A ripping sound cut the air—wet, like cloth tearing off bone.
Ren doubled, hands clawing at his temples as ebony horns split the skin with an ugly pop.
Hot blood slicked his fingers; the pendant at his throat flared into a furnace.
The yard filled with a smell of ozone and scorched iron.
"Kira!" someone yelled. "What's that—what happened to him?"
Ren slammed his palm against the side of his head, nails finding slick hair and a new, raw ridge of horn.
The world tilted; his breath came in sharp, shallow pulls.
Voices around him folded into a single thin thread of panic.
"Stay back!" Li ordered, voice flat as a blade. "Give him room!"
A woman lunged forward and then froze, hands spread as if to catch a falling thing.
"Ren—stop moving!" she cried.
The movement had already started.
Scales erupted along Ren's forearms and shoulders like spilled paint, blue-petroleum and hard as kiln-glass.
Each scale grew with a metallic scrape, a tiny chorus of breaking ceramic.
"By the sky—look at his arm." A child's voice trembled. "It's like stone."
Kira crouched a little apart, goggles fogged, eyes bright.
"Hold him steady—don't crowd!" she barked, voice sharp and practical.
Her fingers hovered over her tools as if she might fix the change with a wrench.
Ren gripped a post to steady himself.
The new protrusions itched, then burned; sleeves split where scales pushed out like stubborn seedlings.
A splinter caught his palm and drew a thin line of red that ran into the metallic gleam at his wrist.
"Old Li—what do we do?" someone screamed behind him.
The sound scraped across the yard and then folded under Kira's steady reply.
"Keep the children back. Someone haul water—if he burns—"
"No water!" Li snapped.
He stepped forward, slow as tide.
His hands were open, palms up like a salutation.
"We don't frighten him. Give him space."
A gust rolled over from the cloud-sea, smelling of cold stone.
The pendant hammered at Ren's breast like a trapped bird.
Horns split another sound from his throat—half a cry, half a raw note.
The villagers backed away, faces a patchwork of awe and fear.
Vision shifted.
Not with thinking, but with the world rearranging itself into layers.
Heat burned like colored glass—warm bodies shone ember-orange, the Devourer's fog read as a dull, bruised violet.
Thin lines of energy—old power-threads braided in the air—glinted silver blue.
"Kira—do you see that?" a man gasped.
Kira's lips peeled back in a tight, fierce smile.
"Don't look at it. Use it."
She jerked a strap from the glider.
"If you can see its lines, you can hit its seams. Aim for the core!"
Words landed like beacons in Ren's head.
The pendant answered with a slow, bright pulse.
His limbs moved.
No calculation.
Only a single, terrible clarity: put his body where Li's stood and hold.
Ren shoved through a gap between crates, cloth and ash clinging to his face.
The Devourer loomed—an edgeless mass of teeth and smoke with a violet core pulsing like a bruised fruit.
Tendrils flowed outward and tasted the air; every lash scraped the soil into gray ash.
"Hold them back!" Li roared, flinging a child toward Kira. "Row! Row, now!"
Ren planted his feet and barreled forward.
A tendril struck his shoulder like a blunt winter.
Pain detonated—cold and burning in the same instant.
The strike should have cut him open.
Instead, pale, oil-blue scales flared where the mist hit, hard as shell.
The tendril recoiled like flesh hitting rock.
"What is—" a pirate breathed, voice gone thin.
Ren hit the creature where its mist felt thinnest, arms driving into vapor as if it were a bellows.
The core shrieked, a noise like fractured glass, and part of the fog collapsed into nothing.
A gust tore at his clothes.
The pendant seared, and a hot aftertaste filled his mouth like pennies.
Strength came—raw, ungainly, violent.
His fist connected with the creature's heart of violet, and the core spasmed.
Plumes of blackened mist unspooled like smoke whips and fell inert.
Kira shouted from behind a barrel.
"Good—keep at it! Don't give it time to reform!"
He swung again, but the cost answered immediately: limbs heavy, breath ragged, the world tilting as if ship-sick.
A ringing bloomed in his ears.
The scales shimmered, then burned with a heat that crawled down into his bones.
The Devourer recoiled, then narrowed its attention like a hunter zeroing in on wounded meat.
Its tendrils tightened into fingers and pointed straight at Ren.
A low, sucking keening rolled across the yard; where the fog passed, color leeched from wood and moss.
"Kira—get the children!" Li snapped.
His eyes—old and steady—caught Ren's for a breath.
No pleading there.
Only a look like a man handing over a tool.
"Ren!" Kira screamed, voice ragged. "If you don't move—"
Ren pivoted to meet the thing.
Every strike tore more from his reserves.
Each breath cost like copper.
Pain flashed at his temples, white and sharp, as if something inside him unstitched.
Still, his fist found the core again, and the creature's bulk shuddered.
A smear of ash slid down his cheek.
Fingers loosened around the handle of the hoe.
Muscles quivered.
The glow under his skin pulsed harder, blue catching light like scales polished in moonshine.
"Keep them clear!" Li ordered, voice a river of command that steadied the chaos.
The creature's wounds smoked; its focus pivoted entirely on Ren.
Men and women pressed against the fences, faces pale as washed cloth.
A child whimpered behind a barrel; Kira's jaw set into a thin, angry line.
Ren's knees shook under the strain.
A cold drain crawled from his limbs into his chest.
The scales flashed brilliant and then dull, like temperamental embers.
Sweat stung his eyes.
Every move felt like wading through iron.
"Kira—if you can—" Ren panted, throat raw.
"I can't hold it much longer," she gasped, oil and ash streaking her palms.
Her goggles fogged; one lens cracked with a spiderweb.
She bit her lip until blood glinted.
"If I can hook a tendon—if I can yank it—maybe it loses balance for a breath."
"Do it."
Ren's fingers found purchase on the earth; mud, ash, and grain packed under his nails.
The pendant at his throat thudded—louder now.
Kira slid into shadow behind an overturned crate.
Her shoulders drew tight as a bow.
She—small, furious, human—reached for a coiled hook and a length of rope.
The Devourer flexed, violet core pulsing wildly, drawing breath like a thing about to swallow.
Li's figure crouched by the barn, the children around him a little knot of motion.
His eyes met Ren's—calm, terrible.
Kira stepped out of the gloom, the hook glinting.
The rope unspooled with a hiss.
The world narrowed into a sliver of motion—the arc of the hook, the twitch of the creature, the beat of Ren's heart like a drum.
From the shadows, Kira throws a hook tied to a rope that wraps around one of the Devourer's tentacles.
Ren, now!