The thing stepped forward just enough for the mist to stop helping it.
It had the body of a hart if a hart had been built by somebody who hated normal animals. Tall. Long-legged. Bark-dark hide stretched too close over the frame. Antlers that hooked the wrong way, more like sharpened roots dragged upward than anything grown clean. And that mouth—
Damián hated the mouth.
It split too far.
Not open. Split.
Like the jaw had once been one thing and then life got disrespectful.
The pale throat under it bulged again.
The spear-woman didn't look at Damián.
"Back."
He didn't move.
Not because he was brave.
Because his body had gone still in that ugly, stupid way people froze when danger got too big for their brain to sort.
The broad man snapped, "Move."
That worked.
Damián stumbled back two steps so fast he nearly tripped over the dead Mudgnaw.
The other man—leaner, quicker-looking, dark hair tied close—lifted one hand. Light gathered across his fingers in thin pale lines.
Damián saw it and forgot the deer thing for half a second.
"What the fuck."
"Quiet," the broad man said.
The spear-woman's voice came flat and cold.
"Splitjaw Hart. Throat burst. Don't stand in front of it."
Damián blinked.
"Why would I stand in front of—"
The thing fired.
Its throat convulsed.
Something invisible tore through the clearing hard enough to shred leaves off branches and explode bark off the trunk beside Damián's head. The sound hit late—more crack than roar—and he yelped, ducking so hard he almost folded in half.
Wood chips rained over him.
"Oh, fuck this place!"
The broad man was already moving. He came in low with the hooked blade, boots digging into damp soil. The lean one snapped his glowing hand forward and three narrow streaks of pale force shot through the air.
Not bullets.
Not arrows.
Worse.
Cleaner.
They hit the Hart's shoulder and side in flashes of white and gold. It jerked, more annoyed than hurt.
Damián stared.
Magic.
Real fucking magic.
Not movie magic. Not game magic. Not fake special effect nonsense.
Magic.
"Holy shit," he breathed.
The spear-woman moved past him in a blur.
No, not blur.
Too quick. Too committed.
Her spear punched forward, not at the chest but under the jaw. The Hart twisted wrong and the thrust scraped bark-dark hide with a shriek. She planted her rear foot, turned the weapon, and shoved hard.
Good movement. Mean movement. Nothing wasted.
Damián noticed all that for exactly one second before the Hart bounded sideways in a way something that size shouldn't have been able to do.
It landed too light.
Its split mouth opened.
The pale throat swelled again.
The broad man shouted, "Down!"
Everybody moved.
Damián moved because everybody else did.
The burst ripped overhead and tore through a hanging branch thick as his leg. It dropped, smashing into the clearing where the lean man had been half a second earlier.
Damián hit the dirt shoulder-first.
Mud. Leaves. Cold. Heart punching through his ribs.
He rolled badly, got up worse, and found himself behind a stump he didn't remember choosing.
"This is insane," he said to nobody. "This is actually insane."
The Hart's hooves chewed up earth as it cut across the clearing again.
The broad man feinted left.
The spear-woman went right.
The lean man's hands flashed with more light.
Damián saw how they fought now.
Not random.
Not panic.
Used to this. Used to each other. Used to things trying to kill them for existing in the wrong patch of woods.
That realization made him feel even more out of place.
The broad man got in close and chopped into one rear leg joint. Dark fluid sprayed. The Hart screamed through that wrong mouth and lashed back with a hind kick that clipped his shoulder and sent him stumbling three steps.
"Ravel!"
"Still here," the broad man growled.
So that was a name.
Good for him.
The lean one loosed another pair of light-strikes. One hit the antlers and burst. The other clipped the swollen throat-sac and made the creature recoil, head jerking hard.
The spear-woman took the opening instantly.
Her spear drove in low, right behind the foreleg.
This time it sank.
The Hart convulsed and let out a sound that made Damián's teeth hurt.
"Push!" the lean man yelled.
"Do I look like I know how?" Damián yelled back before thinking.
Three faces snapped toward him at once.
Even the Hart looked insulted.
Then the broad man barked, "Then stay out the way!"
