Raphael darted through the forest, breath sharp, muscles burning with every stride. The scythe in his hands felt like the only solid thing left in a world that had gone sideways. Behind him, the air tore apart with the sound of something unnatural crashing through the trees, fast, hungry, gaining ground with every second.
A roar split the night. Then a crash. Then a voice.
"Raphael, keep running! Don't look back, just run!"
Stubby's twin swords flashed as he sprinted alongside, his eyes wild with something close to panic. Raphael's stomach twisted hard when he caught sight of what was chasing them, thick roots bursting up from the earth, jagged and twisting, snapping at the air like starving animals.
Stubby leapt sideways, barely dodging as a root speared past where his leg had been a heartbeat earlier. He slashed at another on instinct, the blade biting deep into the wood, but it kept coming regardless, as if the cut meant nothing at all. Raphael's pulse hammered in his ears.
There was no time to think it through. He turned and ran harder, lungs burning, heart slamming against his ribs.
Ahead of them, Toru and Gregory stood guard at the tree line. Gregory had his arms crossed, grumbling under his breath. "Why the hell are we stuck out here anyway? Feels like we're just waiting around to."
"Shut up." Toru's sharp gaze swept the forest, every instinct in him lit up and ready.
Then he caught the movement.
His eyes locked onto Raphael sprinting through the trees, something gripped tight in his hands.
"It's him!" Toru barked, already dropping into motion. "Move, now!"
Gregory barely had time to react before Toru dropped from the branch above them, landing in a low crouch, eyes fixed on Raphael's approach.
"Hey, kid! What's with all the."
"RUN!" Raphael's voice cut through the air sharp enough to draw blood.
Gregory frowned, confused. "What."
Then he saw Stubby's face.
The panic there. The pure, unfiltered terror written across it.
"RUN!" Stubby's scream tore raw from his throat, breaking halfway through. Behind him the ground exploded outward, roots thick as a man's arm shooting up and lashing forward in every direction.
Toru froze for half a second, the blood draining from his face. "Oh, shit."
Then he bolted without another word.
Gregory hesitated a beat too long, only for the earth to crack open beneath his boots. He barely managed to leap clear as a root snapped upward, missing him by inches.
"Oh, NO!" The scream ripped out of him as he ran, lungs already straining against the pace. "WHAT THE HELL IS THIS THING?!"
"You don't wanna die, right? THEN SHUT UP AND RUN!" Stubby's voice shook, his breath coming ragged between words.
A sickening crack sounded behind them. A body torn apart somewhere in the chaos. Gregory didn't look back. He couldn't make himself.
Raphael pushed forward, legs burning, until a wall of fire exploded directly in his path. The heat slammed against his face like a physical blow, forcing him back a step.
He spun toward the other direction, only to find a mage materializing right in front of him, blocking that escape too.
The mage's mouth curled into a sneer, eyes gleaming with something cruel. "Hand over the weapon. Running isn't going to change how this ends."
Raphael's grip tightened around the scythe until his knuckles ached. The fire behind him roared louder, but it stayed contained, boxed in, a trap closing around them all. Sweat ran down the side of his face despite the cold night air.
Stubby, Gregory, and Toru skidded to a halt beside him, all three of them panting hard. "We're boxed in," Toru muttered, his eyes darting between the flames and the mage. "There's no way out of this."
A second mage stepped out from the shadows, smirking with the same cruel confidence as the first. "Nowhere left to run, boy. Give us the scythe and we'll let the four of you walk away alive."
Stubby shifted his weight uneasily, glancing between the two mages. "How about we just talk this through? There's got to be a way to."
Toru shot him a hard look. "That's not going to work, and you know it."
The fire mage's finger pointed straight at Raphael. "Hand it over, boy. Last time I'll ask nicely."
Gregory growled under his breath, frustration boiling over. "Just give it to them already! It's not worth dying over!"
Toru ignored him completely. He leaned in close to Stubby instead, voice dropped to barely a whisper. "Take the fire one. I'll handle the other."
Stubby hesitated. "I've never fought a mage before. Not once."
"They're weak up close. Trust me on this."
"With what weapon? I've got swords, not spells."
"Don't worry about it. Just move when I say."
Toru straightened up and suddenly shouted, loud enough for both mages to hear clearly, "Raphael, maybe you should just hand it over already!"
Gregory nodded along fast. "Yeah, you stubborn brat, just give them what they want!"
Raphael didn't move an inch.
Then Toru gave the signal, low and sharp. "Now!"
Stubby lunged forward, both swords flashing in the firelight. Toru scooped a fistful of dirt off the ground and flung it straight into the second mage's face. The mage cursed, momentarily blinded, but recovered fast enough to send a whip of vines cracking across Toru's chest, smashing him into a tree with a sickening crack that echoed through the clearing.
