Inside the small, dimly lit hut, Zay, Kazren, Lily, and Renzo sat around the wooden table, caught in yet another game of Blades & Crowns. The flickering lantern above cast wavering shadows against the walls as the sky beyond darkened. Evening passed, and the moon began its slow, steady rise. Clouds peeled away, revealing a starlit night, stretching endlessly above them.
A howl.
Not just a sound, but a force. A distorted, guttural wail ripped through the night, carrying across the vast landscape. The air itself trembled as if recoiling from the sheer weight of it.
Near Hollowshade Spires, hundreds of screams erupted all at once. Agonized. Terrified. The cries of people who knew death had come for them.
Zay's breath caught in his throat. His fingers, resting on the edge of the table, twitched. His skin ran cold.
He knew that howl. It was a sound that has haunted him for... countless years.
Slowly, he exhaled through gritted teeth, his chest rising and falling unevenly. His hands curled into fists as his gaze flicked toward Kazren.
"…This howl." His voice was quieter than usual—measured, restrained. But his eyes—his eyes held something dangerous. "Tonight... will be… hell."
He stood abruptly. The wooden chair scraped harshly against the floor as he snatched the four katanas from the row of them. He tossed one to Kazren, then another to Renzo and the last one to Lily. His movements were sharp, and urgent.
"Whatever you do," he said, his voice laced with an unmistakable edge, "and I will make myself so damn clear—do not leave this hut."
Renzo opened his mouth, but Zay cut him off.
"Get on the floor. Now. Under the table, under the bed, I don't give a damn. Just stay low and stay the fuck inside."
Something in his tone sent a cold jolt through all of them. They had seen Zay serious before. They had seen him angry. But this?
This was fear, anger, mixed with a sort of desperation they saw creeping from him
Lily and Renzo scrambled to the ground, pressing themselves as low as possible. Kazren joined them on the floor, slowly getting on the floor.
Renzo swallowed, his body tense. "What… was that sound?"
Zay didn't answer at first. His knuckles turned white against the hilt of his katana, his other hand curling into a trembling fist. The breath he took was shallow, ragged.
Then, without looking at them, "Something you don't—and I mean don't—ever fucking want to run into."
And for the first time in this life, sweat drenched his entire face and it wasn't because of training this time. His body locked up slightly as he felt something he hadn't felt for well over four-hundred life times. Fear.
His breathing grew heavier, chest rising and falling in sharp, uneven motions.
"If that… beast finds us," he continued, his voice shaking and cracking, "there's no fucking way we win. Kazren doesn't have a Seal. Even if he did… I've tried to avoid this thing constantly. No matter what."
His last words came out in a near whisper. A confession of sorts.
Lily, her breath shallow, hesitated before speaking. "W-what do you mean by constantly?"
Zay didn't even realize he had said that aloud. His mouth snapped shut. His heart pounded so hard it hurt.
His aura ignited around him in a violent surge, making his long hair sway wildly as if caught in a storm. His eyes gleamed with something, something unshaken despite the fear rattling in his bones.
"It's nothing," he said sharply. "Stay here. DO NOT LEAVE."
For the first time in his siblings lives, they saw Zay with a look beyond seriousness, a look of someone who knew death was was the only option outside of that door.
Then, gulping hard, he wiped the sweat from his face, inhaled deep, and forced his body to move.
He reached the door, opened it, and walked out into the night.
The air outside was thick, charged with something unnatural. The wind had died completely. No insects, no rustling trees. Just silence. The kind that wrapped around the throat like a noose.
Zay's boots crushed into the dirt as he stepped toward the cliff's edge. His eyes locked onto the direction of Hollowshade Spires.
Suddenly, another howl erupted.
It was closer. The tree line trembled as if something massive had moved through it.
Zay clenched his jaw, breathing deeply through his nose. Even now, his stomach twisted violently. He reached up, tying his hair back into a long ponytail. His fingers were steady. His pulse was not.
His voice came out barely above a whisper.
"Cursed Dreadfang, Ashgrave."
Even saying its name sent a chill through his blood.
His fingers curled tighter around the hilt of his blade, muscles tense, heart pounding like a war drum.
"I never…" His voice faltered for half a second. His grip tightening around the hilt of the katana. "I never wanted to fight this bastard. How the fuck is it here? Why is it here?"
Zay closed his eyes, inhaling deeply, forcing his nerves to steady.
'It doesn't matter when I fight this beast... With Ronald, it was better to kill him when I did. But this? This is something else.'
He had killed Ashgrave before. Many times. And every single time he actually won, it had been a fight that nearly killed him.
Zay swallowed the dread rising in his throat. There was no avoiding it this time.
Tonight…
Tonight, he would be forced to face a beast—no, a nightmare—one that had haunted him across every life he had lived through, an unrelenting form of death that refused to be forgotten no matter how hard he tried to push the nightmare away from memory.
Zay stood atop the rugged mountain ridge, his black loose short-sleeve shirt rippling slightly in the cold wind. The wind carried the scent of damp earth and pine, rustling the dense canopy of trees below. Their leaves, darkened by the night, shimmered faintly beneath the pale glow of the moon. Some clung desperately to their branches, while others drifted downward, carried by the same unseen force that now brushed against Zay's skin.
He exhaled slowly, mist escaping his lips and curling into the air before vanishing. The silence of the mountain was deceptive—nature held its breath, the usual chorus of insects and distant wildlife absent.
