Dagian
The rooftops were slick with dew and ash. Each step I took left a hollow thud that got lost beneath the chaos below. The night was alive in a way it shouldn't have been.
The Red Moon had only been out for an hour, but the world was already unraveling.
From above, Evervale looked like a wound. The light painted the entire layer in crimson—glowing off the rooftops, sliding through cracked windows, bleeding into the cobblestones. The smoke from burning houses climbed toward the sky but never made it far. The air was too heavy.
I moved fast, boots scraping tile, leaping across gaps, keeping my eyes low. Down there was where it mattered—the streets, the alleys, the dark corners where they always came from.
They were everywhere tonight.
I could see the shapes moving through the smoke. Crawling. Leaping. Clawing at the stone. Some hunted alone, others in swarms. It was like watching nightmares run loose.
A woman screamed somewhere in the distance. A second later, the sound cut short.
I exhaled through my teeth and kept running.
The Red Moon always brought them out, but it was never the same way twice. The beasts changed every time, new shapes and sizes, new sounds. Some said it was the moon's reflection on the Pit—whatever stirred down there had its own rhythm, and we were just catching the echoes.
But we had a way of classifying them.
A hierarchy, simple enough for the ones who survived long enough to use it.
The first kind—the ones that never shut up—were called Roots.
You could hear them before you ever saw them.
Small, hunched things with too many joints and not enough thought. Faces that stretched too far, mouths that never closed. They hunted in packs, their shrieks bouncing off walls like broken glass.
They were the bottom of the chain, the base of it all. No tactics, no intelligence. Just raw hunger and noise.
If you were new, they killed you.
If you were trained, they were warm-up.
Down in the streets below, I could see dozens of them scrambling through the alleys—skittering across walls, tearing into corpses, dragging limbs behind them like trophies. Their eyes glowed faintly in the red light, and for a second, the street looked like it was lined with candles.
A flare of blue cut through the haze—arrows from a hunter's bow. The Roots hissed and scattered like insects under a torch.
The next type—the ones that actually made you work for it—were the Jaws.
Most of them came from the Pit's upper tunnels. Nobody knew how they made it to the surface, but when they did, you'd hear it in the city long before seeing one. The air would change. Dogs would start barking.
They weren't clever, but they learned.
They could mimic footsteps. Copy voices.
I'd seen one tear through a squad of hunters just by pretending to cry for help.
From the rooftops, I spotted a few tearing through the old district—a cluster of black silhouettes moving like wolves through the crimson fog. Their bodies were twisted, elongated, muscle straining against cracked bone. Each step they took left claw marks glowing faintly red.
I didn't stop running, but my eyes followed them until they vanished around a corner.
Then there were the Ravorns.
They didn't show up every Red Moon, and no one complained about that. When they did, the flares went up, and every hunter within ten miles turned silent.
No one really agreed on what they were.
Some said they were people once—hunters who pushed too deep, who drew too much power from their weapons until their souls split apart.
Others thought they were experiments from the old days, from before the Great War, crawling back up to remind us what we used to be capable of.
What I knew was simpler.
When a Ravorn showed up, people died.
They looked human from a distance. Moved like us too.
But when you got close, you saw the difference—their limbs too long, their skin torn in places where bone pushed through. The moonlight clung to them differently, like it couldn't decide if they were solid or smoke.
None of them had eyes.
Just the faint red glow where eyes should've been.
And deeper than that… well.
The ones that made the ground shake were something else entirely. The hunters gave them no name because saying it out loud felt wrong. You only ever heard stories—of the Red Moon that didn't end, of beasts the size of towers, of cities wiped clean overnight.
I didn't believe half of it.
But I didn't doubt they were real either.
The Pit had no bottom, not really. Just layers of things that shouldn't exist, waiting for light that never came.
And tonight, the light had gone deeper than usual.
I stopped for a moment at the edge of a roof and crouched, scanning the horizon.
Evervale stretched out below—streets like veins, buildings like cracked bones, all pulsing faintly in red. The citadel's tower stood far in the distance, its bell still ringing, though it sounded slower now, more uneven.
From here, I could see everything. Hunters moving in formation, dragging wounded to safe zones, bodies lining the gutters.
And everywhere, those things.
Roots crawling along walls, Jaws slamming into barricades. The whole city had become a hunting ground.
The Red Moon above flickered, almost pulsing in rhythm with the noise.
I could feel Vireth stir faintly against my back, reacting to the moon's hum. It was a low vibration, something that sank into my chest rather than my ears.