Stubby's blades rang against the fire mage's barrier, flames roaring higher with every strike. Gregory shouted from where he crouched, half hidden. "See what you did, kid?! This is what you wanted!"
Raphael stepped forward anyway, scythe gripped tight in both hands. The earth mage's smirk widened. "Hand it over, or your friend dies right here in front of you."
Raphael hesitated, his arm slowly extending the scythe outward.
Then he spat directly in the mage's face.
The fire mage recoiled in disgust. In the same instant, Raphael moved, slamming the scythe's blunt end into the earth mage's skull with everything he had. Blood splattered across the dirt.
Stubby managed a satisfied smirk at the sight, right before a vine smashed into his chest and launched him hard into a tree trunk. Gregory, desperate now, hurled a dagger toward the fire mage, only for a vine to swat it out of the air like it was nothing. Another strike sent Stubby sprawling across the ground, unmoving.
Raphael leaped toward the fire mage, but the ground trembled violently beneath him. Roots shot upward and wrapped tight around his legs, yanking him off balance. Midair, a tendril slammed hard into his ribs. He crashed down into the dirt, gasping for breath he couldn't quite catch. A sharpened root lunged straight for his throat.
Something yanked him backward at the last second.
Gregory stood in his place instead, the root punching straight through his chest. His body convulsed once, then went completely limp. The root flicked him aside like he weighed nothing at all.
Raphael stared, the world around him blurring at the edges, his pulse roaring loud enough to drown out everything else.
The earth mage laughed, low and mocking. "Should've just handed over the scythe when I asked nicely. Your friend died for absolutely nothing."
Something inside Raphael broke.
His grip on the scythe tightened until his knuckles went bone white. His breath turned ragged, his vision bleeding red at the edges. The air around him seemed to tremble in response, like the world itself had noticed something had shifted.
Slowly, he rose to his feet, every muscle in his body taut with a fury he'd never felt before. When his voice finally came, it was guttural, raw, barely human at all.
"I'LL KILL YOU."
The mage flinched back a full step. Fear twisted across his face. "It can't be. That's not possible."
Raphael took a step forward, and the air around him grew suffocating, monstrous in a way that made the fire crackle louder and the ground itself seem to recoil beneath his feet.
The mage stammered, his voice shaking apart. "Y-you should be extinct. Your kind died out generations ago."
Raphael was a heartbeat away from striking when the temperature dropped sharply, the air turning deathly cold in an instant. A crushing pressure filled the clearing, heavier than any pain he'd ever known, more suffocating than drowning ever could be. A shadowy figure emerged from behind the earth mage, moving with a grace that belonged to something far older than death.
The mage's breath caught in his throat. He spun around, but before he could react, a blackened hand punched straight through his chest from behind. Blood poured from his mouth as his body convulsed violently, his eyes wide with a terror beyond words. "N-no." The word died before he could finish it, his body exploding outward in a gruesome shower of blood and torn flesh.
The fire mage's eyes went wide with pure horror at the sight. His hands shook as he unleashed a desperate wave of flame toward Stubby, sending him crashing hard into the trees. Then he turned and ran, not bothering to look back.
A deep, bone-chilling laugh rolled through the clearing.
"Khahahaha. Running?" The shadowy figure tilted its head slightly, amusement dripping from every word. "How adorable."
The fire mage collapsed to his knees mid stride, his whole body trembling beyond his own control. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't think past the wall of terror pressing down on him. His soul felt like it was being crushed slowly, drowning in something with no bottom.
Raphael staggered where he stood, his fury momentarily buried beneath the sheer weight of the figure's presence. His heart pounded hard against his ribs, but he clenched his fists anyway, refusing to let himself yield to it.
The figure walked past Raphael without a glance, as if he were nothing more than dust on the ground. It knelt beside the earth mage's remains and picked up the fallen scythe, its fingers brushing against the dark blade almost gently. The cloth wrapped around it fell away, revealing something ethereal and twisted, beautiful in a way that made the air around it darken further.
"You shouldn't be found just yet," the figure said, its voice calm, though it cut deeper than any blade could.
Raphael moved to attack, driven by instinct more than sense, but before he could close the distance, a tendril of shadow shot forward and pierced straight into him. Agony unlike anything he'd ever known exploded through his entire body. He screamed, his vision blurring as the weight of the figure's presence swallowed him whole. His knees buckled beneath him, and darkness pulled him under.
Stubby groaned, stumbling out from the tree line, his whole body aching from the impact. His heart clenched hard at the sight of Raphael collapsed on the ground. Every instinct in him screamed to run, but his legs refused to obey.
