Location: Valley of Mount Pire | Year: 7002 A.A
The valley of Mount Pire had become something closer to a graveyard than a battlefield. Its steep walls, once clothed in green life and echoing with the music of mountain streams, now bore the blackened scars of war. The air itself had grown heavy and corrupted, steeped in smoke, scorched stone, and the acrid tang of venom that seemed to cling to every breath. Even the mountain winds, which should have carried freshness and clarity, felt sluggish—as though they too recoiled from the dark presence that had gathered there.
Adam stood alone amid this ruin, his staff held firm in his hands though his chest rose and fell in ragged cadence. His blue eyes, so often a mirror of calm seas, were now the cold surface of frozen lakes—hard, unreadable, but with storms moving beneath. He was exhausted, yes, but not broken. To falter now was to invite the shadow's triumph, and that he could not allow.
Before him stood the Children of Shadow, siblings bound not by love alone but by something more insidious, something woven into their very being. Drakkel, the spider, clung to her brother's armored side as though she had always belonged there, her earlier wailing vanishing like mist in sunlight, replaced by a manic glee that twisted her features into something grotesque. Her mandibles clicked in laughter as she mocked Adam, reveling in his weariness.
"Arajhan!!!" she whined, her shrill voice scraping through the poisoned air like nails upon stone. "You are so mean! You let him bully me before you came out!!"
Her tone was childlike, almost mocking the innocence of children, but her eyes betrayed nothing but cruelty.
Arajhan, towering beside her, received her complaint with an unnatural tenderness. His scorpion tail, gleaming and segmented with dreadful precision, coiled around her in a gesture both protective and possessive. He held her close, his pincer resting lightly against her shoulder as though comforting her.
"There, there, little sister," he murmured, his voice disturbingly soft, more suited for a lullaby than a battlefield drenched in blood. "You know I only answer when you ask me to. I must admit, though…"
He lifted his gaze then, shifting it from his sister to Adam, and the warmth of his words curdled into cold malice. His eyes, sharp as obsidian, carried the calculation of a predator long practiced in waiting for the perfect moment to strike.
"…It's been a very long time since I've heard you cry like that."
The words sent a subtle chill through the broken air, as though even the valley recognized the venom beneath them.
Drakkel turned her gaze back to Adam, her lips curving in a smile that was no smile at all. "You can tell, can't you, brother?"
Arajhan nodded slowly, as if savoring each word. His calm was almost more terrifying than his rage could ever have been. "Yes. #3."
The number itself was a sentence, spoken like the toll of a funeral bell. "Well," he added, his voice low and almost amused, "aren't I lucky."
He tilted his head, studying Adam in silence for a moment, before his expression darkened like a gathering storm. When he spoke again, the softness had vanished, replaced with a tone that weighed like stone.
"I remember fighting a wolf tracient who bore the same necklace and carried the same mana as you… He was Hazël #2 back then."
The name, though unspoken, hung between them like a shadow—Adam's father.
Adam's eyes narrowed, though his face betrayed no more than that. His body stood firm, unflinching, but within, his thoughts stormed and collided.
'So… that's how it is. He came from her back, her tattoo—a living tether between them. She survived even after her head was severed. They are more than siblings; they are one existence, bound together in a way that defies the laws of death. A joint existence? No… something darker. Something designed to cheat the natural end.'
The thought pressed down on him with terrible clarity. The longer he gazed upon them, the more certain he became that what stood before him was no ordinary foe. These two were not simply fighters who happened to share blood. They were designed to be an entwined nightmare, reflections of the Shadow's cruelty.
'If even death cannot sever their bond… how do I face them both?'
Arajhan tilted his head, the motion insect-like, deliberate, and unsettling. His eyes, black pools with faint glimmers of cruel amusement, studied Adam in silence for a breath longer than comfort allowed. When he spoke, the words slithered into the air like venom through a wound.
"You are a rude one, aren't you? Never mind. Your identity doesn't matter."
