They smelled the village before they saw it.
Smoke gone cold. Iron gone brown. The particular sweet‑sour of blood drying in dust.
Frostwing angled her wings and dropped; Brandon's jaw hardened; the koi braced in the sling as the bowl's water kissed its lip in tiny waves. They landed at the edge of something that used to live.
No one lived there now.
Bodies lay where standing had been the last thing they did—doorways, alleys, wellside. Some had died with tools in hand. Some had died in lines that had once been families. Flies wrote their scripture in the air.
Brandon moved among them with a soldier's inventory and a priest's restraint. He didn't waste breath on apologies to the dead; he saved it for the living. Frostwing held her cold close so it wouldn't crystalize what grief heat had left. The koi kept his bowl still and let the river inside him rage where no one could see.
A sound cut the silence.
Thin. High. Wrong.
A cry that had been breaking for a long time and had refused to break all the way.
"North lane," Brandon said, already running.
Frostwing exploded forward in a breath of knives; the koi clung to water, water to bowl, bowl to sling, sling to man—momentum as promise.
They turned a corner into a mouth.
A serpent like a collapsed bridge uncoiled through the street, scales black‑green and slick, head wedge‑shaped and patient. There were fewer villagers left than there had been a minute before. The serpent took another and made that sentence worse.
Its eyes were silver coins with nothing stamped on them.
The koi felt the sting before he saw the source: the air itself bit at his gills. Venom aerosolized—finer than mist, meaner than smoke—whispering sleep to everything with blood.
System, the koi hissed, fury perfect. What happened to luck?
[LUCK: Active]
[Assessment: Event is fortuitous]
"FORTUI—" he started, then the readout hammered on:
[Encounter: Variant — Sovereign Venom Serpent]
[Classification: apex specimen within species]
[Estimated rarity of random encounter on current route: 0.00001%]
[Note: Early detection → higher survivor rescue probability]
[Note: Loot/insight potential ↑]
The koi's mind made three empty laps around the number. You're telling me we're lucky because we hit the strongest venom serpent in a hundred thousand rolls?
[Correct.]
wtffff, he breathed, then Brandon was moving, and thought surrendered to work.
"Pull it off the living," Brandon said, already acting. Orders in twos and threes followed, tight as knots. "Frostwing—curtain the lane; don't freeze the bodies. Koi—watch the wind; when I mark, go for the hinge."
Frostwing climbed half a house and dragged the air cold; sleet stitched a wall between serpent and huddled survivors. The beast's head tilted; it tasted the frost and disliked it. The tail lashed; stone split; venom mist thickened to a pearly fog.
The koi surged to the bowl's rim. Bounce coiled into his spine; Blood Scales hummed with a memory of teeth.
"Task clause," he shot at the System even as he gathered himself. "If I die before we face Emerald—penalty?"
[Fail state: true.]
[Penalty carried upon revival.]
"Right. So we don't die," he told himself. "We hurt it just enough to change its mind."
"Or numb it," Brandon said tightly.
The koi showed his tiny teeth. Or numb it.
The serpent lunged, mouth opening into a cathedral of knives. Frostwing tucked a wing under its jaw and popped—a slab of frozen air snapped the bite sideways; Brandon slid under and carved at the hinge; the cut didn't bite deep enough, but it existed now, a line in the map where no line had been.
Venom hissed. Snow burned. The world smelled wrong.
"Left," Brandon snapped, and his two fingers drew an arc in the air.
The koi launched.
Air became water the way habit becomes skill. He struck where Brandon had marked, where Frostwing had layered cold into brittle; Bite set and tore; Blood Scales scraped venom‑slick gum and shed a red gleam that wasn't just blood anymore.
The serpent twitched.
Not pain—numbness. A hiccup in the perfectly tuned machine of killing. It blinked wrong. Its jaw didn't shut all the way on reflex. A gap opened where panic could fit if panic had anywhere to live in that brain.
[Blood Scales: contact effect applied → local neural dulling]
[Duration (micro): 1.8s][Stacking: yes, diminishing]
"Again," Brandon called, already moving. "We make it clumsy."
Frostwing scythed the lane with shard‑flurry; icicles seeded in scale joints; the serpent's turn slowed a hair; Brandon carved the other hinge and left another thin, bright line; the koi hit the same seam a heartbeat later and left a smear of poison‑pain the color of old iron.
