Year – 7002 A.A | Valley of Mount Pire, The Strings of the Dead
The valley lay broken—no, defiled.
What had once been a narrow, stony clearing framed by jagged cliffs now resembled the scarred remains of a battlefield from some ancient war. Craters pitted the earth where strikes had landed, and deep gouges marred the valley walls as if titanic claws had scraped through the stone. The air was choked with dust and the acrid scent of burned rock, carried on the whispering wind that seemed reluctant to pass through this place. Every surface seemed to carry the story of violence—of a struggle that had raged with no thought for beauty or mercy.
And then there were the threads.
They caught the weak light like veins of crimson glass, stretching in sinister arcs between the broken stones. Each strand shimmered with an unnatural sheen, delicate yet unyielding. They did not sway like the silk of any common spider, but trembled with a slow, deliberate pulse—alive in some hateful way. At the end of each cord lay a body, slack in form but robbed of peace.
Adam knew those faces.
The wolf tracient's piercing blue eyes moved from one to another. They were the men who had followed him here, who had trusted his orders. The ones who had marched with him into this cursed valley believing—believing—that he would lead them out again. And now they hung on those crimson threads like grotesque marionettes, stripped of dignity, their limbs twitching under the will of the monster who stood among them.
The spider tracient was in her element.
Her long legs were planted wide. Six eyes, gleaming with malicious amusement, caught Adam in their unblinking gaze. Around her, the marionette strings shifted with a faint quiver, each motion precise, deliberate—as if she were conducting some silent orchestra. The corpses danced under her control: some jerked their heads in unnatural angles, others shuffled forward like specters pulled from a nightmare.
Her voice cut through the heavy air, dripping venom.
"You are persistent, Wolf. But you are outgunned. All your men, their unique talents, their precious skills—they're mine now."
She tilted her head in mock sympathy, the corners of her mouth curling into something between a smirk and a baring of fangs.
"I am the ultimate puppet master."
Adam's breath left him slowly. He neither moved nor spoke immediately. His face was carved in stone, the stoic mask that had carried him through countless battles, but behind it—behind those glacial eyes—rage coiled like a storm waiting to break.
The icy blue of his gaze swept across the field again, but lingered when it found him—Karadir.
The man's body lay crumpled near a jagged boulder, his chest faintly rising and falling. Alive. Unconscious, but alive. A quiet relief brushed against Adam's heart, almost enough to thaw the frost for a moment. Almost.
But then the reality pressed in.
'If she takes him—if she threads her will through his body like the others…'
Adam felt a hollow tightening in his gut. Karadir was not just another soldier. His loss would mean more than another empty name to mourn; it would tip the fight into something unwinnable.
The thought struck like a nail being driven deeper: 'I cannot let her touch him.'
He forced his gaze away, returning it to the spider. The corpses between them shifted again, their limbs jerking in perfect synchronization with the subtle flicks of her fingers. She enjoyed this—he could see it. Not merely the killing, but the degradation. The humiliation of turning warriors into playthings.
And then came the ache. The one he could never quite harden against.
'This is my fault.' The words rose unbidden, heavy and accusing. 'I should have seen the trap earlier. Should have recognized the signs. Should have stopped it before it was sprung.' His jaw tightened as his eyes moved from one familiar face to another.
'I led you here. I failed you.'
A cold wind passed through the valley, carrying with it the faint rattle of the threads as they pulled against the slack limbs of the dead. The sound was almost like laughter. His fists clenched, nails biting into his palms. The emotion that swelled in his chest was no longer only anger—it was something sharper, something heavier. Guilt forged in the same fire as his rage.
He breathed once, deeply, and let that fire harden into resolve.
When he finally spoke, his voice cut across the space between them—not loud, but certain.
"I will make sure I avenge you today."
It was not a threat, nor a boast. It was a promise. And in the valley's charged silence, it rang louder than any shout.
