Mike's pace slowed. The asphalt beneath his bare feet was cracked and half-swallowed by creeping moss, the surrounding forest pressing close on both sides. The air was still, too still. Even the distant wind seemed to have gone silent.
"You are still being hunted," Bahamut's voice rumbled again, resonating deep in his skull.
Mike's jaw clenched. "Where?"
"Everywhere."
Bahamut's voice faded, but the sense of pressure didn't. Something in the treeline moved, subtle but deliberate, a sway of branches without wind, the crunch of dry twigs under careful weight. Mike turned sharply, scanning the undergrowth. Nothing.
He started walking again, slower now, eyes tracking the shadows between the trees. For several minutes, the only sound was his own breathing and the quiet scrape of his heels against the road.
Then, a faint tap echoed from behind him.
Mike pivoted instantly. The road was empty.
A whisper slid through his mind, not the divine power chaotic whispers, but a new voice. Smooth. Patient.
Keep walking.
Mike's nostrils flared. His dragon instincts pushed to the surface, heat blooming in his chest, muscles coiling for the strike. But something in that voice kept him still, like a wolf circling the edge of his vision, waiting for the perfect angle.
Branches overhead shifted. Something moved in the canopy, keeping pace with him.
Mike took three steps forward, then spun, hurling a blast of flames into the treeline. It exploded against a wall of bark, scattering embers into the dark. A long, low hiss answered from somewhere deeper in the woods.
He stepped off the road, pushing through the underbrush. The smell hit him first, wet earth and rot, mingled with something sharp and metallic.
A shadow shifted twenty feet away. Mike caught a glimpse, the silhouette hunched like a man, but too long in the limbs, its head crowned with something like twisted horns. Its skin shimmered faintly, blending with the forest as if it were made from it.
It vanished before he could close the distance.
The voice returned, this time behind him.
Not prey. Not hunter. Something else.
Mike's claws flexed. "Show yourself."
Silence.
Then the world went dead. No sound. No rustle. No breath of air. Just the pounding of his heart.
From the shadows, a figure emerged, slow, deliberate. Its eyes burned faint green, and when it smiled, Mike caught the glint of teeth carved from polished bone. It didn't attack. It didn't even move closer. It just… watched.
The tension snapped when a distant roar shook the forest, the sound of something much larger. The green-eyed figure tilted its head, as though listening, then slipped back into the trees with impossible speed.
Bahamut's voice returned, quieter now. "That was not what hunts you."
Mike exhaled, scanning the treeline again.
"Then what is?"
The answer came in the form of heavy, deliberate steps approaching through the forest, each one shaking the ground just enough to send loose dirt sliding down the embankment.
The footsteps grew heavier.
Slow. Purposeful.
Not the careless tread of a beast, but the measured march of something intelligent… and furious.
Mike turned toward the sound, his breath steady, every muscle braced.
The first thing he saw was the glow, faint and gold, cutting through the shadows like sunlight off a reflection. Then came the antlers, tall and gnarled, crowned with runes that shifted faintly in the air. The massive bearded man who wore them stepped into the pale light between the trees, his frame draped in a dark cloak that seemed to drink the color from the forest.
Mike froze. The aura from the man felt the same as Hunter. The hair on his arm stood on end as he muttered "...Woden."
The man's eyes burned cold. "You remember my name."
Mike didn't answer. His chest tightened. He could feel the weight behind that voice, the same weight Hecate had carried when she manifested. Woden wasn't sending another chosen or whispering from afar. He had taken the same approach as Hecate and claimed a vessel.
"You killed my Chosen." Woden's voice was calm, but his hand tightened around the haft of a spear that hadn't been there a moment before. Its tip shimmered like liquid gold. "You shattered the bond that made him more than mortal. You left his corpse in the dirt, with nothing but your guilt to honor him."
Mike's hands curled into fists. "I have killed Hecate, who killed him."
"He made my choice," Woden snapped, the calm breaking for just an instant. "And you robbed me of it."
The forest seemed to lean inward, the air thick with tension. Mike shifted his stance, heat beginning to bleed from his skin. "If you came for blood—"
"I came for the hunt," Woden interrupted, stepping forward. "Your blood is just the prize."
Mike barely had time to react before Woden moved, faster than any giant, faster than most chosen Mike had faced. The spear's golden point tore through the air, grazing Mike's cheek before embedding itself in the tree behind him with a crack that split the trunk in two.
Mike lunged, claws flashing, but Woden pivoted effortlessly, catching his strike on the shaft of the spear and slamming a knee into Mike's ribs. Pain lanced through his side, but Mike's dragon form surged, forcing him forward. He exhaled a jet of flame only for Woden to spin his spear and carve a line through the fire, parting it like water.
"You burn hot," Woden said, circling. "But the hotter the fire, the faster it consumes its own fuel."
The whispers in Mike's mind screamed all at once, his vision flickering between the forest and jagged, divine threads coiling around Woden's body. Mike roared, his form bursting outward into the half-dragon state, claws sparking against the spear with every clash.
They fought through the trees, each strike breaking branches, tearing roots from the ground. Woden's movements were precise, almost surgical, not just trying to kill Mike, but wear him down.
A slash of the spear opened Mike's shoulder. He staggered back, only to find Woden gone from in front of him and suddenly at his side, the butt of the spear cracking into his jaw.
Mike hit the ground hard, rolling through dirt and leaves. He looked up through blurred vision to see Woden standing over him, spear raised.
"This is justice," Woden said. "Not for the gods, for me."
Mike's claws dug into the soil. He could feel the divine power twisting inside him, demanding release. He thought of Hunter's broken body, of the screams in the refugee camp, of the look in Persephone's eyes when he left the Underworld.
The roar that tore from his throat was half-human, half-dragon and it shook the forest.