The night had a smell to it.
Cold. Metallic. Like someone had spilled fresh blood on rusty iron and left it to freeze.
Islae inhaled deeply, letting the scent fill her lungs.
Home.
Or close enough to it, anyway.
The borderlands of Abyssia had always smelled like this—blood, snow, and that weird sharp tang that came from corrupted mana seeping into everything. Most people found it nauseating.
She found it comforting.
Beneath the crumbling watchtower, three scouts lay scattered across the frost-cracked ground like broken dolls.
Two were already gone. Eyes staring at nothing, throats opened in silent screams they'd never finish.
The third one was still alive.
Barely.
He'd wedged himself behind a jagged boulder, body shaking so hard his armor rattled. His breathing had stopped being breathing and started being something closer to hyperventilating.
Poor bastard had seen everything.
Every step she'd taken. Every kill she'd made.
And now he couldn't look away, even though every instinct was screaming at him to run.
Islae rotated her curved dagger slowly, watching the obsidian-black energy crawl along its edge like living smoke.
The blade hummed softly in her grip, almost purring.
It was always hungry. Always patient.
Always whispering promises of what it could do to flesh if she just let it.
"You really shouldn't have run," she said, her voice quiet. Almost conversational.
The scout made a sound somewhere between a whimper and a retch.
Then he threw up.
Typical.
The first scout had bolted the second her shadow fell across him.
Big mistake.
His heavy plate armor had clanked with every panicked step—training screaming at him to stand and fight, fear screaming louder to run, just run, RUN—
She'd closed the gap in three strides.
Silent. Effortless.
Her fingers found the base of his skull—that soft spot right where the spine met the brain—and pressed.
Crack.
The sound was wet. Muffled. Quiet enough that the wind swallowed it.
Loud enough that she knew the survivor heard it anyway.
He dropped like a puppet with cut strings.
The second scout had actually tried to fight back.
Credit where it was due—he'd raised his sword, set his stance, tried to remember his training.
Too bad his footing was wrong from the start. Too bad his hands were shaking.
Too bad she was faster.
Islae didn't bother blocking.
She just... moved.
Flowed past him like water, like shadow, like something that shouldn't exist in three dimensions.
One heartbeat later, his sword arm hit the ground.
Still gripping the blade.
The scream that tore out of him was raw and animal and loud—
—until her dagger kissed his throat in passing.
The screaming stopped.
Blood fountained out in a dark arc, hissing when it hit the corrupted mana that had seeped into the soil. Ghostly steam curled upward, twisting in the wind like the souls of the damned.
Islae paused, watching the steam rise.
So fragile, she thought, not for the first time. Every single one of them.
It wasn't cruelty, exactly.
Just... fact.
Humans broke so easily. Like glass. Like ice. One wrong move and they shattered into pieces.
She turned her attention to the third scout.
He'd stopped moving entirely. Stopped blinking. Stopped doing anything except existing in a state of pure, primal terror.
Smart.
Movement attracted predators. Everyone knew that.
Islae approached with the patience of someone who knew the outcome was inevitable.
Each step was deliberate. Measured. Her boots barely whispered against stone.
Her eyes—pure, endless black, like someone had poured the night sky into her skull and forgotten to add stars—fixed on him with the focus of a hunting cat.
"You're lucky," she said softly.
He tried to speak.
Nothing came out except a strangled sound that might have been a word once.
"You won't die tonight."
She crouched in front of him, close enough that he could feel the unnatural cold radiating from her skin. Close enough to see his reflection in her eyes—small, terrified, insignificant.
"Not yet, anyway."
One slender finger pressed against the center of his forehead.
And then the world broke.
Dark mana surged inward—cold, invasive, wrong. It burrowed through skin, through bone, directly into the soft tissue of his mind like a parasite looking for a host.
His eyes flew open wide.
Wider.
The pupils swallowed the irises whole until there was nothing left but black.
The visions hit him like a freight train.
Watchtowers crumbling into dust. Guards torn apart by things with too many teeth and not enough shape. Cities burning under a moon that had turned the wrong color. Screaming. So much screaming.
And through it all, a voice—her voice—whispering directly into the meat of his brain:
"This is what's coming. This is what you couldn't stop. This is what you were always too weak to prevent."
His mind buckled.
Cracked.
Something fundamental inside him shattered like dropped glass.
Islae leaned in close, her lips almost brushing his ear.
"Go," she whispered. "Tell them the night of Abyssia hungers again. Tell them it's coming home."
She pulled her hand back.
The scout crumpled forward like a marionette with cut strings—alive, heart still beating, lungs still drawing breath.
But something vital, something essential, had been carved out of him and left bleeding in the dirt.
He'd live.
Technically.
Islae stood and cast one last glance at the ruined watchtower.
Pathetic.
Border sentinels. Guard duty rejects. Soldiers too mediocre for real assignments, stuck out here watching nothing happen for years on end.
And they'd died like it, too.
Confused. Scared. Completely unprepared for anything that mattered.
"Eighteen years," she muttered to the empty dark, voice dripping with contempt. "Eighteen years you people had to get ready. And this is what you managed?"
She shook her head slowly.
Humans.
But this—this carnage, this blood, these broken bodies cooling in the frost—none of it had been the point.
This was just the warm-up.
The real hunt was about to begin.
Islae lifted her hand toward the sky.
The air split open with a sound like reality screaming.
A rift tore itself into existence—blacker than absence, heavier than despair, wrong in ways that made the eye want to slide away and forget what it had seen.
From within that impossible darkness drifted something else. Something that made her lips curl into a slow, predatory smile.
The scent of mana.
But not corrupted. Not twisted.
Pure. Golden. Arrogant in its perfection.
Royal mana.
Elyndor mana.
His mana.
"There you are," she breathed.
She could feel him even from here—that bright, burning presence sitting comfortable and unaware in his fancy capital with his fancy throne room, probably bored out of his mind while his father lectured about politics or duty or whatever it was Supreme Kings lectured about.
Prince Ashen Ironvale.
Seventeen years old.
Completely average.
Utterly unremarkable in every way that normal people measured worth.
And yet...
Islae slid her dagger back into its sheath with a soft, satisfied snick.
"The Supreme King's precious son," she said, tasting the words. "The disappointing prince. The one nobody expects anything from."
Her smile widened.
Perfect.
He had no idea, of course.
No clue what he actually was. What he carried in his blood. What made him different from every other pampered royal brat playing at importance.
But she knew.
She'd always known.
And tonight—finally, finally, after eighteen years of waiting, of planning, of patience that would have broken lesser beings—
Tonight she would take what was hers.
"You're going to be so surprised, little prince," she whispered into the rift, knowing he couldn't hear her, savoring the anticipation anyway.
"But don't worry. I'll explain everything."
She stepped through.
The rift sealed behind her without a sound, without a trace, as though it had never existed.
The third scout remained where she'd left him, curled on the frozen ground, alive but emptied.
In a few hours, someone would find him.
He'd deliver her message—garbled, broken, barely coherent, but he'd deliver it.
And by then, it wouldn't matter.
By then, she'd already have what she came for.
The night drew another long, satisfied breath.
Somewhere far away, in a warm throne room full of arguing kings and political theater, a seventeen-year-old prince was thinking about dinner.
He had no idea his life was about to end.
Well.
His old life, anyway.
The new one was going to be much more interesting.