The spider tilted her head again, her expression unreadable for a moment. Then her lips curled back, exposing the glint of fangs. She tugged sharply at the strings, and the corpses moved—jerking forward, ready to swarm.
The spider's mandibles clicked with an almost playful cadence—a predator amused by the thrashing of its prey. She gave a subtle, practiced tug on her crimson threads, and the field came alive with dreadful motion.
The corpses lurched forward in unison, not with the stiff awkwardness of mindless dead, but with the frightening precision of living warriors—men who in life had honed their skills to perfection. Each step, each pivot, each sudden lunge carried the echo of muscle memory. They fought as they once had, only now their loyalty was shackled to her will.
The first came at Adam with a lightning-charged blade. The air cracked and hissed as arcs of white-blue electricity leapt from its surface, snarling like wild dogs. Each swing split the air with a sound that made the hairs on Adam's neck stand on end.
Another soldier, his forearms fused with jagged stone, slammed both fists into the ground. The impact sent a shudder through the valley floor, stone waves rolling outward and throwing dust into the air. Adam felt the shockwave under his paw boots, a reminder that these bodies still wielded their old, devastating power.
A third—a man Adam remembered had once been quick to laugh, a fire in his spirit that matched the one in his eyes—now wielded a flaming whip. The weapon writhed and cracked like a living serpent, its blazing coils biting at the air and leaving molten scars on the ground where they struck.
Above them all, the spider moved her claws in small, exacting gestures. From her limbs rained more crimson threads, each strand glinting faintly before finding purchase on stone, flesh, or weapon. It was artistry, in a way—a weaving of death where every line served her design.
Adam moved among them like a shadow in constant motion. His three-segment staff, Canvari, blurred as it met blow after blow, the strikes ringing in sharp, hollow tones. He twisted, pivoted, and bent low under sweeping arcs, the staff catching blades, deflecting stone, and parrying fire. Each motion was measured—precise to the fraction of an inch—because every inch too far meant a strike that could crush a comrade's head or sever a limb.
And that… he would not allow.
The spider's laughter rolled over the battlefield, high and jagged, echoing through the shattered valley walls.
"Muahahahaha! It's futile! Your sentimentality won't let you fight them head-on. Despair, Wolf! İpekkan revels in despair!"
Her words slithered over him, but Adam's face did not change. His jaw stayed set, his expression flat, as if her voice were no more than the wind brushing past his ears. Outwardly, he was a calm river.
Inwardly, he was a dam ready to break.
'She's right about one thing,' he admitted silently. 'I won't destroy them. I can't. Not after I've already failed them once.'
Each blow he deflected was another reminder of who they had been: the soldier with the lightning blade who once sparred with him under rain and laughed every time he lost; the one with stone fists who had a habit of sharing his rations with the camp's children; the fire-whip wielder who had played songs on a stringed lute by the fire after battles.
To strike them down now would be to betray the lives they had lived.
But sentiment alone was not enough to win.
Adam shifted, letting the spider's horde press him. He let his boots slide over the loose gravel, the ground's tremors guiding his retreat. To the spider it might look like he was weakening, forced back by the relentless assault. But every step he gave was calculated, every inch measured.
'Too many threads overhead. Too close together. I need them spread… just enough for an opening.'
His eyes, sharp and searching, flicked between the lines of crimson thread, the movement of each puppet, and the distant form of the Spider herself. Behind the stillness of his face, thoughts and possibilities moved quickly, folding and unfolding in silence.
His grip on Canvari shifted slightly—looser, ready for a sudden change in rhythm. His feet dug in for just a moment before yielding another step back.
He was not losing ground.
He was setting the board.
And the spider, for all her skill, had not yet noticed the trap he was building in plain sight.
Adam inhaled deeply, his chest rising with slow determination. His lips barely moved, but the word he uttered carried the weight of thunder:
"ARCEM: KIRIN…"
The valley itself seemed to draw breath with him. A surge of bluish-green radiance burst outward, enveloping his form in a mantle of light. The glow poured through the rents in his clothing, danced across his scars that were sealed, and consumed even the dust in the air. His hair shimmered into the same radiant hue, flowing as if stirred by unseen winds.