The sky always changed under the Red Moon, but tonight it felt… off.
The air was heavier.
The beasts louder.
The smell got worse.
Almost like the world was feeding something deeper.
I kept running.
The rooftops blurred together, each one ending in another leap, another crack of old tile. My breath came out harsh and even. Down below, I caught glimpses of movement—hunters cutting through beasts, flashes of light from their weapons, the sound of orders yelled and ignored.
Everywhere I looked, there was motion.
You could always tell who'd been through one of these before. The veterans moved quiet, their strikes efficient, their panic hidden behind precision. The new ones screamed too much, swung too wide, died too fast.
That was the way of Duskfall. You either adapted to the hunt or became part of it.
As I ran, I thought of Ma back home, probably locking every door twice, probably trying to act calm for Isabella's sake. The thought made my chest tighten, but I pushed it away.
I couldn't go back yet. Not while the streets still screamed.
A shriek cut through the night—high, jagged, close.
I turned my head and saw it.
A Root dragging itself across a roof not far from me, claws scraping the stone. It stopped when it noticed me, its head twisting too far to one side, bones cracking. Its grin spread wider, impossibly wide.
I raised my hand.
Vireth flared faintly.
The Root backed away, hissing, then darted off into the darkness.
I didn't chase it.
There were too many. Killing one meant nothing.
The rooftops ahead were on fire, flames licking at the shingles, smoke twisting into the red sky. I leapt across the gaps, heat searing my face, embers sticking to my coat. For a second, it almost looked like the air itself was burning.
Below, the streets were chaos—bodies, fire, blood. But above it all, there was rhythm.
The Red Moon pulsed again.
The beasts howled in unison.
And I ran, the sound of my boots lost in the roar.
I didn't know how long I'd been running. Minutes, maybe hours. Time bent strange during hunts. The moon didn't move. The world didn't breathe.
All that existed was motion and instinct.
Every corner of Evervale was alive with battle. Hunters shouting, beasts shrieking, people dying. And somewhere beyond the city, deep beneath our feet, the Pit was stirring.
You could feel it.
Like a heartbeat under stone.
I kept my eyes ahead, scanning for the next block.
The rooftops narrowed into a line of sharp ridges. I slowed to a crouch, scanning the streets between two burnt-out inns. Something big moved under the smoke—low to the ground, steady, wrong.
Jaws.
I tracked the shadows until they cut across a lantern's dead glass. Four of them at first. Then two more sliding from an alley, shoulders rolling, claws scoring red into the cobble. Their bodies looked molded by the moon—too long in the spine, knees bending backward, bone pushing through hide like hooks. Yellow teeth clicked against each other as they scented the air.
They weren't hunting blind. They were following a route.
I backed up two steps, then sprinted and leapt.
The drop knocked the breath into my ribs. I hit the street, rolled, came up behind them.
"Hey," I said.
Six heads snapped toward me, eyes reflecting the sky.
Vireth answered my hand before I called it. The scythe formed in a curl of black smoke, the blade sliding into shape with a low hum that sat in my chest. Gold ran along the edge, faint and thin, like a single vein of light fighting to exist under the Red Moon.
The first Jaw lunged.
I slid left. The blade whispered. Its head kept going without its body; the body remembered too late and fell sideways, legs kicking until they stopped.
The other five hesitated. Then they broke and came in from angles.
Jaws don't rush stupid. They flank. I kept the wall to my back and stepped into them.
Claw. Tail. Teeth.
I caught the closest one across the snout and reversed the swing into its foreleg. Bone split; it dropped. I pivoted, drove the butt of the scythe into another's throat. It gagged on air. The next leapt over its friend and hit me high. I took the impact, let it carry me a step, then cut under its ribs and felt the blade skate along cartilage and into something that burst warm across my gloves.
Two left. They fanned out, clicking, reading my stance.
"Come on," I said.
They came together.
I went low, carved one's toes off in a clean rake. It toppled, screaming. The second hit where my head had been and slammed its chest into the wall. I chopped its spine as it rebounded. It folded like a door that forgot its hinge.
Silence tried to settle. The Red Moon wouldn't let it. The air hummed, the same steady rhythm, like a hand on the city's throat.
Footsteps pounded from the alley. Three hunters burst out—coats half-buckled, faces streaked black and red. They froze at the pile of bodies, then at me.
"North patrol?" one asked.
"Rooftops," I said. I turned Vireth's blade outward to shake off gore; it steamed and ran in strings.
