Kael rested on a branch, watching over an open snowfield. He pulled out a folded piece of paper and marked a small cross on it.
"Not here either, then."
He pushed off the branch, landed in a burst of snow, brushed it from his arm, and moved on.
The day after meeting Adam, he had gone through the library in search of any record of Dreadborne sightings in the forests or mountains surrounding Velthoria. A week had passed since then. He had visited every location that showed even a remote possibility.
Still nothing.
Reaching a narrow creek, Kael crouched and let his hand dip into the water, watching it flow around his fingers.
'Perhaps I should prioritize locations near flowing water.'
He turned his hand, observing the current shift.
Dreadbornes, no matter how intelligent, were still beasts at their core. They needed water. It didn't matter that some could survive for centuries, even millennia.
'Statistically, it would increase my chances.'
He straightened and shook the water from his hand. Wind stirred his hair as he stepped over the creek.
The probability would rise, yes, but only marginally. The difference was negligible.
Kael continued his search as before.
While every location he had visited had, at some point, been marked by a Dreadborne's presence. Some of the records, however, dated back more than a thousand years. Searching such places now bordered on foolishness.
But what choice did he have?
'The black market doesn't sell anything related to Dreadbornes either.'
He pushed past two trees.
Dreadbornes were premium commodities by any standard. That alone made Kael wonder what the mote Adam wanted refined was truly capable of. He had his suspicions, but they were nothing more than hunches.
His thoughts returned to the recipe.
Since his ability to use the Weeping Eye had improved, so too had his grasp of refinement. Not in a way he could explain or teach. But his intuition had sharpened noticeably.
Just by glancing at the recipe, Kael could sense fragments of its nature. Whether the resulting mote leaned toward offense or defense, for instance.
"I'm a little afraid I won't be able to deliver your mote before the war,"
Kael murmured.
He pushed through a cluster of bushes, and a boulder came into view, a human-shaped figure slumped against it.
Kael slipped his hands from his pockets and approached.
A Pale One leaned against the stone, its mouth stretched wide, thin icicles hanging from its lips. Its flesh was rigid, locked in place by the cold.
'Completely frozen.'
He nudged it once. The body tipped over and hit the ground with a dull thud.
The thought of someone else having ventured this deep into the forest unsettled him. With Pale Ones beginning to appear more frequently, it was not a reassuring sign.
The bushes he had passed through moments earlier exploded behind him.
A stone coffin tore free from the ground where the trees had stood, rising with a low rumble.
Lately, even more than before, Kael had begun gathering ingredients whenever he could. Part of it was practical. The less he needed to return to civilized places, the better. But there was more to it than that.
As he pushed himself deeper into refinement, he studied every material he encountered. Not just for use, but for understanding. He wanted to see how they behaved, how they resisted, how they failed.
He hoped that one day, it would all align.
That the laws governing them would finally reveal themselves.
Kael waited for the stone coffin to open.
The moment the void revealed itself, he grabbed the Pale One and hurled it forward. The body sailed through the air and slammed into the darkness within.
It didn't enter.
Kael raised an eyebrow.
'Why didn't it pass through?'
He approached and crouched beside the corpse. His fingers closed around its neck as he lifted it, turning it slightly.
'Is it… alive?'
Impossible. He wouldn't miss something that obvious.
A sharp sound came as the Pale One's jaw snapped shut.
Kael's grip tightened. Bone gave way. The head twisted sideways under the pressure, the jaw falling open again, lifeless.
He tossed the body back toward the stone coffin.
It slammed shut and sank from sight.
Kael turned slowly.
'I'm surrounded.'
Snow shook loose from nearby branches as a low rumble rolled through the forest. His gaze lifted.
A flock of birds scattered across the sky overhead.
Whether imagined or not, the air around him grew heavy, almost suffocating.
Kael dropped low.
WOOSH.
The forest bent behind him as he sprinted. The air displacement alone snapped smaller branches free, lesser trees bowing and tearing loose as he tore past. He ducked beneath a fallen trunk, vaulted another, then cut sharply around a massive boulder, snow spraying beneath his boots.
'Not good.'
The world blurred as his thoughts raced.
Kael had always been cautious. Put him alone in a room and he'd notice if a speck of dust shifted. So why hadn't he sensed it? The Pale Ones closing in from every direction. The birds' panic earlier. The pressure building long before now.
How had he missed it?
His hand rose toward his blindfold as he ran.
Was the Eye dulling his senses? Interfering with his Thoughts?
He knew it did.
But why like this?
If he died here…
Wouldn't the Eye die with him?
Kael's eye widened for a split second.
His body folded backward as momentum dragged him forward, a white blur slicing through the space a hair's breadth above his face.
A Pale One.
It had swung at him mid-charge.
Kael twisted hard, muscles screaming, and snapped his hand up. His finger flicked.
The trees nearest him detonated in a cloud of snow as bark tore loose, flashes of summer-green needles revealed beneath.
The Pale One's stomach collapsed inward.
But the pressure of Kael's strike moved faster than its body could react.
The force punched through it like a cannonball. Organs liquefied on impact, shredded apart as the shockwave tore through its torso. A gaping wound burst open in its back as the force exited, vertebrae ripping free and screaming through the air.
Bone punched through tree trunks behind it, tearing fist-sized holes straight through the wood.
The Pale One crumpled mid-step, its body folding in on itself before it even hit the ground.
Kael was already moving.
He straightened, blood mist still hanging in the air, and launched back into a sprint without looking back.
Two more Pale Ones emerged to his left.
One of them seized the other by the shoulder and threw it.
Kael skidded to a halt.
SWIISH—
The airborne beast tore past him in a white blur and slammed into a boulder behind, bursting apart into a cloud of red spray that painted stone and snow alike.
Kael's head snapped left.
'Something intelligent is controlling them.'
He snatched up a loose rock and flicked his arm.
The stone turned into a streak as it flew through the air, tearing clean through the Pale One's torso and bursting out its back in a spray of blood and fragments. Thunderous cracks could be heard as the stone continued on, ripping through tree after tree behind it before vanishing into the forest.
Kael was already moving again.
Another minute passed.
Then he stopped.
Ahead of him stood a wall of Pale Ones. Dozens of them. Maybe more. Every empty gaze locked onto him.
Kael slowed to a full stop.
A single heartbeat passed.
Then his hair snapped forward as the displaced air caught up, dragging a thick mist of snow along with it.
Fight or run?
Kael glanced over his shoulder. Turning back meant fleeing farther from Velthoria, away from the nearest protection. Ahead lay the wall of Pale Ones, and beyond them, only a few hundred steps before the city's wards.
He turned forward
Kael scooped up another rock and flicked it ahead. A head detonated mid-step.
Then he surged forward.
One swung.
Kael ducked, letting its momentum carry the limb past him. Its forearm brushed his fingers.
Point Blank activated.
The creature's elbow exploded upward, bone and flesh tearing free in a spray.
Another lunged, its arm crashing into Kael's neck. Bone shattered on impact as it struck Point Aegis.
'One. Two. Three.'
Kael's fingers moved like liquid, grazing Pale Ones as he passed. Left. Right.
A beat later—
They ruptured in unison.
Bodies burst open, intestines and shattered bone scattering across the snow.
Kael dropped low, another fist screaming past overhead, then drove forward again.
In the next instant, he was gone, vanishing from their sight as the snow settled behind him.
The cabin flashed past at Kael's side, there for only a moment before it was swallowed by trees once more.
Five hundred steps away, a bearded figure leaned against a trunk. He brushed his hair back and watched as Kael slipped beyond his reach.