Chapter 5: Sparks in the Fog
White-blue light burst through the clearing, swallowing shadows and fog alike. For a moment, there was no beast, no marsh, no caravan—just the raw, blinding shape of lightning wrapped around a massive scaled body.
Aiden felt the shockwave pass through him like a physical blow. His teeth rattled. His bones hummed. His skin prickled with the phantom sensation of static racing across it.
The Fangback's roar strangled into a cracked, choking sound. Its limbs jerked against the electric cage spiraling around it. Every muscle spasmed, claws gouging deep furrows in the mud.
The source of the storm stood only a few feet away.
The tiny lightning wolf pup.
Its fur stood on end in sharp, glowing ridges, blue-white electricity racing along its spine in jagged pulses. The air around it shimmered with heat and static. Its eyes burned bright enough to cast long, thin shadows across the trunks of the willow trees.
Myra stumbled backward, hand going to her chest. The air between her and the pup thrummed like stretched wire, like a heartbeat made from stormlight.
The Fangback's massive weight crashed down onto its knees. It convulsed once, twice, tail smashing into the ground with enough force to spray mud across half the clearing. Then the creature toppled sideways, trembling under the onslaught.
Aiden, half-blinded by the flash, threw his arms out on instinct, pulling Myra and Nellie in against him until the light began to die.
The lightning receded in ragged waves, leaving behind the smell of burnt air and something sharp and metallic.
The pup swayed on its feet.
Its breath came out in short, visible puffs of static.
Aiden's System flickered like an exhausted lantern:
[Unknown Beast: TEMPORARILY PARALYZED]
[Threat Level: Reduced]
[Combat State: Stabilizing…]
[Instinct Surge: Draining]
The strange, super-sharp clarity inside his head slowly dulled. Sounds rushed back in—the panicked shouts of caravanners, the crackle of dying embers where fires had been kicked apart, the low groans of the injured.
The Fangback twitched again, tail slamming weakly into the mud.
Aiden swallowed. "Stay back," he said, still breathing hard. "It's not dead."
Myra stared at the wolf pup instead of the monster. "Did it… did the little one do that?"
Nellie clung to Aiden's sleeve, eyes huge. "I-I think so…"
The pup's ears flicked. Lightning sputtered along its back in tired, uneven pulses.
Myra took a hesitant step toward it. Her eyes shone with something Aiden couldn't name—fear, awe, something else.
"You… saved us," she whispered.
The pup lowered its head.
Not like a pet.
Not like a submissive beast.
More like a fighter who'd hit its limit.
Before any of them could move again, boots thundered through the mud.
Hunters burst into the clearing from the south, weapons raised, faces pale and furious.
Garrik led them, spear in hand, eyes locked on the Fangback.
"DOWN!" he roared.
Three spears flew before Aiden could speak.
They slammed into the Fangback's flank, throat, and jaw with heavy, wet thuds. The beast convulsed, a final, broken roar bubbling from its throat. One last spear drove through the underside of its skull and into the ground, pinning it there.
Nellie flinched as the massive body finally collapsed, the thud echoing up through her bones.
Silence hit the clearing.
Then noise rushed in all at once—people crying, curses flying, someone calling for a healer, someone else shouting about the beast's size.
Aiden turned back to the pup.
It was already limping away.
Blood dripped from its injured leg in thin, dark lines. Every step made its shoulders tremble. It passed between two willow trunks, pausing for just a breath.
"Myra…" Aiden warned.
"Wait!" she called, taking a step forward.
Aiden grabbed her wrist. "Don't."
She tugged against his grip, anger and worry flashing across her face. "It's hurt, Aiden! It saved us! We can't just let it—"
"We don't know what it is," he said, voice low. "We don't know what it wants."
The pup turned its head.
For a heartbeat, it locked eyes with Myra again.
A faint, gentle crackle of static fluttered through the air between them—soft as a whisper, sharp as a promise.
Myra stopped struggling.
The pup blinked once.
Then it stepped through the curtain of fog and vanished.
Myra sagged back a half step, like something inside her had been stretched toward the disappearing creature and then cut loose.
Nellie swallowed, looking at the place where the pup had gone. "D-do you think it'll be okay?"
Aiden wanted to say yes.
He said nothing.
