The moon, a cold, watchful eye, cast long, distorted shadows through the Whispering Woods. Silence had fallen after the white-haired hunter's taunt, but it was a silence that screamed. Barry's calculated retreat had become a desperate flight. The hunter didn't follow their trail; he appeared ahead of them, leaning against a tree as if he'd been waiting for hours, a jovial smile plastered on the lower half of his face visible below his mask.
"Took you long enough," he chimed, his voice a melodic mockery. The mask was sleek, black, and featureless, covering everything but his left eye—a void-black sclera with a pupil that glowed with a faint, dark blue light. It was the direct opposite of Barry's hidden eye.
Barry didn't break stride. He shoved Belinda and Leo behind a thick oak and turned to face the threat. His expression was granite. "Stay back," he ordered, his voice low and deadly calm.
The hunter pushed off the tree, his hands tucked casually into his trouser pockets. "So protective. It's your most predictable trait. Also your greatest weakness."
He began to walk forward, not with a fighter's stance, but with a leisurely, confident stroll. Barry didn't wait for him to get closer. He thrust his palm out.
"Gravio Impactus!"
The air in front of the hunter warped violently. But before the crushing force could hit, tendrils of void-blackish blue shadow erupted from the ground at the hunter's feet, coiling together into a dense, living shield. The gravity blast hit the shadow-shield with a sound like a thunderclap, but the shadows absorbed the impact, rippling like dark water before settling.
The hunter didn't even flinch. He kept walking, his left eye crinkling as if he were smiling underneath the mask. "Is that all? The famous gravity magic? I expected more."
Barry's mind raced. Analysis: Target utilizes a form of shadow manipulation. Defensive capabilities: high. Offensive capabilities: unknown. Methodology: not blood-activated. Contradicts all known magical principles. Cannot be analyzed with current data.
He switched tactics, using his gravity to rip a large boulder from the earth and hurl it at the hunter. Simultaneously, he darted to the side, creating a localized high-gravity field where he predicted the hunter would dodge.
The hunter didn't dodge. More shadow tendrils shot out, not to block the boulder, but to wrap around it. With a flick of his will, the tendrils whipped the boulder around and sent it careening back toward Barry with twice the force, while another set of tendrils speared into the ground where Barry had placed the gravity field, disrupting the spell with a violent shockwave of dark energy.
Barry was forced to cancel his own spell and dive aside as his own projectile shattered against a tree behind him.
"You think in straight lines, brother," the hunter sighed, as if disappointed. He was now only ten paces away, still strolling, hands in pockets. "Cause and effect. Action and reaction. It's so… limiting."
Frustration, a foreign and dangerous emotion, sparked in Barry's chest. This man wasn't just powerful; he was unpredictable. He fought like a artist painting with chaos, while Barry was an engineer building with logic.
Barry lunged forward, abandoning ranged attacks. He feinted with a gravity-enhanced punch aimed at the head, then dropped, sweeping a leg wrapped in gravitational force at the hunter's knees.
The hunter simply hopped over the sweep, his movements effortless. A shadow tendril lashed out from his own shadow, not at Barry, but at a branch above. The branch snapped and fell toward Belinda and Leo.
It was a distraction. A fraction of a second. But it was all he needed.
As Barry's focus split to ensure the branch was deflected, the hunter finally moved his hands. But not to attack. He simply reached out, incredibly fast, and grabbed Barry's outstretched wrist.
"Got you," he whispered, his grip like iron.
Barry reacted instantly, twisting his arm with brutal force. The sound of bone snapping was sickeningly loud.
The hunter's jovial expression didn't change. He didn't cry out. He just looked down at his broken wrist, which was already knitting itself back together with a faint, black-blue glow, the bones shifting under the skin until it was perfectly healed without a trace.
"See?" the hunter said, flexing his hand. "We're not so different."
The confirmation was a shock to Barry's system. Instant healing. Magic-reinforced durability. This was no ordinary mage.