His aura flared suddenly, a tidal wave of pressure that rolled outward from his body. The valley itself groaned beneath the force—jagged stones crumbled into dust, fissures split open across the cracked earth, and the suffocating atmosphere thickened until it felt like a physical weight pressing upon the chest.
And yet Adam stood firm. His boots dug into the broken soil, shoulders square, his staff resting against his grip with the ease of long familiarity. He did not tremble, though the oppressive aura gnawed at his lungs and whispered to his body that it should bow.
For a moment, silence held. The only sound was the slow crumble of rocks giving way under the scorpion's power. Then Arajhan's voice cut through that silence, low and deceptively calm.
"Why did you hurt my little sister?"
There was no shouting, no wrathful roar. The calmness itself carried the menace, as though Arajhan's rage was so absolute it needed no volume. His tail arched lazily above him, its stinger glinting with a venomous sheen.
Adam's reply came cold and steady, the steel of his voice echoing across the ruined valley.
"Look around you."
He lifted his staff slightly, pointing toward the broken forms scattered across the battlefield—the bodies of his men. Their once bright armor was dulled by dust and blood, their faces frozen in the stillness of death.
"The bodies you see are my men—soldiers who fought for our cause, men under my command." His voice grew heavier, each word shaped by grief held at bay. "Your sister killed them all because she thought it was 'fun.' That is unforgivable."
Arajhan did not even glance at the corpses. To him, they were not men, not individuals with stories or homes or loved ones. They were scenery, discarded pieces in a game his sister chose to play.
"If she says it's fun, then it's fun," he answered flatly, his unwavering tone carrying the certainty of something carved into stone. "That is not a good enough reason to harm her."
The words chilled the air more than the venom in his stinger. For Arajhan, morality was irrelevant. Only blood—his blood, his family—was sacred. Everything else was dust.
Adam exhaled slowly, a sound that was half sigh, half the measured breath of one steadying himself against despair. His eyes did not waver, though a shadow flickered in their depths.
'There it is again—the arrogance of the Shadow's children. They think life bends to their whims, that suffering is entertainment. They cannot imagine grief because they do not allow themselves to feel it. To them, joy is cruelty, and cruelty is joy.'
The sight of his fallen comrades rose before him with brutal clarity. He remembered their laughter on cold mornings when the fires were lit, their murmured prayers before marching into battle, the way they had followed his orders not out of fear but trust. Men of flesh, bone, and heart—each with names and families who would never see them again.
'How many of them had I promised would return? How many believed in me more than they believed in themselves? And now, because of her, they are corpses strung like puppets, stripped of even the dignity of their deaths.'
He clenched his grip on Canvari until his knuckles whitened. Guilt pressed at him with merciless weight, but he forced it aside. Guilt would weaken him. Resolve was what his men deserved now.
"I didn't expect you to understand," Adam said at last, his tone even, almost weary. The sigh that had escaped earlier now echoed in the words. "You're protecting your family, and I'm protecting mine."
There it was, the truth that bound them and separated them. Both stood for their kin. But where Arajhan's definition of family began and ended with blood, Adam's was broader, deeper—the wolf's creed. His soldiers were more than comrades; they were brothers. His people, more than subjects; they were kin. To him, family was not just blood, but bond.
'That is why I cannot falter. Wolves do not abandon their pack, living or dead.'
The valley seemed to hold its breath, as though even the broken stones awaited Arajhan's reply.
A slow gleam lit the scorpion tracient's eyes. It was not warmth, nor admiration, but malice sharpened into something almost playful. His lips curled in the faintest of smiles.
"Then you understand," he said softly, almost as though in praise. "You'll have to pay for touching her."
The words slithered across the valley like the promise of an executioner. His aura swelled further, rolling in waves that pressed upon the earth and rattled the bones of the fallen. The ground beneath his feet cracked again, sending up small clouds of dust that drifted like smoke.
