The convergence point became a makeshift camp as darkness settled fully over the jungle. Portable lights created islands of harsh white illumination while hunters set up tents and established watch rotations. The exhaustion was visible on every face, even Jake's perpetual grin had faded to tired determination.
"Four-hour rotations," Jake announced to both teams. "Two hunters on watch at all times. Everyone else, get some rest. We push deeper tomorrow."
Ash helped set up the perimeter defenses, his mind racing. Helen had noticed his eyes changing. Angela had felt the mana disturbance. The questions would come eventually, and he needed to tell his sister the truth before someone else forced it out of him.
He waited until the camp settled, until most hunters had retreated to their tents. Then he made his way to Angela's tent, positioned near the center of the camp.
"Angela?" he called softly outside the entrance.
"Come in, Ash."
She sat cross-legged on her bedroll. Her white hair with black tips was tied back, and she looked up at him with those sharp green eyes that missed nothing.
"We need to talk," Ash said, closing the tent flap behind him.
Ash sat across from her, pulling off his glove to reveal the summoning mark on his palm. The intricate patterns seemed to pulse faintly in the dim light.
"At the estate," he began, his voice quiet but steady, "when those creatures broke through, and we were trapped on the balcony, I nearly died. We all nearly died. I felt something inside me reach out, desperate for anything that could save us."
Angela's expression remained calm, listening.
"I summoned something. A demon." Ash met her eyes. "It called itself Moros. The Death Bringer. This mark—" he showed her his palm "—it's what I use for summoning. It burned into my skin when the demon appeared."
"The eight people who died in the gardens," Angela said. "That was the demon?"
"Yes." The word came out heavy with guilt. "I asked it to save everyone, to end the threat. I didn't know it would kill indiscriminately. I didn't know our people who'd survived the monsters would die too. Thirteen died at the creatures. Eight died because I—"
"Because you tried to save us," Angela interrupted firmly. "You were powerless, and facing certain death. You did what you had to do."
"I killed eight people."
"The demon killed eight people. There's a difference." She reached across and squeezed his hand. "Ash, I know you. I know the guilt you carry. But you can't blame yourself for not understanding a power you'd never used before."
Ash felt something tight in his chest loosen slightly. "I don't know how to control it. The summoning only happened that once, when I was desperate enough. I don't even know if I can do it again."
"Then we figure it out together," Angela said. "Whatever this power is, whatever that mark means—"
A scream tore through the night.
They were on their feet instantly, weapons drawn. The scream cut off abruptly, replaced by the sound of tearing fabric and something worse the wet crunch of breaking bones.
Ash burst from the tent behind Angela. Chaos had erupted across the camp. A tent on the perimeter had been shredded, and inside—
He forced himself to look away from the body. An unnamed C-rank hunter, torn apart with brutal efficiency. Blood pooled in the dirt, spreading dark and glistening in the portable lights.
"Defensive positions!" Jake's voice boomed across the camp, his enhancement already active. "They're in the camp!"
Shadows moved at the edge of the light. Lizardmen, but different from before. Larger, moving with predatory patience rather than the scouts' aggressive charges.
One lunged at a D-rank hunter who'd been on watch. Jake intercepted with enhanced speed, his fist connecting with the creature's jaw hard enough to snap its head sideways. The lizardman stumbled, and Jake followed up with a strike to its chest that caved in ribs.
"Form up!" Angela commanded, her time manipulation already flickering around her. "Don't let them separate us!"
But these weren't scouts. These were something else.
They emerged from the darkness beyond the lights eight-foot-tall lizardmen clad in actual forged steel armor. Breastplates, pauldrons, and greaves all fitted to their reptilian frames with disturbing precision. They carried shields and swords that gleamed with quality craftsmanship, not the crude weapons of the scouts.
And they moved with military precision, forming a shield wall as they advanced into the light.
The shield wall didn't charge. It advanced slowly, methodically, shields interlocked perfectly. Behind the shields, spear tips protruded, ready to skewer anyone who got too close.
"We can't break through that defense!" Marcus said, his earth manipulation raising barriers that the knights simply walked around.
"Ash!" Jake barked. "Give me a gap!"
