The forest screamed.
Kaelen moved like a storm, crashing through brush, twin knives soaked in blood. His bare feet made no sound, but his breath came fast—hungry, sharp, alive. Behind him, Raelith's shadow flickered like smoke between trees, barely visible beneath the dying light of dusk.
Three targets remained. Deserters from the clan. Failed apprentices. Once brothers, now prey.
The Trial of Blood and Bone was no game. This was their first sanctioned kill beyond temple walls. No ropes. No training blades. No instructors to intervene. Only orders: track, kill, return with proof. Or die.
Kaelen leapt, blade flashing, and plunged it into a shrieking throat. A woman. Mid-thirties. Eyes wide with terror. He twisted hard, breaking cartilage, tearing deep. She gurgled, choked, collapsed.
One breath later, a throwing needle hissed past his shoulder.
Raelith caught it midair.
He stepped from shadow like a phantom, dark eyes expressionless. The needle trembled in his fingers. His body was still wet with blood from their earlier kill. In his other hand, he held a curved ritual dagger, etched with the clan's venom sigils—black lines that pulsed faintly as they drank fear from the air.
Kaelen grinned. "Two left."
Raelith said nothing. He flicked the needle aside and gestured ahead.
They moved again.
Their tattoos shimmered faintly under the moonlight—alive, moving, like coiled snakes beneath their skin. The clan's power was not loud. It did not blaze like fire or crash like swords. It slithered. It strangled. It killed in silence.
Blood Tempering had made their muscles dense, fast, brutal. The venom they ingested weekly had carved resistance into their veins. Shadow Weaving cloaked their steps and twisted their presence in the mind of prey. Raelith had already begun sensing fear trails—residual emotional energy left behind by terrified targets. Kaelen still relied on instinct.
And yet they moved as one.
The last two deserters were waiting in ambush.
One of them, a hulking man with iron-threaded gauntlets, roared as he burst from the tree line, swinging hard at Kaelen. The impact cracked bark and sent dirt flying. Kaelen ducked low, swept a leg, missed, rolled—and took a punch to the ribs that sent him crashing into a tree.
He grunted, blood in his mouth, but smiled. "Better."
The second deserter, a woman with blackened eyes and a poisoned bone spear, lunged at Raelith from the right.
Raelith moved like a whisper. A twist. A pivot. His fingers brushed her weapon mid-strike—and the venom glyph burned bright. His palm glowed purple for a moment, and the spear shattered in her hands, rotting to dust.
He slipped behind her in a breath, pressed a blade to her throat, and sliced. No hesitation.
Kaelen roared and rushed the larger man. His knives were gone—lost in the trees—so he fought with fists and elbows. One strike to the groin. A knee to the gut. A headbutt. The man reeled, stunned—and Raelith appeared behind him, hands glowing faint violet. Shadow Weaving technique: Coilbind.
Dark tendrils snaked from Raelith's fingers into the man's neck. He screamed as his limbs froze, twisted, collapsed.
Kaelen didn't wait. He stomped the man's skull in.
It took three hits.
When silence fell, only the wind remained.
Four corpses. Blood soaking the ground. The smell of venom, sweat, and metal in the air.
They stood still for a long time, their breath steaming in the cold.
Raelith cleaned his blade on the grass. Kaelen pulled a bloodied tooth from his knuckle and laughed.
A gong sounded in the distance—low, echoing. The call to return.
They dragged the bodies back with them. Broken proof for their passage.
Back in the temple's upper sanctum, beneath the pale serpent moon, the high-ranking members of the clan waited. Masked. Silent. Watching.
The Clan Head sat atop a blackened throne of coiled stone, face hidden behind a silver serpent helm. Beside him stood the High Priest, robes swirling with shadow mist. Their father—Karn, the twins' blood—stood off to the side, arms crossed, face unreadable.
The twins dropped the bodies at the altar.
Raelith bowed, shallow. Kaelen did not.
No one spoke for a long time.
Then the High Priest stepped forward. His eyes were dark pits beneath his hood.
"The flesh breaks. The blood remembers. The serpent accepts."
He turned toward the Clan Head.
"They killed as one. Without mercy. Without hesitation. The venom burns pure."
The Clan Head raised one gloved hand slowly, then lowered it. Approval.
Their father gave no smile. Only the faintest flicker in his eyes.
Kaelen cracked his knuckles. "What's next?"
Raelith's gaze stayed on the priest.
The old man looked at both boys for a long time. Then he spoke again, softly, almost to himself.
"The moon bleeds brighter now. The coils shift. The world beyond this mountain begins to turn. The gods are stirring in their graves. And chaos... chaos has begun to hunt its own children."
He looked down at them with something close to reverence. Or perhaps fear.
"Make no mistake. The age of silence is ending."
The serpent moon pulsed overhead—red, watching.