Jin moved through the forest with the easy, deliberate step of someone who no longer had to guess the weight of his own power. The canopy closed and opened above him in slow, patient breaths; the air was damp and smelled of moss and crushed pine needles, a green perfume that made the world feel alive enough to betray secrets if only one listened closely. He glanced up as a silver streak cut the sky—Sarafina, arcing through the leaves toward the northwest, a comet of pale hair and resolve.
A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. The amusement in his crimson eyes was private and sharp.
"Alright," he murmured, voice low enough for the trees to keep. "Time to go find my dear wife. I wonder how she'll react." The thought tasted of mischief. He straightened his coat, hands slipping back into his pockets, and angled his steps toward the direction his ring tugged him—a subtle pull beneath his skin that pulled him like a lodestone.
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Not far from where Sarafina cleaved the sky, the forest opened into a shadowed glade where things had soured. The scent here was different: iron and singed hair, the copper tang of blood undercut with the bitter smoke of small flames. Rina lay prone on the carpet of leaves, unconscious, the heat of the phoenix flame that had tried to seal her wounds still faint against the cold skin of the ground. Around her, broken twigs and scorched earth told the story of violence—of a struggle cut short.
Nox—Zakaros—stood a small distance away, a dark silhouette against the soft green. Beside him was Shizana, her silver fur glinting like frost, blue eyes steady and unblinking as cut glass. She lifted an ear at Jin's coming—their little pack always alert—and cocked her head with a soft sound that was almost catlike curiosity.
Shizana's voice, when she spoke, was a bell of silk. "Zakaros," she said softly, as if to announce a visitor. "It appears Master Jin has arrived through a space-gate. He is coming this way."
Nox laughed—a sound thin and brittle at first, then something like a rasp of amusement. "Ha. The Prince of Darkness deigns to honor us with his arrival." There was a jibe in the tone, but it floated like a loose feather in the air; his attention was elsewhere. His grin had the brittle humor of someone who enjoys theater more than truth.
Shizana glanced at Zakaros and gave a tiny wag of her tail—joyous, expectant. "Will you fight young Master Jin?" she asked with the sweetness of a child asking to see fireworks.
Zakaros barked out a booming laugh that rolled through the trees. "Not I. My rivalry is with one opponent only—one who carries a white lion's legacy." He pointed, with a lazy, theatrical flick of the finger, toward Leona—lying senseless nearby with injuries that showed the remorselessness of the attack: internal traumas, tears under the skin, the aftermath of a blow that had not been clean. Rena had poured phoenix fire into her to bind the worst of the wound, but the damage ran deep and stubborn. Zakaros's interest lay elsewhere; his posture was that of a predator bored with easy pray and hungry for a different challenge.
Suddenly Nox's shoulders shuddered. His silver hair glinted, his blue eyes flashed, and then, as if some internal thread were cut, his body folded inward. He collapsed without sound to the leaf-strewn earth. The change was brutal and immediate: veins burst close to the surface, blood spilling in a frightened red that stained the ground; the muscles in his limbs twitched and then lay slack. His mouth foamed with dark flecks. The scene was ugly in its intensity—an exhaustion that had been imposed, not earned. Zakaros's control had been heavy upon him; his body had been pushed until the flesh could no longer hold.
Shizana watched the ruin of Nox's form with that stillness that is not the same as indifference. She did not approach the broken body. Instead, her attention moved—gentle and urgent—to Rina. Though her frame had the svelte grace of a spirit-bred beast, she moved with the careful speed of one who has learned to carry precious things.
Shizana reached Rena and, with a soft, practiced motion, folded the unconscious woman into a cradle created by mind and muscle. Threads of mana—thin filaments of luminous silver—coiled delicately around Rena's torso and limbs to secure her, to pin the limbs gently so no further harm would be done by the journey. The air smelled suddenly of ozone and leaf-sap, the mingled perfume of magic and forest.
Then Shizana broke into a run—an animal sprint that brought the world whipping past in a blur of green and brown. Her paws struck the moss with a rhythm that was both drum and prayer; her tail rose like a banner. She raced toward Jin, toward the one who could steady things that were broken, toward the center of the storm as a playful pup might run to its master—eyes bright, tongue a quick pink in her mouth, excitement bleeding into urgency.
She loved that about Jin in her own peculiar way. When she was alone with him, the great spirit took on a smaller life: she wanted his fingers through her fur, his hand to smooth her head, his voice to call and reassure. She loved the scent of him—the sharp edge of his soul, the warmth that hummed like iron—and she recognized, in him above all, something of the boy who could be both hunter and harbor.
The forest blurred as Shizana hurtled between trunks; Rina's body rested secure against her warm, steady back. Leaves slapped the air. The scent of pine and damp earth mixed with the metallic trace of blood and the faint perfume of phoenix-ash clinging to Rena's clothes. Shizana's fur flicked silver in the mottled light, and the mana-threads hummed against the soft resistance of Rena's breathing.
As they ran, the island seemed to bow its head, the canopy opening in narrow lanes for them as if the trees were making way. Somewhere in the distance a bell-like warning chimed—students and traps, the ripple of panic—yet Shizana kept to her single-minded task: bring Rina to the master, and do it quickly.
Jin, moving through the dappled forest, paused as the sound of rushing paws met his ears. He looked up, his crimson eyes catching the silver flight of fur that bore Rena like an ember on its back. A dozen small impressions traced themselves across his face—concern, a tightening in his chest, and then that familiar, ironic brightness that seemed to be his shield against things both dreadful and merciless.
He set his stride to meet them and the ground seemed to answer: roots parted, a gust shifted, the world clearing a corridor for the one who had become an axis in people's more fragile orbits. The smell of wet earth and the metallic tang of blood layered with the scent of phoenix-heat and floating mana as Shizana closed the distance. The moment they crashed into sight was quick and all at once: Rena's pale face, the quick rise of her chest under the mana-bindings, Nox's ruined body, and Zakaros standing there like a shadow pleased with himself.
Jin's hand flexed, a small motion that carried the import of a fist. He moved forward without a shout; there was no need. Shizana skidded to a stop, tail high and triumphant, and dipped her head in an eager, canine bow. Jin reached out like a man who has been preparing for a particular kind of mercy and took Rina's weight from the creature that had dashed through the green.
He felt the heat of her like a slow coal beneath skin: weak, but stubbornly stubbornly alive. The ring on his finger pulsed soft red as if in warning, as if promising binding and sorrow in equal measure. Zakaros watched, amused and cool. Nox lay groaning, a casualty of war against a will that was not entirely his own.
In the green hush, with sunlight mottled into flecks across Rena's still face and the smell of sap and smoke hanging in the air, choices gathered around Jin like small knives. The forest watched with patient silence; the island seemed to hold its breath for the decision he would make next.
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Heat: Thanks for reading