Damián threw both hands up.
"I was already planning that!"
The Hart ripped itself backward off the spear with a wet, hateful sound. Blood—if that dark slick stuff was blood—ran down its side. Its pale throat inflated again, bigger this time.
The spear-woman's face changed.
First fear he'd seen on her.
"Lívia," the lean man said, tight.
So that was her name.
Good. Great. Awesome. He was learning names while a demon deer loaded a cannon in its neck.
Lívia took one step back and lowered the spearpoint.
Not retreat.
Angle.
"Eyes," she said.
"What about them?" Damián snapped, because apparently his mouth wanted to die before the rest of him did.
Her stare hit him like a slap.
"Yours. Did you lie?"
Damián actually laughed.
"Lady, I don't know enough to lie usefully!"
The Hart fired again.
The burst hit the stump in front of Damián and obliterated half of it.
Wood and dirt exploded into his face. He went over backward, ears ringing. His vision whited for a second. He tasted mud.
Then he realized something.
The thing had aimed at him.
Not them.
Him.
"Oh, come on!"
He scrambled sideways on hands and knees as another pulse of pressure shaved leaves and bark off the ground where his head had been.
"Why me?!"
"Because you're loud!" the broad man shouted.
"That's not a real reason!"
The lean man actually looked offended.
"Everything notices loud first!"
Damián almost answered, then the Hart charged.
Not elegant.
Not noble.
A killing line. Head low, antlers forward, split mouth open, leg muscles bunching under dark hide.
Straight at him.
His body locked up again.
Too big.
Too fast.
Wrong angle.
He saw, all at once, that he was about to die in another world exactly as uselessly as he had in the first one.
No.
Not even exactly.
Stupider.
By deer.
"Move!" Lívia shouted.
He didn't process anything except the charging shape and the instinctive, screaming refusal inside him.
No.
Not again.
The cold behind his left eye flashed.
Not on impact this time.
Before it.
The Hart's throat pulsed white-blue.
A little earlier than the mouth.
A pressure gather.
A pattern.
He didn't understand what he was seeing.
Only that he saw it.
"Left!" he screamed.
Lívia moved instantly.
The Hart fired as it charged.
The burst missed her by a breath and tore through the trunk behind where she'd been standing.
Everyone noticed.
The broad man's head whipped toward Damián.
"What did you—"
"No idea!" Damián shouted, because that was still true.
The Hart was still coming.
He couldn't outrun it.
Couldn't outfight it.
Couldn't think.
So his body picked the stupidest possible option and committed to it with full confidence.
He grabbed the shattered half of the stump.
It was heavy. Wet. Splintered.
Too heavy, honestly.
He hauled it anyway with both hands and screamed something that wasn't words as he swung.
The stump slammed into one antler.
Not enough to stop the charge.
Enough to skew it.
The Hart's head whipped sideways just as the broad man—Ravel—hit it from the other angle with a full-bodied hook-strike of his blade.
Lívia drove in again.
This time her spear went through the throat-sac.
The creature burst.
Not exploded like fire.
Collapsed from the inside.
A wet white-blue rupture sprayed over the shaft and the front of Lívia's arms. The Hart convulsed mid-step, stumbled, and crashed hard enough to shake the clearing.
Damián lost his grip on the stump and got thrown to the ground with it.
For a second, nobody moved.
The Hart twitched.
Its split jaw opened and closed once.
Then stayed open.
Silence came back in pieces.
Breathing.
Leaves falling.
Something dripping.
Damián stared up at the canopy, chest heaving.
Then sat up and pointed at the dead thing.
"I hate this world."
The lean man bent over, hands on his knees, trying not to laugh.
Ravel was breathing hard through his nose, one hand pressed to his shoulder where the kick had clipped him.
Lívia braced on her spear, looking down at the corpse.
Then she turned to Damián.
He was on the ground, muddy, panting, hair half in his face, one hand still on the broken stump like he'd won some private argument with it.
She walked over.
Damián put a hand up immediately.
"Before you say anything, I know that looked stupid."
"That," she said, "was the smartest stupid thing I've seen all month."
He frowned.
"That sounds disrespectful."