Hunters fanned out, checking for other threats. One of them swore under his breath as he got a closer look at the Fangback.
"Biggest one I've seen in years… and it got this close to the whole caravan?"
Another spat into the mud. "Someone up there likes us."
"Or hates us," a third muttered.
Garrik strode toward Aiden, Myra, and Nellie. His face was carved stone, jaw clenched tight enough to crack.
"You three," he snapped. "Inside the ring."
Aiden stepped in front of the girls without thinking. "We didn't draw it here."
"You think I don't know that?" Garrik growled. "That thing's been stalking the marsh road for months. We try to plan around it. Today, we got unlucky."
He jabbed his chin toward the shattered clearing. "But something else was here. And it wasn't luck that it chose to show up right between us and that monster."
Myra crossed her arms. "It helped us."
"Lightning beasts help no one," Garrik shot back. "They help themselves. Until they don't need you anymore."
"It stunned the Fangback," Aiden said. "If it hadn't, half of us would be dead."
Garrik held his gaze for a long moment.
Then he grunted. "I'm not arguing that. I'm saying we don't rely on creatures we don't understand. Move."
He stalked away, barking orders.
"Check the carts!"
"Get those fires under control!"
"Anyone bleeding, sit your ass down where the healer can find you!"
Nellie jolted. "I— that's— that's me…"
Aiden glanced at her. "You still have enough herbs?"
She patted her satchel, hands shaking. "Y-yes."
He squeezed her shoulder. "Go. They need you."
Her eyes widened like he'd just told her she was important. Then she nodded hard and hurried toward the injured hunters.
She knelt beside a man with a gash down his arm and pressed her hands over the wound with herbs already crushed between her fingers.
"This'll sting," she warned, voice trembling. "But it'll help stop the bleeding."
The hunter hissed as she worked, but didn't pull away.
Aiden watched as Nellie moved from one wounded person to another, clumsy but determined. Her hands shook, but she never stopped. A woman sobbed with relief when the bleeding in her leg slowed. A young boy—one of the caravan hands—whispered a hoarse "thank you" when the pain in his side dulled.
Myra watched too.
"She's… braver than she thinks," Myra said quietly.
"So are you," Aiden replied.
She scoffed. "I nearly got us killed trying to touch a lightning wolf."
He couldn't help a tiny smile. "You only nearly got us killed. That's improvement."
She made a strangled noise that might have been a laugh.
They helped where they could—dragging broken crates out of the way, righting a tipped cart, stamping out smoldering brush. The Fangback lay still in the center of the clearing, a hulking corpse bristling with spears.
Someone would strip it for scales and meat later. Marsh beasts were too valuable to waste.
But not now.
Now, everyone just wanted to breathe.
Garrik eventually circled back to them, face still hard but less sharp around the edges. "We leave as soon as we can stand," he said. "No one sleeps here."
"We're that exposed?" Aiden asked.
"We spilled blood on the marsh," Garrik answered. "The smell carries. Predators notice. This is their home, not ours."
Myra frowned. "Can't we just fortify and—"
"No," he cut in. "We're not an army. We're a caravan. We survive by moving, not by standing still and daring the world to hit us again."
That shut her up.
Within the hour, packs were loaded. The dead Fangback had its head cut off as proof of kill for whatever border office tracked such things. Nellie worked until sweat matted her curls and dark circles formed under her eyes.
When she finally came back to them, she swayed on her feet.
Aiden reached out. "Sit."
She plopped down on a log, breathless. "I—I helped… I think I got everyone who needed it…"
"You did well," Aiden said.
Her lips quivered. Then she beamed, shy and tired and proud all at once.
They moved on.
The fog closed around them again as they left the ruined clearing behind. The willow branches swallowed the scene of the fight as completely as if it had never happened.
The road ahead felt different.
Heavier.
Every splash of a boot in the mud.
Every ripple in the marsh water.
Every distant cry of some unseen creature—
Aiden flinched at them all now, muscles coiled tight.
Myra walked nearer than before, shoulder brushing his occasionally. She kept scanning the edges of their formation, eyes searching for any sign of a small, silver-blue pup.
She didn't say it out loud.
She didn't have to.
Nellie trudged beside them, clutching her satchel to her chest like a shield. She'd seen blood before—in training, in small accidents—but not like this.
