Keiser remembered the battlefield.
The constant press of monsters, their bodies piling high around him. Blood--thick and sticky--dripping from his sword's edge to his fingers. His grip on the dragonbone hilt, warm from his hand and the weapon's own core.
Now?
No warmth. No elegant hilt molded perfectly to his palm. Just a charred stick with a burnt-in sigil that read, 'stop-running'. A stick that might trip a thieving princess, sure, but definitely not take down the hulking shadow circling above them.
Behind him, Lenko's sudden yank on his cloak nearly sent him sprawling.
"You think they saw us?" Lenko whispered, voice trembling. "Maybe if we play dead, they'll leave."
Keiser thought that if it weren't for the princess, Lenko would've already pissed himself. Fair--this was probably his first time seeing a Corvus.
The beast was enormous, black-feathered and thrice their size--its talons as long as Muzio's forearm. Its bulging red eyes swept the ground for prey. And Corvus didn't just hunt the living, they feasted on the dead. Which meant sticking around was basically volunteering for the menu.
Worse--Keiser could already count five in the air. The nearest was so close its shadow crawled across them.
Lenko pulled him back again, but Keiser ignored it. Then came another tug--but this time from the side. Lenko gestured sharply toward the third member of their very unlucky trio.
Yona Hanaki--First Prince's fiancée, twin-sword prodigy, the moonlight warrior--was rolling away. Literally rolling.
Upper body twisting. Lower body stubbornly staying put. Her escape path looked like a drunk compass needle drawing half-circles in the dirt.
"What are you doing?" Keiser called out.
Lenko whipped his head toward him with a whisper-you-idiot expression. Yona froze mid-roll, then tried to push herself upright on shaky arms.
"Release me!" she shrieked, panic rising. "It's a sigil, isn't it? Take it off! Take it off!"
Keiser didn't answer--because her yelling was competing with the Corvus's ear-splitting screech. The creature's massive wings churned the air overhead, claws flexing. Smaller beasts around scattered.
"That's why," Lenko muttered, voice pale as his face. "That's why I said we should've hired someone! We're still too close to Sheol!"
The beast's cry came again, sharper now, the sound of something about to strike.
Yona sneer toward Keiser, eyes wide. "I can't move! I can't run! If we die because of your stupid runes--!"
"You shouldn't have stolen from us," Lenko snapped back instead.
"Yeah? Well, you shouldn't just parade those pouches around! Now take it off!" Yona's voice cracked at the end, shrill and desperate.
Lenko clutched the satchel to his chest like it was a holy relic. "My lord--should I draw a ward? One we can move with? Just until we're back inside the village's ward--"
"No." Keiser's tone was quiet, final. His gaze never left the sky.
"We don't have time--"
"I said no." His voice sharpened. "It's already found its prey."
Above them, the Corvus folded its wings and dropped from the clouds.
"M-My lord, we have to--have to run!" Lenko's voice cracked like dry wood, but Keiser didn't move.
He'd never run from a fight--not even the ones he was doomed to lose. Not until that day in the court, when his own dragonbone hilt blade ran him through. The weapon forged from the remains of the sacred beast he once saved.
The memory burned hot in his chest. His fingers clenched around the crude stick in his hand--splintered, heavy, nothing like a sword. But it would do.
Behind him, Lenko's voice rose in panic, the princess demanded release, but they blurred into background noise.
Once Keiser held something, it became a weapon. Even in a body that wasn't his own. Even now.
Muzio's body wheezed from the chase earlier, muscles trembling under strain. Sweat slid down the side of his face. The stick felt awkward, far too thick to handle cleanly. If he'd been in his own body, he could have snapped it in half with one hand.
But Muzio's body had one advantage--mana.
Not just mana. Runes. Sigils.
Something inside him shifted, like a door he didn't know existed swinging open.
His hand trembled--not with fear, but with heat. It pulsed in his palm, swelling, crawling up the stick like a fuse catching fire.
The air tore with the screech of wings.
Keiser's head snapped upward just as a shadow cut across the sun--wings at least six feet wide, feathers black as char, a hooked beak like a dagger, and talons that spread wide, aiming for him with precision.
This was a Corvus--
A beast that always circled the line between life and death.
Hell's personal courier, here to deliver you straight to the underworld without the courtesy of knocking first.
And Keiser knew them. Knew them like the back of his hand--his real hand, not Muzio's frail ones. They had an unerring sense for weakness. They didn't waste time on the strongest prey--they crushed the feeble first, and they did it fast.
