They didn't get a full day before it came back.
Kairn had hoped for that much.
A night.
A few hours.
Time for Lysa's hands to stop shaking, for Fen to stop flinching at every rustle, for the bone-walker to grow its half-melted arm back properly.
They got maybe two hours.
Long enough to drag themselves out of the hollow, find a patch of higher ground overlooking a valley of twisted trees and glass river, and choke down dried food that tasted like ash.
Long enough for Kairn's blood gauge to crawl up from "empty" to "barely functional," for his chest to stop feeling like a broken bell, for the drum of his headache to settle into a steady throb.
Not long enough for anyone to feel ready.
The dragon in his ribs stretched, testing his limits.
You are held together with spit and hate, it said. Still, you stand. Good.
"Your standards are low," Kairn muttered.
Lysa sat on a slanted rock nearby, wrapping fresh cloth around her palms. The skin there was torn from the last beat, veins under it still dark where magic had overrun them.
Fen paced.
He'd dozed for maybe ten minutes, then snapped awake, knife in hand.
The kids slept in a loose pile under a leaning chunk of black stone, bone-walker perched above them like an ugly, protective gargoyle.
The Wilds around them creaked and whispered.
The King's web, in Kairn's **Web Map**, looked frayed here—threads thin, some snapped, some rerouted—the preacher's path a jagged line zig-zagging toward them.
It was moving faster this time.
Less glitching.
More focus.
"He's getting better at steering it," Kairn said.
Lysa looked up.
"How long?" she asked.
"Fifteen, twenty minutes," Kairn said. "He's pulling it along shorter, stronger lines."
Fen swore under his breath.
"What does he want?" Sia asked, awake now, voice thick. "If he has all those other toys, why keep throwing this one at us?"
Kairn thought of the preacher's internal chain-net, the Null scar he'd bitten into it, the way the King had tried to patch around that hole and failed to fully erase it.
"He doesn't like loose ends," Kairn said. "And I left a piece of myself in it. He probably wants that back. Or wants to see what happens when we keep breaking the same thing."
"He's stubborn," Mar said quietly.
"So are we," Tam added, too quickly.
Lysa smiled at that, brief but real.
"Terrible habit," she said. "Never change it."
Kairn pushed himself to his feet.
Pain flared.
He ignored it.
The chain-scar in his chest pulsed.
His **Drake-Null Brand** hummed, dragon and zero rings both.
The preacher was close enough now that he could feel its aura without Web Map.
Rot and chain and that flicker of absence he recognized as his own doing.
He didn't want to meet it in the open.
He also didn't want to be trapped in another hollow that could flood with rot.
He picked a compromise.
A broken ridge jutted from the hillside, forming a low, jagged wall of stone with gaps he could move through quickly but a larger creature would have to squeeze.
"Positions," he said.
No argument this time.
Lysa took a spot where she could lean on the stone and still reach the ground with her hands.
Fen chose a crack that gave him a narrow shooting lane.
The kids went behind the thickest part of the ridge, bone-walker above them on a higher rock, its one regrown arm still thinner than the other.
Kairn stood in front of the widest gap.
He flexed his claws.
Ash-fire coiled, answering.
He didn't call **Null Pulse** yet.
He couldn't afford to waste it.
"Third time's the charm?" Fen said.
"Third time's the sermon," Kairn said. "Maybe we walk out before the altar falls this round."
The air thickened.
Not like before.
This time, it bent.
Reality creaked.
The preacher did not step out of the trees or drop from the sky.
It unfolded.
One moment, the space in front of Kairn was full of ash and distant branches.
The next, it was full of chain and rot and stitched flesh.
The King had cleaned it up.
A bit.
The preacher's frame was more stable, its motions smoother. The jagged metal plate on its half-face had been replaced with something carved—an approximation of a visage: blank eyes, a suggestion of a mouth. Its new arm was fully grown, a seamless fusion of chain and hardened mold.
The Null scar in its chest was still there.
Wider.
Like a missing rib.
Kairn met its burning gaze.
"You're persistent," he said.
It moved its head side to side once, as if grinding invisible sand out of its neck.
When it raised its hand, chains trembled all around them—not just around its limbs, but in the air.
The King had given it more reach.
"Kairn…" Lysa warned.
"I see it," he said.
The first attack wasn't a physical chain.
It was a wave.
His **Drake-Null Brand** flared in warning.
Chain-sight showed the ripple—a push through the web, a command-blur meant to stun, freeze, make prey flop like fish on dry stone.
He didn't have time to shout.
He did have time to do something very stupid.
He stepped into it.
He opened himself just enough to let that wave hit his Brand full-on.
It slammed into him like a slab of cold stone.
His muscles locked.
His heart stuttered.
Behind him, Lysa and the others felt the edge of it—but it was weaker, fuzzed by his null field.