A child tried to scream and only coughed. Brandon planted himself where the serpent could see him and be a better meal. Frostwing flashed low, beat her wings once, and laid a sheet of glare ice the survivors could slide across, out of range. The serpent took the bait and the lane emptied of everyone who could still move.
Luck with a knife in its smile.
"System," the koi said between impacts. "Confirm aerosol spread. If Frostwing freezes the mist—"
[Venom particulate suspended at < 3μm]
[Rapid freeze will agglomerate → fall-out hazard]
[Recommendation: laminar cold; drift control; no hard shock]
"Laminar," Brandon echoed, catching the thought as if it were his own. "Feather it, girl."
Frostwing changed how she breathed. The cold deepened without shattering. The pearly fog sagged, lazy, less eager to enter lungs. Survivors stumbled behind the gelled sheet of air and made distance. One tripped; the koi felt Brandon start to turn and then not. The rule hung between them like a bridge: We save more by staying on the teeth.
The serpent understood one thing: the thing that hurt it twice in a row might hurt it a third time. It reared, mouth yawning, and loosed a jet of liquid green that etched a doorframe empty.
The koi's bowl clinked—a lazy wave slapping glass. He read the splash the way birds read pressure. "Back!" he flashed, and Brandon dropped as if a string had been cut. The spray scythed where his neck had been and kissed Frostwing's wingtip; thin ice combusted into steam; the phoenix screamed—a sound like bells breaking and reforming in the same breath—and rose three body lengths.
"Still with me?" Brandon asked, too calm.
The koi flexed, counted every fin. Still.
"Good. Make it dumber."
They did. Not with glory—glory is for songs—but with repetitions that make muscles smarter than thought. Mark. Strike. Numb. Mark. Strike. Numb. The serpent missed an easy snap because the hinge said later when the brain said now; its head clipped a beam; a balcony fell on it out of sequence with fate. Every tiny error became a bruise on inevitability.
[Numb stacks: 3 → 4 → 5]
[Behavioral latency ↑]
[Strike windows widening (micro)]
The koi almost laughed. Luck wasn't coins and cheers; it was a 0.00001% nightmare hitting them instead of the next village, now instead of later, here where an icy phoenix and a human who believed and a fish who refused to be a burden had somehow arrived exactly on time.
Maybe cringe. Maybe grace. Argue later.
The serpent reared again, higher, deciding to end the noise in one vertical line. Frostwing went wide, drawing its eyes. Brandon didn't look up; he looked at the koi.
"Ready?" he asked.
Always, the koi thought, and for once it wasn't a lie.
He coiled. Bounce loaded the springs of him until sound thinned. Frostwing snapped a glare into the serpent's left eye—a flash, not a wound. The head turned. Brandon's two fingers drew a new arc.
There—inside the mouth, past the knives, where venom glands fed the world its sleep. A slit of tissue glistening before the next jet.
The koi launched. Air remembered water for a heartbeat. He slid under a fang whose shadow was bigger than his whole body and bit a place made to be untouchable. Red sang. Green spat. The world turned white around the edges.
[Blood Scales: deep contact]
[Neural dulling spike]
[Venom contamination risk: severe → Survived (Luck)]
He tore free as the jaw stuttered. The next jet didn't happen. The serpent convulsed, confused by its own body. A gap opened where a story could end.
Brandon didn't lunge. He looked at the villagers—gone from the lane. He looked at Frostwing—air clear enough to breathe. He looked at the koi—still moving.
"Good," he said softly, as if to all three. Then louder, to the monster and the mountain behind it: "We're not dying today."
The serpent gathered itself anyway, rage pure, logic dulled, mass undeniable. It coiled to strike, a black‑green spring with a city's weight.
Frostwing folded her wings until she was a knife. Brandon set his feet on slick ice as if it were stone. The koi turned, body singing, and coiled at the bowl's lip for one more impossible line through teeth.
The System chimed like a hammer on anvil:
[Encounter Escalation: Phase Two]
[Advisory: Survive][Condition: Alive]
The street held its breath. The mountain watched. The world waited to see if belief could keep buying seconds, and if seconds could keep buying lives.
And the three of them—bird, man, fish—moved.