Ace and Cedric moved through the woods like water through a narrowing channel—slow, deliberate, with a pressure that built with every silent step.
Every footfall was a conscious decision, the heel placed first, then the sole rolled down to muffle the crunch of decay. Every breath was drawn through the nose, held, released slowly through parted lips to silence the tell-tale puff of vapor in the cold air. They were no longer hunters pursuing prey; they were duelists entering the arena chosen by their opponent.
The trees here were ancient sentinels, taller and thicker than anywhere else on the hill, their upper branches knitted into a dense, skeletal canopy that strangled the moonlight. What little light seeped through fell in thin, sickly shafts, illuminating nothing but motes of drifting pollen and decay. The shadows beneath were not mere absences of light; they were substances—thick, layered, pooling in hollows and clinging to trunks with a velvety depth that seemed to swallow sound. The darkness had weight here. It pressed against Ace's pupils and sat heavily on his shoulders.
Ace led, his pistol held in a high-ready position, the barrel tracing a subtle, constant micro-sweep of the lethal funnel ahead. His finger lay straight along the frame, the pad resting beside the trigger guard, a hair's breadth from commitment. His senses, stretched wire-tight, felt raw. He listened not for sound, but for the lack of sound—for the patch of forest where the crickets had gone silent, for the direction from which no owl called. The Goatman wasn't just an animal hiding. It was an intelligence. It would be observing, calculating range, waiting for the perfect moment of distraction.
Cedric walked a few paces behind and to the right, his rifle's stock tucked into his shoulder, its muzzle angled slightly downward but ready to snap up. His eyes performed a relentless, automated scan: left periphery, center, right periphery, up into the tangled branches, down to the root-crossed ground. Repeat.
Too quiet, Ace's own thoughts echoed in the vault of his skull. Way too quiet. This is the place. This is where it makes its—
Then—
"…Ace."
Ace froze. His entire body locked, not with fear, but with the intense focus of a safecracker hearing the first tumblers fall.
The voice didn't originate in the air. It didn't travel from a point ahead or left or right. It manifested inside the center of his mind, bypassing his ears entirely. It wasn't loud, wasn't a shout. It wasn't a theatrical whisper. It was a calm, clear statement. And it was horrifyingly familiar.
"…Ace, where are you, son?"
Ace's jaw tightened until his teeth ached. A cold flush, unrelated to the night air, washed over the back of his neck.
His father's voice.
Not a cheap mimicry. Not a guttural impression. It was exact. The timbre, the slight gravel from a lifetime of giving orders, the underlying layer of weary authority that had always made Ace feel simultaneously protected and profoundly inadequate. It was the voice from模糊的记忆 of being eight years old and shown how to track a wendigo's spoor for the first time. It was the voice from a static-filled phone call two years ago. It was perfect.
Cedric noticed the minute change in Ace's posture—the almost imperceptible hitch in his step, the slight tilt of his head as if listening to a distant frequency. "You good?" Cedric muttered, his own voice a low rasp.
Ace exhaled sharply, a controlled burst of air through his nostrils. "Yeah. No. It's… it's using my dad's voice."
Cedric let out a short, derisive scoff. "Classy. Real subtle creature."
Ace tilted his head, his eyes like flint as they scanned the oppressive wall of shadows. He didn't shout. He spoke clearly, his voice cutting through the thick air, addressed to the woods themselves. "Nice try, asshole. Pro tip? I don't even like my dad."
For a split second—nothing. The forest seemed to hold its breath. The psychic pressure, which had begun to coil around Ace's thoughts, hesitated. Stuttered. It was a fleeting sensation, like a hand fumbling for a grip on wet glass.
Cedric felt the shift too—a slight lessening of the oppressive atmosphere, a ripple in the creature's focus. "Huh," he muttered under his breath, a ghost of a smirk touching his lips. "Didn't see that coming, did you?"
Ace's own smirk was a thin, brittle thing. "Yeah. Guess daddy issues aren't the universal weak spot it hoped for."
But the creature was adaptable. The hesitation lasted only a heartbeat before the presence in his mind recalibrated, searching, probing for a softer target.
The voice changed.
The texture of it altered completely. The gravel and authority melted away, replaced by a warmth, a gentle concern that was uniquely, devastatingly familiar.
"…Ace?"