The shadowy figure turned its head toward him and smiled.
A smile so wrong, so far beyond anything human, that Stubby's mind whispered a single horrifying truth.
Death would be mercy compared to whatever this is.
"What." Stubby forced the words out, his voice barely recognizable as his own. "What did you do to the kid?"
The figure chuckled, low and almost fond.
"Nothing he won't survive," it mused, its tone edging toward playful. "Yet."
Then, with one final echoing laugh, "Khahahaha," it vanished into the dark, the scythe disappearing along with it.
Stubby let out a shaking breath, only just now realizing he'd been holding it the whole time. The crushing weight lifted from the air around him, but the damage was already done.
The fire mage was gone. Fled into the trees.
Gregory's body lay still in the dirt, his eyes open and empty, staring at nothing at all.
And Raphael.
Stubby swallowed hard and knelt down beside him, his hands trembling as the weight of failure settled over him, heavier than the shadow's presence had ever been.
The clash of steel rang out across the clearing like something tolling for the dead. The boss swung his blade with everything he had left in him, but his movements had slowed considerably, each strike costing more than the last. Blood dripped steadily from the gash in his side, soaking through his clothes, but he refused to let himself falter. Zephyr, by contrast, remained completely untouched, dodging each attack with an ease that bordered on outright mockery, his own sword barely needing to move to turn aside the boss's blows.
Zephyr sidestepped another desperate swing and drove his fist hard into the boss's gut. The force sent him staggering backward, coughing up a mouthful of blood.
"You're finished," Zephyr said, his tone flat and unbothered. "Look at you. You can barely keep standing."
The boss spat blood into the dirt, his eyes still burning with defiance despite everything. "I don't care." He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, shifting his stance to find whatever footing he had left. "Even if it's the last thing I do, I'm cutting you down."
Zephyr tilted his head slightly, something close to genuine respect flickering behind his eyes for just a moment. "Commendable. But foolish, all the same."
He moved. The boss barely registered the speed of it before a boot slammed into his chest and launched him backward through the air. He crashed against a tree hard enough to split the bark on impact. His vision swam, his grip loosening around the hilt of his weapon almost against his will. Zephyr approached at an unhurried pace, raising his sword for what looked like the final blow.
Then he froze.
His whole body locked up mid stride, his face twisting into something that had never once marred his expression before tonight. His breath caught hard in his throat. His pupils shrank to nothing.
No.
It can't be.
Death himself.
The boss, despite the pain radiating through every part of him, noticed the change immediately. He blinked, confusion cutting through the haze of agony as he watched Zephyr's entire being recoil from something unseen, something that wasn't even there in the clearing with them. The cold, arrogant man standing over him had gone rigid with something dangerously close to fear.
And just as fast as it had come, the moment passed. Zephyr exhaled slowly, his body loosening back into its usual ease. The mask of control slid back into place, his smirk returning like nothing had happened at all. He turned back toward the boss, his voice regaining its usual unshaken composure.
"It seems my men have failed me tonight."
The boss gritted his teeth against the pain, forcing the words out. "What the hell are you even talking about?"
Zephyr's smirk widened further. "You've won." He said it like the outcome meant nothing to him either way. "But not here. Not like this. I've simply lost interest in finishing it."
The boss growled low in his throat, forcing himself back up onto unsteady legs. "You're not walking away from this."
Zephyr's next words cut into him sharper than any blade could have managed.
"Even with my men gone, you won't have time to celebrate any of this." His voice dropped low, turning into something that carried far more weight than a shout ever could. "Because that beast behind you. It isn't finished yet."
The boss turned, his breath catching hard as the massive form of the minotaur stirred back to life behind him. A beast that should have already been dead. A beast that simply refused to fall no matter what had been done to it.
Zephyr let out a low, dark chuckle. "You see? I don't need to kill you myself. It'll wipe you out well enough on its own."
The boss's fists clenched hard at his sides, fury boiling beneath the exhaustion weighing down every limb.
Zephyr stepped toward the minotaur and placed a hand against its thick hide. The beast didn't resist him in the slightest, simply obeying without hesitation. His eyes flicked back to the boss, his smirk deepening further.
"Don't worry," he said, his tone mockingly gentle. "If we happen to meet again, try to be stronger next time. This was rather boring."
Then, with a single snap of his fingers, both Zephyr and the minotaur vanished into nothing, leaving only silence behind.
The boss stood there a long moment, his chest rising and falling hard. His knees buckled beneath him, his weapon slipping from fingers that no longer had the strength to hold it. He pressed his fists into the dirt, shaking with a frustration that had nowhere left to go.
The battle was over.
But it didn't feel anything close to a victory.