The air claws at my face as I plummet, the castle shrinking above me. Wind howls. My heartbeat pounds like hooves on stone.
Then—
A scent.
Him.
The blond one.
The Elder.
He's FALLING with me.
I snap my head upward, shocked.
What the actual hell is he doing? Jumping after me? IS HE BROKEN??
But then something shifts — violently.
His body twists, cracks, rearranges.
Bones snap like twigs.
His skin loses its glow.
Wings shrivel into nothing.
The brightness that clung to him like fire…
gone.
What's left is something else entirely — ugly, dark, twisted, wrong.
NOT an angel.
MAYBE human.
My instinct snarls: Let him die.
But something deeper — something I HATE — rips that thought away.
I look down.
The ground is rushing toward us.
Fast.
Too fast.
I growl, furious at myself, furious at him, furious at whatever instinct is forcing my body to move on its own—I dive toward him.
My limbs tuck.
My horns angle down.I slam into him mid-air and wrap around him, curling my body over his like a shield.He gasps — shocked, maybe terrified — but I don't look at him.Stupid creature.He doesn't get to die yet.
Impact.The earth explodes beneath us.
My body drives into the ground and carves a crater deep enough to swallow a tree. Dirt rains down. Stone cracks. I barely feel any of it — just a dull thud, like tapping on thick bone.I rise.My heels dig into the crumbly earth.Dust slides off my fur.
The elder lies inside the crater — alive, barely, trembling, breathing like something is ripping him apart from the inside.
I stare at him for one long, hateful second.
Then I turn my back.
I bolted straight for the forest, the one we crashed beside. Those weird metal beasts on wheels screamed past me—bright, loud, and reeking of burnt poison. More humans spilled out of them, ugly little things with wide eyes and louder mouths. I didn't bother looking twice.
I left the blond idiot where he fell and tore into the trees, away from metal, away from humans, away from everything that made my skin crawl.
All I thought about while tearing through the trees was one thing:
Why the hell did that Baki follow me?
(Baki = idiot. Obviously.)
And more importantly—WHY didn't I just eat him before we hit the ground?
I was hungry.I'm always hungry.
I shoved the thoughts away. Thinking hurt more than my bones did.
A rustle ahead.A deer.
Small. Soft. Dumb.
It stared at me with those flat, stupid eyes.
I smirked—teeth out, ready to rip it in half and paint the ground with it.
But instead of running…It stepped closer.
I froze.For a second, I didn't understand why.Why it wasn't afraid.Why I wasn't lunging already.
Then I realized something disgusting:
It looked like me.Not exactly, but close enough. Four legs. Antlers. Brown fur.
A pathetic, natural version of whatever the hell I am.
I stared at it for a long moment, tasting its calm.
No fear.No terror.No delicious panic in the air.
And finally I understood why I didn't kill the blond elder either—
I don't hunt things that aren't scared of me.Not worth the effort.No flavor.
I snorted, brushed past the deer, and stalked deeper into the woods.
A sharp ache rippled through my body—
muscles stretching, bones creaking, skin tightening like it was too small for me.
I growled low.Growing again.Only a little.Bigger with every breath.
I shook it off and looked around.
This forest was nothing like the glowing world I came from.
The air was heavy and wet.
The ground soft.
Plants unfamiliar.Sounds sharp and constant—birds, insects, the distant scream of metal beasts on roads.And yet…
It felt right.This place would be mine.My territory.My hunting ground.My future.
And everything living inside it?
It lived at my mercy.