Morning came with knives of cold light sliding through the shutters.Klaus was already moving—he always woke up like a sermon nobody asked for.Ragnar hummed a raiding song that had too many verses about drinking and none about surviving.Kayra handed out bread that pretended to be food.
"We'll follow the river," Klaus said. "Frozen edges. Wolves hunt near water this late in winter."
I still ached from yesterday's training.The scythe rested on my shoulder like it was judging me for being mortal.The mark under my sleeve twitched with a polite, hungry pulse.
"Hey, kiddo," Lucifer whispered as I buckled my cloak. "You sure about hunting things that bite?"
"I need a core," I muttered. "And breakfast."
"Two kinds of hunger. Good start."
1. The River Path
The four of us left before dawn finished deciding what color it wanted to be.Frost cracked under our boots.Breath became ghosts and wandered off.The river beside us flowed under a glass skin, muttering secrets in its sleep.
"Stay behind me," Klaus said. "Ragnar flanks. Kayra covers the trail."
"And me?" I asked.
"Learn," he said.
That's brotherly love for you—education through fear.
We moved quiet.Birds didn't argue.The world had that expectant hush it gets right before teeth appear in the brush.
2. Signs
Half a league upriver, Klaus crouched and touched the snow.A print the size of my open hand dented the crust.Wolves—bigger than they should be.
Ragnar grinned. "Three, maybe four."
Kayra frowned. "Too close to the village."
"That's why we're here," Klaus said.
He looked at me. "You see anything?"
I let the Eyes of Nihility open.The world shifted into veins of faint light.Every tree, every stone exhaled a thin breath of mana.And there—traces on the snow, like bruises in color: crimson trails where energy had bled from living things recently killed.
"They fed last night," I said.
Klaus gave a curt nod. "Good. Maybe they're slow."
"Or maybe full," Lucifer added in my head. "Predators nap after dinner. Humans never learn."
3. First Contact
The wind turned, carrying fur and copper.One shape detached from the trees—gray, low, eyes burning faintly blue from a core lodged too near the brain.Corrupted.Its breath steamed like poison.
"Take it," Klaus said.
I stepped forward, scythe low.My heart tried to climb out through my throat and apply for another job.
The wolf circled, testing distance.I mirrored it.The Shadow Elf stirred under my skin—cold fingertips tracing the path of my veins, suggesting angles, rhythm.Her whisper slid into my skull like a thought I didn't make.
"Left. Then draw."
I feinted right, stepped left, brought the scythe across.Too slow.The blade kissed fur, not flesh.
The wolf snapped back, teeth flashing.I dodged, half tripped, rolled. Snow in my mouth tasted like failure and iron.
"Again," she murmured.
I pushed off, breath steady, every motion remembering yesterday's pain.The scythe moved with me this time instead of after me.Shadow Step caught—a blink of darkness—and I was behind the wolf.
The Shadow Slash cut from silence.
For one heartbeat the air froze.Then the wolf's front half kept arguing with the back half about direction.The argument ended quietly.
Steam rose. Inside its chest, something pulsed—a dim, cracked core, throbbing with the last of the beast's life.
Klaus exhaled approval. Ragnar whistled. Kayra looked both proud and afraid.
"Take the core," Klaus said.
I knelt. The heat from the carcass ghosted through my gloves.When I touched the core, the Eyes saw its lines fracturing, light leaking like sighs.I pressed it to my mark.
Cold fire climbed my arm.The tattoo flared, brighter than before, swallowing the light greedily until the core dulled to stone.
Power stirred—tiny, sharp, honest.Rank F, still, but louder now.The kind of louder that promised the alphabet might have more letters if I survived.
Lucifer chuckled. "Not bad, kiddo. Try to die less impressively next time."
4. The Pack
The snow moved.
Three shapes unfolded from the treeline, eyes glowing like distant forge embers.
"Company," Ragnar said, cheerful as ever.
Klaus lifted his axe. "Form line."
"Form panic?" I offered.
"Later," he said.
The wolves spread out, fanning, learning us the way hunger learns prayer.My mark thrummed, shadow bleeding around my boots like ink deciding to be alive.
The Shadow Elf's voice was closer now—inside the bones behind my ears."Do you want to live?"
"Yes," I thought.
"Then stop thinking about dying."
She surged—cold and sure.Shadows lengthened, connecting me to the trees, to the wolves, to everything that remembered night.The scythe hummed in answer.
We moved.
Klaus's axe broke the first skull with righteous math.Ragnar's blade drew a silver line through the second's throat.The third lunged for me.
I didn't step back.
The mark on my arm ignited; darkness folded.I slid sideways into its shadow, came out behind it, and drove the blade down through the spine.The world exhaled frost.
When silence returned, it limped.
We stood among steaming corpses and snow painted red in expensive patterns.
Klaus wiped his axe. "Four cores. Enough to trade for a month's flour."
Ragnar poked a corpse. "Or beer."
Kayra looked at me. "You're bleeding."
I glanced down. A gash along my ribs. Shallow, but eager.I pressed my hand to it, turned the runes forward—Mercy Mode.Warmth spread, steady and apologetic. The skin knit.
Klaus's eyebrows lifted a millimeter. "That's new."
"Learning fast," I said.
Lucifer purred. "Growing faster."
5. Aftermath
We carried the cores in a cloth Kayra used for herbs.The sky had decided on gray.Snow began again—not heavy, just enough to remind the world of standards.
At the village gate, the guards stared at the blood, the weapons, the boy holding a scythe taller than himself.
"F-rank," one of them muttered. "Miracle he's breathing."
"Not miracle," Klaus said. "Discipline."
That's how brothers say love without paperwork.
We crossed into the narrow streets. People moved aside, half respect, half superstition.I felt their eyes linger on the faint shadow smoke still trailing from my boots.
Inside our house, warmth returned the way debts do—slowly, with interest.
Kayra tended to the meat. Ragnar sorted the cores by brightness. Klaus set the weapons aside with care that meant prayer.
Lucifer broke the quiet:"First hunt done. Alive. Fed. Shadow likes you better."
"How can you tell?" I asked.
"You're starting to think in her rhythm."
"What does that mean?"
"It means next time you'll kill faster."
6. The Quiet After
Later, when everyone slept, I set one dim core on the floor.The tattoo warmed in greeting.
"Shadow," I whispered, "you awake?"
A shape moved behind my eyelids—tall, feminine, edges of smoke and frost, eyes like eclipses that never ended.For a moment she was there beside me, an echo standing where light didn't reach.
"Always," she said.
I smiled, tired and alive. "Then let's get stronger."
"We will," she promised. "The night remembers its own."
The core dimmed, satisfied.Outside, the wolves had stopped singing.Inside, the fire hummed approval.
End of Chapter 3