“Bryx!” Sarnyx grabbed him, shaking him hard. “It’s not real! Whatever you’re seeing, it’s not real!”
But it was real to him. That was the hounds’ power—they didn’t just show you fear, they made you live it.
Another hound circled toward me, and I made the mistake of meeting its void-like gaze.
Suddenly I wasn’t in the forest anymore. I was back in Grandmother’s house, watching her take her last breath, but this time I was frozen, unable to reach her bedside. Unable to say goodbye. Unable to tell her I understood now, understood what she’d tried to protect me from. The portal opened behind me, lightning crackling, and I was falling through—but Grandmother’s hand reached out, accusing: You left me. You left everyone.
“Elle!” Kaelren’s voice cut through the vision like a blade. His hand caught my arm, hauling me upright with bruising force. “Fight it. You’re stronger than fear.”
The hound snarled, frustrated its hold had broken. It lunged.
Kaelren’s corruption met it mid-leap. Black tendrils of decay spread from his marks, wrapping around the hound like chains. The creature’s howl turned to something almost like pain as its ethereal form began to solidify, to rot, to become something that could be hurt.
“Now!” he shouted.
Sarnyx’s thorns struck true, piercing through what was now partially solid flesh. The hound dispersed into mist, but we could all hear its whimper echoing from somewhere else, somewhere between.
“They can be fought,” Vashael said, her pollen already creating golden clouds of illusion around us. “But not for long.”
She was right. For every hound we drove off, two more materialized from the shadows. They were testing us, wearing us down, driving us toward—
“It’s a trap,” Eltrien said suddenly. “They’re herding us.”
“Where?” I demanded.
“Does it matter?” Nimor materialized beside me, more solid than I’d ever seen him. “We can’t fight them all.”
One hound lunged at Bryx, who had finally broken free of the fear-vision but was still disoriented. It left three parallel scratches across his chest that bled light instead of blood—not physical wounds, but something worse.
“Those are essence wounds,” Eltrien said, pulling Bryx back. “They’re tearing at what makes him him.”
“Oh good,” Peeble said. “Because regular deadly wounds would be too boring.”
The riders appeared then, surrounding us in a perfect circle. They’d stopped herding us—we were exactly where they wanted us. The Hunter himself dismounted, and looking at him was like trying to focus on a migraine—painful and impossible. He was beautiful and terrible, ancient and newly born, everything and nothing all at once.
“Elle of Earth,” his voice came from everywhere and nowhere. “You runfrom judgment.”
“I run from bullshit,” I shot back, my marks flaring brightly at my collarbones. The Root responded to my anger, roots beginning to push up through the forest floor around my feet. “What crime am I guilty of besides existing?”
“Existing as anabomination,” he replied simply. “You are becoming something outside the pattern. Something that breaks the wheel.”
“Good. The wheel sucks.”
“Oh brilliant,” Peeble hissed. “Yes, definitely sass the ancient death god. What could possibly go wrong?”
He laughed, and birds fell dead from the trees around us, their small bodies hitting the ground with soft thumps. “Such defiance. It will make the hunt sweeter.”
He raised his hand, and the hounds tensed to spring—
Nimor didn’t wait. He charged.
Not at the Hunter—that would be suicide—but at the nearest hound, his shadow-form wrapping around the creature like chains of darkness. The hound howled, thrashing, snapping at something it couldn’t quite catch, and the Hunt’s attention divided.
“Move!” Kaelren commanded, already dragging me backward.
“Nimor!” I screamed, but he was already fighting three hounds at once, his form flickering wildly as they tore at his essence with teeth and claws that shouldn’t exist.
Two more hounds peeled off from the circle to join the attack on him. Then another. He was outnumbered, outmatched, and he knew it—but he kept fighting anyway, kept drawing their attention, kept buying us seconds.