"Jaws all over the markets," the tallest said, catching his breath. "You alone?"
"Faster that way."
He grimaced but didn't argue. "We've got civs pinned two streets east—couldn't move them with these things sweeping blocks. You cleared more than we did."
I glanced past him. The ground wasn't quiet yet. Scratches ticked in the dark—more claws on stone, more weight gathering.
"They're testing routes," I said. "Looking for openings."
The third hunter—a woman with a torn sleeve and blood under her nails—tilted her head, listening to the street like I was. "Hear that?"
We all did. The scrape had changed. Heavier. Not Jaws. Not Roots. Something hauling itself over a cart, wood cracking like ribs.
"Left," I said, and moved.
We took the corner together. The street opened into a T-junction with a collapsed wagon in the center and three bodies under it—hunters by the look of the boots sticking out. Jaws crouched on the debris like vultures. Smaller things—Roots—skittered around the edges, waiting for scraps.
We didn't warn them. We didn't need to.
I hit the first with a cut that opened it from jaw to sternum. The hunters crashed into the next two, steel and ether flashing red. The woman ducked under a swipe and drove a short spear up through a Jaw's palate; the point burst out between its eyes. She yanked it free and spun, stabbing a Root mid-leap. It folded like cloth.
"Watch your right!" the tall one shouted.
I took two steps and split a Jaw's forelimb, then side-kicked it into the cart. The wood gave. Bodies slid loose under a rain of splinters. One of the dead twitched. Not dead. He sucked a wet breath and rolled, coughing blood.
I put my boot on the Jaw's throat and pressed until it stopped. "Get him behind the door," I said.
The tall hunter grabbed the man under the arms and dragged; the third cleared a path, snapping at Roots with quick, precise thrusts. I stayed in the middle, turning, cutting, keeping the circle tight. Jaws hate tight circles. They want angles, space. I denied them both.
A Root got past and went for the tall one's calf. I hooked it by the waist with Vireth's shaft and flung it into the wall. It squealed, slid, tried to stand on a leg that wasn't there anymore, and hissed until the woman pinned its head to the stone.
"Thanks," the tall one grunted, hauling the wounded hunter through a splintered doorway and kicking it shut.
He reappeared a second later, breath fogging under the heat. "No more inside. Place is clean."
"Keep it that way," I said.
The street quieted again, the kind of quiet you don't trust. The Red Moon pulsed. The hum pressed the air down into our lungs and waited.
"How bad is it?" the woman asked, wiping her spear on her coat.
"Bad," I said. "They're everywhere. Roots in swarms. Jaws running flanks. Someone's driving them without thinking it."
"Command wants us grouping at the south square," the tall one said. "Push lines out from the citadel." He exhaled, looked me over. "You with us?"
"Not grouping."
He gave a tired half-smile. "Of course not, soon to be Eidolon."
A sound rolled over the rooftops. Not a scream. A bell, doubled and then tripled by echo, dull under the sky's constant hum.
"West tower," the woman said, frowning. "That's fast.
"They're sounding early," the tall one muttered. "Either they're scared or they're hearing something we haven't yet."
"They're hearing it," I said. I pointed with Vireth's blade. "Listen to the stone."
We stood still. Under the hum, under the shallow breaths and the wet drip from the broken wagon, the ground had picked up a faint tremor. Not the heavy step of anything colossal—just the busy vibration of too many bodies moving the same way, the way a hive sounds when it decides.
"North side," the woman guessed.
"Everything's moving north," I said. "They'll use every alley from the ridge to the river wall. You'll get cut if you try the straight streets."
"We'll zig," the tall one said, like he needed to prove he'd thought of it. He glanced at my mask—the cracked half-face, gold lines running through the bone. "You look different under a red sky, Dagian."
"So do they," I said, and started walking.
He caught my arm. I looked at his hand until he let go. "If you see flares…"
"I know what they mean."
"Just—don't disappear when they go up." He looked at the door he'd dragged the wounded through, jaw hard. "We're light on blades tonight."
I didn't answer. He nodded like that was enough, turned, and jogged after the woman. Their footsteps vanished into the alley.
I checked the wagon again. The two bodies under it didn't move. Their weapons were already fading—the glow running down the blades and filaments like water turning to steam. Hunters die; their Willwork goes with them. The tools don't stick around without the soul that made them.
"I'm Sorry," I said, and kept moving.
