"Oh no. Oh no! OH NO!"
Auren moved like a ghost caught in a hurricane—ducking, diving, scrambling with the desperate instincts of someone who didn't want to die. Not yet. Not here.
He wasn't graceful. He wasn't calm.
He was alive, and he was fighting to stay that way.
He leapt over roots, rolled beneath fallen branches, sidestepped through curtains of leaves—anything to stay just ahead of the Alpha's next swipe. Once, he even kicked off the ground in a frantic burst of magic-powered flight, just to clear a collapsing tree that had been sliced in half behind him.
The air screamed with every claw wave.
These weren't just attacks—they were rage made visible. The forest wasn't just being torn apart; it was being rewritten with every slash. Massive gashes carved into the dirt where he'd just been standing. Trees toppled like snapped matchsticks. Rocks exploded into shards as the ground itself buckled under the weight of the Alpha's fury.
And still, Auren ran.
