They felt it before they saw it.
Not pressure this time.
Interference.
The King's web wavered behind them like heat over stone. Threads twitched, reknitting around a moving distortion that carried the preacher's stink.
Kairn's **Web Map** pulsed the warning in his skull.
"Close?" Lysa asked without slowing.
"Too close," he said. "Half an hour, maybe less, if we keep this pace."
"And if we don't?" Fen said.
"Sooner," Kairn said.
They were picking their way down from the ridge into twisted scrub—a tangle of black-thorn bushes and warped trunks that grew in spirals. The ground here was uneven, pitted with old impact craters now filled with ash and shallow pools of stagnant, gray water.
Rot was thinner.
Other things were not.
Eyes watched from holes and cracks.
None stepped out.
Yet.
"Where do we want to hit it?" Lysa asked. "Not on a slope. Not near anything that screams 'trap me here forever.'"
Kairn scanned.
His ash eye and chain-sight layered together for a moment.
Ahead, to the right, the warped trees thinned around a shallow depression—almost a bowl, but natural, rimmed by jagged rocks. No strong chain-lines ran directly through it. No obvious Null anomalies. The rot skirted its edges, as if cautious, but didn't avoid it fully.
"That hollow," he said, chin-jerking toward it. "Good sight lines. Not too many hiding places. If we try to keep running with it on our back, we'll just get worn down."
Fen grimaced.
"Love when the best option is 'pick a grave that suits you,'" he said.
They cut toward the hollow.
The bone-walker scampered up one of the taller twisted trees, pale limbs blending with bark.
"I will watch from above," it said. "And chew if it tastes good again."
"Appreciated," Kairn said.
He could feel the preacher homing in now.
Not by smell.
By pattern.
It moved along the King's web like a glitch, jumping between half-stable nodes, sometimes overshooting, sometimes snapping back. The Null scar he'd left in it made its travel messy, but not impossible.
He had maybe twenty minutes.
"Positioning?" Lysa asked as they dropped into the depression.
Kairn took the center.
He didn't even argue.
His scaled feet sank slightly into ash, leaving dark prints.
Lysa chose a chunk of rock near his right shoulder, high enough to give her a vantage point but close enough to touch him if she had to.
Fen tucked himself to the left, behind a low boulder, where he had cover and angles.
The kids…
"You three stay back," Kairn said, pointing to a deeper nook in the hollow wall where broken stone formed a rough alcove. "If it gets through me and Fen and Lysa, you run. Don't look back."
Tam opened his mouth.
Kairn raised a hand.
"No," he said. "This isn't bravado time. This thing is built to break people like me. You stay alive by not being here when it does."
Sia swallowed.
"We won't be useless forever," she said, almost angry.
"I know," Kairn said. "That's why I'm keeping you breathing."
Mar nodded once, jaw tight.
They went, hunkering down in the alcove.
The dragon in Kairn's chest stirred.
He comes, it said. Not clean. Not whole. Good.
"How stupid can we be," Kairn asked it silently, "without dying?"
Stupidity is relative, the dragon said. You already let two powers into your ribs. Bite a third and you are merely consistent.
The Null was quieter.
It hummed, cold and steady.
Control.
Break.
Silence.
Lysa's fingers began tapping on her rock.
Not a full storm-song.
Not the grave's rage.
A lean rhythm designed for focus and anchor, not big pushes.
Da-dum.
Da-dum-da.
Fen checked his knife, then his scavenged crossbow, then the position of every piece of cover around them like a man counting the exits in a burning building.
"Remind me," he said, "what we know about this thing now."
Kairn flexed his ash-flame fingers once.
"Fast," he said. "Short-chain teleport. Rot-cloak. Built from a Warden, so it hits hard and takes hits. King-laced inside, but now with a bite of Null where I tore it."
"And you're… more of a walking bad signal now," Fen said. "So its chains might glitch around you."
"They also might have been patched to deal with that," Kairn said.
Fen sighed.
"Optimism is dead," he said. "Good. It would only get us killed."
The air changed.
Even without chain-sight, everyone felt it.
A moment of pressure, then an absence, like a breath drawn in around them.
Kairn's Brand burned.
"It's here," he said.
The preacher appeared at the lip of the hollow.
It did not leap.
It did not crash.
It just was there where it hadn't been a blink before.
It was worse.
The first version had been tall, gaunt, wrapped in rot and chain, its mouth sewn shut.
This one had been rebuilt in haste and anger.
Its frame was thicker, chains wrapped deeper into its flesh. The rot had been burned off in places and grown back in others, leaving a patchwork of bone, dead muscle, and mold. One arm was new—grown from chain segments and hardened rot, jagged and wrong. Its face was half-melted, and where Kairn's breath had slagged it, the King had simply embedded a plate of dull metal, featureless, like a mask.
