The three soldiers rallied, their courage reigniting when Nicolo's strange glow bent the battlefield. "Push them back!" one shouted, firing bursts of steel into the writhing shadows.
Daron cut with precision, his blade sparking as it clashed against claws. Maris moved like a predator, her bone spear extending and retracting in grotesque arcs.
But Nicolo was the one that changed the rhythm of the fight.
The constellations across his skin shifted each time he blinked, and with them the battlefield twisted. A path would appear before him, a shining arrow on the floor, and if he stepped where it pointed, time seemed to ripple. The monster lunging at him would stumble as though it had slipped on fate itself.
"Keep moving!" Will whispered in his mind. "Your choice makes the path. Each step rewrites the next."
He dragged 12 behind him, blood soaking his arm, her emerald eyes dim but fixed on him. He shoved the three children into the soldiers' care, then turned again to face the beasts.
His chest heaved, panic and awe mixing. "I don't know what I'm doing…"
"And yet you do," the Dweller laughed softly. "Because you chose."
The car filled with mangled corpses—dwellers and humans alike. Nicolo felt his stomach churn, bile rising in his throat, but his body kept moving, following the threads that only he could see.
For the first time, his cursed luck obeyed him.