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Chapter 4 - Watching from the Trees

The nest wasn't far. Corren tracked them through the blood-smudged woods, past broken tree limbs and claw-marks carved into bark. The songs were still there—twisting, writhing, a discordant echo behind every heartbeat. They guided him.

He found the burrow beneath the roots of a fallen tree, where the ground sagged into darkness. The scent hit first—iron, rot, bile. Then came the eyes, dozens of them, blinking open all at once in the gloom.

Chupacabras. Smaller than the alpha, but just as wrong. Three to four feet, wiry and fast. Corren didn't hesitate.

He dropped into the pit like a knife into flesh.

The first one lunged. He sidestepped, drove his blade down, pinned it to the dirt. Another slashed at his ribs—he spun, letting the cut graze his cloak, and opened its throat with one clean strike.

There were six. Then four. Then two.

He didn't stop.

The song screamed around him, shrill and furious, notes of death building until the whole burrow felt like it was vibrating with their end. He cut through the last one as it tried to run.

Silence followed. Not peace. Just absence.

He stood there a moment, chest heaving, blade dripping. His hands shook. Not from fear. From the weight of it. From how easily it had come.

He didn't think of the boy. Or the innkeeper. Or Mira.

He just listened.

Nothing.

It was midday by the time he neared the village again. Smoke still rose, thinner now, curling into the clouds like breath from a dying mouth. He didn't enter. Didn't need to.

From the treeline, he saw them.

Two knights—young, polished, tense—and a mage, cloaked in green silk, her fingers twitching in thought as she surveyed the square. One girl, two boys. Emissaries of Baroness Stilleon. Power draped across their shoulders like fur.

And with them, talking low, were the old knight and the innkeeper.

Corren couldn't hear the words. He didn't have to.

They were talking about him. Of course they were.

He took a step back into the shadows.

Knights and mages had rules. Orders. Structure. But the Gifted—people like him—had no place. No name.

When someone like him was found, there were only two options: Serve or vanish.

The world didn't understand the Gift. Mages drew from the world around them—Thirra. Enhancers from themselves—Vira. But the Gifted? Their power came from somewhere else—something no one could understand.

So they were feared. Or worse—chained.

He'd heard good things about the Baroness—how she was fair, principled, even kind. But principles bent when fear or greed entered the room. Even the best intentions snapped under the right weight.

He'd heard the stories. He'd seen the chains.

He ran.

The woods swallowed him like water. Branches slapped his arms, mud clung to his feet. He didn't stop. Not until the village was a smudge behind the hills.

He found a river just before dusk. Narrow and fast, its surface rippling with the last light of day.

Corren knelt beside it, plunged his hands into the freezing water, and scrubbed. Blood spiraled away. Bits of fur. A piece of something's tooth.

He didn't stop until the skin on his arms turned raw.

He drank, then climbed a tree with thick limbs and leaves dense enough to hide him.

High above the forest floor, he wrapped his cloak around him and settled into the crook of a branch.

The sky had turned violet. The stars blinked through.

The songs were gone now.

But he didn't trust the silence.

He never had.

Sleep came slow. Bitter and light.

In his dreams, the melody waited.

Always.

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