The light didn't fade—it peeled.
Reality split and folded in on itself like scorched paper curling at the edges.
The creation ritual was over.
Sid stood motionless at the center of everyone's gaze. His threads—stretched out, twitching—hung in the still air like nervous veins.
Then—
Twitch.
A shadow lay where the materials had been. Flattened, shapeless… except it wasn't.
It moved.
Not rising. Not shaking. Just a small, insectoid pulse.
Sid's silver threads jerked on their own—not summoned. They latched to the shape like nerves seeking a brainstem.
"What—" Sid's voice cracked. "It's connecting on its own…"
The thing on the ground unfurled.
Long limbs slid out first—sleek, blackened, and blade-edged.
The arms were curved like scythes, double-jointed like a mantis, each edge gleaming faintly green. Serrated ridges ran along the underside like hidden saw teeth.
Then the rest of it followed.
Thin torso, armor plated in matte carapace. No face—only a smooth, slit-masked head.
It stood in silence. Breathing none. Alive still.
And from its vents—along spine, collar, and knees—toxic fog began to hiss.
A pale, green mist slithered out, almost imperceptible. Then stronger. Spreading.
Ethan blinked. "W-wait. Am I the only one—feeling weird?"
Dianna stumbled a step, bracing on her blade. "Vision's… hazy."
One of the Tarnak'hul coughed and fell to a knee, groaning. "Fog… this fog is cursed…"
Sid's eyes shot wide. "Damn it—my toxic trait's amplifying its ability! It's venting venom on its own!"
He yanked his hand back, trying to retract the threads. But they only shuddered—responding, not obeying.
The puppet didn't even flinch. It watched.
Sid gritted his teeth and hurled the connection, flinging the puppet with a flick of his wrist.
It soared through the air—toward a pile of cracked stone and debris—
And vanished.
No impact. No sound. Just a ripple. Like smoke slipping through a crack.
Ethan spun. "It—what?"
Then—
Creak.
The puppet reappeared, crouched behind the rubble. Head tilted. One blade-arm raised—poised like a reaper's question mark.
No glowing eyes. No aura.
But something about it knew they were looking.
Its scythe twitched.
Another hiss of fog escaped its back vents.
And Sid's threads wound tighter around his palm—tightening in rhythm.
Not with his pulse.
With its.
Ethan took a slow step back, lips parted.
"Okay. So that's horrifying."
Dianna's blade was already halfway drawn. Her eyes never left the puppet. "Sid… does it know what we are?"
The Tarnak'hul around them had shifted—stance low, weapons partially raised, not quite threatening… but not at ease either. One of them muttered in a low, grave tone, "Spirits don't come back right. This one… it remembers dying."
The puppet tilted its head again—slow, deliberate.
Sid raised a palm, breath tight. "Everyone stay calm. It's not hostile. It's just… responding."
"Responding?" Ethan echoed. "It just gassed half the party and ghost-walked through a boulder. What's it gonna do next—sing lullabies made of razor wire?"
The puppet didn't move. But the mist continued leaking from its vents in quiet pulses, and Sid's threads remained latched—subtle, organic, as though they'd grown roots into it.
"It's not leaking by mistake," Sid said, eyes narrowing. "It's testing."
"Testing what?" Dianna asked.
"Everything."
The Warlord stepped forward, his bulk casting a new shadow over the group. He looked at the puppet, long and slow. Then at Sid.
"You've given form to something meant for silence," he said. "Spirit-forged… soul-laced. And worse, listening."
Sid met his gaze. "I didn't program it to be like this. It... chose to."
The Warlord's lips parted in a grin—not wide, not friendly. Just impressed.
"Then teach it who its master is. Before it decides it doesn't need one."
A gust of wind stirred the trees. The puppet didn't flinch.
Ethan crossed his arms. "So what's the plan? Train it? Tame it? Or wait till it crawls into your bed one night and fills your lungs with fog?"
Sid didn't respond immediately. He stepped forward slowly, hand raised—not to command, but to reach.
The puppet's head tilted slightly higher. It didn't recoil. It didn't vanish.
And Sid smiled.
"I think," he said softly, "it's waiting for a name."
Sid took a slow breath, hand still tingling where the threads pulsed back from the connection.
The puppet—no, the construct—watched him with that blank, slitted mask, fog still faintly hissing from its vents like it was breathing sideways through the world.
"…Krixi," he muttered. "Your name's Krixi."
Ethan blinked. "Krixi? Really?"
Dianna tilted her head. "That's… weirdly adorable."
Sid shrugged, not taking his eyes off the puppet. "It twitched like a baby bird and poisoned everyone in ten seconds. It's earned a misleadingly cute name."
Krixi tilted its head in sync, blade arm twitching in a low, fluid motion—as if in approval.
Then one of the nearby Tarnak'hul warriors exhaled and broke the silence with a rough chuckle.
"You travelers are blessed, in a way," he said, voice rasped but laced with reluctant admiration. "You've forged another monstrosity."
His gaze swept across them—slow and deliberate.
"A broadsword with the presence of hell…" His eyes lingered on Dianna, whose blade still shimmered faintly even at rest.
"An axe-cleaver engulfed by darkness and void…" Ethan grinned, resting one hand on the hilt of the Abyss Splitter.
"A poison-laced threadweaver with a fog-born puppet from beyond sanity…"
He stared directly at Krixi as it crept quietly behind Sid's shoulder—still semi-phased, only half visible, like a shadow pretending to be solid.
"…an abomination."
The warrior gave a short laugh, then tapped his chest with a closed fist.
"If you aren't careful, the world will fear you before it remembers your names."
Another Tarnak'hul beside him added, "Or it'll worship you out of fear."
Ethan raised a brow. "We're not trying to be nightmares."
Dianna said dryly, "We're just different."
Sid didn't respond. He was still watching Krixi—who hadn't moved since he said its name.
The puppet's blade-arm twitched again… not in threat, but in sync.
Then—
Without warning—
Krixi raised its bladed arms… and gently tapped the tips together.
Clink. Clink.
The motion was slow, cautious… deliberate.
Then it tilted its head slightly, and—
It waved.
The scythe-blades clinked again—like a child imitating a hand gesture it didn't quite understand.
A pause. Then it repeated the motion, this time with a faint vent-puff that could only be described as a sigh.
Hiiiissss~clink.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Ethan's jaw dropped.
Dianna blinked. "Did it just… wave?"
One Tarnak'hul warrior took a slow step back. "It greets like a hatchling."
Another whispered, "But it shouldn't know how."
Sid looked horrified and proud all at once. "It's mimicking… it's mimicking me. I always clack my thread tension tools when I'm thinking. That's— That's how it learned waving."
Krixi clinked its scythes again. Then gave a very slow, hesitant head tilt bow—just a fraction of a nod, like a confused but polite assassin.
Ethan burst out laughing. "I take it back—this is the best puppet in existence."
Dianna covered her mouth, half-choking on a laugh. "That thing just broke the laws of creepy and cute at the same time."
A huge Tarnak'hul warrior who'd survived four wars and killed beasts the size of carriages sat down heavily on a log. "I was not prepared."
Even the Warlord gave a deep grunt, somewhere between a cough and a chuckle. "It waves… and yet I fear it more."
Krixi, unfazed, simply shuffled behind Sid and sat in a low crouch, blade-arms resting against its knees like a mantis in meditation—still releasing a faint, ever-so-sweet trail of toxic mist.
Sid rubbed the back of his head, still stunned. "It… likes you guys."
Ethan laughed harder. "Oh we're doomed."