The hunter used Barry's moment of stunned realization. A powerful shadow tendril, thick as a tree trunk, slammed into Barry's chest, flinging him aside through the air. He crashed into the oak tree, the breath knocked from his lungs.
Before he could recover, the hunter was there. Not standing over him, but walking past him, straight toward Belinda and Leo.
"Now for the main event," he sang.
"No!" Barry growled, pushing himself up.
The hunter ignored him. A web of shadows shot out, wrapping around Leo and pinning him to a tree, a tendril covering his mouth. Another tendril, gentle as a caress, wrapped around Belinda's waist, lifting her off the ground.
"Let her go," Barry demanded, his voice shaking with a rage he hadn't felt in years. The monster inside him stirred, awakened by his anger and his bleeding lip.
The hunter stopped and turned his masked face toward Barry, Belinda suspended in his shadowy grip. He brought his other hand out of his pocket and formed a blade of solidified, blue-black shadow, holding it to Belinda's throat.
"Or what?" the hunter asked, his head tilted. "You'll get angry? Show me. Show me what you really are. Show me the power you hide. Or I'll show you what happens when this pretty neck meets a shadow's edge."
It was a bait. A transparent, obvious trap. But Barry, for the first time in a decade, couldn't think logically. He saw the fear in Belinda's eyes. He saw the blade at her throat. He saw the smug, single eye of the hunter.
He broke.
With a roar of pure fury, he ripped the black bandana from his face.
His right eye was revealed. The pupil glowed with a fierce, bloody crimson light, set in a sclera of void black. His left eye remained its piercing sky-blue. The half-transformation was terrifying, a glimpse into the abyss within.
The hunter's visible eye widened, not in fear, but in rapturous, greedy awe. "Yes…! Yes! That's it! That's what I want to see!"
Barry didn't speak. He just moved. Shadows, his own true shadows, erupted from the blood on his lip. They were liquid midnight and deep crimson, howling with a silent fury that made the hunter's blue-black shadows seem like pale imitations. They shot forward, a storm of razor-sharp tendrils aimed to obliterate the hunter.
The hunter's smile finally vanished. He dropped Belinda and threw both hands up, his own shadows converging into a massive shield. But Barry's power, fueled by rage and fear, was immense.
KA-BOOM!!!
The collision of shadows was like a bomb going off. The force wave shattered trees and sent leaves flying in a violent vortex. The hunter's shield shattered. He was thrown backward like a ragdoll, crashing through several bushes before skidding to a halt.
Barry didn't press the attack. The display had cost him. He could feel the fifteen-minute countdown begin, the energy drain immediate and severe. He had to go. Now.
He stumbled to Belinda, grabbed her hand, then used a burst of gravity to free Leo. "Run!" he commanded, his voice hoarse.
He didn't look back. He half-dragged them, half-ran, pushing his body to its limit, the forest blurring around them.
From far behind them, a voice cut through the ringing silence, clear and full of delighted promise. "Soon, brother… soon…"
They ran until they collapsed, miles away, in a hidden cave by a roaring river. Barry slumped against the wall, exhausted, his transformed eye slowly fading back to normal.
Back in the clearing, the white-haired hunter slowly got to his feet. He ripped off his broken mask, revealing the rest of his face—a mirror of Barry's, but colder, sharper. His right eye was now visible: a royal, eerie purple pupil that seemed to swallow the light. He brushed the dirt from his coat as a squad of Order reinforcements burst into the clearing.
"Sir! Are you alright? We detected the energy surge—"
The hunter held up a hand, silencing them. A slow, ecstatic smile spread across his unmasked face.
"There's no need for concern," he said, his voice dripping with satisfaction. "Tell Lord Greimore that the 'Curse' is right where I want him. And his power… will be mine. The hunt has only just begun." He looked in the direction Barry had fled, his purple eye gleaming with insatiable hunger. "And I've never been more hungry."