Smoke still lingered in the air from the earlier village fire as Henry ducked beneath a collapsed beam, his breath steady but sharp. The sky above was broken clouds scattered like claw marks, and shrieking shadows darted between them. The creatures hadn't given up. Wings like torn sailcloth flapped with bone-snapping precision. Four of them. Maybe five.
Henry didn't run blindly. His eyes scanned the terrain as he moved, cracked stone fences, broken carts, and ahead, a partially sunk wine cellar barely visible beneath overgrown weeds.
Then he saw them—a mother shielding two children behind a tipped ox-cart, its wheels still spinning from a failed escape. The father stood, panicked and unarmed, eyes darting between his family and the beasts above.
Henry adjusted course.
Without a word, he veered left, sliding down the slope beside the cellar. His boots scraped mud and gravel. Two feathers floated beside his right shoulder and then three more. They hovered around him like orbiting moons, faintly glowing.
He raised one hand. The feathers snapped into formation, six of them stretched and curved, forming the limbs of a long, sleek bow. A seventh compressed into his palm, shaping into a sharp, translucent arrow, vibrating with latent force.
He emerged from behind the ridge and took aim.
The first creature swooped jaws wide, claws curled. Henry loosed.
The arrow struck directly between the eyes. It dropped mid-air without a sound.
"Get down!" Henry called to the family. "Now. Crawl toward the stone cellar entrance, fifteen paces west."
The father obeyed, pulling the others. Henry didn't look back cause he trusted they'd move. Another feather formed, then another. He drew and fired again, catching the wing joint of the second beast. It tumbled, crashed against an abandoned cart.
Two remained. These were faster. Wiser.
They flanked from opposite angles.
Henry reacted instantly. The feathers orbiting his feet pulsed, lifting him several feet above ground. His body hung weightlessly, hair whipping from the sudden updraft. More feathers circled. He sent them outward in a radial arc, spinning fast enough to cut flesh.
One creature lunged. It met the spinning barrier and screamed, its face torn, wings flayed by the sharp ring.
The last hesitated. Henry hovered in the air, a second bow already forming in his grip. He didn't waste time.
Arrow loosed. Pierced straight through the throat.
It fell without drama.
Silence settled, only broken by the soft breaths of the hiding family. Henry floated downward, landing lightly on both feet. The cellar door had been closed. Reinforced. Good.
He scattered a few residual feathers along the entrance—forming a thin veil that would repel weaker beings.
Then he turned, glancing up at the quiet sky.
His voice was low.
"They're getting faster," he murmured to himself. "But so am I."
The sky didn't stay quiet for long.
Henry barely had time to catch his breath when a shrill cry split the clouds again this time, lower. Closer.
More shadows broke through the smoke-heavy horizon. Three of them different from before. Thinner, sleeker. Their wings shimmered like oil under moonlight, and their flight wasn't wild, it was calculated. One peeled left, another right. The third remained high, watching.
"Coordinated," Henry muttered, narrowing his eyes.
He bolted from the cellar's cover, guiding the floating feathers back to orbit him. The bow dissolved into strands, reshaping around his arms like armored thread. The ground sloped upward toward a ruined bell tower as a better vantage point, and maybe a distraction if needed.
The first beast dove. Henry twisted mid-step, leaning into the movement with practiced grace. Its claws scraped the earth where his chest had been seconds ago. As it rose again, Henry kicked off a fallen wagon wheel and spun, letting a feather solidify into a blade. He slashed upward, nicking its wing but not enough to kill, but it dropped a few feet in altitude, shrieking.
The second came, fast and low.
Henry dropped flat, letting it pass overhead. He noticed something. Its right eye was glazed, not just visually but in motion. It didn't fully track his movement. Not a blind spot, but something close.
Then it hit him.
Their eyes moved too slowly to match sharp, angular motions. In open flight, they were agile. But when forced to react to sudden, angular turns? Their delay was fatal.
He filed it in his mind.
The third beast screeched and dove straight from above—trying to pin him with brute force. Henry burst upward again, carried by the feathers at his feet. His body flipped mid-air, and he twisted, corkscrewing just out of range. He felt the wind from its wingbeat skim his ear.
He didn't slow.
Three feathers circled around his wrist. He shaped them again, not into a bow, but into sharp, dart-like projectiles. He didn't aim directly. Instead, he launched them toward the creature's sides, forcing it to adjust.
When it did—he banked right, then sharply left.
It couldn't follow.
Its turn was sluggish, delayed by half a second. That was enough.
He struck from below, launching a feather-blade upward, piercing its exposed belly. The creature shrieked, spiraling, then crashed into a half-burned chapel roof.
One down.
The second one looped back, hunting him more cautiously now. Henry dropped toward a narrow alley between a stone shed and stable ruin. The beast followed—and that's when he used it.
Mid-dash, Henry leapt toward a low wall, kicked off it, then spun in a tight half-circle, moving sharply out of the creature's line. Its eye lagged behind again.
It flinched late.
Henry was already in position. Three feathers formed another arrow that he drew, fired!
Straight through its exposed flank. The creature twisted, lost altitude, and smashed against the stone ground with a wet crunch.
Two down.
Only the first remained the wounded one, circling high.
Henry didn't wait for it to come to him. He pushed upward again, carried by the swirling feathers, then launched himself higher with every pulse. The air grew thinner, colder.
The beast saw him.
It dove.
They met in midair.
Henry twisted at the last second and spun behind it. He grabbed one feather in each hand and slashed both wings diagonally. With a scream, it lost control.
Feathers burst from Henry's body like a comet trail as he hovered above the falling corpse.