Its eyes burned brighter.
And at its core, beneath the chains, he saw a hollow—a flicker of absence where his Null bite had taken hold.
The preacher saw him.
Its head tilted at an unnatural angle, as if listening to something far away.
Then it started down into the hollow.
No theatrics.
No roar.
No words.
It didn't need them.
Lysa's rhythm tightened.
Fen lifted the crossbow.
Kairn stepped forward.
He kept his ash-flame close, wrapping his arms and shoulders, not flaring a breath yet.
The preacher's first chain-thrust came early, a testing lash aimed at his knee from ten strides away.
Kairn saw it in chain-sight before the physical link appeared.
He moved.
The chain stabbed ash where his leg had been.
He slashed at it with a claw, ash-fire biting.
It hissed and recoiled, sluggish—his **disruption field** bending the command in it.
The preacher adjusted.
The next three chains came in at once, different angles.
He dodged one, blocked one with scaled forearm, letting it burn, and bit the third with his Brand, not full, just enough to throw its aim wide.
Pain dug in, but less than last time.
He grinned, baring teeth.
"Missed me," he said.
The preacher's stitched jaw bulged.
A low, muffled sound came from its throat—too garbled to be words, too full of rage to be a moan.
It flickered.
For a heartbeat, it was at his left flank.
Then his right.
Then directly before him, chain-wrapped fist swinging.
Kairn barely got his arms up.
The impact drove him back, boots skidding in ash.
His ribs creaked.
The dragon roared in his chest.
Hit back, it urged.
He did.
He slammed one ash-flame wrapped fist into the preacher's torso, right where the Null scar pulsed.
He didn't just hit with fire.
He triggered **Null Pulse** at the same time.
The cost was immediate.
A spike of pain lanced from his Brand to his skull, eyes going white for a heartbeat.
Around them, everything went silent.
Not quiet.
No sound, no song, no beat, no chain.
Absolute.
Lysa's rhythm cut mid-tap.
Fen's breath froze in his own ears.
The preacher convulsed.
Its chains went dead for that one instant, rot paused mid-squirm, King's control line severed in a blink.
Then the moment passed.
Sound crashed back—the beat, the ragged breathing, the whisper of rot.
A crack ran through the preacher's torso where Kairn's fist had landed.
Chains inside it writhed in disarray, some failing to reconnect cleanly.
Kairn swayed.
His nose bled.
Lysa's eyes were wide.
"What was that?" she demanded.
"New trick," he panted. "Don't like using it."
"Use it again later," Fen said grimly. "Preferably when it hurts him more."
The preacher staggered once, then straightened.
It tilted its head the other way, as if recalibrating.
Chains flared brighter.
The King was adjusting.
"Well," Kairn muttered. "That got his attention."
The preacher came in harder.
Chains swept the ground, forcing Kairn to jump and weave. Each time they neared him, his disruption field warped their path, keeping them from being perfectly lethal. Each time they touched, they still hurt.
He ducked under a swing, slapped a hand to a chain-wrapped leg, and sent ash-fire crawling up it like ivy.
The rot there burned.
The preacher stamped, shaking it off.
Fen's arrow took it in the side of the head, bouncing off the metal plate with a spark.
"Of course," Fen muttered.
The preacher flicked a chain.
Fen dove, barely avoiding being pinned to his rock.
Lysa's rhythm sharpened.
She wasn't pushing big magic.
She didn't have the blood or strength for that.
She did what she could—kept her beat wrapped around Kairn's heartbeat, giving him a rope every time the preacher's aura tried to drag his thoughts sideways.
Twice, he felt the thing's internal chain-net reach for his mind, trying to drag his vision into the King's current.
Twice, his **Drake-Null Brand** bit back, backed by her rhythm.
The second time, he glimpsed the throne room again—scales and chains and cold eyes—and spat into that vision.
"Not yours," he snarled.
The preacher hit him full in the chest with its new rot-chain arm.
It was like being struck by a tree that had learned to hate.
He flew back, slamming into the hollow wall.
Stone cracked.
His spine yelled.
He slid down, coughing.
"Kairn!" Tam shouted from the alcove before Sia yanked him back.
The preacher turned.
Its chain-sight swept the hollow.
It saw knots—Lysa, Fen, kids, bone-walker.
It moved toward the alcove.
"No," Kairn growled.
He pushed up, bones protesting.
His blood gauge was dropping, but slower than last time. His regeneration was doing what it could.
He couldn't afford another **Null Pulse** yet.
He could still burn.
He launched himself at the preacher's back, claws raking.
He tore rot and chain.
It spun, faster this time, adaption in its movements.
It caught his arm with one iron-grip hand, chains biting into his scales.
He felt the King push through that contact, control effort redoubled.
In your bones, a cold voice whispered.
Submit.
Kneel.
