Renji's boot hit the bear's throat. It wasn't a clean, cinematic strike; it was a heavy, clumsy collision of bone and gristle. The beast's neck buckled, making a sound like a wet branch snapping, and the pressure of the impact sent the animal skidding into the dirt before its teeth could close on the boy's shoulder.
Renji hit the ground with a flat-footed thud. Dust and dry needles puffed up, getting into his throat and making him cough. He stood up, his legs shaking. He looked at his hands—the gray skin was pulsing with a dull, rhythmic heat he didn't recognize.
"How is this thing still holding together?" he muttered.
He looked at the kids. They weren't cheering. They were backing away, their eyes wide and wet, clutching each other like he was just a different kind of monster. He felt a sharp, annoying twitch in his chest—a memory of his own sister's face when she was small and had scraped her knee. He hated it.
"I'm not going to eat you," he said. The words felt like gravel in his mouth.
The bear didn't stay down. It surged out of the shadows, a gray blur of matted fur and bad breath. It swiped at Renji, the claws catching the silver-threaded hoodie and tearing a long, jagged strip out of the chest.
Renji stumbled back, his spine hitting a pine tree with a jar that made his vision go gray for a second.
"Seriously?" he wheezed, looking at the ruined fabric. "I just got these."
He wiped a smear of dark blood from his lip. His shoulder was throbbing where the impact had bruised the bone. He didn't feel like a hero; he felt like a man who was about to lose a very expensive shirt.
"You've got some nerve."
He didn't summon a legendary weapon. He focused on the cold, oily rot in his gut and forced a small, jagged splinter of green crystal into his palm. It was sharp and uneven, biting into his own thumb. He lunged. It wasn't a graceful leap. He tripped over a root, his momentum carrying him forward in a desperate, low-angle dive.
The bear roared, the sound vibrating in Renji's eardrums. He drove the crystal into the beast's skull. There was a sickening thump as it hit the bone, then a wet slide as it found the throat. He didn't stop. He hacked at the chest, his muscles screaming, until he felt the hot, slippery weight of the heart in his grip. He yanked it out.
The beast collapsed. No sound. Just a heavy, limp pile of meat in the dirt.
Renji stood over it, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He looked at the heart in his hand—it was still twitching, a rhythmic, pathetic movement. He let out a short, jagged laugh that sounded wrong even to him.
"Yeah. This is it."
The kids were screaming now. They weren't grateful. They were staring at the bloody, gray man holding a piece of their nightmare.
"Please," the boy begged. He stood up, his legs wobbling, and shoved his sister behind him. "Spare her. Take me. Just let her go."
He was crying, but his jaw was set in a way that made him look older. Renji didn't answer. He couldn't. He just stood there, the blood from the heart dripping onto his stolen jeans. He felt a sudden, irrational desire to tell the boy that the hoodie was actually very comfortable, but he kept his mouth shut.
The kids ran to the bodies of their parents. They were shaking them, screaming for them to wake up, their small hands getting stained with the same dark red that covered Renji.
Renji couldn't watch it. It was too loud, too raw. He moved toward them—not fast, but with a heavy, deliberate step. He reached out and struck the back of their necks, a blunt, measured blow that sent them into a quiet, merciful dark.
He picked them up. They were heavier than they looked. He carried them through the brush, his boots dragging in the dirt, until he reached the edge of the market district. He found a stall filled with woven blankets and left them there, tucked behind a pile of wool.
"Hope someone finds you," he muttered. He didn't stay to check.
He turned back toward the deeper woods, his shoulder aching and his breath smelling of iron. He had the book tucked under his arm.
"A few years," he said to the empty air. He felt a sharp, cold pressure in his chest—the limit of his soul's tether to this body. "My time is short. I need the three divisions. I need to break the Abyss Lord before this vessel rots off my bones."
He started to walk, his gait uneven, his eyes fixed on the darkening horizon. He needed to find a place to hide. And he really needed a new shirt.
Renji's boots hit the slope of the mountain with a jolt that went straight to his teeth. He'd tried to catch a branch of a stunted, grey-leafed tree, but the wood was brittle. It snapped like a dry bone. He tumbled, the slope of the mountain dragging him down through sharp shale that tore at the back of his stolen hoodie. He stopped at the bottom, face-down in the dirt.
His lungs felt flat. He stayed there for a moment, pressing his forehead into the cold, gritty soil. The air was thin up here, tasting of old snow and wet stone.
He pushed himself up. His left wrist was stiff, probably sprained from the fall. He looked at the town below. It wasn't like the pearl-city. It was a cluster of low, heavy stone houses huddled in the valley like they were trying to hide from the wind. No noise came up from it. No shouting, no carts.
It was too quiet. He waited for the sound of a bird or a cricket, but there was nothing. Just the dry whistle of wind through the rocks.
This was the place. The survivors of the Fourth War. Ninety years of hiding in the shadow of the peaks. They'd stayed alive by being invisible.
Renji stood up, his knee clicking. He brushed the dirt from his jeans, but the fabric was stained a deep, ugly brown. He felt a sudden, stupid annoyance that he'd ruined the trousers so quickly. He'd only had them an hour.
He turned to find a path, but a sound stopped him. Footsteps.
They weren't heavy like the soldiers. They were soft. Careful. The sound of someone who knew how to walk on loose stone without making it slide.
Renji didn't think. He didn't use a technique. He just lunged for the trunk of a thick, gnarled tree, his back hitting the bark with a thud that made him wince. He held his breath. His heart was a frantic, uneven hammer against his ribs, the rhythm of it making his vision pulse. He clutched the heavy Aetherian book to his chest, the leather cold and stubborn against his skin.
"Hey you! I found you!"
The voice came from right behind him. It wasn't loud, but in the silence of the mountain, it sounded like a crack of thunder.
Renji didn't move. He didn't spin around. He just stared at a small, red beetle crawling up a nearby rock, wondering why he hadn't noticed it before. He felt a bead of sweat crawl down his temple. He'd lived through a dimension collapsing and a bear trying to eat his face, but the sound of a girl's voice made his hands shake.
He slowly turned his head. His neck was stiff.
A girl stood there. She was thin, her gray skin marked with the faint, faded red of a Vermilion, but the lines were different—thinner, like they'd been drawn by someone with a shaking hand. She was holding a small basket filled with grey mushrooms.
"You're not from here," she said. It wasn't a question.
Renji looked at her, then at the mushrooms. He felt an irrational urge to tell her some of them looked poisonous.
"I'm just passing through," he wheezed. His throat felt like it was lined with sandpaper.
He didn't want to kill her. He didn't even want to talk to her. He just wanted to find a place to sit down where nothing was trying to die or scream. He shifted his weight, and his sprained wrist gave a sharp, hot throb.
"You're bleeding on your shoulder," she said. She stepped closer. She didn't look scared. That was the problem. People who weren't scared were dangerous.
"It's not mine," Renji said. It was a lie. Some of it was his. Most of it was the bear's.
He looked down at the town again. The ruler there—the Noble. He'd heard the whispers. High power. The kind of power that didn't like strangers dropping off the mountainside with forbidden books.
"My grandfather is the Elder," she said, watching him. "He says outsiders only come here to bring the war back. Are you bringing it back?"
Renji looked at the girl's small, dirt-stained fingers. He thought of the boy in the forest.
"The war never left," he said. He didn't mean to be dramatic; he just couldn't think of a nicer way to say it.