All three were down.
He exhaled sharply, hovering a moment longer before letting gravity claim him again. His boots hit the dirt with a muffled thud.
Behind him, the family emerged from the cellar, eyes wide with disbelief.
Henry didn't speak. He simply looked skyward again.
More would come.
And next time, they'd learn.
Henry sighed calmly.
Smoke twisted like ribbons above the scorched earth, the aftermath of the aerial slaughter still warm beneath Henry's boots. He approached the third creature's corpse, its wings bent at grotesque angles, blood soaking the cracked stones below. He knelt beside it, scanning the ragged remains.
That's when he saw it.
Just under the exposed ribs wedged inside what looked like a flesh-formed socket was a pulsating orb. It was the color of dying embers, heartbeat red, and veins of black lightning crackled across its surface.
A core.
Not just any core—a bomb core.
His pupils shrank.
The pulse was accelerating. One beat every second… then half. Then less.
"Shit."
He moved without hesitation, reaching to grab it—
But then—
Time froze.
His body locked. No heartbeat. No breath. The feathers circling him halted midair like statues of light. A stillness engulfed him not even death could match.
But his mind... remained.
"Inventory."
The word echoed in his consciousness like a sacred mantra.
In this frozen realm. This gap between thoughts—Henry's mind expanded. Before him opened a translucent grid, infinite and cold, floating in the mental ether. Each slot held a memory, a tool, a principle.
His inventory wasn't for storing items.
It was for storing decisions.
He analyzed the bomb core's pulse, trajectory, blast radius. Astral reaction cores like this had a delay, meant to lure scavengers. Estimated output? Enough to level five city blocks. Too much for a simple shield, and too fast for evacuation.
No time to defuse. No time to think physically. But enough time to outthink reality.
In his mind's eye, he shifted strategies. Every motion, every angle of force played out in perfect clarity. He ran simulations of speed, wind resistance, feather propulsion limits, and terrain elevation.
Then he saw it.
To the east, four kilometers was a salt cliff. A collapsed mine beneath it. Empty. Stable. Deep enough to swallow the blast.
Now came the hard part.
Speed.
He exited the Inventory.
Time resumed.
Henry's breath rushed back in like a slap to the lungs. The orb's pulse screamed—flickerflickerflicker.
With barely a heartbeat's warning, he surged.
Feathers exploded from his back, lashing around his body, lifting him with more force than he'd ever used before. He didn't fly—he launched, like a spear hurled by a god.
He gritted his teeth, wind shattering against his cheeks.
The landscape became a smear villages, rivers, stone fences a blur of color. He was faster than sound now, feathers burning from friction but never breaking.
The cliff loomed ahead.
Thirty meters.
Ten.
At the last instant, he spun mid-air, his feet catching a jagged outcrop. He slammed the orb down into the earth with all his force—into the mine shaft's opening.
Then—
He soared upward.
Behind him—
BOOM.
The ground swallowed the blast. A muffled quake rippled through the stone as flame and light poured upward like a dragon's scream—but only dust reached the surface.
Henry hovered above, backlit by the shockwave, his feathers flaring around him like the wings of a fallen seraph.
His body trembled.
He didn't speak. Didn't scream.
He just hovered in silence, looking down.
One second later, that entire family would've died.
But now… there was nothing left of the bomb but fading heat.
Henry exhaled slowly, feathers gently rotating again.
"Inventory," he whispered.
A decision, saved.
A life preserved.
Dust still hung in the air like ghosts refusing to leave. Henry hovered a moment longer, then let the feathers ease him down. His boots skimmed the edge of the cliff before gravity took full control.
He dropped like a sack of bricks.
"Woah—shi—!"
His right foot slammed into a jutting stone. There was a sickening crunch. He crumpled sideways, rolled once, and landed flat on his back with a groan.
"...Yep," he muttered, staring up at the sky. "Definitely broke that."
A sharp, white-hot pain ran up his ankle. He winced, clenching his jaw as the feathered ring around his body dimmed.
"I just broke the sound barrier. Saved a District. Outran a goddamn bomb. And this is what takes me out? Gravity and poor foot placement?"
He let out a half-laugh, half-cough. "Classic Henry."
The wind rustled the grasses beside him. Somewhere, a hawk cried. Henry exhaled slowly, his chest rising and falling as his heartbeat calmed.
"Y'know, they don't tell you in school that using your trait like a madman gives you crater ankles. They just go: 'Use it responsibly, maintain mental stability, blah blah.'" He pointed to the sky with his finger like he was lecturing someone. "'Feather Trait grants versatile movement, temporary flight, and high maneuverability.'"
He lowered his hand.
"They never say, 'Oh, by the way, you might hyper-compress your bones and snap your foot like a twig if you use it during Mach speeds.'"
Another groan escaped him. He tilted his head slightly, watching a lone feather drift down beside him.
"I think that was my proudest moment," he said quietly. "Saved them. Didn't panic. Thought through it." A beat passed. "Still ended up horizontal in the dirt, but... yeah. Worth it."
Then a sly grin crept across his face.
"If I survive this week, I'm demanding a pension raise. Or at least a chair with a leg rest."
He glanced at his ankle again. It was already swelling. Ugly purple spreading beneath the skin.
"Ugh. Alright, alright. Let's not be dramatic," he told himself. "Just a little break. Nothing a week of lying and guilt-tripping a medic can't fix."
He inhaled deeply, looking at the drifting sky.
"No feathers left, ankle's busted, bomb's neutralized. And still breathing."
A moment passed.
Then he whispered, "...Suck it, gravity."
And laughed, alone but victorious.