This one had already chosen.
It dove.
Straight at him.
Because of course it did.
Between the three of them--
A trembling boy half-hiding under a satchel as though it might bribe death itself.
A princess writhing dramatically in the dust, still tangled in her cloak and screaming like she was being sawed in half.
And him--Muzio's wheezing, sweat-slick, painfully breakable body--
The choice was obvious.
His body was the weakest.
The slowest.
The least threatening.
But Keiser wasn't.
The Corvus's shriek split the air as it swooped, its wings slicing the wind with the speed of a falling guillotine. The air churned around him, thick with the reek of feathers and something metallic--blood, maybe its last meal.
Keiser's grip tightened on the stick. The heat was building again--no, surging. His palm prickled, then burned. His other hand was starting to smoke, the heat curling up from his skin and crawling along the wood like a hungry flame.
Lenko's voice broke behind him, "M-My lord, we have to--!"
"Shut up," Keiser snapped. He didn't even look back.
His lungs screamed for air, his ribs ached from the earlier chase, and his arms felt like lead, but his stance was solid. He swung.
Not just with muscle--he threw his entire weight into it. His grip was precise despite the pain, his movement smooth in a way Muzio's body had no right to be.
The burning stick met the beast mid-flight.
CRACK.
For a fraction of a second, time seemed to lock in place--the feathers flaring wide, the talons inches from his face, the heat flaring between them like lightning in reverse--
Then the world snapped back.
A sound that wasn't just loud, but alive, vibrating in his bones.
It wasn't Lenko's.
It wasn't the princess's.
It was the beast's.
The force of the blow sent it spiraling backward, wings thrashing wildly as it smashed through the treeline in a cascade of snapping branches and raining leaves.
Keiser's chest rose and fell in ragged bursts. He looked down. The stick in his hand was now half its length, splintered clean where the blow had landed. The tip still smoked faintly, ember-like heat curling off the wood.
Behind him, Lenko's jaw hung open. "You… broke it."
Keiser didn't turn. "Better the stick than me."
The princess, still sprawled on the ground, blinked up at him like she wasn't sure if she'd just been saved or had merely traded one executioner for another.
The forest was quiet again. Too quiet. Which meant it wasn't over.
***
Lenko stared, stunned.
His young lord--Muzio--stood with his hood blown back, face flushed, almost glowing like polished alabaster. Sweat clung to his dark hair, damp strands sticking to his brow. He was panting, wheezing nearly, chest rising in sharp, uneven bursts.
But it was his eyes that stopped Lenko cold.
Muzio's eyes had never been that red before. Normally, they looked almost black, always hidden in the shadows. But now…
Lenko's mind flashed back to when they first met. The boy who used magic to make chores easier, who sat through court lessons only because he was forced to, who never once showed what he was truly capable of. And now here he was--no pen, no chalk, no proper medium--and yet…
Lenko's gaze dropped to the broken, splintered stick in Muzio's trembling grip. It smoked. Charred nearly black, yes, but not entirely. Glowing red marks--runes--still burned faintly across it. Blood dripped from them.
Blood from his young lord's own hand.
He'd written the runes directly with his own skin, formed sigils with his own blood.
The brief silence shattered with another screech overhead.
"My lord!" Lenko shouted, clutching Muzio's shoulder. Whatever focus had lit those red eyes was gone the moment the cry tore through the air. Lenko's own gaze kept darting to the dripping hand--it wasn't much blood, but it was an open wound.
"We really need to go back to the village," he urged, tugging at him.
But Muzio didn't move. His eyes stayed on the blackened stick in his hand.
Then he laughed. Low. Bitter.
The stick crumbled in his grip, charred fragments dropping alongside the blood.
"That was it?" he muttered. "That's all it could manage? I thought of Reinforce. Strength. Haul. And this thing still broke?"
Lenko winced as the stick fell away completely, revealing the damage beneath. Charred wood stains clung to the skin, but the front of the hand was burned raw, the flesh marked over and over with sigils--each one carved like a fresh wound.
"Your hand--"
Lenko's words cut short as his eyes followed Muzio's gaze upward. A second Corvus was diving toward them.
He had never heard his young lord sound so frustrated--at anything.
And he had never, in his life, seen anyone use their own flesh to mark runes.
His question caught in his throat.
Not, How did you...?
But, Since when...?
But that could wait.
He thought grimly, Next time--when we survive this.