The atmosphere changed in an instant. The oppressive gloom of the spider's threads faltered. The air, once heavy with despair, now crackled with raw vitality—alive, brimming with the rhythm of something greater than war.
The spider froze. Her many eyes dilated at once. Instinct clawed at her carapace.
'What… what is this?' she thought, her mandibles twitching. 'This pressure… it crushes even me. Even İpekkan cannot—'
But pride smothered her hesitation. With a shrill hiss, she launched more crimson threads, a storm of webbing designed to drown him in suffocation.
Adam's voice cut through her frenzy. Calm. Certain.
"Kirin, 4th Fang: Uğultu…"
And then—he vanished.
Not vanished like prey slipping behind a stone, nor like a soldier hidden by dust. He disappeared as if the world itself had forgotten his place within it.
A half-second later, the valley erupted.
Slashes of pure mana tore through the battlefield in blinding arcs, each one precise, each one purposeful. The sound was not a roar but a thousand whispers carried on the wind—Uğultu, the howl of inevitability. Every thread the spider had spun, every crimson tether that bound her puppets, was severed in perfect succession.
Bodies that had once been puppets collapsed gently to the ground, lifeless once more, freed from her cruel grasp. The crimson strands shriveled into dust, disintegrating before her horrified gaze.
"No… no, no, NO!" The spider screeched, her limbs scraping against stone in a frantic rhythm. "Impossible! What did you do?!"
Through the falling glow of disintegrated threads, Adam reappeared. His aura hummed around him like a living storm. His eyes, once human-blue, now glowed with a light that seemed to burn through her very shell.
His voice was low, yet unshakable.
"I simply got serious."
The words were not bravado—they were judgment.
A primal terror gripped her. Her instincts, honed over centuries, screamed at her to retreat. And for once, she obeyed. She leapt back with desperate speed, stringing lines of silk between boulders and cliffs to put distance between them.
But Adam did not relent.
Step by step—or rather, blur by blur—he erased that distance as if it were meaningless. His movements were no longer bound by the valley floor; he seemed to ride the very force of his own Arcem. Wherever her threads coiled, they were cut. Wherever her webs crossed, they were torn apart. Her intricate designs, her artistry of despair, crumbled like cobwebs before fire.
Her panic deepened. 'How is this possible? This is not the KIRIN I knew, nor the strength I expected. He wields it as though the blood of centuries sharpened his hand…'
She had once known his father. She had fought him, measured his power, and remembered the weight of his Arcem. But now—this son, this wolf with ice-blue eyes—was eclipsing him with every passing breath.
'Stronger… faster… more relentless. This is not the KIRIN I remember. This is something more.'
Adam's voice followed her, cold and unyielding, as if it echoed from the stones themselves:
"Your Arcem enjoys despair, doesn't it? Very well…"
He drew Canvari close, the staff's segments spinning with renewed energy, tracing lines of bluish light in the dust-filled air.
"…I'll give you something to feast on."
And with that, he surged forward again, blinding speed and purpose incarnate.
The spiders retreat faltered. Her panicked leaps backward ceased as her trembling limbs crossed one another in a final act of desperation. Her hands clapped together, and crimson energy flared violently. In an instant, threads spun faster than sight could follow, knitting into a dense lattice that enclosed her like a fortress.
The air groaned under the strain. A cage of blood-red silk surrounded her—a spider's last sanctuary. Her mandibles clicked nervously as she whispered to herself, a tremor betraying her fear.
"This should hold him. At least until I can—"
But her words drowned beneath a single phrase:
"Kirin, Second Fang… Hayalet Adım."
Adam's voice came like a bell tolling judgment.
He vanished.
