a brief flash of clarity. Charge. Swipe. Sweep. It doesn't adapt. I do.
The rage blurred the edges of his vision. His body moved anyway.
They fell into a savage rhythm.
The bear charged and swiped. Ezra leapt aside, then onto its back, stabbing again and again, taking advantage of the enormous gap in their dexterity. Each time he hit the ground, he felt his awareness slip a little further away, as if he were watching someone else from a distance.
This bear is too tough, he snarled inwardly, even as he drove the dagger home yet again. How much damage can you take?
At some point, the felbear's attacks began to slow.
Its roars grew hoarse. Its steps staggered. Blood matted its fur in dark sheets. It dragged one paw.
Ezra's own breathing had turned ragged. Sweat stung his eyes. Mana burned through him like dry tinder. A quick internal check, dim and muzzy, told him he'd burned through nearly half his reserves.
If this thing dies, he realized abruptly, I'll have nothing to pin this on. No target. Just… rage. And no circle to hide in.
He dodged another sluggish swipe.
Think. Think, damn it.
What little remained of his analytic mind clawed its way to the surface.
The rage isn't coming from me. It's amplified by something. A field. A ward. Whatever it is, it gets stronger the further I go. The knights aren't affected because they're inside the circle. The pillar. The runes. That has to be the anchor.
He ducked under a final clumsy sweep.
The bear's front legs buckled. It crashed to its knees, then onto its side, sides heaving. After five more frenzied stabs, its breath rattled, then stopped.
Silence slammed into the clearing like a wall.
For two glorious heartbeats, Ezra thought the rage would die with it.
It didn't.
It roared back, filling the space the felbear had left. His vision narrowed. His hands shook with the urge to tear. For a horrible moment, every living thing in reach—bird, insect, human—felt like a valid target.
No.
He forced the denial like he was pushing against a storm.
Fine. New target.
He thought of the knights.
I hate them, he told the rage, even though he didn't. I hate them. They're the problem. They're in my way. I have to get to them.
Something in his head twisted, like a lock accepting a key.
The rage swiveled.
His body lunged—not deeper into the forest, but back.
Good.
Ugly, but good.
He ran.
The forest blurred past. Trees became smears of dark and lighter dark. His feet found purchase on roots and rocks without him consciously choosing the steps. He barely saw the path; he felt it, his entire being focused on one thing: reaching the circle, reaching the men he'd decided to hate.
He couldn't track time. His mind kept flickering—moments of clarity, then red fog, then clarity again.
Once, he looked up.
The canopy above had gone from dim green to near-black. No more scattered sunlight. Only the faintest hints of starlight poking through.
Night already, he thought, startled. That long?
His anger stayed hot, but something else was changing.
As he drew closer to where he remembered the pillar standing, the pressure on his mind eased, just a fraction. The rage stopped screaming and started… growling. Still there. Still ugly. But no longer everything.
His mana consumption dropped with it. The constant leak slowed. He latched onto that immediately.
The pillar really is the anchor, he thought, teeth gritted.
At roughly a hundred meters out, he could think in full sentences again.
His run broke into a controlled jog. He forced his steps quieter, less like a charging beast and more like a thief. By thirty meters, he was moving from trunk to trunk, using them as cover.
He dropped into a crouch behind a fallen log and felt inward for his reserves.
The sensation was fuzzy, but clear enough: he had maybe a third of his mana left. Less than he wanted, more than he deserved.
"Risky," he muttered under his breath. "Stupid. But not dead."
He looked up.
The rune pillar loomed ahead, a dark tooth against the darker forest. The circle of bare soil around it was faintly visible, a subtle texture shift in the gloom. Beyond it, he could see the faint glow of the campfire and silhouettes of men moving inside the ward.
He angled left, found a tree with a good spread of branches, and climbed.
His body protested, but the rage was now a sullen simmer instead of a blaze. Mana came when called, reinforcing fingers and toes just enough to keep him from slipping. Within moments he was ten meters above the circle again, cradled in the fork of a sturdy branch directly over the pillar.
He leaned back against the trunk and let himself breathe.
I shouldn't have come this far, he thought, the admission bitter. I thought I was ready to roam because I can run a toy treadmill and punch a bear if I cheat hard enough.
He grimaced.
He glanced down at his hands. They were still. The urge to kill had ebbed to something small and mean, easily ignored from this distance.
Or maybe it's just biology I don't understand yet. A switch I stepped on without knowing. I need data. Controlled tests. Later.
His eyelids felt suddenly heavy.
"I'll go back to Bren tomorrow," he murmured. Saying it out loud made it feel more like a plan and less like surrender. "Write this off as reconnaissance. And a near-mauling."
He reached for the mana he had left and spread a thin layer of it over his skin, especially around his ears and along his spine.
A sensory net. Not flaring, not bright—just enough that any large movement close by would ripple through it and nudge him awake. His body would be his own alarm system.
His mana pulsed once, then settled.
If I sleep, I recover, he told himself. If I recover, I walk home. Simple.
He dug into his pack, pulled out a strip of dried meat, and chewed, more out of habit than hunger. His stomach still didn't quite know how to talk to his mana-rich blood.
When the meat was gone, he stuffed the pack behind his head as a makeshift pillow and shifted until the branch felt as comfortable as a branch was ever going to feel.
Above him, the canopy formed a broken, shifting roof. Through one small gap, a star stared back at him, cold and distant.
Ezra closed his eyes.
The forest creaked and whispered around him. The camp below glowed faintly. His magic hummed quietly along his nerves, listening for danger.
Within minutes, despite everything, he slipped under—just another small, sleeping shadow in Irriton Grove.