CHAPTER 9
Snezna and I stepped out of the ruined carriage.
The reptilian beasts still tethered to the wagons shrieked at the sound of the horn—long necks jerking, claws tearing furrows into the mud. The ones still alive kicked and thrashed, eyes rolling white. They could feel it coming. Animals always sensed the Empire before men did.
We ran for the treeline.
"They move in packs," Snezna hissed beside me. "A miracle they haven't gotten here earlier."
I nodded. The motion felt automatic, like a gesture rehearsed before I was born.
We reached the shadow of the jungle. The air tasted thicker here, damp with old rot and dark leaves. I paused, thinking—if the word thinking even applied anymore. Instinct filled the gaps where thoughts used to be.
"You go," I said. "I'll gather intel."
Snezna stared at me—his rotting arm limp, the girl's small body slumped against his shoulder.
He nodded slowly.
"Right… but is that really necessary? If we get caught, that's the end."
"We?" The word felt strange on my tongue—too familiar, too warm.
"There is no we. You go. The girl slows you down. And your arm slows you down more. I'll scout."
He blinked at me, eyebrows rising.
"Well… can't argue with that. I'll find us a way out of this shithole. I'll leave marks. Follow them. And erase the trail behind us."
"Fine."
We said nothing else.
I climbed the nearest tree, bark scraping under my fingers, branches bending with my weight. Snezna walked away into the undergrowth—the girl limp in his arms, leaving faint marks on the damp earth.
A horn blew again.
Much closer.
Night hid me well. But caution demanded more. I shaped a cloak of shadow around myself—thin, cold, clinging. The world dimmed, sound muffled, breath quieter than thought.
The horn blasted again.
My skull vibrated with it—a low hum threading through bone.
Ah.
The Empire and their melodrama.
Always announcing their presence like a god demanding worship.
Metal scraped earth.
Chains rattled.
Boots crushed brush under precise rhythm.
I counted under my breath.
One… three… five… twelve.
More than a dozen. Enough to raze a camp. Enough to raze a town.
This wasn't a slave convoy.
This was an escort unit.
Which meant they were guarding someone—or something—important.
Someone I wanted to see.
---
They entered the clearing.
Red-gold armor, polished to an arrogant shine even in moonlight.
Heavy carriages hauled by scaled beasts. Two, four, six animals each depending on the weight. One carriage was massive—steel plates reinforced with runes, a walking fortress.
They halted.
I held my breath.
Red silhouettes flowed out of the cages—disciplined, trained, better armed than the fools guarding the slaves.
If I got caught now, there was no escape. Not even for me.
They moved with drilled precision, forming into phalanxes and scouting lines.
A man stepped out from the fortress-carriage—helmet hiding his face but not the authority in his posture.
The crest etched in gold declared him high-ranking.
Royal, even.
He barked orders to the old man beside him—weathered face, stiff spine. A veteran.
Soldiers began clearing the remains of the caravan.
Clean. Efficient.
The Empire at its most ruthless and most beautiful.
They gathered fallen soldiers first. Cloaked clerks whispered names, writing each into ledgers. Shapers collected fragments of glass-flesh from the mimics.
The royal inspected the dead.
He reached the misted corpses and froze.
Of course.
The black mist had clung to them too.
He spoke sharply to the old man. More orders.
Shapers scraped the glass remains, muttering prayers or curses.
Some soldiers removed their helmets to honor the fallen.
Clerics knelt beside them, murmuring rites.
At the slave cages, their faces tensed—brief disgust at the carnage—but no pity.
Their expressions shuttered quickly.
Empire soldiers were trained to ignore suffering.
The cages were burned entirely.
The smell reached even me—sweet rot, cooked blood.
Something inside me twisted.
A small, inconvenient part of me recoiled.
I crushed the feeling.
Dream-kissed slaves are cattle.
That is all.
Finally, they reached "our" bodies—the mimics I'd left in the open.
Better they thought we were dead.
The superior removed his mask.
Dirty blond hair. Sharp blue eyes.
A face so stereotypically imperial I nearly scoffed aloud.
These Empire royals look no different from their Astarian counterparts.
Yet inheritance decides who's cattle.
He paused at "my" corpse.
Blood still dripped from its ear—the mark left by the words I'd whispered before ending it.
Minutes passed.
I didn't breathe.
They couldn't identify a mimic that quickly. Not without autopsies. Not without mages.
He lifted his head.
Looked toward the treeline.
At me.
Even through the dark, I felt his gaze lock onto mine.
I stared back, silent, still.
He turned to the old man.
His lips shaped words easily read:
"Send only veterans into the canopy. These ones belong to the North."
Curiosity truly is a noose.
I was caught.
---
I dropped from the tree.
Shadowstepped backward before I hit the ground, boots crunching softly on leaf mold.
The horn sounded again—no longer a signal, but a declaration.
They were hunting me.
I ran.
Varka's steps—my steps—cut smoothly through the underbrush.
I wanted to shadowstep farther, but my funnel was thin from the fight earlier.
Another confrontation was inevitable. I had to conserve strength.
Snezna had left sigils on trunks and stones.
A path to follow.
I erased each as I passed.
Covering our trail.
The sounds of pursuit grew distant.
Then—
Blood.
The scent hit me like a blade.