For a heartbeat, she allowed herself hope. Then her vision shifted. The valley spun, tilting at an impossible angle. The air grew cold, and she felt a dreadful wrongness.
Her body no longer obeyed her.
With dawning horror, she realized she was no longer looking from her body at all—she was staring at it. She saw her own headless form sway upon its slender and spindly legs before collapsing to its knees. Her world tumbled until the ground rushed up to meet her, and she understood: her head was falling.
A wet thud confirmed it.
Adam reappeared behind her, his staff resting lightly against his shoulder as though it were weightless. He looked upon her body without triumph, without relish. His expression was cold, his gaze glacial.
"Impossible…" İpekkan's lips formed the word as air still passed through them. Her mandibles twitched feebly. "Impossible!"
Adam's eyes narrowed. "Rest in peace. Not that you deserve it."
His tone carried neither hatred nor mercy—it was something worse: indifference, the quiet sentence of one who had endured too much to waste passion on monsters.
He turned slightly, preparing to leave. But the sound of movement froze him in place.
The spider's corpse twitched.
Her severed arms jerked, her torso convulsed, her legs scraped the ground in a grotesque parody of life. Then her voice rang out again, shrill and venomous, echoing in the valley with an unnatural distortion.
"How dare you!" she shrieked. "How dare you behead me! I am a Child of Shadow! You have no right to treat me this way!"
Adam's eyes narrowed to slits. A faint unease rippled through his calm. Something was wrong—terribly wrong. Her aura had not faded with her head. If anything, it was swelling, distorting.
Her shrill voice rose higher, weaving between madness and grief.
"This isn't how it was supposed to go! I was supposed to bring honor to my master! You ruined everything!"
Then she screamed, with the desperation of a child crying into the void:
"Big Bro! Help me!"
The words echoed unnaturally, reverberating through the stone walls of the valley.
Adam's heart lurched.
A new presence entered the field. Heavy. Suffocating. Sinister. It pressed down on him like a storm cloud blotting out the sun. He knew this aura. It was not quite The Shadow's—but it was close enough to stir every instinct to readiness.
From the tattoo etched into İpekkan's back, black as ink and pulsing with unholy power, something began to emerge.
The mark stretched, bulged, and then split open, birthing form from darkness. Adam lunged immediately, moving to end it—his staff arcing in a decisive strike aimed to obliterate the twitching body before it could become a vessel.
But just as he reached it, the body vanished. Gone. As if plucked from reality.
A voice spoke softly behind him, a chilling caress that turned Adam's blood cold.
"There, there, little sister."
Adam spun, staff raised, every nerve alight.
And he saw him.
A figure stood where moments ago there had been only air. His upper body bore the shape of a man, broad-shouldered and powerful, but his skin gleamed with an unnatural sheen. His arms ended not in hands but in massive black pincers, each the size of a blade. His lower half was the segmented bulk of a scorpion, armored and gleaming like obsidian under the pale light. The tail arched high above him, curved and poised, venom dripping from its stinger.
In his hand—casually, almost tenderly—he held the spiders severed head.
Calmly, as though the battlefield belonged to him, he stooped and pressed it back onto her body. Flesh knit with unnatural speed, sinew crawling and twisting until her head reattached seamlessly.
Her six eyes fluttered open, glassy with both relief and madness.
The scorpion tracient's voice was disturbingly soft, almost gentle:
"Tell me then, Drakkel… who was it that hurt you again?"
She whimpered like a child, trembling as her restored hands pointed toward Adam. "B-Big Brother… him."
The figure straightened. Slowly, deliberately, his cold, gleaming eyes turned and fixed upon Adam.
The air between them shifted—heavy, electric, like the silence before lightning strikes. Adam tightened his grip on Canvari, his body ready, his mind sharpening to a razor edge.
No words were needed. He knew instinctively—this was no ordinary enemy. The battle with Drakkel had not ended; it had only been the prologue.
A storm greater than the one before was coming.