It was his mother's voice.
Not calling out in fear. Not scolding. Just… worried. A mother's intuition given sound.
"…Honey? Are you out here?"
Ace's chest constricted, a visceral reaction he couldn't suppress. The smirk died on his face.
"Don't," he whispered aloud, the word a plea and a command to himself. "Don't you dare."
The voice softened further, wrapping around his mind like a heavy blanket, like a hand on his fevered brow after a nightmare. "You sound so tired, sweetheart. I can hear it in your breathing. You've been pushing yourself again, haven't you? Always trying to carry it all…"
A dull, throbbing ache bloomed behind Ace's eyes, not a physical pain, but the psychic strain of resisting a siren's call crafted from pure, loving concern.
Cedric saw him slow, the purposeful hunter's stride faltering by a fraction. "Ace? Talk to me. What's it doing?"
"You don't have to do this," the voice cooed, soothing, reasonable. "Just sit down for a moment. Right there. Just rest. I'll take care of everything. You've done enough. Come home."
Ace clenched his teeth, a muscle jumping in his jaw. His heartbeat, which had been a steady drum, began to escalate into a frantic hammer against his ribs. The edges of his vision darkened slightly, the layered shadows of the forest seeming to pulse and stretch, reaching for him. The ground beneath his feet felt unstable, as if it might turn to sand.
"Hey—look at me," Cedric said, his voice sharpening. He closed the distance between them, his shoulder almost brushing Ace's. "Don't listen to it. It's not her. It's a lie."
Ace nodded, a stiff, mechanical motion. "I'm fine," he managed, but the words came out thick, slurred at the edges.
He wasn't fine. The headache sharpened, transforming from a throb into a series of precise, ice-pick jabs behind his eyes. His vision swam, the trees performing a slow, nauseating waltz. A heavy lethargy seeped into his limbs, making his legs feel like they were moving through deep water. The switchblade in his hand felt like it weighed twenty pounds.
Cedric was fully beside him now, his own rifle momentarily lowered, his focus entirely on his partner. "Breathe, damn it. In. Out. Look at my face. It's just me. It's just Cedric."
Ace tried. He forced his eyes to focus on Cedric's determined, worried face. He dragged in a shuddering breath.
But the voice was a current pulling him under. "You're hurting yourself," it sighed, the tone shifting to one of gentle, maternal disappointment. It was a weapon more brutal than any shout. "You always do. My brave, stubborn boy… just let go."
Ace's knees buckled. It wasn't a collapse, but a sudden, alarming loss of strength—a stumble that Cedric caught by grabbing his arm, hauling him upright.
"Shit—Ace!"
Ace sucked in a sharp, ragged gasp, using the pain of Cedric's grip to anchor himself. His hand, still clutching the switchblade, trembled violently. His instincts screamed through the fog: This isn't over. It's pushing. It thinks it's winning.
He staggered back a step, then another, creating space as if distance could mute the psychic assault. The headache became a roaring tempest in his skull, a feeling of violation as something cold and alien scrabbled at the walls of his memory, seeking purchase, trying to reshape his reality around its comforting lie.
"You're lost," the voice whispered, now from within and everywhere. "But I can find you. Just stop running."
"No," Ace gritted out, squeezing his eyes shut. He saw his mother's face—not the worried phantom, but her real face, etched with fear every time he walked out the door. He used that real fear, that real love, as a shield. "You're. Not. Real."
That's when Cedric felt it.
A pulse in the air. Not a sound, but a sensation—a wave of dark, gloating amusement.
It was followed by a sound. A low, wet, guttural chuckle that seemed to seep from the bark of the trees and rise from the damp earth. It wasn't loud or triumphant. It was quiet. Confident. Smug. The sound of a predator that has felt its prey's muscles go slack in its jaws. It was the Goatman, laughing because it had felt Ace falter, because it believed the fight for his mind was over.
Cedric's blood turned to ice water in his veins. The creature had slipped. In its moment of perceived victory, it had let its guard down, its psychic focus loosening just enough to leak its true emotion into the physical world.
"So that's how it is," Cedric muttered, the fear in his gut hardening into a diamond point of focus. His earlier concern for Ace evaporated, replaced by the cold clarity of a shot that needed to be taken. He was already moving, the rifle coming up in one fluid motion, his cheek welding to the stock.