Drakkel giggled, her six eyes shining with manic delight, the twitch of her threads betraying her giddy anticipation. They writhed above her like crimson serpents, vibrating with hunger.
"Arajhan!" she cried, stamping her clawed feet into the cracked soil like a spoiled child demanding attention. "Ipekkan wants revenge!"
The scorpion tracient's expression softened in an uncanny way, as if indulging a younger sibling's whim. He tilted his head, voice low and indulgent.
"Oh? Are you sure, little sister?"
"Yes, brother!" she chirped with unholy cheer, her fangs glinting in the faint light.
Arajhan's lips curved into a slow, sinister smile. "Well then… it can't be helped."
The air seemed to freeze. A faint glow stirred on Arajhan's chest, a symbol etched in light, old as the mountains yet alien to the valley. At the same moment, an identical mark seared itself into being upon Drakkel's forehead. The glow pulsed once, then steadied, binding the siblings in a strange rhythm, as if two hearts had begun to beat as one.
Adam's eyes narrowed. His voice did not rise, but a flicker of recognition betrayed the steel mask of his face.
'That symbol… the Crest of the White Fox clan?'
Arajhan lowered his head slightly, his voice dropping into a whisper that seemed to ripple unnaturally through the valley.
"Fısıltı…"
The single word carried, not by sound, but by intent. It passed beyond the valley, across the scarred ridges of Mount Pire, over rivers and shadowed forests, until it sank into the far reaches of Narn.
The Shadow stirred.
From beneath his hood, a faint glow shimmered—a tear drop shaped pendant at his breast, its cold light responding to the whisper. The Shadow let out a low grunt, not surprise, not anger—merely acknowledgment, like a master noting the movement of a piece on a game board.
Jarik, ever watchful at his side, tilted his head, his serpent-like smile widening. "Oh? Is something interesting happening, master?"
But The Shadow did not answer. Words were wasted on what the faithful could not yet comprehend.
Yet the silence was not empty. The other presence with them, shapeless, save for eyes that gleamed with unending hunger—shifted. Its gaze turned outward, peering across leagues of stone and shadow, toward the valley where Adam faced the siblings.
The battle was no longer a mere clash of wills. It was being watched.
______________________________
Back in the valley, the shift was immediate. The very air quivered as Drakkel's crimson threads darkened, turning a grotesque, pulsating purple, streaked with veins of glowing scarlet. They no longer twitched with childish glee but moved with deliberate, unnatural rhythm, as though guided by something older and far more sinister.
The atmosphere thickened, oppressive, suffocating. Each breath Adam drew felt as if it carried weights upon his chest. His boots sank slightly into the soil, not from his own fatigue, but from the sheer density of the aura pressing down upon him.
Drakkel threw her head back and squealed with unrestrained delight. "Ah… it's been so long since Ipekkan has been this free!"
The joy in her voice was not human—it was madness incarnate, the ecstasy of one unshackled from restraint, who found rapture not in life, but in destruction.
Beside her, Arajhan's tail rose high, its armored segments grinding against one another, until with a resounding crack it drove into the earth. The ground splintered outward from the impact, stones leaping into the air before turning to dust.
"Well then," he declared, his voice no longer indulgent but formal, cold as the ringing of a judge's gavel, "Son of Abel Kurt. As #3 among us Hazëls and by warriors creed, it would be disrespectful to hold back against you."
The air trembled violently, the pressure crashing over Adam in suffocating waves. His muscles tensed instinctively, his every breath threatened by the invisible grip of their shared aura. His grip on Canvari tightened, the the staff groaning faintly under his strength.
'So this is it,' he thought grimly. 'The Arya of the Fox…'
The fox clan had been masters of deception, but this was no mere trickery. This was transfiguration—two wills merged, two powers doubled, bound in a cruel symphony.
The realization gnawed at him. Even alone, either of them was deadly. But together—like this… their strength multiplies. No… it twists, as though the Shadow himself feeds them from afar.
