It had been a wolf once. Gray fur, lean body, built for pack hunting in these forests.
But the taint had twisted it.
Its fur was matted with black ichor, great patches of it fallen away to reveal skin that had cracked and split like drought-baked earth. Beneath the cracks, red flesh showed—not healthy red but the red of spoiled meat, of tissue rotting from the inside out.
Its eyes glowed with sickly yellow-red light—no intelligence there, no pack instinct, no animal cunning. Just mindless, all-consuming hunger.
The wolf's mouth hung open, jaw dislocated and hanging at an unnatural angle. Its teeth had lengthened into needle-sharp fangs, some of them growing through the roof of its mouth and out through its skull. Black saliva dripped from its muzzle, hissing where it hit the dead leaves, eating through organic matter like acid.
The smell hit them—rot and corruption and old blood and something worse, something that shouldn't have a smell at all. The scent of wrongness made manifest.
More wolves emerged from the shadows. Ten. Twenty. Fifty. A hundred.
All of them tainted. All of them staring with those dead, hungry eyes. All of them breathing in wet, rattling gasps through ruined throats.
"Defensive formation," Diana commanded, her voice cutting through the rising fear like a blade through silk. "Protect the survivors. Kill anything that gets through."
Diana's team moved instantly, flowing into position with practiced precision.
Rowan at the front, shield raised despite its cracks, his massive frame an immovable wall.
Thorne and Sylva on the flanks, weapons ready, eyes tracking threats. Ivy falling back to higher ground, finding a thick branch that would give her elevation. Ashwood's staff already glowing with gathering power, green light pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.
The eight survivors—Don among them—clustered behind the defensive line.
The wolves circled, pacing, claws clicking on dead wood. Waiting. Building courage or simply savoring the moment before the kill.
Then one lunged.
It came from Rowan's right—a blur of corrupted fur and gaping jaws aimed at his throat.
Rowan's shield caught it mid-leap. The impact echoed like thunder, the sound of skull meeting reinforced steel at terminal velocity. The wolf's head caved in with a wet crunch. It dropped, body twitching, black blood pooling beneath it.
And that was the signal.
The pack attacked.
They came from every direction at once—a tide of corrupted flesh and fangs and mindless rage that crashed against Diana's formation like a wave against rocks.
Thorne's blades spun in patterns too fast to follow, each movement ending a life with surgical precision. His mirrored edges created afterimages that cut half a heartbeat after the real strikes, turning each slash into two kills. Wolves fell in pieces, their corrupted bodies unable to regenerate.
Sylva's spear was a blur of deadly efficiency, punching through throats, through hearts, through the soft spot at the base of skulls. Every thrust killed. Every movement flowed into the next without wasted motion.
Ivy's arrows sang from above, each shot finding throats, eyes, anything vital. She didn't miss. Couldn't miss. Her will wouldn't allow it.
Ashwood's magic erupted—roots bursting from dead soil, impaling wolves, crushing them, throwing them back with bone-breaking force.
And Don—
Don moved.
A wolf lunged at Martha's exposed flank. Don's knife found its temple, blade punching through bone. The wolf dropped.
He pulled the blade free, spun, sword catching another wolf across the throat. Black blood sprayed. It collapsed, choking.
Another wolf. Don's thrown knife took it mid-leap. It crashed down.
Two more tried to flank Aldric. Don intercepted—first one, then the second. Knife, sword, stab, slash. Both dead.
Then he stopped counting.
The battle became a rhythm—identify threat, move, strike, kill, move again. His body flowed through the chaos with instincts burned in through pain and survival. His yellow eye tracked targets faster than conscious thought, Madness whispering guidance he barely registered.
["Left. Behind you. There. Good. Again. YES."]
A massive wolf got past Sylva's defense, charging straight at Finn. Don intercepted, his sword opening its belly. It tried to rise. His knife through its skull ended it.
Another wolf clamped jaws around his forearm. Teeth ground against bone. Don stabbed into its ear, angling up. It released him, dead before it hit the ground.
His arm regenerated slowly—mana depleting with each healing, each created weapon, each second of combat.
["You're magnificent,"] Madness whispered. ["Look at you. Dancing with death. Embracing what you are."]
The wolves kept coming, and Don kept killing, and somewhere in the chaos he lost himself in the pure mechanics of survival.
Then—
A scream.
High-pitched. Young. Desperate.
Don's head snapped toward the sound.
Tam.
The fifteen-year-old boy with sandy hair and terrified eyes stood frozen as a wolf charged him, jaw dislocated wide enough to fit his entire head inside.
Martha lunged, too far to reach him in time.
The wolf's jaws closed around Tam's throat.
Not biting—tearing.
Ripping through flesh and windpipe and major vessels all at once.
Blood sprayed—real blood, red and human and far too much of it.
Tam's eyes went wide. His hands came up, fingers scrabbling weakly at the wolf's muzzle. His mouth opened but no sound came out—just blood, pouring down his chest, soaking his clothes, pooling at his feet.
The wolf shook its head like a dog with prey, and Tam's body went limp.
Dead.
Just like that.
One second alive, the next gone, reduced to meat and memory.
Sylva's spear took the wolf through the heart a moment later, but it didn't matter.
Tam was already dead.
His body hit the ground, eyes still open, still staring at nothing, blood spreading beneath him in an expanding circle.
Finn—the other young boy—made a sound somewhere between a sob and a wail. His makeshift weapon fell from nerveless fingers.
Something cold settled in Don's chest.
Something hard and sharp and utterly merciless.
He'd seen death before. Caused it. Watched others die.
But this—
Tam had been scared. Just a boy. Fifteen years old. Pulled from his farm, thrown into a colosseum, tortured, freed, and now dead in a forest that didn't even know his name.
["There it is,"] Madness whispered, and his voice carried something like satisfaction. ["That's what I've been waiting for. That moment when the rage becomes cold. When survival isn't enough anymore. When you want them dead not because you must, but because they deserve it."]
Don's yellow eye blazed brighter.