I took the narrow rise to the next block, a staircase wedged between two shops that used to sell candles and bread. The handrail had teeth marks in it. Roots? Or something that wore a Root once and learned how wood tasted. Either way, someone had bled here; it painted the steps in long, broken palm prints.
The wind shifted. The smell hit me hard—copper and sour oil, lantern fuel and flesh gone wrong. I cut left, sprinted a line of roofs, and slid to a stop above a wide market lane.
Chaos.
Jaws had run the stalls down in a clean path—canvas hanging in rags, crates busted open, fruit smashed into a slick that made the cobbles shine. Roots swarmed the mess like rats, chomping pulp and meat with equal enthusiasm. A hunter squad had formed a half-circle near a fountain, backs together, blades and poles working in fast rhythm. A captain barked count. "Two—six—ten—push!"
They pushed. The circle moved as one and bought ten feet of breathing room. The Roots peeled, came in again. The Jaws waited at the edges, watching for a break.
They were learning the pattern. They'd break it soon.
I tracked right. A high roof over a narrow alley would give me an angle into the Jaws' rear line. The shingles were slick, the pitch steeper here; I went low, palms flat, boots quiet.
The nearest Jaw lifted its head and sniffed. I froze. It turned away. The wind held.
I vaulted down behind them.
Two steps forward. First swing took a tail clean off. Second carved a hamstring. The third started at one Jaw's hip and ripped to the ribs; it shrieked like a kettle at a boil and fell into the alley, thrashing.
The others reacted fast. I was already moving.
Jaws crash. I don't.
I made them follow me into the narrow, where their shoulders scraped and their claws clacked against brick instead of my face. Their roars doubled on themselves in the tight space. One tried to climb the wall for height; I knocked its hand away and opened its belly with an upward cut that scattered it across its friend.
"Push!" the captain yelled somewhere behind the pack. "Now—now—now!"
I timed the last cut with their drive. The Jaws in front of me stumbled; the half-circle burst forward and jammed steel into the hesitation. For a heartbeat the street became a machine with working parts. Hunters and blade and timing. Then Roots turned it back into a mess.
I waded into it until the Jaws were dead or running wide. The Roots flooded and hissed and died on poles and boot heels. One found my calf; I slammed Vireth's butt into its mouth and felt its teeth break against the haft.
The captain saw me now. He didn't smile—no one smiled under a Red Moon—but his chin lifted a fraction. "You picked a fine spot."
"Clear your left," I said. "They'll sweep again."
He made a quick chopping motion and his squad shifted without asking why. Good men. Tired men. Blood up to their laces.
I stepped away from them before they could add me to their formation. Being counted meant being slowed. Being slowed meant being dead.
A root swarm hit a doorway beside me. The door held. The swarm moved to the shutters and raked wood until it shredded under their nails. I put three down with easy shoulder cuts and left the rest to the squad's spear points. A woman inside screamed. The scream went thin, then steady; she'd found a corner to hide in. That was smart if she stayed there.
The hum deepened. Not louder. Lower. The kind of note that makes your molars notice themselves.
I looked up. The Red Moon didn't move, but the clouds around it trembled like the sky had remembered how to shiver. A bell clanged somewhere far and wrong, as if struck from under the tower instead of inside it.
The captain heard it too. His voice flattened. "Brace. They're shifting lines."
He was right. The noise of claws on stone drew north again, that hive movement, streets humming with bodies picking the same direction because something told them to.
"Why north?" one of the hunters asked, panting.
"Because the wall's thin," I said, and left the circle behind.
I cut across the square and took the stairs up a narrow bridge. Vireth's blade dulled to black and slid back into smoke along the way; the haft stayed in my palm, solid as a thought you won't let go of. I breathed in for four steps, out for four, the Red Moon's rhythm matching my lungs whether I liked it or not.
Halfway over, I glanced down. A Root clung to the underside of the bridge, long arms braided through the beams, staring up with that open, idiot smile. It swayed with my footsteps like a charm on a string.
"Don't," I told it.
It blinked once, slow. I kept moving. It stayed.
On the far side, the street narrowed into a canyon of brick and soot, chimneys leaning like drunks toward each other. Far ahead, something heavy dropped. The vibration ran through my soles.
Not colossal. Not yet. Just a lot of medium weight learning it can act like one.
I lengthened my stride.
The rooftops rose again, sharper here, edges cutting into the red like knives through a curtain. I climbed and ran, climbed and ran, letting the city map sit behind my eyes. There was a choke point four blocks ahead—two warehouses facing a bottleneck street that funneled into a courtyard. If Jaws were moving north in groups, they'd hit that pinch and stack.