Before Adam could fully comprehend the strange mark that had bound the siblings, movement shattered his thoughts. Arajhan's massive tail lashed forward with lethal speed, a blur of armored chitin glinting with venomous sheen.
Adam's instincts screamed. He twisted aside just in time, the sting of displaced wind grazing his cheek. The strike did not miss its mark—it merely changed its victim. The valley wall behind him erupted in a thunderous roar, stone pulverized into dust and rubble as though the mountain itself had been struck by a titan's hammer.
The force rattled through Adam's bones. For the briefest moment, he allowed himself the cold acknowledgment: 'That would have pierced me clean through. If I slow, even by a fraction, I will not survive.'
Arajhan's voice cut through the settling dust, smooth, deliberate, but with mockery dripping from every syllable.
"I must commend your Arcem. Even with the vast gap in our power, you can still keep up. But of course you can. You wolves have always been stubborn—always growing, always sharpening. Yes… with every passing second, you draw nearer to the beast you're meant to be."
He tilted his head slightly, his scorpion eyes narrowing with cruel remembrance. "But I have faced Kirin before…"
The words carried weight, pressing upon Adam like another aura. He fought one who carried my bloodline… perhaps even my father himself. The thought was both warning and reminder: he was not the first Wolf to walk this path. And the last had not triumphed.
Without waiting for further exchange, Arajhan raised both his clawed arms high, his voice reverberating with a command that seemed to call the very venom of creation itself.
"Akrep Zehri: Predator's Arena."
The ground trembled. The air thickened. Then, like a black wound tearing open across the sky, a dome began to unfurl. It stretched higher and higher until it dwarfed even the jagged spires of Mount Pire, its surface glowing with a sickly green luminescence.
The dome closed with finality, the valley swallowed in its unholy light. A muffled silence fell, as though the outside world had ceased to exist.
Adam's heart jolted—instinctively, he tried to teleport, forcing his mana outward in sharp currents. His form shimmered faintly, but… nothing. No shift, no slip through space. The mana dissolved into the air like rain striking sand.
He froze.
"No…"
Arajhan's grin widened, every tooth glinting with satisfaction. "Now you understand. There is no escape. Imagine this arena as a pocket dimension, a universe of my own making. You cannot step between universes, can you?"
His words echoed with sinister delight, but underneath lay a dreadful truth. Adam's blood chilled as the realization rooted deeper. 'A pocket dimension… he commands a realm of his own?'
For a moment, the dome's surface shimmered, revealing glimpses of void beyond, a swirling emptiness of venomous green and endless dark. A world built to hunt.
Adam steadied his breath, his chest rising and falling in disciplined rhythm. His mind turned quickly, faster than his fear would allow.
'He has trapped me in a cage of his own design. Everything here will bend to his advantage—the air, the ground, the light itself. The Predator's Arena… it is not just a battlefield. It is a snare.'
The wolf's instinct within him growled, a primal voice urging him to rage, to bite, to tear until even walls of venom gave way. Yet another voice—his father's, a voice which should be foreign to him—cut through the storm of instinct.
'Patience, Adam. A wolf that throws itself at bars only bloodies its own snout. Study the cage. Find the weakness.'
The pressure around him grew heavier, pressing on his shoulders as though unseen hands tried to force him to his knees. He resisted, not with pride, but with duty. His soldiers' bodies still lay in this desecrated valley. To falter now would be to betray their memory.
Drakkel's shrill laughter pierced the poisoned silence, her threads spilling from her fingers like rivers of living crimson. Within moments, the dome was no longer an empty cage but a labyrinth of webs—each line quivering with lethal intent, each thread a noose.
Adam wove between them, his staff flashing, his body twisting with instinctive precision. Every strike he parried, every whip of thread he cut away felt like delaying the inevitable tide. And all the while, from the opposite flank, Arajhan's brute force crashed against him—each pincer strike, each pounding tail, each venomous blow a hammer threatening to shatter his ribs.
