The two crimson lights on the horizon were not a mirage. They were the eyes of the beast. The rhythmic tremor on the frozen ground escalated into a thunderous, bone-rattling roar. The first of the Archon's "Hounds" was no larger than an elephant, its body a terrifying composite of crystallised shadow and sharpened starlight. Its jaws dripped with a phosphorescent drool, and the twin crimson lights of its eyes radiated a cold, predatory intelligence.
This was not a beast of nature. It was a weapon of pure, divine hunger.
It lunged.
Kael's mind, a battlefield of exhaustion and pain, screamed for him to run, but his body moved on instinct. He wasn't a hero. He was a survivor. He dodged the first impossible attack, the Hound's claws tearing through the crystalline ice where he had stood a microsecond before. He felt the cold shockwave of its impact, a force that should have shattered his bones.
His mana, already drained by the Archon's parasitic mark, was dangerously low. He couldn't afford to fight. He had to outlast. He had to outsmart. He had to find a weakness.
The Hound attacked again, its movements a blur of terrifying speed. Kael wove through the desolate landscape, using the jagged spires of crystallized starlight as cover. The Hound didn't try to go around them; it simply smashed through, its brute force so immense that the spires exploded into a cloud of deadly, shimmering dust.
A simple beast of strength, Kael thought, trying to analyse his enemy. But his thought was a lie. The Hound's eyes, those crimson lights, tracked his every move, not just his physical ones, but the flicker of his intent. It wasn't hunting him by sight. It was hunting him by pure, raw intuition. It was a predator designed to hunt Players.
He needed a weakness. And the fragmented crystal in his hand, the screaming memory of the dead Player, was his only clue. He risked a second, brief touch, ignoring the jarring scream of the past. The information he sought was a single, horrifying whisper: ...they are beings of antithetical light... born of darkness and starlight... they hate their own form...
Kael's mind went to the frozen starlight he stood on. It was beautiful, but it was also a form of raw, unfiltered power. The Hounds were a dark, corrupt reflection of that power. Their own light was their enemy.
He had a plan. A desperate, impossible plan. He stopped running. He turned to face the oncoming beast, his stance one of calm, unwavering resolve. The Hound paused, confused by his lack of fear. Kael's mana reserves were almost empty. He didn't have enough power for a spell. He didn't need one.
He focused his remaining energy, not to attack, but to command. He had spent a year learning to master the will of a Vestige Realm. This was a Vestige Core. The power was the same, just purer, wilder. He commanded the ground.
The crystallised starlight beneath his feet began to glow. It wasn't a cultivation technique. It was a simple, brutal command. The light in the ice pulsed, then erupted, not in an explosion, but in a focused, blinding laser of pure, unrefined light. It was a perfect, silent, white death.
The beam slammed into the Hound's chest. The creature screamed, a sound of pure agony that was not of a beast, but of a consciousness. Its body, so perfect and terrifying, began to melt and dissolve, the dark energy of its form struggling against the pure, white light. The Hound tried to recoil, to escape, but Kael was relentless. He pushed more and more of his will into the laser, burning his own body, his own mana, to fuel the attack.
The Hound shrieked, its body flickering, its essence unravelling. The cosmic predator, a hunter of the gods, was undone by a simple, brutal truth of its own nature. It collapsed, its crystalline form dissolving into nothingness. The crimson light in its eyes vanished, and only a faint, shimmering vapour remained.
Kael stumbled, collapsing to his knees, his body shaking with exhaustion. He had won. He had defeated the first Hound. But his victory felt hollow. He was completely out of mana, and the Archon's mark now pulsed with a newfound strength, having fed on his energy during the desperate fight.
He raised his head, looking out into the silent void. Then he saw it. The second Hound. It had watched the entire fight from the edge of the horizon. It was larger, its form less chaotic, its crimson eyes burning with a far colder, more deliberate intelligence. It was not a brute-force beast. It was a strategist.
It began to walk towards him, but it didn't lunge. It simply watched him. It was learning. It was analysing his every move. And Kael felt a new, insidious fear creep into his soul. This was not a physical hunt. It was a game of cat and mouse, and he was the mouse.
He was about to get up, to force his tired body to run, when the crystal shard in his hand began to pulse with a faint, crimson glow. The dead Player's voice returned, not as a scream this time, but as a terrified, final whisper.
"He watches from afar… his body is a lie… a construct to deceive… he is not the hunter, but the puppet… the third one… the one you can't see… has already arrived… inside your mind…"
Kael's eyes widened, a new, terrible realisation dawning. The second Hound was a puppet. The true threat was already here.
A cold, unseen presence wrapped around his consciousness. He felt his mind, his soul, being probed. It was a silent, terrifying hunger. He had won the physical battle, but the war was being fought on a new front. The third Hound wasn't a beast of flesh or shadow. It was a predator of the mind. And it was already inside.