CHAPTER 10
Time held its breath.
The omen didn't move—not truly. Its mass shifted in slow ripples, heads turning, limbs adjusting, a dozen hungry minds trapped in a single wrong shape. It watched me. Studied me. Trying to decide if I was worth killing for the marked human behind me.
A moment passed.
Then its posture changed.
Decision made.
I was worth it.
I gritted my teeth and shaped a blade along my remaining forearm. The familiar cold hum settled through me, though my funnel thinned with every heartbeat. Shadows clung weakly to my skin. I ignored the warning.
All I needed to do was hold it off.
Long enough to escape.
Long enough to survive.
The omen surged forward. No roar, no warning—just motion. The ground cratered under its weight as tendrils shot upward, dozens, seeking to crush me from every angle.
I Shadowstepped.
Darkness swallowed me, spat me out a few paces aside—but I couldn't fall back. I couldn't abandon the front. If I moved too far, too fast, the girl would be exposed. One hit from this thing and she'd be paste.
And if the omen followed us because it smelled divinity… there were more out there. Others moving through the forest, drawn by the same scent.
The girl was a liability.
Another tendril whipped toward my ribs.
I snapped upward, feeling the air tear against my cheek.
I swung at it—my blade hit with the force of determination and achieved as much as damp paper against a stone wall. The blow stopped mid-swing, reversed direction, and tried to scythe off my head.
I ducked, letting it screech across my skull.
Another tendril. Then another. Then another.
Speed increasing. Pressure intensifying.
I couldn't pierce its skin.
Not an inch.
"Good thing I'm a slippery bastard," I hissed under my breath, "or I'd be decorating the ground like Snezna."
The omen twisted.
The world dimmed.
A bloom of shadow ignited around its core—darkflame gathering, condensing, then firing outward in a roaring blade of living night.
Too wide. Too fast.
Even if I Shadowstepped, the girl would be ash.
The wind howled.
A gale slammed into the darkflame, forcing it backward into the omen's own body. The shockwave split the dirt around us.
I didn't look behind me.
"Tough bastard," I muttered. "Snezna pulled through."
Movement shook the canopy—branches cracking, armor clanking.
The Empire had arrived.
The omen's attention flickered, if such a thing could flicker. I felt its curiosity fracture, redirected. For an instant, I had a window.
I threw my blade.
It spun once, twice—
I Shadowstepped into its shadow mid-flight, appearing in front of one of the omen's many heads.
I plunged the blade into its eye.
The resulting sound wasn't a scream.
It was something older.
A pressure wave of agony and hunger twisted together.
The imperial soldiers recoiled. Their formation wavered. For a heartbeat, they looked like they weren't sure who the monster was—me or the omen.
The omen struck again.
Tendrils shot toward me with renewed fury. I Shadowstepped—too slow. Blocked—too weak. My one-handed guard buckled. A blow slammed into my ribs and hurled me across the ground.
Darkness burst in my vision.
I tasted iron.
When my senses crawled back, I saw the Empire forming a semicircle around the omen—trying to force it toward the cliff's edge.
Good.
Perfect.
Let them try to kill the thing.
And while they were busy…
Now I run—
A blade cut toward my torso.
I twisted aside, instinct alone saving me. Dust exploded where steel struck earth.
The old man stood there—same one who watched my mimic corpse, same one who recognized me even through the dark. His stance was steady. Disciplined. Deadly.
He stepped forward.
He wasn't trying to kill me.
Not yet.
Capture was the order. I could see it in his eyes.
And given the state of my body—my missing hand, my thinning funnel—
he had a chance.
He circled. I stepped back. Slowly, carefully.
My eyes scanned for openings.
The girl was surrounded by three robed figures—the Empire's clerics or shapers, their hands glowing faintly as if already preparing containment rites. She didn't fight. She didn't flee. She simply stood there, calm as the river below us.
Marked ones were always strange.
As for Snezna—
No sign.
Only a smear of blood where he had fallen.
Either dead.
Or taken.
Or crawling off to die somewhere quieter.
The omen roared behind us. Soldiers shouted. Steel clashed with tendrils. The cliff shook under the force.
And still, the old man's eyes stayed on me.
The Empire.
The omen.
The girl.
The cliff.
No escape in any direction.
My breath slowed.
If they wanted me alive…
they'd regret it.
I steadied my stance.
Shadow curled around my feet, weak but present.
My heart hammered once—twice—
and the world narrowed to a single point:
Survive.
A part of me was panicking.
Or perhaps it was fear.
It had been a long time since I'd relished fear—since it had felt sharp and clean instead of distant and muted. The emotion crawled up my spine like a parasite returning to familiar territory. I tried to crush it, grind it into dust, but some part of me recoiled.
Dream?
What dream?
My vision blurred. My heartbeat staggered. For a moment I wasn't in my body—then, suddenly, I was already moving, already engaging the old man in close combat without remembering how I got there.
My instincts lagged behind my limbs, like I was watching myself from a half-step away. When my awareness finally snapped back into place, I almost took a blade to the throat.
Of course.
How could I forget?
My funnel was thinning.
Visions slipping through the cracks of my mind.
That must be it.