"You're quiet," Myra said softly.
"I'm… just thinking," Nellie murmured.
"About the wolf?" Aiden asked.
She nodded, curls bouncing. "It was… scary. But its eyes weren't. Not like the big one. The big one wanted to eat us. The pup just… looked curious. And sad."
"Sad?" Myra echoed.
Nellie hesitated. "It felt like… it didn't belong with the other beasts either."
Aiden stared at the fog ahead.
Didn't belong.
He knew that feeling too well.
As afternoon bled into evening, the fog darkened. What had been pale gray in the morning became a deeper, heavier shade, like storm clouds had fallen to ground level.
The caravan's pace slowed.
Aiden's legs ached, but he forced them to keep moving. His newly revealed stats hummed at the back of his awareness—Strength 8, Agility 10, Intuition 11—numbers that finally put shape to the instincts he'd been leaning on.
He couldn't afford to obsess over them now. Not out here.
"Hey," Myra said, bumping her shoulder lightly against his. "You're doing the face thing."
"What face thing?"
"The one where you're thinking so loud I can almost hear it."
He huffed. "Just… processing."
"Same," she admitted. "Except most of my processing is just: 'There was a giant monster, a tiny lightning wolf, I almost died, and now my feet hurt.'"
"That's… fair."
"Also," she added dryly, "Garrik is mean."
Aiden snorted. "He's keeping everyone alive. That counts for something."
"Yeah, yeah. Logic. I get it."
The path twisted between clusters of reeds and half-submerged stones. Once, they passed a half-sunken statue—only the eroded top of a stone helmet visible above the waterline.
"Was this area always a marsh?" Nellie asked quietly.
"No," Aiden said before thinking.
The girls looked at him.
He blinked. "I mean… it doesn't look like it. Old roads. Statues. It feels like this was… something else. Once."
He didn't know how he knew that. But the feeling lodged itself in his bones like an old, half-remembered story.
By the time full darkness pressed in, Garrik called another halt.
"Short rest," he said. "No fires. Fog's thick enough to hide us, but light cuts both ways. Eat rations. Whisper if you have to talk."
They huddled beneath a leaning tree, cloaks pulled close. The night air was cold enough to bite at fingers and noses.
Nellie sat between Aiden and Myra, small enough that both their cloaks overlapped her. She sighed softly, leaning into their warmth.
"Aiden?" she whispered.
"Yeah?"
"Do you… think we'll make it to the Academy?"
"Yes," he said without hesitation.
"How do you know?"
"Because we didn't survive today just to die tomorrow."
Myra snorted very quietly. "That's… grimly inspiring."
He smiled faintly. "Take what you can get."
Silence settled over them like another layer of fog.
Until something crackled.
Very softly.
Like the tiniest thread of lightning brushing across wet stone.
Aiden's head snapped up.
"So you hear that too," Myra breathed.
The sound came again, not loud, not near—just a faint sizzle in the distance, like storm air exhaling.
Garrik hissed from the front. "Stay put."
The caravan remained still.
Minutes passed.
Then the order came, low and tense. "Move. Carefully."
They rose, legs stiff, and began walking again.
It wasn't long before they saw it.
Just ahead on the path, barely visible through the fog, a thin line of blue light was burned into the mud. It crackled faintly, the glow already fading, but unmistakable.
A trail of scorched footprints, each no bigger than Aiden's hand.
Myra's breath caught. "That's…"
"The pup," Nellie whispered.
The line extended forward, a broken, glowing scar in the direction they were already going.
"Garrik?" someone whispered nervously. "Is that— is that safe to follow?"
"Road only goes one way through this marsh," Garrik muttered. "We don't have another choice."
Myra stared at the trail. Her fingers twitched at her side, like she wanted to reach out and touch the fading light.
"…It's calling us," she whispered.
Aiden's System pulsed like a second heartbeat behind his eyes.
[Instinct Triggered]
[Beast Affinity Spike Detected]
[Unknown Beast: Nearby]
[Danger / Opportunity: Undefined]
Nellie tightened her grip on his cloak.
"A-Aiden," she stammered, voice barely more than a breath, "please say we're not… really following that…"
The fog ahead crackled faintly with distant lightning.
And the caravan walked straight toward it.