Ace heard it too. The laughter wasn't in his mind. It was out there. A tangible clue. A mistake.
The Goatman was laughing because it thought it had won.
Big. Mistake.
The sound acted like a splash of cold water. Ace sucked in a breath so sharp it hurt his bruised ribs, and forced his legs to solidify beneath him. The psychic fog didn't lift, but it thinned, his vision snapping back into a shaky, manageable clarity. The manipulative voice of his mother faded to a distant echo.
"…It laughed," Ace said, the words grating out from between clenched teeth. He spat another coppery mouthful of blood onto the leaves.
Cedric didn't take his eye from his scope. He gave a single, tight nod. "Yeah. And that means it's gotten cocky. It's not hiding its presence anymore."
With his free hand, Cedric reached over his shoulder to a specially padded pouch on his harness. His fingers closed not on a standard magazine, but on one whose polymer casing was etched with a spiral of intricate, minuscule sigils. As he pulled it free, the symbols shimmered with a faint, internal azure light, casting ghostly patterns on his grim face. The air around the magazine hummed with a barely audible frequency, a sound that felt more like a pressure change than a noise.
Enchanted ammunition.
These were not bullets for flesh and bone. They were metaphysical arguments carved in brass and lead, infused with energy that screamed "You do not belong here" to things that lived outside nature's laws. They were expensive, dangerous to make, and their use was a declaration of total war.
Click-clack.
The sound of the magazine seating home was definitive. The hum intensified, the glow from the sigils pulsing in time with Cedric's own heartbeat. He cycled the bolt, chambering a round that glowed faintly as it slid home.
Cedric raised the rifle again, his breathing stilled. He didn't try to see the unseen. He felt for it. He tracked the disturbance in the fabric of the night—the unnatural stillness of a patch of ferns, the way a shadow seemed to cling too tightly to one specific tree, the faint, sourceless reek of wet fur and old blood that hung in a localized pocket of air.
His finger settled on the trigger. "There," he murmured, a hunter's certainty in the word.
Ace, following the line of the barrel, saw it too. For a fractured second, the layered shadows coalesced into a form. A tall, hunched silhouette, shifting its weight between two massive oaks. The curve of a twisted horn caught a sliver of stray moonlight and gleamed like polished bone.
Cedric didn't hesitate. He exhaled halfway and squeezed.
BANG.
The report was different—sharper, clearer, with a resonant crack that seemed to tear the very air. The muzzle flash was not just orange flame, but laced with a burst of actinic blue light. The enchanted round tore through the darkness, leaving a brief, searing afterimage of its path.
It did not hit the creature square. The Goatman was too fast. But as it twisted to evade, the bullet grazed its flank, ripping through matted fur and the unnatural hide beneath.
The effect was immediate and spectacular. Where the bullet passed, the creature's flesh didn't just bleed; it sizzled and unraveled. The glowing runes on the bullet flared violently upon contact, and a patch of the Goatman's side seemed to momentarily decay, blackening and smoking as if reality itself were rejecting its existence.
A sharp, furious shriek—a sound of pure, unadulterated agony and shock—exploded from the woods. It was no longer a growl of irritation or a chuckle of amusement. It was the scream of something profoundly hurt, its invulnerability shattered.
"Got you," Cedric said, his voice a flat line of satisfaction. He was already working the bolt, the spent, now-dark casing ejecting and gleaming dully as it fell.
The Goatman bolted.
All pretense of stealth vanished. It crashed through the undergrowth, a nine-foot-tall engine of panic and rage. Branches the thickness of a man's arm snapped like kindling. Saplings were crushed underfoot. The forest erupted into a chaotic symphony of breaking wood and scattering wildlife as the creature fled in a blind, pain-driven sprint, heading deeper into the steep, rocky heart of the hill.
Ace straightened fully, rolling his shoulders. The headache was a persistent throb, and his side burned where the tree had hit him, but both were distant concerns now, buried under a wave of cold adrenaline. He looked at Cedric and nodded once. No words of thanks were needed. The debt was paid in the currency they understood: cover fire when your partner is vulnerable.
Cedric adjusted his grip, firing another round—not a direct shot, but a suppressing fire aimed at the creature's predicted path. The blue-tracer round impacted a rock face ahead of the fleeing shape, showering it with stinging fragments and herding it further into the terrain they now knew was a dead end.
