The smirks stayed a moment longer than they should have. Then we both shifted — I moved right, Cassian drifted left.
The three scales kept orbiting him, but the vibrations told me they were picking up speed. A brief standoff before whatever came next.
Cassian moved first. The scales were orbiting in a loose triangle, and the leftmost one broke formation first and shot straight at me. I jumped — felt the air snap shut beneath me as it flew under my feet, closer than I'd expected. The second had already rotated into position and fired while I was still midair. I shifted my body sideways, the scale whipping past close enough that the vibration of it sang against my side. Then the third. I retracted my arm into my body just before it arrived, the scale cutting through the space where it had been a fraction of a second earlier.
The vibrations in Cassian's body shifted.
Three impacts rang out behind me. I didn't turn — I already knew. My eyes stayed on Cassian.
Something was wrong with the image in front of me. It took a fraction of a second to place it. The tail was gone. The scales were gone. Just Cassian standing there, still.
The ground shifted beneath me.
My vision dropped just as the dirt below me cracked and spiderwebbed outward. Cassian's tail burst through the earth and launched past me — too wide, missing by more than it should have.
How did it miss that badly?
I heard something change above me. The clean rush of air the tail had carried before was gone — replaced by a clattering, scales grinding against each other as it bent back on itself.
My eyes tracked right as the tail end flew past me going down. It bent around and rose, curving toward my torso to wrap around it. I spread my flesh outward, letting my body mass widen and slow my descent. The tail miscalculated — my speed had changed. It passed beneath me at the wrong angle, and as I pulled my body back together my foot came down on the tail.
One step.
Gone.
The tail wrapped around the space I'd just occupied. A harsh grinding crack tore through the forest as scales scraped and crushed against each other. Cassian's eyes widened — not at the miss, but at how I'd moved. The tail began retracting as he searched for me.
The scales embedded in the wall behind me shuddered loose one by one, pulling free from the stone and flying back toward Cassian.
That was my chance.
I emerged from one of the holes the tail had punched into the earth, unflattening as I rose, claws extending before my body had fully reformed.
Claw Slash.
Three arcs. One aimed at each returning scale.
I couldn't break them — I already knew that. But I had a theory.
The first missed entirely. The second caught the scale too high, sending it spinning into the ground. The third—
The third was perfect.
It struck the scale just right, accelerating it and nudging its path enough that it angled toward Cassian's face. I felt him trying to pull it back under control, but it was moving too fast. He moved. Not enough.
The scale flew past his face and cut shallowly across his serpentine cheek before stabbing deep into the earth behind him. Much deeper than any of the earlier impacts.
His expression had changed. Shock. Displeasure. And something darker sitting beneath both. His tongue slid across his cheek slowly, catching the green blood at the edge of the cut.
He wasn't going to let that slide.
Cassian hissed — deeper than before, something in it that felt less like a sound and more like a warning. Green blood dripped from the cut and vanished into the grass below. He exhaled slowly, then hissed again.
This time it sounded closer to a roar.
My senses caught it before my eyes did. His whole body was moving, but not as one thing — hundreds of tiny shifts at once, each one scraping and adjusting in its own direction. I felt it long before I understood it.
The two redirected scales flew back toward him, locking into his tail behind the first with a hard clicking sound, like pieces sliding into place.
The vibrations should have settled.
They didn't. They got louder.
Scales began peeling away from Cassian's body one by one — smaller than the ones his tail had used, lifting free and rising into the air around him. Dozens at first, then more than I could count. His hide underneath looked darker now, almost exposed.
Cassian hadn't changed color.
That was his true skin.
For a second I just stared. Part of me grew more cautious. Another part couldn't help being impressed.
He could shed his scales, control them, and fight with them.
That was absurd.
His tail vanished into the ground with a loud crack. Any admiration I had died with it.
He wasn't hiding what he was about to do anymore.
Something moved beneath me, but I couldn't focus on that for long because the scales hovering around his body began to move. One by one, they shot outward — quicker than the tail scales, but just as sharp.
They didn't come straight at me. I stayed still and watched. His tail had disappeared underground and I couldn't sense where it was anymore — that alone was bad enough. The scales circled around me instead, flowing into position until they formed a dome above and around me. They hovered there for a heartbeat.
Every scale tilted toward me at once, each one locking onto its angle. The air rippled with the movement — then went completely still.
Cassian looked at me. Buried inside his gaze was enjoyment.
The scales fired.
They came from every direction at once. Too many warnings, too fast to process — I moved on instinct, running the curve of the dome as scales tore through the air inches from me. Every movement had to be tight. Every turn efficient. Anything wasted would be punished instantly.
So I ran.