I reached the ridge over it and looked down.
Called it.
Two packs of Jaws paced on either side of the bottleneck, testing air for scent. Roots flooded the mouth of the street and crawled up the walls, nails leaving smears like charcoal. Behind them, a low cluster of hunters shepherded five civilians across the courtyard, backs bent, eyes up.
If the Jaws picked up the trail, those five wouldn't make it ten steps.
I dropped to the lower roof, then to a balcony. The balcony's wood bowed and didn't break. I rode it down, let it dump me into the bottleneck, and landed between the packs.
"Over here," I said.
They obliged.
The first got the curve, clean and deep, a farmer's cut across the neck that took everything it needed to. The second got a hook in the jaw and a pull that dumped it under my knee; I put my knee through its throat. The third jumped; I stepped back and let it pass, then scythed its hind legs out from under it so it slid into the Roots and flattened half a dozen.
"Go!" one of the hunters yelled to the civilians. "Don't look back!"
They ran. I didn't watch them go. I felt their footsteps fade as the Jaws pressed in again, smarter now, working to turn me sideways and open a path to the square. I refused to be turned.
The haft cracked a jawbone. The blade wrote its lesson into tendon and muscle. Movement, angle, breath. There's a point where fighting turns into arithmetic and your body starts doing the math for you. I let it.
A Jaw broke wide, desperate for speed. I flung Vireth—haft first—into its ribs. It spun, crashed, tried to stand, and met the spearwoman from the earlier squad as she slid in to finish it. "You again," she said, not out of breath. "You run faster than bad news."
"It's the boots," I said, and caught Vireth as it returned to my hand in a coil of smoke.
"Captain says north wall is screaming," she added, stabbing a Root through the top of the skull without looking. "He sent runners to the citadel. Bells are going mad."
"Then the worst isn't here yet," I said.
She swallowed and didn't ask what the worst was. We both knew.
The last Jaw in the pinch hesitated, pressed between us and the wall. It bared teeth like broken glass and made its choice—me. I let it. It charged high. I went low and cut its legs where they hinged, then rose and finished it before it could feel the floor.
Silence tried to fall again. The Red Moon refused it. Somewhere behind the warehouses, a flare gun cracked—single shot, then two more, in sequence.
We both looked up.
Red blooms opened above the rooftops and bled smoke.
The spearwoman's jaw tightened. "Ravorns."
I rolled my shoulders once. Vireth was steady in my grip. The hum in the air took another step down the scale.
"Stay with your captain," I said.
"You—"
But I was already moving, back to the walls, up the narrow bricks, hands and boots finding old holds I didn't have to see to know. The spearwoman swore without heat and sprinted toward her unit.
I climbed until the market spread under me again like a map gone red. The flares hung over the north blocks, burning slow, trailing thread-thin veins of smoke that blew east and smeared into the dark.
Ravorns.
I didn't look back toward home. That would come later—if there was a later.
I set my feet on the ridge and ran.
Only the hum of the Red Moon filled the air — low, constant, steady, like it was breathing through the city. The flames had burned low here, leaving the roads slick with soot and blood.
I slowed, scanning the alleys as I passed.
That's when I heard it.
A sound softer than the wind — a muffled sob, the kind that comes from someone trying not to exist.
I followed it, moving between two broken walls. The smell hit first — rot, iron, smoke. Then I saw them.
A boy, maybe ten, curled against a crumbling wall. His hands were clamped over his ears, shaking so hard his knuckles turned white.
And around him — five Jaws.
They moved in a slow circle, their claws scraping sparks from the cobblestone. Their movements were deliberate, savoring the fear. One leaned down, tongue sliding across its teeth as it growled low.
The boy whimpered.
I jumped from the ledge above before I even thought.
The drop cracked the ground beneath me. The nearest Jaw turned its head just in time for Vireth to cut through it — clean, deep, final.
The others shrieked and lunged.
I pivoted, driving the butt of my scythe into the second's skull. It staggered, clawing blindly. The third came from my right, faster than I expected — its talons raked across my back.
The pain was instant. Sharp. Hot.
I stumbled forward but forced my footing, twisting mid-turn to cleave through its throat. The fourth was already leaping. I caught its momentum, rolled, and came up behind it, slicing upward through its ribs. The last one lunged wild; I ducked low, cut its legs from under it, and drove Vireth down through its chest until it stopped moving.