"Running already?" Ace muttered, a feral edge returning to his voice. The hunted had become the hunters again.
His right hand slid down to his hip, to the custom sheath there. His fingers wrapped around the worn bone handle of his switchblade—not with desperation, but with a sense of homecoming. The moment his skin made contact, the air around his hand seemed to grow still and cold.
His thumb found the release.
SNICKT.
The sound was crisp, authoritative, and final in the chaos. The Italian stiletto's blade sprang forth, locking into place with a vibration he felt in his wrist.
The blade itself was a masterpiece of deadly art. Long, slender, and needle-pointed, it was forged from a dark, non-reflective steel. Along its central fuller, intricate symbols were inlaid in silver—not glowing like the bullet's runes, but holding a deep, latent light, like moonlight captured in mercury. They were hunter's sigils: bindings of silence, prayers for sharpness, curses against regeneration. This wasn't just a knife; it was a relic. The last and only meaningful gift from a ghost of a father. A piece of the Eldren legacy he both resented and relied upon. It didn't hum with power; it thrummed with a quiet, patient lethality.
Ace rolled his wrist once, feeling the perfect, familiar balance. The symbols pulsed once, softly, as if greeting the corrupted air of the Goatman's territory.
His eyes, cold and focused, locked onto the path of destruction ahead—the trampled ferns, the shaking branches, the trail of dark, sizzling blood that now speckled the leaves.
A dangerous calm settled over him, washing away the last vestiges of psychic interference. This was no longer about defense, or fear, or mind games.
This was about execution.
"Alright," Ace said, his voice barely a whisper, yet it carried all the weight of a judge's sentence.
He didn't say let's go. He didn't need to.
"Now we chase."
***
Ace exploded forward from a standstill, a coil of kinetic energy unleashed. The world narrowed to a tunnel: the path of the beast, the next footfall, the next breath. His boots tore into the soft earth, then found purchase on stone, then launched him over a mossy log. The wind whipped past his ears, a roaring counterpoint to the thunderous crash of the Goatman's flight ahead.
The creature was terrifyingly fast, a lesson in contradictory physics. Something so massive should not move with such fluid, silent grace. Yet it did. It flowed over the rugged terrain like black water, its hooves finding purchase on slick stone and between tangled roots where Ace had to fight for balance. It was a part of this dark place, and the land itself seemed to aid its flight.
Ace's grip on the switchblade was iron. In his hand, the relic came alive. The silver sigils along the blade began to glow with a steady, cold white light, no longer latent. It hummed now, a high-frequency vibration that tingled in Ace's palm, its intensity increasing as he closed the distance. It wasn't seeking the creature; it was repelled by it, the energy within the blade resonating with a harmonics of disgust against the Goatman's unnatural presence. It was a compass pointing straight at the corruption.
"Don't you dare run," Ace growled, the words ripped away by the speed of his pursuit.
The Goatman, sensing the closing distance and the piercing aura of the blade, glanced over its shoulder. For a fleeting moment, Ace saw its face clearly in a patch of moonlight: the intelligent, golden eyes wide not with fear, but with a furious, cornered cunning. Its lips peeled back from yellowed, jagged teeth in a snarl that was pure hatred.
And then the forest warped.
It wasn't an illusion in Ace's mind this time; it was a manipulation of his perception. The trees to his left stretched upward impossibly fast, their canopies knitting into a solid roof of darkness. The ground to his right fell away into a bottomless black pit that he knew wasn't there but his stomach lurched anyway. The path ahead spiraled into a nonsensical maze. The Goatman was pulling out every psychic stop, trying to break his pursuit with disorientation.
Mind tricks—!
Ace bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. The sharp, coppery tang of his own blood flooded his mouth, a brutal, grounding shock of real sensation in the face of false perception. The pain was an anchor.
"Not today!" he roared, and charged straight through the center of the nightmare geometry. The illusory pit vanished as he crossed where it seemed to be. The trees snapped back to their normal proportions.
Behind him, covering his desperate charge—
BANG!
