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Chapter 5 - Awakend Scent

Veyr ran hard, cutting across scorched grass and dead earth, his breath steady only because he forced it to be. His thoughts were far less disciplined.

Why now?Why so far into a quiet zone?

Shadow Wanderers had always watched him, rarely Ellie. The instinct-driven ones barely noticed her at all. The intelligent types — even the leaders — had tracked his movements like he was the one worth testing, worth peeling open. What had changed? Had something shifted in her… or had something finally awakened in him?

He should have stayed at the hut.

That thought beat through his skull with every step — he should have stayed and kept watch instead of chasing down one lone Wanderer at the edge of their territory. As he cleared the last rise, a smear of rising smoke cut a line through his stomach.

The hut was half-crushed.

The entire northeast corner had caved inward, wood torn away, stones cracked and blackened. Debris scattered across the clearing like ribs torn from a chest. Veyr bolted, ice searing his veins. As he neared, movement flickered in the corner of his eye.

Shadows — four of them — slim and skittering.

Type Ones.

The closest lunged at him with primitive speed. Veyr didn't slow. His short blade came up like the flick of a snake. Metal split through its chest and spine in one rising cut. The Wanderer burst into drifting black powder before it even landed.

Another snapped forward from his blind side. He leaned backward, letting its claws swipe past his throat, brought the blade up and ripped it diagonally from shoulder to hip. Dust exploded across him.

The remaining two tried to come at him from opposite sides. Typical Type One behavior: instinct, nothing else. He pivoted, kicked one into the other, then skewered them both on a single stabbing strike, twisting the blade for good measure. Their bodies dissolved around his arm like smoke shaken free.

He didn't pause to breathe.

Eight larger shapes emerged from the trees — hunched and dark, but heavier, more aware. Their dark, eyeless faces stayed fixed on him even as they spread to encircle the ruin.

Type Twos.

His heartbeat slowed. Focus sharpened like ice.

The first leapt. He dropped low and cut its legs out clean under the knees, rotating smoothly to strike backward across its neck. The head detached in a blur, disintegrating before it hit the ground. Another came in behind the first — smarter, using the moment — but Veyr pivoted and drove his blade backward through its gut without turning. It sagged on the steel, whining in a soundless cry as the second blade came up across its throat.

Two down.

The third and fourth attacked simultaneously. Veyr threw himself into a spin, short swords flashing in tight arcs. One blade cleaved a forearm; the second sliced through a neck. He didn't let them fall — he kept moving forward, not retreating once, fighting like a man reclaiming his territory.

Four more remained.

He surged into them.

His left blade slashed across the chest of one Wanderer as his right drove into the ribs of another. He kicked off the dying corpse to flip clear of the next two and landed in a crouch, blades out. The moment they closed in — he met them in the middle. Steel pierced gaping black torsos until nothing remained but dark vapor swirling around his boots.

Silence returned — broken only by the crackle of burning wood from the shattered remains of the hearth.

Veyr straightened, breathing lightly, bloodless dust coating his sleeves. Twelve bodies gone… no, fragments. Wanderers didn't leave bodies. They left questions.

Four Type Ones. Eight Type Twos.Raid numbers.

They hadn't come to test.

They had come to take. His jaw clenched so tightly it hurt. He stepped over what remained of the doorframe and into the wreckage of the hut.

Smoke drifted beneath the shattered roof. Half of the hearth lay collapsed. His woven cloak was scorched in a corner. The table was splintered into toothpicks. Veyr's eyes darted to the far end—

Ellie's blanket was there. Thrown aside. Scorched on one edge.

Beneath the sharp scent of ash and burnt wood came a second scent.

Not human sweat. Not Wanderer dust.Not Rift-rot residue.

Her.

Except… not exactly her.

He slowed, frowning. Ellie had always carried the same dusty-sweet trace to him — no matter blood, mud, or frost. Now it was wrong. Warmer. Sharper somehow. As if something underneath her scent had begun overtaking it.

Veyr barely had time to process before another instinct flared inside his skull.

He wasn't alone.

There was a breath in the smoke that didn't belong to him. A shadow shift that wasn't fading. Something — someone — remained in the room.

Both blades flexed back into his hands before his conscious mind even told them to move.

His heartbeat thudded painfully once.

Ellie wasn't alone.

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