The scythe hummed in my hands, the vibration matching my heartbeat.
Blood burned down my back, warm against the cold air. My coat was torn open; I could feel the sting where the claws had dug deep.
I turned to the boy, forcing myself upright. He hadn't moved — still frozen, face buried against his knees.
"It's alright," I said quietly, voice rough. "They're gone."
He looked up slowly. Wide brown eyes, rimmed red from crying. Dirt streaked his cheeks. His lip trembled, but he didn't speak.
I crouched beside him. "You hurt?"
He shook his head fast. "N-no. I just... I couldn't move."
"That's fine," I said, pulling a small metal flare from my belt. "You're not supposed to."
I twisted the base. It hissed, then burst upward, a streak of blue light cutting through the crimson sky. The flare hung there, glowing — a mark that meant one thing to every hunter within a mile: civilian found.
The boy flinched at the sound, then looked up at the light, eyes wide. "That's… the hunter signal, isn't it?"
"Yeah." I met his gaze. "Means someone's coming for you."
"But... what about you?"
I reached under my collar and pulled off a small chain — a hunter's sigil, a dull silver pendant shaped like an open eye. The faintest pulse of light flickered across its surface.
"This will keep you safe until they get here." I slipped it over his neck. The sigil glowed briefly, then dimmed again, forming a faint translucent shimmer that surrounded his small frame — like a veil of air made visible.
He looked down at it, then at me. "It's warm."
"Means it's working."
He hesitated. "Will you come back?"
I paused. The Red Moon's hum filled the silence between us. I didn't answer.
Instead, I stood, turning toward the road ahead. "Don't move. No matter what happens, you stay behind this wall. Understand?"
He nodded, clutching the pendant tight. "Thank you, mister hunter."
I gave him one last glance — small, fragile, shaking — then forced myself to keep walking.
The wound burned with every step, but the rhythm helped. Step. Pain. Breathe. Step. Pain. Breathe.
It reminded me I was still alive.
The street opened wider ahead, leading toward what had once been the merchant quarter. Stalls collapsed into heaps of splintered wood. Lanterns flickered weakly, their oil long burned out.
Everything was still. Too still.
The air changed before I saw it — heavy, metallic, like the smell of the Pit itself had crawled up here.
Then came the sound.
Wet. Rhythmic. Chewing.
I slowed.
There, at the end of the street, under the bleeding moonlight — a silhouette crouched among bodies.
Long-limbed. Hunched. Still.
As I approached, the faint details came into view — a creature that stood too tall for its frame, its gray skin stretched tight like dried leather. The moonlight caught on the slick blood dripping from its jaw.
A Ravorn.
It tore another strip of flesh from a corpse and tilted its head as it chewed, as though savoring it.
When it finally stopped, it turned its face toward me.
Its eyes — if you could call them that — glowed faintly red, almost human, almost not. Its jaw unhinged slightly as it sniffed the air, tongue sliding across cracked lips.
I gripped Vireth tighter. The hum from the blade deepened — a vibration that climbed up my arm and into my chest.
The Ravorn took one step forward. Then another.
We stood maybe ten meters apart — the blood between us reflecting the moonlight like water.
The creature tilted its head, studying me the way a man might study prey he didn't expect to see again.
It smiled. A slow, deliberate curl of its mouth.
"Beast," I muttered.
It moved first.
One blink, and it was already on me. Its claws sliced through the air — fast, deliberate. I blocked with Vireth, the impact jolting through my arms. Sparks of gold and red burst out where metal met bone.
The Ravorn's strength was inhuman. It pressed forward, forcing me back step by step. I twisted my body, pain flaring across my back where the earlier wound tore wider.
I shoved the scythe upward, caught its arm, and drove a kick into its stomach. The force barely made it stumble.
It laughed — a low, distorted sound, half-growl, half-mockery.
Then it lunged again.
I barely brought the blade up in time. Our strikes collided again and again, metal screaming through the air.
Each hit shook the ground. Each step pushed me closer to the end of the street.
The Ravorn swiped wide; I ducked low, slashing its leg. The cut landed, but instead of bleeding, a dark smoke seeped out from the wound.
It looked down at it — almost curious — then back at me.
My breathing came hard and fast, chest burning.
The moon pulsed again above us, painting everything in deeper red.
The creature tilted its head again, jaw twitching, like it was waiting for me to break first.
I raised Vireth and steadied my stance.
"Come on," I muttered.
The Ravorn crouched. The air tensed.
Then — we moved.