Figures erupted from alcoves with a scratch of antler against stone. They were shaped like men but stretched wrong—limbs elongated, bark plates fused into armor over bone that clicked and hissed with every motion. Antlers rose from skulls, twisted into crude spearpoints that dripped black sap. Bramble-Wraiths, but grown on some monstrous fertilizer. Two on the left, two on the right, all moving faster than the smaller ones above.
Thalatha blurred forward, more reflex than choice. Her longsai blade left its sheath with a whisper and met the first wraith mid-leap. Steel kissed rot; the creature's mask split clean along the nose ridge, falling away in halves like rotten fruit. She pivoted on her trailing heel, cape snapping, and used the backstroke to slice an exposed vine-tendon in its knee. The corpse crumpled, green ichor splashing the moss-tiles.
