The eastern flank of the island is a chorus of blows and flame.
Shadows crash against shadow. Silver steel flashes, then is swallowed by smoke. Screams ricochet through the groves. The four of them — Leona, Ethan, Lilia, Nox — have carved a thin, trembling wedge through the swarm and now hold a battered circle of ground, a small pocket of survival in the chaos.
Ethan is a blade in motion. He parries a demon's talon with the flat of his sword, rebounds on the ball of his foot, and drives steel through a throat. He moves like a man who has worn a hundred battles into his joints; each strike economical, precise.
Leona is a storm of white hair and clenched jaw. Blood soils her cheek where a claw nicked her; the smear makes her look more feral than she already is. She hacks, slices, and somehow keeps the rhythm that keeps them alive.
Lilia stands back a few paces, green hair damp with condensation from her mana. Her hands knock arrow after arrow into being — shafts of condensed, humming light — and she fires at the demons' bones, implosions of mana erupting the instant the arrows strike.
Nox is the axis. He block-repels, steps, counters, a quiet center among the arc and flash. He looks gnarled and pale but steady. At least he did, until the voice begins. The voice that only he can hear.
Ethan wipes blood from his lip with the back of his glove and keeps cutting.
"Gods," he grunts, "they're weak, but there are damned so many of them."
Lilia's reply is breathless, threaded with focus. "They don't want to kill us fast. They want to tire us."
Leona doesn't look away from the next demon. The silver of her blade sings and slices as if the air itself were a thing to be ruined. Her voice is thin with edge. "Then we don't give them time to wear us down."
The fight fragments into small conversations — orders between strikes, half-shouts, brief calls that stitch them together. Then Nox staggers.
At first it's a blink, an eyelid closing too long. Then his glove hits open air, his parry goes wide, and a small, toothy creature catches his shoulder. He grunts, shakes it off. He wipes blood from the corner of his mouth and keeps moving.
But the voice grows louder.
It is not a voice with language; it is a pressure that turns syllables into needles: "Surrender. Relax. Let me free. Close your eyes. Let go."
It is inside his skull like a second pulse.
Nox's stance shifts. The world becomes a magnet and he the iron. He takes a step toward the woods as if pulled. Ethan notes it in the corner of his eye and snaps, "Nox, focus!"
The voice replies with a sibilant suggestion and a pain like pins: sharper than battle, colder than frost, closer than breath. Nox's pupils widen; blood beads at the corners of his eyes.
"Why—" Lilia starts, an arrow nocked and ready, but the sound in the air cuts across her words. "Nox, speak!"
He does not answer.
Leona's eyes catch the change, and fear colors her face like spilled dye. "Nox?" Her voice slits the smoke. "Nox, what's wrong?"
He puts both hands to his temples as if to keep something from clawing out. Tiny red lines form at the inner rims of his eyes. He makes a sound between a sob and an animal growl and collapses to his knees.
Something in him screams, but the scream is not wholly human. It warps in the throat, a vibration that moves the air like thunder.
"Wooooaaaarrrr—" The sound is monstrous, a long vowel stretched and broken.
Lilia barrels forward and catches him, frantic fingers digging against his shoulders. "Hold him, dammit — hold him!" she shouts, voice cracking.
Leona drops to the ground and cradles his head on her lap. The blood on her cheek feels colder than before. She leans down and presses her forehead to his, whispering in a voice that's half prayer, half command. "Nox, please. Speak to me. Say anything!"
Ethan forms a ring with tired muscle, slashing demons that try to thread through. He's between fury and panic — every rational part of him shouting to maintain defense, every brotherly part screaming not to let Nox fall. He bites his lower lip until it splits and the metallic taste of his own blood sharpens his focus.
"We can't leave him," Ethan says, almost to himself. "We can't— not like this."
Lilia's green eyes flash. She keeps shooting; each mana arrow is a small, bright punctuation mark that kills a demon in an instant. "I won't let them get to him," she says. "Hold on, Nox. You hear me? Hold on."
They hold.
Inside Nox's skull, the dark churns into a name. A silhouette of a lion, larger than memory, steps out of void and declares itself in a voice that is both thunder and silk.
Zakaros.
The name is a bruise against Nox's mind. It tastes of iron and winter flame.
"Child," Zakaros says, and the word opens like a maw. "Stop struggling. Let your body remember what it once was. Let me in."
Nox's face contorts as if every muscle is being rewired. His breathing becomes a series of ragged pulls. Leona feels it — the air around him compresses, the hair at her neck rises.
Ethan's sword whips through a demon's throat and sprays dark ichor. He doesn't see the change at first, only the battle. Then Leona's hand trembles as she presses it against his cheek. Her fingers come away slick; Nox's blood is frosty to the touch.
His hair — once a pale white — trembles like frost, then blackens at the tips. The white pulls back like a veil being ripped off. It grows long and messy and takes on a deep, velvet black. The shift is so sudden the whole clearing seems to hiccup.
Leona's body reacts in a way her training cannot explain. An ancestral alarm that lives behind the ribs pulls her away before her mind decides it must.
"Nox—" she starts, but her voice is swallowed by the air itself, which bends, and a storm lashes the treetops.
Lightning cracks from a sky that had held only smoke. This bolt is wrong — it is black as pitch, a fracture of the night with the scent of iron and old blood. It falls and strikes Nox's body with the force of a cannon.
An explosion throws them all backward.
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Heat: Thank you very much for reading. What do you think of the new style? I hope you like it.
please energy stone Free novel and I would be happy if I saw everyone helping at least with an energy stone for me because frankly I started to feel stagnant and a little frustrated. Any writer who reaches this stage, especially after entering the climax of the story, well thank you. It was with you, Heat.
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