Yes. That was the likely explanation.
Block.
Dodge.
Retreat.
The old man pressed forward without a hint of fatigue.
He was shaping—metal, steel, weapons—bending them subtly, reinforcing his strikes, sharpening every edge he touched. Authority over metal, or perhaps over armaments themselves.
I stepped back. He denied me even a breath of reprieve. His movements were too practiced, too deliberate—he wasn't trying to kill me. He was keeping me occupied. Ensuring I couldn't intervene.
I saw a blur of motion from the left.
A body—half alive, half mangled—was hurled at us.
I ducked.
It slammed into the old man's chest with a wet crunch.
He didn't move.
The corpse slid off him and hit the ground with a heavy thud.
I hissed under my breath.
Skill.
Experience.
Age sharpened by war.
Old ones on the battlefield always carried weight. That was a given. But this one—this man—moved like he had fought someone like me before. Someone with shadow. Someone who didn't belong fully in their own body.
Then a scream tore through the clearing.
Both of us turned.
The omen surged forward, ripping through the Empire's line like paper. Soldiers fell—some in pieces, some still screaming as tendrils burrowed through them. A few slumped on the ground, their armor caved in like crushed tin. Veterans, yes. Seasoned, yes.
But they needed more manpower.
More than a handful of humans.
More than this cliffside could offer.
They were dying.
Predictable.
Inevitable.
And the omen was only getting started.
---
The man turned his back to me.
A deadly mistake anywhere else.
But he knew I wasn't an idiot—I wouldn't waste time attacking him with an omen at our throats. So he lunged forward, blade-first, to join the slaughter.
I scanned for the girl.
The shapers were already readying themselves—arcs of flame, crescents of ice, currents of manipulated air—all aligned to intercept me. I wove through them, ducked under a spray of needles, shadowstepped through another barrage.
Almost reached one—
A tendril whipped toward me.
Down.
I let it take the shaper instead. His scream died before it even reached his lips. Another shaper bolted, but the omen's passing turned her into drifting mist.
I turned again—searching.
More soldiers poured from the canopy, steel flashing, chants rising. The old man fought the omen directly, carving real wounds into it—impressive. A quarter of the forest had been pulverized to mulch and ash.
My gaze locked onto the girl.
Still there. Still useless.
And still the reason all of this was happening.
And me?
I needed to ensure she belonged to no one.
Somewhere below, I heard the distant rush of water.
I approached her, kneeled, and asked, "Do you want to live?"
She stared at me—blank, empty.
Seconds stretched like an eternity on the battlefield.
Then she looked away.
"It doesn't matter," she murmured.
I grit my teeth.
"Then I'll choose for you. And I choose to hand this to fate over damnation."
I lifted her. She didn't resist.
I stepped toward the cliff's edge.
One soldier noticed.
He charged.
I threw her off.
"I hope you can swim, kid," I muttered. "And I hope I go to hell for at least one sin I committed willingly."
I sidestepped.
The soldier ran past me and tumbled over the edge.
---
The battle behind me devolved into carnage.
Steel shattered.
Bones snapped.
Flame washed over the omen's flesh—only to be absorbed.
Spells struck like meteors, punching holes through its hide, but the wounds sealed in seconds, tendrils knitting like veins made of tar.
Veterans screamed.
Their deaths were instantaneous.
A cleric began praying—the air trembled, light searing the omen's flesh in righteous pulses.
For a moment, the creature recoiled—
Then its tendril punched through his chest, silencing him mid-hymn.
It kept going.
Relentless.
Purposeful.
A few minutes later, the clearing was silent.
Bodies—some whole, most not—littered the ground.
The old man lay motionless, blood pooling beneath him.
Too bad.
I had hoped he'd last longer.
Only two things remained standing:
Me.
And the omen.
---
I met its eyes—its myriad eyes.
For a long moment, it simply existed.
Waiting.
Calculating.
The girl was gone.
There was no reason for it to stay.
Any rational omen should have left—the risk of engaging a marked human was rarely worth the cost.
But it didn't leave.
Its mass rippled—
Shifted—
Collapsed into a grey, spectral silhouette of a humanoid figure in tattered robes.
A corpse, maybe.
Or the remnants of a once-strong name holder, rotted and corrupted beyond form.
It tilted its head, searching the cliffside for the girl.
Found nothing.
Then it looked at me.
Really looked at me.
As if peeling back layers.
As if seeing underneath the skin, the muscle, the shadow, the mask—
For a heartbeat, a thought whispered through me:
Does it see me?
See who?
I shut the thought down instantly.
It lunged.
Distance vanished.
I tried to move—too slow.
Its blow snapped my blade like it was twine and sent me flying.
I slammed into a tree.
My spine screamed.
My breath vanished.
Why?
Why was it still engaging me?
The girl was gone.
Its target eliminated.
It had no reason to linger, no reason to fight—
Yet here it was.
I tilted my head—just in time.
A blade of dark rotted material cleaved through the trunk, grazing the old wound on my cheek, reopening it.
Blood dripped.
Its tendrils quivered in anticipation.
Whatever the reason—
whatever it sensed—
it had found something else to hunt.
And that something…
…was me.
---