"I guess I can't outrun my fears forever, huh?" Zay murmured, his voice barely above a whisper.
He reached down, securing his katana at his waist, fingers brushing against the cool metal of its sheath. Rolling his shoulders, he cracked his knuckles, each pop echoing faintly. A slow stretch followed, his muscles tensing and then relaxing as his breathing steadied, controlled. His amethyst-colored eyes narrowed, sharpening as they adjusted to the darkness. And then—there it was.
A monstrous silhouette moved through the forest below. A beast, towering taller than the trees, its midnight-black fur rippling like liquid as it passed beneath the moonlight. The leaves trembled, and the ground shook from every step it took. The underbrush parted for its massive frame. Even at this distance, Zay could make out the fresh remnants of flesh caught between its jagged fangs.
His grip tightened over the hilt of his sword.
"I always knew it would always be this way," he muttered to himself, a bitter chuckle escaping his lips. "One way or another, it's always us two... meeting head-on."
Violet aura ignited around him, flaring like spectral flames. His amethyst eyes gleamed with its glow, a stark contrast to the encroaching darkness around him.
Without another thought, Zay leaped from the mountaintop.
The wind howled past him as he descended, twisting his body mid-air with effortless control. The ground rushed toward him, but his landing was perfect—feet planting firmly against the earth with a loud crashing sound.
Zay laughed loudly, placing his hand over his face, a smile crossing his lips.
"Why... why do I feel... alive? For the first time in... how long? I've lost count. This... I'm ambivalent about this... quite tremendously."
His hand dropped into a clenched fist. Exhaling deeply, his smile vanished. He grabbed the sheath from his waist, and took out from his waist and held it in his left hand as he made his way toward the beast.
Ashgrave's black aura surged, howling like a beast of death. The ground trembled beneath its massive legs as its snout flared, catching Zay's scent. Its eyes, glowing like molten onyx, locked onto him—an unrelenting hunger driving its charge.
With a single push, the beast launched forward, tearing through the earth in its wake. Zay barely had time to adjust before it was upon him.
The first strike came like lightning. Ashgrave's claws carved through the air, a blur that split stones apart. Zay twisted at the last possible moment, his body slipping just beneath the lethal arc of its claws. His boots skidded across the rain-soaked dirt, mud spraying as he barely maintained his footing.
He retaliated in an instant. His right hand shot over to his left as he unsheathed the blade, sheath falling into the soaked dirt, he drove its steel edge into the beast's ribcage. The impact sent a shockwave through his arm, bones rattling from the sheer force. But Ashgrave didn't recoil. It thrived in close quarters.
Ashgrave howled, a guttural, abyssal sound that reverberated through the sky. Jagged spears of lightning cascading down in blinding torrents. Trees exploded into cinders, their leaves disintegrated before they even touched the ground. The air itself reeked of ozone and burning bark.
Zay's feet barely touched the earth before he was forced to swerve, twist, and evade—his body weaving between the heavy bombardment as if dancing with death itself. The lightning shot out randomly against the ground, shrieking past him with deafening force. The aftershocks alone sent gales of wind slashing across his skin, slicing through his shirt like invisible blades.
Then came the claw.
A monstrous appendage, black as the void and wreathed in spectral mist, descended like an avalanche. The sheer velocity of its strike sent a shockwave tearing through the ground, uprooting trees, splitting the earth. It was unstoppable.
Zay's katana flashed upward, violet aura surging through the blade's edge in a desperate bid to parry the cataclysmic force. He pivoted, barely sidestepping the full brunt of the beast's titanic paw—but one single claw found its mark.
The world blurred. His blade screeched under the pressure, and his entire form crashed onto his knees. A strangled gasp left his lips as his bones groaned—his very essence buckling beneath the sheer magnitude of a single claw's weight. His fingers nearly snapped against the hilt of his katana. A fraction of a second slower, and he would've been reduced to a scarlet smear upon the battlefield.
A second heartbeat thundered through his body—not of flesh, but of aura. His veins ignited, pulsing with power as he forced his limbs to move. His aura coiled, constricted, compressed, gathering into a singular point—his left hand. Every ounce of strength, every drop of his will, he forged it into one decisive strike.
Zay's fist surged upward, crashing into the beast's gargantuan paw with enough force to send shockwaves rippling through its form. The blades of Midnight Fangs snapped outward, sinking into its flesh like fangs into prey.
Black blood erupted in streaks of crimson-stained ichor. The blood covering Zay's entire body.
Ashgrave recoiled, its molten-onyx eyes snapping downward in irritation. But the wounds did not last. The air around its wounds wavered, shimmered, bled mist, and in mere seconds, the gashes were gone—sealed by an eerie, crimson glow.
The beast leaped, soaring high, vanishing into the night above. Zay barely caught a glimpse of its silhouette—a monstrous form wreathed in darkness, twisting through the skies like a god ascending.
Then it roared.
The very ground convulsed, splitting in jagged cracks as trees buckled beneath the force of its fury. Zay wiped blood from his face as he looked up at the beast who looked down at him.
Lightning converged from the cloudless sky. The lightning obeyed the beast's command, forming a spiraling vortex of electricity directly above Zay.
The air hummed, charged with an energy so potent it made his skin prickle, his hair stand on end.
Over two hundred bolts descended at once, each one screaming toward him.
There was nowhere to run. Zay exhaled, muscles tightening, aura flaring like a beacon amidst the darkness.