The battle became a storm of unrelenting pressure. Adam moved, always a fraction late, always a step too slow. He could not strike with his full intent, not yet—not while his mind calculated the siblings' joint existence. Every dodge, every deflection came at a cost, and that cost was mounting.
Then came the falter. His vision blurred as though a veil had been cast across his eyes. His limbs felt weighted, as though chains bound them. His heart staggered in his chest, and a hot, bitter taste rose in his mouth.
He coughed. Blood spilled between his lips.
Arajhan's scorpion tail thundered into his abdomen before he could recover, the blow sinking deep. The pain was fire and iron, radiating outward with venomous burn. Adam's body folded under the strike and launched skyward, crashing through one of valley walls that splintered like dry bone beneath the force.
The crash silenced even the echo of Drakkel's threads. For a moment, Adam lay amidst shattered stone, his body heaving with uneven breaths. Each inhale was agony, his ribs grinding against themselves like broken glass.
He forced himself upright, one trembling hand pressed to his side. His other hand clutched Canvari, grounding himself, refusing to let it go even as blood dripped from his lips onto the pale rocks.
Arajhan's calm, mocking voice slithered across the battlefield.
"You must be wondering what's happening to you."
He stepped forward, the ground cracking beneath his armored limbs. His words were as clinical as they were cruel. "My sister's threads, my venom, and the very air within this arena—they are one. They corrode your body, and they gnaw at your mana. Every breath you take is another chain. Every heartbeat another nail in your coffin."
His pincer flexed with quiet menace. "There is no escape."
Adam's breathing came shallow and uneven. He steadied himself with slow deliberation, forcing his legs to bear the weight of his battered frame. His thoughts, though clouded, sharpened in defiance.
'So that's it. The air itself is their weapon. Their corruption is not separate, but shared. The web, the venom, even the breath in my lungs—one life, split between two forms. The Shadow has bound them to each other, feeding power through unity.'
His mind pieced the puzzle together through the haze of pain. A joint existence. A binding curse and gift.
He raised his gaze, blood streaking down his chin, and spoke aloud, his voice hoarse but unyielding.
"So… The Shadow gave you this power. You and your sister share your strength, making you reliant on each other. As long as one of you lives, the other cannot die."
Arajhan's smirk deepened, unbothered, almost pleased. "Nice deduction. But it won't help you."
Adam's lips curled faintly into the ghost of a smile, defiant even as blood painted his teeth. "Maybe not. But I can make sure she doesn't move again."
And in that instant, his form flickered.
The wolf reappeared behind Drakkel, staff raised high, aimed with lethal precision at her throat. The movement was clean, faster than thought, a flash of wolfish cunning unleashed in the poisoned cage.
But Arajhan was no passive brother. His voice cut like steel.
"Do not underestimate me."
Before Adam's strike could fall, the air shuddered with a violent barrage. A swarm of scorpion tails—illusions, or perhaps extensions of his will—lashed from all directions. Drakkel's threads joined them, weaving and cutting in murderous tandem. The combined assault was overwhelming.
Adam tried to push through, but even his glowing aura faltered beneath the storm. Webs cut into his arms, drawing deep crimson lines. A pincer slammed into his ribs, tearing another scream of pain from his body. The tails lashed across his back, shredding skin and cloth alike. He was flung backward, his strike undone, his resolve punished by raw force.
Above them, shadows twisted. A colossal silhouette of a scorpion loomed, its monstrous form dwarfing the siblings themselves. Its presence pressed down on the battlefield like a god of venom, suffocating, undeniable.
The arena itself seemed to bow to their unity. Brother and sister stood as one, the scorpion looming behind them—a terrible trinity of predator, prey, and poisoned world.
Adam's knees buckled. He fell forward, one hand bracing against the blood-slick ground, the other clinging weakly to his staff. His chest heaved, every breath shallow. Blood pooled beneath him, dark against the green glow of the dome.