He used the pressure.
He let it crash into the zero rings around his core.
He let the Null and dragon and ash-fire grind it up and spit back shards.
The System flickered.
[ CHAIN WAVE: PARTIALLY ABSORBED ]
[ BACKFLOW: UNSTABLE ]
He pushed.
Not clean.
Not elegant.
He just shoved whatever came out back along the nearest line that smelled of the King's command.
The preacher jerked.
Its own wave hit it sideways.
For a heartbeat, it froze.
Kairn's jaw unclenched.
His limbs unlocked.
His vision cleared.
He lunged.
He slashed across its torso, claws scraping chain, ash-fire biting rot.
It recovered fast.
Too fast.
It grabbed his forearm with a chain-wrapped hand and squeezed.
Bones creaked.
It flung him sideways.
He hit the ridge stone, rolled, came up on his knees.
A chain speared the ground where his head had been.
Lysa's beat pounded, messy but present.
Da-dum-da.
Fen's bolt slammed into the preacher's neck, wedging between metal mask and stitched flesh.
It didn't slow.
But it turned its head slightly, tracking Fen now.
"Bad idea," Fen muttered, scrambling.
Chains whipped toward his crack.
Kairn moved, instinct and map.
He stepped into their path, letting his disruption field twist their aim.
One slammed into the stone beside Fen's head instead of through it.
Stone exploded.
Fen ducked deeper.
"I hate being right next to you when you're heroic," he shouted.
"Complaints later," Kairn grunted.
The preacher altered tactics.
Short-chain hops now, blinking closer, then out, testing every angle.
Kairn's new **Web Map** gave him split-second warning where it would land, but each use made his head pound harder.
He cut, ducked, slashed, burned.
It was like fighting a memory of Maereth's speed wrapped in rot.
The preacher didn't taunt.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't question.
It was all execution, none of the ego.
That made it worse.
Lysa's rhythm threaded through the chaos, not an attack, not a big spell—just anchor, anchor, anchor, keeping Kairn's thoughts from slipping into dragon or Null too far, too fast.
Twice, the preacher's chains tried to latch onto his mind, to drag him under the King's current.
Twice, his Brand and the Null refused.
Control.
Break.
Silence.
"Not yours," he spat again.
He was getting tired of saying it.
The preacher shifted.
It stopped trying to overwhelm Kairn alone and widened its sense again, chains feeling for the others.
They weren't strong enough to batter down his guard yet, but they were learning.
A chain flicked toward the ridge gap where the kids huddled.
The bone-walker dropped in front of it, taking the hit in its already damaged arm.
Rot ate.
Bone regrew.
It screeched, manic.
"Not for you!" it shrilled. "Mine!"
The preacher didn't like that.
It swept a wide chain around, trying to smash the ridge and alcove together.
Kairn reacted without thinking.
He jumped into the clearing, between stone and chain.
His null field flared, bending the trajectory just enough that the chain slammed into rock above the kids instead of into it.
The impact showered them with fragments.
Sia shielded Tam with her body.
Mar threw his arms up.
Stone cut Kairn's scales and skin.
Everything rang.
His head throbbed.
He was nearly out of tricks.
He had one left.
A bad one.
"Lysa!" he shouted. "Can you still push once more?"
She didn't say yes.
She didn't say no.
She just started beating.
Not storm.
Not grave.
Something new.
Tight.
Sharp.
A pattern that didn't want to spread, only to punch one point again and again.
Da-DA-da.
Da-DA-da.
She aimed it at his Brand.
He opened himself to it.
He did not call Null Pulse.
He did something in between.
He reached through the Null scar he'd left in the preacher.
He could see it now, clearer than ever—a jagged hole in the chain-net inside it, an absence the King had plastered around but not filled.
He shoved Lysa's beat and his ash-fire and a sliver of null into that wound, not as a blast, but as a wedge.
The preacher convulsed mid-step.
Its chains flailed, some disconnecting entirely, flopping lifeless.
Its rot-arm melted at the elbow, dripping sludge.
It reached for the King's song—reflex.
The Null wedge blocked.
For the first time, Kairn felt it—not as an extension of the King, not as a puppet.
As a thing.
Hollow.
Full of pain.
Full of stolen commands.
Trapped.
He saw flashes—not clear memories, more like impressions: a Warden's face, proud; failure; the King's disappointment; unmaking; remaking; endless work in dark halls; sermons that never reached ears.
It wasn't important.
It was enough.
The preacher staggered, head jerking.
The mask-face cracked, a line running down it.
Under it, something glowed—not chain-light.
Something like it.
"Now," Kairn snarled.
He didn't know who he spoke to.
Himself.
Lysa.
The preacher.
He lunged again, ash-fire wrapping both arms, fangs bared.
He aimed not for limbs.
Not for outer chains.