Cold. Sharp. Fresh.
My heartbeat stuttered.
The sigils stopped.
Snezna should've been here.
Instead, a puddle of blood soaked the roots.
Dragged marks leading away into deeper dark.
No trace of him.
No trace of the girl.
Just blood.
I followed.
I crouched, letting myself sink into the forest floor's damp loam.
The blood gleamed black under the moonlight.
I lathered two fingers in it and brought them close.
Warm.
Fresh.
Human—unmistakably human—but threaded with something else. Something metallic and wrong. A taint I couldn't name but recognized the way an old scar recognizes the blade that made it.
Whatever had followed him…
Snezna hadn't gone quietly.
He'd made sure it bled as well.
I started forward on instinct before stopping myself.
Too exposed.
Too direct.
Too… human.
I climbed instead—silently—pressing my weight onto the trunk so the bark didn't groan. When I perched on a high branch, the jungle's floor opened beneath me into blackness and shifting leaf-shadows. Much better. Up here I was a whisper, not a target.
I leapt branch to branch, following the blood trail's dotted constellation through the foliage.
It was too much.
Far too much.
Not Snezna's.
If he'd lost this volume, I would have found the body, or what was left of it.
This belonged to something larger—or something that bled differently.
The forest seemed to inhale as I moved.
Then—
a pressure.
A subtle tightening.
Air thickening around me, like a massive unseen shape had just leaned its weight against the world.
My fingers tightened on the bark.
The leaves trembled.
I was close.
Too close.
The canopy ended beneath my feet—abruptly, unnaturally.
One moment I was hidden among the leaves, the next I was staring down at bare, open ground.
No undergrowth.
No movement.
As if the forest itself had recoiled from this place.
A crack echoed to my right.
I dropped immediately.
Being in the trees here gave no advantage—only exposed me.
The moment I hit the ground, dust washed over my boots.
When it settled, I saw Snezna.
Bleeding heavily.
His rotting arm had finally given out, nothing left but a limp, blackened stump dangling uselessly at his side.
An instinct—move, help him—flickered through me.
I crushed it.
Sentiment made corpses.
Better to observe.
To understand what we were against before making myself known.
I scanned through the settling haze.
The girl stood far from the center of the fight—awake now, watching.
Too calm for a child.
Marked ones always were.
But whatever faced Snezna… I could not see clearly.
Human?
Too large.
Beast?
Not any I knew.
The air smelled wrong, as if its body exhaled rot and old stone.
Snezna lifted his remaining hand, shaping a roar of wind—one of his strongest.
Even through his failing body, the pressure spike was immense.
A blast that should have erased anything short of a wyvern.
The dust exploded outward from the impact.
And when it thinned—
I saw it.
A mass.
A grey cluster of limbs, hides, skins, bone fragments.
Animals.
Humans.
Creatures I didn't have names for.
All fused.
All wrong.
Snezna's strongest attack had marked it as much as a tossed pebble.
Maybe even less.
It struck back.
One tendril—massive, terrible—whipped out with an impossible speed.
I shadowstepped to intercept—
Too slow.
The hit caught Snezna cleanly.
He was thrown back as if flicked by a god.
I reached him the moment his body skidded to a stop.
Fast.
The following tendril snapped at my throat—
I twisted aside just in time.
I had miscalculated.
Gravely.
This wasn't any beast we'd fought in decades.
Not a mimic.
Not a feral shaper.
Not even a purebred predator.
This was an omen.
And the last time we killed one, there had been twelve of us.
Only four survived.
Now… two.
No—one.
Snezna was barely conscious.
I stared at the omen, weighing my options with razor precision.
Run? Too slow.
Hide? It would smell the funnel of power leaking from my wounds.
Fight? Laughable in my state.
Wait for the empire's patrol to catch up—
let them throw themselves into this abomination
and slip away during the chaos?
Possible.
But only if I calculated perfectly.
A cold wind struck my face.
We were standing at a cliff's edge—sheer drop to a roaring river below.
No way out.
Not forward, not back.
The girl's knees buckled—no, not buckled.
She sat.
Calmly.
Deliberately.
I almost cursed aloud.
Marked children always had this infuriating serenity in the face of annihilation.
My thought snapped in half as the omen's shadow twisted.
It had chosen a target.
Me.
Tendrils lunged—
I shadowstepped—
barely avoiding them.
A neat trick, yes.
But shadowsteps meant nothing to an omen.
They learned.
Adapted.
Devoured patterns.
Several of its heads tilted—dozens of eyes narrowing in curiosity, hunger, calculation.
I exhaled slowly.
I couldn't fight it.
My hand was gone.
My funnel thinning by the second.
And I had a child to protect?
Impossible.
If I were ordinary, I might've hoped.
But hope is poison.
I learned that long ago.
The omen wasn't hunting me.
Not really.
It smelled divinity.
It smelled her.
It wanted the girl.
We were just obstacles.
A disgust rose in me—unexpected, sharp, unwelcome.
Give her up and run?
Live another day?
Strengthen the omen and damn the region?
No.
Leave her for the empire?
Let them cradle a marked child in their arms, let their priests and nobles drink from her potential?
Absolutely not.
The rushing river below roared louder.
The omen moved closer.
I saw only one path out.
A terrible one.
The only one.