Boom.
Boom.
BOOM.
The Dark Forest breathed violence.
Explosions pulsed through its depths like the heartbeat of some corrupted titan buried under the soil. Rotten branches shook. Black leaves shivered. The air itself seemed to peel and mend with every detonation.
Zane ran through the underbrush like a streak of shadow given purpose.
His boots slammed against twisted roots; each step rippled the miasma coiling around the ground.
Another thunder-arrow screamed past.
He spun just a half-twist, clean, controlled his blade sliding into the projectile's path.
Slish CRACK.
The lightning arrow split in two, its halves dissolving into snapping sparks that burned brief holes in the fog. Zane didn't bother watching them fade. His gaze swept behind him, tracking the source before the next volley even formed.
Behind a veil of warped trees stood Cataline and Ray.
The three exchanged a single nod silent, sharp, automatic.
Then, at the exact same moment, they broke apart splitting in three different directions, scattering through the forest like loose fragments of a shattered omen.
"We can't let them find the labyrinth."
Zane's voice was a low snarl in the wind.
"If they do… everything gets harder."
There was no need to say what "everything" meant.
Cataline knew.
Ray knew.
The forest certainly knew.
Zane's next step was cut off by a sudden slicing whistle—a wind blade, razor-thin, cleaving through the air toward his neck.
He didn't blink.
His body curved backward in an impossible arch, the attack grazing the air where his throat had been a heartbeat ago.
A whisper of wind…
Then silence.
Zane rolled his shoulder, pivoted, and landed on a low branch without a sound. His katana darkened blackness leaking across its steel like ink claiming a page.
Two figures materialized on the branches opposite him, perching like vultures preparing for a feast.
The Dark Forest was no place for naïve hearts.
Its trees towered like pillars of a cathedral built to worship corruption.
Its bark pulsed faintly with veins of void-energy.
Its roots twisted beneath the soil like buried serpents.
Corrupted beasts prowled in the mist.
Human corpses bloomed with eyes.
The air reeked of rot, thunder, and old secrets.
And these two strangers these hunters fit the forest too well.
One raised two fingers shaped like a bowstring. Sparks crawled across his skin.
Lightning-user.
The other exhaled, and the branches around him trembled.
Wind-user.
"Where is the labyrinth key?"
The wind-user didn't ask.
He demanded.
L
Zane answered by lifting his katana slightly.
Darkness rolled off it thick, cold, slithering forward like ink spilled into water.
The two figures reacted instantly.
Lightning-flash.
Wind-burst.
Both attackers lunged into motion.
The lightning-user fired first his hands snapping forward, forming two perfect arcs.
Two blazing arrows ripped through the forest, turning leaves to ash as they screamed through the air.
Zane didn't meet them.
Cataline intervened.
From far off, invisible arrows mist condensed into shape cut across his vision. They shot forward with silent precision, intercepting both lightning bolts midair.
The projectiles collided with a muffled pulse like air being crushed into itself.
Zane caught the brief flicker of surprise on the lightning-user's face.
Too slow.
The invisible arrow continued through the collapsing lightning and struck his shoulder firm, unbreakable, unseen.
The man staggered.
His sibling reacted instantly, wind swirling to propel them both backward.
But the lightning-user had another idea.
Sparks ignited around his feet.
Zane felt it before he saw it.
A thunder spark.
The air detonated.
A shockwave burst outward tearing bark from trees, shattering roots, kicking up clouds of corrupted dust. The entire forest shuddered as though struck by a god's hammer.
Zane barely avoided the blast shadow folding around him, swallowing him into a sliver of safety.
When he emerged, the forest was a plume of drifting debris.
Fallen trees smoldered.
Lightning scars burned across the earth.
Birds if they could be called that just screamed and scattered.
Coughing through the haze, Zane spotted a streak of lightning rising through the forest canopy.
The two brothers were trying to escape.
Cataline's mist arrows had only slowed them.
Ray was too far behind to intercept.
If the lightning brothers escaped, reinforcements would come.
Reinforcements meant numbers.
Numbers meant the labyrinth would no longer be hidden.
Zane's jaw tightened.
"Not happening."
His one of is eyes turned crimson and then it opened fully.
A thin shudder ran through the forest as if the trees themselves felt the gaze.
His pupils dilated into rings concentric crimson halos that devoured every layer of reality they touched.
He saw the lightning brothers.
He saw their energy.
He saw the world-energy they were pulling from the corrupted atmosphere.
Even if the air was tainted…
Even if the energy was twisted…
Even if the lightning was foreign…
His eyes did not care.
They devoured.
They assimilated.
They rewrote.
Around Zane, corrupted energy condensed dark lightning spiraling around him like a storm made of broken stars.
The world dimmed.
Black lightning finished forming, crackling along the length of Zane's katana.
The opposite of the fleeing brother's light.
Lightning born from corrupted essence, not sky.
A sin of an element.
Zane drew in a breath and whispered to the blade:
"Fly."
He swung.
Not a cut.
A launch.
The katana screamed as black lightning surged through it, turning the blade into a spear of corrupted thunder that ripped upward.
The forest turned black for a heartbeat.
Every tree cast three shadows.
And then.
The black lightning arrow stabbed through the sky, chasing the lightning-user fleeing above the canopy.
The moment before impact stretched thin, trembling like glass on the verge of shattering.
The lightning-user sensed death behind him.
His brother shouted something.
The forest held its breath.
The black lightning descended toward the two pair running.