They chased my afterimage, and the moment I cleared one line another was already cutting across to intercept. Some aimed for my face — I jumped just enough, landed, jolted left before the next wave arrived. There was no pause between them. No breath. Just constant motion and the sound of scales ripping through air that had just been occupied by something that was no longer there.
The moment I started finding a rhythm, the ground cracked beneath me.
The tail.
I'd forgotten about the tail. The dome had consumed every piece of focus I had, and whatever had been waiting underground had used that. It burst up directly in my path — too high, too fast to jump. My path forward was gone.
Left or right. That was all I had.
I committed and darted right. The tail reacted instantly, sweeping across at eye level. I ducked just enough to let it flash past my vision — but dropping low was the mistake. My senses fired too late. A scale sliced into my leg before I could shift away from it. My balance buckled and my hand hit the ground, keeping me from going down fully. I used it to push off and got most of my momentum back. A few strides later I felt the tail retract into the earth behind me.
HP: 60 / 68
The HP caught my eye for half a second. More damage than I wanted to admit. I glanced at my leg as I ran — deep cut, but not enough to stop me.
The tail kept attacking from different angles after that, trying to force me into the scales.
Once was enough. I wasn't falling for it twice.
The dome was changing. After every volley the scales drifted slightly closer before resetting — little by little, the cage shrinking around me.
I needed a way out.
I kept moving and studied the scales. The reset took just under a second — after firing, each one needed a brief moment to return to position. That was the opening.
Cassian's pressure had never left me the entire time. Not once. He was always watching, always tracking.
His ability to follow movement is impressive.
But he couldn't track what wasn't there.
Claw Slash was off the table. Too many hard surfaces — arcs and scales both deflecting unpredictably would turn the cage into something I couldn't navigate. Patience was the only option.
I started running closer to one side of the dome, forcing that wall to fire more often. More shots, more resets, more chances to find the gap.
That was the plan.
One had been hovering directly above me the whole time. Not moving. Not part of the pattern. I never sensed it.
The moment I ran beneath it, it fired straight down — no angle, no warning. By the time I felt it, it was already inside me.
HP: 30 / 68
Pain tore through me. It got worse immediately — the scale was trying to pull free, to retract and attack again, but my flesh had already closed around it. The more it tried to leave the worse it got, vibrating and churning inside me as it fought against the grip of my own body. Pieces of flesh tore free with every tremor.
HP: 28 / 68
I couldn't reach it. Couldn't waste time trying. I had to get out.
The scales kept firing.
My original plan was gone — escape quietly, use confusion, strike from somewhere unexpected. The scale in my back had killed my patience. I kept moving, running the dome, watching the walls. Scales left their positions one by one, but the gaps weren't wide enough. Then one opened that I knew I could make. I changed direction instantly, cutting straight across to it, and stepped.
The world didn't stop — but my senses had sharpened enough that everything inside Shadow Step felt stretched. Scales that had been tearing through the air a heartbeat ago drifted slowly past me, lazy and weightless, like they'd forgotten what speed was. I moved between them, threading through the gap, watching the edges of each scale slide past close enough to touch.
It was small. Too small for how I was shaped with the scale still churning inside me. I forced most of myself through, but the outer edges of my flesh caught against the border as the step carried me. The speed did the rest.
HP: 20 / 68
I was out.
The scales and tail adjusted toward where they thought I was, buying me a moment. I slid one eye backward along my body until I could see my own back clearly — something I rarely did, something that still felt wrong even now. The scale was buried deep. I reached in with both hands — one gripping the scale, the other driving claws into the strands of flesh wrapping around it and cutting them free before they could close any tighter. My body fought everything I did, suction pulling harder the more I pulled, strands snapping as my claws tore through them one by one.
The scale came loose with a sound I didn't want to make.
HP: 15 / 68
The momentum I'd built up was too much to contain. The scale ripped free and flew out of my grip, spinning several meters away before clattering to the ground.
Cassian's pressure snapped back onto me. The scale hitting the ground — that was probably what gave me away. His attention locked on immediately, and the other scales abandoned the dome and rushed toward me.
I moved toward where the scale had landed and grabbed it off the ground. The moment my flesh closed around it the scale vibrated violently, trying to pull itself back to Cassian. I held on and wrapped more of my flesh around it, forming a rough handle, the scale itself becoming the weapon. It kept cutting into me as it fought to leave, but I didn't have a better option.
The scales closed in.
I stepped.
They slammed into the space I'd just left, ripping the ground apart. The ones that hadn't buried themselves yet changed direction instantly and launched again — faster than they should've been able to redirect.
It must be tracking the scale I'm holding.
Fine. They still couldn't keep up with my speed.