For the scar.
The preacher brought its good arm up.
It was slower.
He batted it aside, took a chain across the shoulder for his trouble, felt flesh split, ignored it.
He slammed his clawed hand into its chest, fingers digging into the Null-warped cavity.
Cold and fire and nothing all met.
He roared.
He bit—not with teeth, but with Brand and Null and dragon, chewing at the King's pattern inside this toy.
"Not yours," he snarled, not just to the King now.
To the preacher, too.
"Not anymore."
Something gave.
The chains inside it snapped in waves.
The King's grip slipped.
He could have held on.
He could have forced the preacher to explode, to take Kairn with it.
He didn't.
Distance.
Attention.
Cost.
Some calculation somewhere decided it wasn't worth burning this much will for this one fight.
The King let go.
The preacher jerked like a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Chains went limp.
Rot sagged.
It stayed upright only because Kairn's arm was buried in its chest.
Without the King's song, something else rushed in to fill the gap.
Null.
Dragon.
Lysa's beat.
Kairn's own stubborn will.
It wasn't a graceful process.
More like a dam collapse.
Fragments of commands, broken sermons, half-remembered orders, all flooded him.
He could have drowned in them.
He almost did.
Lysa's rhythm hammered.
Da-DA-da.
He used it as a filter.
He shoved everything that wasn't useful out.
He kept one thing.
The preacher's still-burning hate.
Not for them.
For the chains.
For the King.
He offered it an option in the one instant before its core either collapsed or reformed.
"Break with me," he rasped.
It did something that might have been nodding.
The mask-face shattered fully.
Under it, the pits of its eyes burned one last time.
Not chain-white.
Ash-amber, for a heartbeat.
Then the preacher's body came apart.
Not exploded.
Unwound.
Chains fell away in dead heaps.
Rot hit the ground like wet cloth.
Bone and stitched flesh collapsed.
Something like a ripple went through the local web.
Kairn staggered back, arm dragging free, covered in ichor.
His head felt like it had been used as a drum.
The System chimed.
[ NIGHT PREACHER – UNCHAINED / DESTROYED ]
[ RESULT: KING'S CONTROL NODE LOST ]
[ EFFECTS: REGIONAL CHAIN STABILITY - / KING'S NOTICE +++ ]
[ EXPERIENCE: LARGE – LEVEL 13 REACHED ]
[ NEW PASSIVE: CHAIN-RESIST SERMON I ]
– Having broken a preacher, your presence now slightly blunts chain-based mental influence for nearby allies.
– Range: small group radius.
He dropped to his knees.
Lysa was there before he fully hit, catching his shoulder, panting, sweat streaking dirt on her face.
"Still… you?" she demanded.
He laughed once, short and wrecked.
"Bit more crowded," he said. "Still me."
Fen sagged against the ridge, sliding down to sit, crossbow hanging limp in his hand.
"Tell me," he said hoarsely, "that this thing isn't coming back a fourth time."
Kairn looked at the heap of dead chain and rot.
His Web Map showed a gap where the preacher's signature had been.
The King's web trembled around that hole, angry, calculating.
"He can build another someday," Kairn said. "But not that one. Not with those pieces. We broke it where it mattered."
The bone-walker hopped down from its perch, circling the corpse, sniffing.
"Tastes… free," it said, surprised. "Bad. Good. Empty. Full. Strange."
Tam peered out from the alcove, eyes huge.
"Is it over?" he asked.
"For this one," Kairn said.
Sia frowned.
"But not for… everything," she said.
"No," Kairn said. "Not for everything."
Lysa slumped back on her heels.
"I'll take 'not everything' today," she said. "Tomorrow can yell at us when it gets here."
The dragon hummed, oddly satisfied.
You broke his sermon, it said. You turned his reminder into your own.
The Null was quiet, but its rings felt a little denser around his Brand now.
Kairn breathed.
In.
Out.
Lysa's beat slowed, then stilled.
Fen closed his eyes.
The kids crawled out, edges of fear and awe warring on their faces.
The bone-walker sat on the preacher's chest as if on a throne, humming tunelessly.
Kairn pushed himself upright, eventually.
"We need to move," he said.
Fen opened one eye.
"Now?" he asked.
"Soon," Kairn said. "He'll be busy yelling at the space where his toy used to be. That won't last. The longer we sit, the more likely he decides to throw something bigger."
Lysa groaned.
"Of course," she said. "No rest for the dragon-leech."
Kairn looked at her, at all of them.
He felt tired to the marrow.
He also felt something else—a thin, hard line of satisfaction.
They'd gone three rounds with a hand-picked monster.
They were still standing.
More scarred.
More wrong.
More themselves.
He turned his back on the preacher's corpse and the tremoring web and the distant, cold attention of a furious King.
"Forward," he said again.
No one argued.