He shoved dragon will into the link, then twisted, letting a bit of Null leak instead of fire.
The chain between them screamed.
The preacher jerked.
Its grip loosened.
He ripped free, leaving scales behind.
It retaliated with a wide sweep of chains.
He couldn't dodge all of them.
One wrapped his ankle, yanking.
He hit the ground.
The preacher dragged him toward it.
Lysa hopped off her rock.
"Don't," he gasped.
She ignored him.
She slammed her hands down, rhythm pounding.
She didn't aim for the preacher.
She aimed for the chains dragging him, beating a **counter-beat** that tangled with their internal rhythm.
Da-da-DUM.
The chain shuddered.
Its pull stuttered.
Kairn dug his claws into the ash, anchoring.
The chain held for a heartbeat.
Then snapped.
The recoil sent both him and the preacher stumbling.
"Good," she hissed. "Stay mad at me later."
He grinned despite himself.
Fen took the opening to scramble around the preacher's blind side, driving his knife into the back of its knee.
Rot and chain parted with difficulty.
The leg buckled.
The preacher dropped to one knee again.
Deja vu.
This time, it was ready.
Chains flared around it in a spinning circle, driving Kairn and Fen back.
The bone-walker dropped from above, teeth bared, aiming for its head.
The preacher's rot-arm whipped up, catching it mid-leap.
Rot swarmed its limbs, eating into bone.
The bone-walker shrieked, sound high and furious.
"Let go!" Lysa yelled.
It did, wrenching free at the cost of chunks of itself, landing hard and skittering back with one arm half-melted.
"You taste worse now," it hissed at the preacher. "Broken."
Kairn's Brand rang again.
The King pushed harder.
He was not just trying to kill now.
He was testing.
How far can this aberration be pushed before it breaks.
Kairn felt anger rise, hot and clean.
Not dragon rage.
His.
He'd been tested his whole life—by Wardens, by chains, by mines, by hunger.
He was tired of being someone else's experiment.
He decided something.
"Lysa!" he shouted. "On my mark—big beat. One hit."
She paled.
"I can't—"
"One," he said. "I'll keep it small."
She nodded once, jaw set.
He moved.
He ran straight in, ash-fire wrapping his arms.
The preacher met him with chains and rot and steel.
He ducked, blocked, took cuts.
He made himself obvious, loud, the brightest target.
"Now!" he roared.
Lysa slammed her hands down.
She didn't sing a full storm-song.
She used what she had left and aimed it like a knife, beating a sharp, staccato pattern that spiked into Kairn's Brand.
Da-DA.
He caught it.
He burned it.
He didn't turn it into a grave-wide blast.
He turned it into a single, tight strike—ash-flame and dragon fire and Null edge wrapped into his fist.
He drove it into the preacher's chest, right over the Null scar, as hard as he could.
For a split-second, he triggered a **mini Pulse**—not full radius, just local in that contact.
Silence.
Then rupture.
The preacher convulsed, chains inside snapping.
Rot exploded outward.
Kairn was thrown back, tumbling.
When he rolled to a stop, ears ringing, he saw the preacher down on all fours, chest caved in where his fist had hit.
Its chains flailed, trying to reattach, patch, rebuild.
The Null scar in its core had widened into a jagged void that refused commands.
For a heartbeat, it was hanging together on habit alone.
Kairn's blood gauge flashed red.
His chest felt hollow.
He couldn't do that again now if his life depended on it.
The preacher started to rise.
Halfway.
Stopped.
Its head turned toward the hollow's lip.
Kairn followed its gaze.
Chains shivered there.
The air thickened.
Another presence brushed the edge.
Not Maereth.
Smaller.
Sharper.
A new hand.
The preacher made a halting motion, as if acknowledging an order.
Then, in a blink of folded space and janky chain, it was gone—snatched backwards along the web, half-ruined, being pulled toward some other root where the King could work on it again.
Kairn lay there, panting.
"We didn't kill it," Fen said.
"No," Kairn said.
"Good," Fen said. "Because if that was dead, I don't want to see what nearly dead looks like."
Lysa staggered to him, kneeling at his side.
Her hands shook.
"You're out," she said quietly.
"Yes," he said.
She slapped his shoulder.
"You idiot," she said. "You said small."
"That was small," he wheezed. "You've seen big."
She huffed, half a laugh, half a sob.
The bone-walker crawled closer, dripping bits of itself, its remaining hand clutching its half-melted arm in place.
"It will come again," it said. "More wrong. More interesting."
Kairn stared up at the ashen sky.
"I know," he said.
The dragon in his chest was quiet for once.
The Null hummed, faintly satisfied.
The King's web shook with irritation.
Kairn exhaled.
Two rounds with the preacher, and it was still not over.
But it hadn't taken anyone yet.
That, for today, was enough.