They smelled the village before they saw it.
Smoke gone cold. Iron gone brown. Blood sweet-sour in the dust.
Frostwing angled her wings and dropped. Brandon's jaw hardened. The koi braced in the sling, bowl water slapping its rim. They landed at the edge of what had once been alive.
Now it was not.
Bodies lay where standing had been their last act—doorways, alleys, wells. Some still held tools. Some had fallen in family lines. Flies wrote scripture in the heat.
Brandon moved among them with a soldier's precision and a priest's restraint. Frostwing kept her frost close, careful not to freeze grief. The koi lay still in his bowl, river inside him raging where no one could see.
Then—
A sound cut the silence.
Thin. High. Wrong.
A cry that had been breaking for too long without breaking.
"North lane," Brandon said, already running.
Frostwing burst forward in a gust of knives. The koi clung to water, water to bowl, bowl to sling, sling to man—momentum chained as promise.
They turned a corner into a mouth.
A serpent like a collapsed bridge uncoiled through the street, scales black-green, slick like oiled stone. Fewer villagers lived now than a minute before. The serpent took another and made that sentence worse.
Its eyes were silver coins with nothing stamped on them.
The koi felt it before he saw it: the air itself biting his gills. Venom, not mist but vapor—finer than smoke, crueler than fire—sliding into lungs, whispering sleep.
System, he hissed. What happened to luck?
[LUCK: Active]
[Assessment: Event classified as fortuitous]
"Fortui—" His thought snapped as text hammered across his mind:
[Encounter: Variant — Sovereign Venom Serpent]
[Classification: apex specimen within species]
[Encounter rarity on current route: 0.00001%]
[Note: Early detection = survivor rescue probability ↑]
[Note: Loot / tactical insight potential ↑]
The koi circled the number in disbelief. We're lucky because we hit the strongest venom serpent in a hundred thousand rolls?
[Correct.]
What the fuck.
Then Brandon was moving, and thought gave way to work.
"Pull it off the living," he ordered. "Frostwing—curtain the lane, no freezing bodies. Koi—watch the wind. When I mark, strike the hinge."
Frostwing climbed a wall, dragging cold into the air. Sleet stitched a barrier between serpent and huddled survivors. The beast tasted frost and recoiled. Tail lashed; stone cracked; venom fog thickened to pearl.
The koi surged to the rim. Bounce coiled his spine; Blood Scales hummed with memory of teeth.
System—task clause. If I die here?
[Fail state: true. Penalty applied upon revival.]
"Right," he muttered. "So we don't die. We numb it."
"Exactly," Brandon said tightly.
The serpent lunged. A cathedral of knives opened. Frostwing snapped frozen air under its jaw, twisting the bite. Brandon slid beneath, carving the hinge. The cut was shallow—but it existed now, a line on the map.
Venom hissed. Snow burned. The world smelled wrong.
"Left," Brandon snapped, two fingers slashing an arc.
The koi launched.
Air became water for a heartbeat. He struck the hinge where Brandon marked, where Frostwing's cold had made scales brittle. Bite tore. Blood Scales scraped venom-slick gum and left a red gleam that carried more than pain.
The serpent twitched. Not agony—numbness. A hiccup in the perfect machine of killing. Its jaw failed to close in time. A gap opened where panic could live.
[Blood Scales effect: motor latency 1.8s]
[Stacking: diminishing returns]
"Again," Brandon called, already carving the opposite hinge.
Frostwing raked shard-flurry across joints. Ice seeded scale gaps. The serpent's turn slowed. Brandon's blade left another bright seam. The koi slammed it again, scales shedding pain-poison into the wound.
Survivors coughed, stumbled. Frostwing dropped a sheet of glare ice for them to slide across, out of range. The serpent struck at the larger prey—Brandon—leaving the lane behind emptier.
Luck, with a knife in its smile.
"System," the koi thought between strikes, "if Frostwing freezes the mist—"
[Venom particulate: <3μm]
[Rapid freeze = agglomeration → fall hazard]
[Recommendation: laminar cold drift control. No hard shock.]
"Laminar," Brandon echoed, catching the feed as his own. "Feather it, girl."
Frostwing obeyed. Cold deepened, not shattering but settling. Mist sagged, lazy, less eager for lungs. Survivors staggered into clear air. One tripped—Brandon twitched to move, then didn't. The rule held: save more by staying on the teeth.
The serpent learned fast. It spat liquid green; stone sizzled away.
"Back!" the koi flared, reading splash the way birds read pressure. Brandon dropped flat; the spray seared empty air. Frostwing caught a kiss on her wingtip—ice combusted to steam. She screamed like bells breaking, then rose higher.
"Still with me?" Brandon asked, too calm.
The koi flexed, counted every fin. Still.
"Good. Make it dumber."
So they did. Not with glory—glory is for songs—but with repetition. Mark. Strike. Numb. Mark. Strike. Numb. Each delay widened. The serpent missed an easy snap; clipped a beam; dropped a balcony on itself. Tiny errors snowballed into clumsiness.
[Numb stacks: 3 → 4 → 5]
[Behavioral latency ↑]
[Strike windows widening]
The koi almost laughed. Luck wasn't coins and cheers. It was a nightmare hitting here instead of there, now instead of later—where an icy phoenix, a believer, and a cursed koi had arrived exactly on time.
The serpent reared, rage pure, logic dulled, mass undeniable.
Frostwing folded her wings until she was a knife. Brandon planted his feet as if on stone. The koi coiled at the bowl's lip, body singing for one more impossible line through teeth.
The System chimed like an anvil struck:
[Encounter Escalation: Phase Two]
[Directive: Stay alive. No alternatives.]
The lane held its breath. The mountain watched.
The koi whispered to himself as he launched again: I won't be a burden. Not here. Not now.
And the three of them—bird, man, fish—moved.