Ash's eyes flared black and green as Eyes of the Dead activated. There the third shield from the left had a crack in its base mount, the metal stress-fractured from previous combat.
"Jake, third shield from the left the base is unstable!" Ash called out. "Angela, follow his strike with a time-accelerated thrust!"
Jake didn't question it. He charged, his enhanced strength focused entirely into his right fist. The impact on the weakened shield was devastating metal screamed as the base mount shattered, and the shield exploded into fragments.
Angela was already moving; time accelerated around her to maximum speed. She blurred through the gap before the splinters hit the ground, her daggers finding the exposed knight's throat with surgical precision.
The shield wall faltered.
"Again!" Jake grinned despite the danger. "Ash, where's the next weak point?"
They fell into a brutal rhythm. Ash's Eyes of the Dead found the weaknesses a damaged pauldron here, a cracked breastplate there. Jake would create the opening with raw power. Angela would exploit it with time-manipulated speed. Lin, Marcus, and the other hunters pressed the advantage.
But the Lizard Knights were learning, adapting their formation with each breach. And they fought back with devastating effectiveness.
A D-rank hunter got too close to the reformed shield wall. A spear thrust caught him in the stomach, and he went down screaming. Sarah rushed to heal him, but another knight's sword nearly took her head off. Marcus barely managed to raise a barrier in time.
"We're taking too many casualties!" Lin shouted, her enhanced reflexes the only thing keeping her ahead of multiple knight attackers.
"Push through!" Jake commanded. "We break them here or they hunt us all night!"
The fight devolved into desperate violence. Ash called out weak points until his throat was raw. Jake's enhanced body was covered in cuts and bruises from deflecting attacks. Angela's mana reserves were draining fast from constant time manipulation.
But slowly, agonizingly, the Lizard Knights fell.
The last one collapsed under Lin's twin swords, its armor finally failing after sustained assault. Silence fell over the camp, broken only by ragged breathing and someone crying.
Jake did a quick count. "Sound off! Who's hurt?"
The casualties were heavy. Two dead the C-rank from the initial ambush and the D-rank who'd been speared. Three more seriously injured, being tended by Sarah's healing magic. Everyone else was battered and exhausted.
Jake surveyed the carnage, his jaw tight. "We can't stay here. They know where we are now."
"We're too injured to move," Sarah protested, her hands glowing white as she worked on the wounded. "Half the team can barely stand."
"Then we fortify and hope we last until dawn," Helen said, her tablet's light casting harsh shadows on her face. She'd been recording everything, but even her clinical detachment had cracked. "Those weren't random scouts. That was an organized assault."
Angela helped pull the bodies of the fallen hunters to the center of camp, covering them with torn canvas. Her hands shook slightly not from fear, but from mana exhaustion. She'd pushed her time manipulation to its limit.
Ash stood near the perimeter, staring into the darkness beyond the lights. His eyes ached from repeated use of Eyes of the Dead, but he couldn't shake the feeling that something was still out there. Watching. Waiting.
"Get some rest," Jake said, clapping a heavy hand on Ash's shoulder. "You did good tonight, kid. Those callouts saved lives."
But as Ash turned back toward the tents, he caught movement at the edge of the jungle. Just for a moment, a figure that shouldn't exist.
A skull, not a lizardman, but something ancient and demonic. Elongated and wrong, with curved horns jutting from its temples. Empty eye sockets that pulsed with a sickly green glow, the same color as necromantic energy. Wisps of dark miasma leaked from its mouth like breath, coiling in the air before dissipating.
The Corpse Handler.
One skeletal hand, far too long with too many joints, emerged from the robes to rest against a tree. Dark magic writhed around its fingers like living shadow.
Then, slowly, deliberately, its jaw opened in what could only be described as a smile. A low, rattling sound, almost like laughter, echoed from its throat.
It had been watching the entire fight. Studying them. Feeding on the death.
The creature's skull tilted slightly, those green eye-socket flames flickering with terrible intelligence, before it stepped backward and dissolved into the darkness not fleeing, but retreating by choice. A nightmare returning to deeper nightmares.
Ash's breath caught in his throat. His hands trembled.