Cedric's second enchanted round screamed past, a streak of blue light. It wasn't aimed at the Goatman's body, but at an ancient pine just ahead and to its left. The round struck the trunk and detonated in a silent burst of sapphire energy. Bark and splinters erupted in a devastating cloud, but more importantly, the concussive wave of unmaking energy shoved the creature violently to the right, directly into Ace's path.
The Goatman screeched—a sound of rage so profound it was almost metallic—and was forced to veer sharply to avoid the lingering nexus of disruptive energy.
They burst into a narrow, rocky defile, the trees here growing impossibly close together, forming a natural tunnel. The Goatman was forced to duck low, its horns scraping against stone on either side, slowing its frantic pace.
Now.
Ace poured on one last burst of speed, his lungs screaming, legs burning with lactic fire. He closed the gap in three mighty strides. His arm drew back, the glowing stiletto held in a reverse grip, poised to drive up and into the creature's kidney, into the soft spot beneath its ribs—
And that's when the Goatman stopped running.
It didn't slow. It didn't stumble.
It spun.
The move was a blur of unnatural speed and torque. One moment it was fleeing, the next it had pivoted on a cloven hoof, its full, monstrous mass now facing Ace, its momentum redirected into a devastating, close-quarters charge.
It was too fast. Too close.
Ace had a millisecond to register the shift, to see the massive wall of fur and muscle filling his vision, to see the powerful neck muscles bunch as the creature lowered its head—
WHAM.
The world dissolved into pure, white-hot force.
The Goatman's horns—those twisted, brutal spires—didn't gore him. They slammed like battering rams into his left side, just below the ribcage. The impact lifted Ace clean off his feet. All the air in his body was expelled in a single, agonized WHOOSH that wasn't even a scream. He was hurled sideways like a ragdoll.
Time stretched. He saw the forest canopy whirl past in a dizzying streak. Then the world snapped back with brutal finality as his body connected with the unyielding trunk of a centuries-old oak.
CRACK.
The sound was sickening, a hollow, wet thud of flesh and bone meeting immovable wood. The tree shuddered, raining down leaves and twigs.
Ace dropped. He didn't crumple gracefully; he fell like a sack of stones, collapsing first to his knees, then pitching forward onto his hands. A violent, wrenching cough tore through him, and a spray of crimson splattered across the dark leaves and pale roots between his shaking hands.
Pain. It wasn't a single sensation, but a universe of agony exploding across his nervous system. His left side was a supernova of fire, each breath a knife-twist. His vision swam, a kaleidoscope of dancing black spots and blurred, tilting trees. A high-pitched ringing filled his ears, drowning out all other sound.
But not broken. Through the haze of pain, a detached, clinical part of his mind performed a damage assessment. The armor under his jacket had dispersed the worst of the horn's puncture. The ribs were screaming, likely cracked, but not shattered. He could still breathe, even if it felt like swallowing glass. He could still move.
Gritting his teeth, Ace forced himself up onto one knee. His left arm hung useless, numb and throbbing. His right hand, miraculously, still held the switchblade. The glowing symbols on the blade were flickering erratically, mirroring the chaos in his body.
He spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground, the metallic taste filling his senses. He lifted his head, vision clearing by sheer force of will.
The Goatman stood ten feet away.
It wasn't charging. It was approaching.
Slow. Confident. The panicked flight was gone, replaced by the deliberate, menacing stride of a victor. It loomed over him, a nine-foot-tall monument of corrupted nature. Its heavy, panting breaths steamed in the cold air, each exhalation a cloud of foul-smelling vapor. The wound on its flank from Cedric's bullet still smoked faintly, a blackened, necrotic patch, but it seemed to ignore it. Its golden eyes, now lit with a cruel, gleaming intelligence, were fixed solely on Ace. They held no animal rage, only a cold, calculating triumph. It was savoring this. Savoring the kill.
Ace pushed himself to his feet. It was a clumsy, staggering motion, one hand braced against the rough bark of the tree that had almost broken him. He stood, swaying slightly, facing the monster.
Not done.
The thought was clean and sharp, cutting through the pain.
Not even close.
The Goatman took another step, the ground trembling faintly. It raised one massive, clawed hand, the talons glinting dully. It was preparing to finish the hunt—to swat aside this wounded, defiant pest and tear him apart.
Ace tightened his grip on the switchblade. The white glow of the sigils stabilized, burning with a steady, cold fire.
He met the creature's gaze and didn't look away.