I stepped again, closer to Cassian. I lunged, raising the scale weapon above my head and swinging it down with everything I had. One scale intercepted just before it struck — moving faster than any scale had before. Cassian's head never turned.
The collision blasted through my arm, the force rebounding so hard the weapon ripped out of my grip — even my sticky flesh couldn't contain it.
HP: 12 / 68
The scales that formed the dome dropped to the ground one by one, uncontrolled. He'd pulled everything into that single scale to move it fast enough.
Strong. Very strong.
I extended both hands, claws spread wide, still airborne from the rebound.
Claw Slash.
Six arcs burst outward together and overlapped — a massive X. Something I'd learned from the previous lord.
The attack tore toward Cassian. He hissed, and his tail — finally pulling free from underground — rose to meet it. The X crashed into the tail with a violent surge of force, neither giving way. Energy exploded through the forest. Arcs peeled away in every direction — one into the treeline, another splitting the ground, a third flying straight back at me.
I had just landed on a tree.
The moment I saw it coming I stepped and was gone, landing on the ground below. The tree split in half behind me.
The clash was still going. Cassian's face twisted with strain, feet sliding backward, the scales on the ground completely still. He had nothing left to spare.
My eyes dropped to the ground beneath him for a moment.
I moved in.
The clash broke. The remaining arcs burst outward and sliced through everything in their path. Cassian staggered under the recoil — and then I heard it. A crack.
His head snapped toward his tail. One of the scales had fractured.
The vibrations in his face shifted in a way they hadn't before.
The scales launched back toward him with a desperate speed, locking back into place one by one.
Too late.
I was already beneath him — flat inside one of the tunnels the tail had carved through the earth. The moment his focus shifted to his scales I pushed upward, reformed as I rose, and came out directly beneath his exposed belly.
I punched him. Hard. Right in the gut.
Cassian's whole body folded around the impact and flew upward. I felt his gaze hit me — weaker than before.
I followed.
I launched from the ground and punched him again. And again. And again.
Each blow folded his body further as he rose, the pressure of his gaze weakening with every strike until it vanished entirely. I stepped away and reappeared several meters back as gravity reclaimed him.
His body slammed into the ground and threw up dirt and dust in every direction. The cloud swallowed him. The impact thundered through the forest, then —
Silence.
I walked toward him carefully. When the dust thinned I saw him coughing up green blood, eyes slightly bloodshot. I extended my claws.
He looked at me.
No bloodlust. No hatred. No rage. Just the gaze of a lord who had lost.
And somehow, he smirked. Broken and pained, but still there — like despite everything, he was satisfied.
A chuckle left me before I could stop it.
"You are crazy," I murmured.
Cassian exhaled loudly, like he was forcing the whole battle out of himself in one breath. I knelt down. My hand rose. My claws extended.
Every instinct in me told me to finish it. This had been a brutal fight, and I wasn't sure I'd win a second time.
His eyes met mine. He accepted it — that was what it looked like. No intent to continue fighting. Just the stillness of water that had never been disturbed.
Something deep in me stirred. Cassian wasn't like the Riftscour, or the Virelochs, or the things I'd faced that existed purely to kill and consume. Those creatures fought because killing was the point. Cassian fought because the fight itself was the point. There was a difference, and looking at him now I felt it clearly.
This hadn't been a fight for death. It had been a fight for pride, for dignity — the same ritual of respect that had started it. Ending it with mercy felt closer to honoring that than ending it with a killing blow. And if that gamble was wrong, if he came back stronger and smarter and less restrained, I'd have no regret fighting him again.
I lowered my hand.
I smirked at him and let out a long breath. As I turned away I felt the unease in his muscle movements — a tension that read less like aggression and more like confusion at what I'd just done.
I made my way back to the rock and let myself collapse onto it, spreading flat against the stone, letting the exhaustion have me. My back was torn open where the scale had buried itself. Cassian had taken his hits too.
I heard him try to move. He couldn't. Not yet.
My eyes closed. A moment later his pressure drifted toward me — not the weight of something sizing me up, not the intent to fight. Just a mild, almost casual curiosity settling over me like he was trying to figure out what I was.
I let it sit there.
The Brambleharts had already shown me that monsters weren't all what I'd first assumed. But Cassian was something else — a lord from a neighbouring region, not a creature born inside my borders, and he'd shown me something I hadn't seen yet at that level. The code. The dignity. The difference between a monster that existed to kill and one that existed to fight.
My territory was full of creatures I barely understood. Their abilities, their struggles, the way they survived and what they protected. I was responsible for all of it and I'd barely scratched the surface of what that meant.
Something stirred in my chest. Not dread. Not the weight of responsibility pulling me down.
Excitement.
I wanted to see all of it.