His vision dimmed, the arena spinning around him, the webs blurring into indistinct streaks. His mana flickered weakly, its once-blazing light now sputtering like a dying flame.
Arajhan's voice cut through his haze, merciless and heavy as iron.
"Pathetic. You couldn't even draw out Kirin's full power."
He took a step closer, his shadow falling across Adam's crumpled form. His words dripped with disdain, yet also with memory.
"Your father almost defeated me years ago. He had the makings of a true and respectable warrior"
The memory of Abel's fight seemed to hang in the poisoned air—a phantom duel that had scarred him long before this day. Arajhan's eyes gleamed with cruel amusement.
"What a disappointment."
"Brother!" Drakkel whined, her sharp voice cutting through the poisoned silence like a rusted blade. Her threads quivered and danced, each strand restless with malice. "Before we kill him, I want to kill that goat over there. He insulted me!"
Her many eyes glinted with cruel delight as they landed upon Karadir's unconscious body lying on the jagged ground, helpless, defenseless, utterly unaware of the fate that her childish cruelty now promised.
Arajhan, ever composed, simply lifted one armored hand and gestured lazily. "Do as you please, sister."
His tone was casual, but in its carelessness was cruelty. To him, if Drakkel wasn't happy, he would let every other thing happen.
Drakkel's lips curled into a venomous grin. "Then watch, little wolf," she purred, threads snapping into motion, streaking toward Karadir like fangs unleashed.
"No…" Adam's voice broke the tension, ragged and thin as a dying ember. He was on his knees, blood soaking into the stone beneath him, his body trembling with weakness. His lips were pale, his breaths shallow, yet his eyes—faint though they burned—remained fixed upon Karadir.
"No… Don't… touch him." The words rasped out, strained and fragile.
Drakkel laughed, her threads quivering with excitement, each strand weaving closer and closer to the helpless body of the goat.
"Watch me break that promise, little wolf. Watch me show you what happens when you fail."
The threads drew near—closer, closer—each strand humming with power, each one a death sentence drawn taut.
Adam's chest heaved. His heart thundered not with fear for himself, but with a storm of grief and fury for another. His body was failing, his mana flickering, his vision dimming—yet in that moment, something deeper stirred within him.
"NOOOOOOOOOOO!"
The cry tore itself from his throat, raw and unrestrained, echoing through the poisoned dome like the howl of a wolf at its most desperate.
And then—something snapped.
It was as if chains, long hidden within his soul, shattered in an instant.
The very ground trembled violently, cracks splitting across the scorched stone floor of the arena. The webs Drakkel had so gleefully woven quivered, snapping one by one, unable to withstand the force that now erupted from the heart of the wolf.
A violent storm of wind and radiant blue light burst forth from Adam's body, a tidal wave of power unleashed without restraint.
The oppressive air that had suffocated him only moments before was swept away, shattered by a surge of energy so pure, so overwhelming, that even the walls of Arajhan's constructed universe groaned and shook under its pressure.
Drakkel shrieked in sudden terror, her threads recoiling instinctively, withdrawing from Karadir as though burned by the sheer presence of the power that now radiated from Adam. Her once-giddy malice was drowned in fear; her many eyes widened, trembling at the storm that threatened to consume her.
"Brother!" she cried, her voice no longer mocking, but frightened, desperate.
Arajhan, who until now had stood unshaken, felt the tremor of fear gnaw at his composure. His armored frame shifted as he planted his feet against the storm, his scorpion tail bracing against the stone to keep him from being swept away.
His cold, calculating eyes widened, betraying—for the first time—a flicker of disbelief.
"What… sort of mana is this?" His words, though whispered, carried the weight of a predator suddenly confronted by something greater than himself.
The storm howled, rattling the very dome of the Predator's Arena. The blue light pulsed with every heartbeat of the wolf, growing brighter, fiercer, refusing to be contained.