"It is."
The lean man finally let the laugh out, short and ugly.
Ravel just stared at Damián.
"Say what you yelled."
"What?"
"Before the burst."
He replayed it. The charging shape. The swelling throat. The flash he didn't understand.
His left eye gave a faint cold pulse at the memory.
He touched it automatically.
"I saw it do something."
All three of them went still.
Damián hated that instantly.
"What."
Lívia stepped closer.
"When."
"Just before it fired. The throat thing. It sort of—" He made an angry useless motion in front of his own neck. "Built up weird."
Ravel and the lean man exchanged a look.
Lívia didn't.
She was too busy staring directly into Damián's face again.
"You saw the throat charge before release."
"That sentence means nothing to me."
"It doesn't have to."
"That is not comforting."
Her eyes flicked to the dead Mudgnaw. Then to the Hart. Then back to him.
Damián straightened a little, suddenly defensive.
"Okay, don't look at me like I did something on purpose. I'm still catching up to being alive."
No answer.
The lean man exhaled through his teeth and finally straightened.
"We can't leave him in the wood."
"Obviously," Lívia said.
Ravel grunted once. "Question is whether taking him in is smarter than leaving him and pretending we never saw this."
Damián's face changed.
"Oh, hell no."
All three looked at him.
He pushed himself up, covered in mud and dead leaf bits, and pointed toward the deeper woods.
"You are not about to have that conversation in front of me while there are demon deer and goblin crack-dogs living out here."
"Mudgnaws," the lean man corrected automatically.
Damián threw both hands up.
"That is not better!"
For the first time, Lívia's mouth twitched.
Small. Fast. Gone almost immediately.
But Damián saw it.
So did Ravel, apparently, because he looked more disturbed by that than by the Hart.
She ignored both of them.
"What's your name."
He stared.
"Now you ask?"
"What's your name."
He swallowed once. His throat still felt too easy, too whole.
"Damián."
"Damián what."
"Dos Santos."
The lean man repeated it under his breath like he was testing how foreign it sounded.
Ravel looked unimpressed by everything.
Lívia nodded once.
"I'm Lívia. That's Ravel. That's Ico."
The lean one lifted two fingers lazily. "Unfortunately."
Damián pointed at him immediately.
"See? I like him more already."
"I didn't say I liked you."
"Didn't ask."
Ravel muttered, "He talks too much."
"Yeah," Lívia said. "Still breathing, though."
That shut the clearing up for half a beat.
Damián looked at the Hart again. Then the Mudgnaw. Then the woods beyond all of them.
Still alive.
Somehow.
Again.
A strange laugh nearly came out. He swallowed that too.
Lívia wiped the spear shaft against dead grass, then jerked her chin toward the clearing edge.
"We move. Short-Ember Post first. Then city."
Damián looked at her.
"City?"
She gave him a flat look.
"Yes, Damián. We have those."
He stared for another second.
Then laughed, breathless and a little cracked.
"Okay. Cool. Great. That helps exactly none."
Ico crouched by the Hart and started cutting into the throat area with a short field knife.
Damián recoiled.
"Oh, nah, what are you doing now?"
"Taking proof."
"Proof of what? That Satan makes wildlife?"
Ravel picked up the broken stump Damián had swung and looked at the dent in the antler with a face like he didn't enjoy being confused.
Lívia had already started scanning the trees again.
"Talk while we move," she said. "Not here."
Damián opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Looked at the dead Hart.
Looked at the woods.
Looked at the people who had just killed it like this was a hard day, not the end of reason itself.
Then he pointed at the Hart one last time.
"For the record," he said, "if anything else in this forest looks normal first and then opens wrong, I'm leaving."
Ravel snorted.
Ico smiled without looking up.
Lívia turned and started walking.
Damián followed because the trees behind them had already gone quiet again, and he had learned enough in one chapter of this place to know that quiet here was not his friend.
He took three steps after them before realizing something else.
He stopped.
Touched his left eye.
Cold.
Still faintly cold.
Like whatever the Mudgnaw spat hadn't vanished.
Like it was still there.
Buried somewhere behind the silver.