The forest's deep silence was a lie.
Kael learned this in the dead of night. He was swimming in the hazy waters between sleep and waking, the memory of that inner coldness a fresh ghost in his mind, when the feeling sharpened from a whisper to a needle's prick.
It was a jolt, entirely different from the dull throb in his arm. A sudden, silent ping of dissonance in his blood. His eyes snapped open. The small hideout was pitch black, but he could feel Sera's presence at the entrance, a statue of alert stillness.
"You feel it," her voice came, a soft murmur in the absolute dark. It wasn't a question.
"Something's… wrong," he whispered back, pushing himself up on his good arm. The icy thread within him was pulling taut, vibrating with a faint, hostile energy. "It's not like before. It's not me. It's… out there."
"Yes," Sera confirmed. Her calm was a anchor in his sudden surge of fear. "Your Path is not just a weapon. It is a sensor. It feels the distortion of other powers, especially those that are… predatory."
A low, guttural growl rippled through the night, so deep it felt more like a vibration in the earth than a sound. It was answered by another, closer this time, from the opposite direction. They were being surrounded.
"What is that?" Kael asked, his hand instinctively reaching for the katana's hilt. The cold in his veins spiked in response, a eager, hungry reaction to his fear.
"Wargs," Sera said, her voice all business. "Creatures of the Basilisk Path, in a way. Not true Mythicals, but beasts twisted by the Path's toxic influence. They hunt in packs. They are drawn to weakness… and to powerful, unclaimed energy." She paused meaningfully. "Like yours."
Before he could process that, a hulking shape lunged through the ivy curtain. It was the size of a large wolf, but its flesh was mottled and scaly, and its eyes glowed with a sickly green light. Its maw dripped with saliva that sizzled where it hit the ground.
It moved with terrifying speed, straight for Kael.
He froze.
But Sera didn't.
She didn't summon light or power. She simply moved. As the warg leaped, she sidestepped with impossible precision, her hand snapping out. She wasn't aiming for the beast, but for the air beside it. Her fingers wrapped around a thick, hanging vine.
Using the creature's own momentum, she pulled the vine taut.
The warg's neck snapped against it with a sickening crack. The beast yelped once, a strangled sound, and collapsed in a heap at Kael's feet, motionless.
It had all happened in a single, fluid second. A perfect, lethal dance.
Kael stared, stunned, from the dead beast to Sera. She was already releasing the vine, her breathing slightly elevated, her eyes hard. "They will not all be that easy. There are more."
As if on cue, another pair of glowing green eyes appeared at the entrance, then another. Snarls and the sound of clawed feet scraping on stone filled the small space. The air grew thick with the smell of rot and poison.
The icy thread inside Kael screamed. It wasn't just fear now; it was a challenge. The Mistress Path, the power of rebellion, would not be hunted in its den. He felt it rise, a tide of black frost threatening to swallow his mind. His vision began to tunnel, the image of Lilith's laughing face flickering at the edges.
No.
He clutched his injured arm, the pain a welcome anchor. Not like last time. I am not a passenger.
He remembered Sera's lesson. Listen. Don't grasp.
He took a shuddering breath, and instead of fighting the cold power, he acknowledged it. He felt its rage, its desire to unmake the threats surrounding them. But he didn't let it loose. He focused it, channelled it away from his entire body and down through his good arm, into the hand that gripped the katana's hilt.
He didn't draw it. He just held on.
The effect was immediate and subtle. The black frost receded from his vision. But a faint, visible mist of pure cold began to seep from the wrapped hilt of the katana, pooling around his hand and drifting to the forest floor, where it killed the moss it touched.
The two wargs at the entrance hesitated, their growls turning to uneasy whimpers. The unnatural cold, the scent of void and negation, was an anathema to their corrupted life force. They backed away a step, confused and wary.
It was the opening Sera needed.
In the moment of their hesitation, she struck. She moved like a phantom between them. There was no grand display. A precise, knife-handed strike to the first beast's throat crushed its windpipe. A swift, powerful kick to the second's front leg shattered the joint with a loud snap, sending it yelping and stumbling back into the darkness.
Silence descended once more, broken only by Kael's ragged breathing and the faint, pained whimper of the crippled warg retreating into the woods.
Sera stood amidst the carnage, her robes untouched by blood or filth. She turned to look at him, her eyes going first to the dead warg at his feet, then to the mist still coiling around his hand and the katana.
A slow, genuine smile touched her lips—the first true, unguarded one he had ever seen. It transformed her face, making her look both ancient and young.
"Good," she said, her voice filled with a quiet intensity. "That was control."
Kael looked down at his hand, at the dying mist. He had not unleashed the void. He had not passed out from the strain. He had used the power as a shield, a warning. A tool.
He had listened to the whisper, and he had answered with one of his own.
The howls had ended. For now.