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The golden arrow that Henry had whispered into existence grew larger and larger as it streaked through the air. What had started as a normal-sized projectile expanded into something truly massive, becoming the size of an actual meteor blazing with divine light. The sheer presence of it warped the air around it, creating ripples in reality itself that made the very fabric of space seem to bend and twist.
The massive arrow struck the Obsidian God Avatar dead center in its chest with the force of a falling star.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The explosion was beyond sound, beyond sight, beyond anything their minds could properly process. Light erupted in every direction, turning the red sky white for a brief moment that seared itself into their retinas. The shockwave rolled outward like the wrath of gods themselves, shattering the glass plain for kilometers in every direction. Fragments of obsidian and superheated air filled the space where the Avatar had been standing, creating a cloud of debris that sparkled like deadly snow.
Henry didn't wait to see the results. Moving with speed that was twenty times faster than when he had been an S-rank hunter, he blurred across the battlefield in a streak of golden light. His enhanced reflexes allowed him to grab both Hans and Irene without even slowing down, scooping them up as if they weighed nothing at all. To them, the world became nothing but a streak of motion as Henry carried them several kilometers toward where Ren had landed after being kicked by the Avatar.
The sensation of moving at such incredible speed was disorienting for Hans and Irene. The landscape rushed past them in a blur of colors and shapes, the wind whipping around them so fast it created a protective bubble of compressed air. They could feel the raw power radiating from Henry's body, a warmth that spoke of energy barely contained within human form.
"You guys, protect him," Henry said, setting them down near Nox who still unconscious. His voice carried the authority of someone who had stepped into a completely different league of power, a resonance that made the air itself vibrate with command.
Hans and Irene nodded grimly, understanding immediately what Henry was asking of them. They had witnessed enough to realize that the battle about to unfold would be on a different level entirely. This wasn't something A rank hunters could interfere with without being instantly vaporized. This was a clash between powers that could reshape the landscape with their mere presence, forces that operated on scales beyond human comprehension.
Nox lay unconscious but breathing, his plague doctor mask cracked but still functioning. Blood seeped through tears in his Umbral Gentleman's Attire, and his tentacles hung limply from his opened mask. But he was alive, which was more than they had dared to hope after seeing him take a direct hit from a Master being.
Henry turned back toward the explosion, his golden bow dissolving into motes of light as he prepared for what came next. The smoke and debris were already clearing, revealing a sight that made his heart sink slightly. The Avatar stood exactly where it had been before the meteor strike. The massive attack had done nothing more than scorch its obsidian flesh slightly, leaving faint silver marks across its chest that were already beginning to fade.
The Avatar's emerald eyes locked onto Henry's position with the intensity of twin suns. Its draconic head turned to regard him with the kind of attention a predator gives to something that has finally proven itself worthy of notice. No words came from its mouth, only the sound of obsidian grinding against obsidian as it flexed its claws. Each movement sent small cracks racing through the air itself, reality struggling to contain the divine being's presence.
The avatar lifted one arm and opened its palm. A cloud of onyx lances formed in the air, long and thin, making a soft singing as the edges met the wind. The cloud broke and came for him.
"Phantom Lattice."
He pulsed one arrow into the glass at his left and another at his right, anchors biting the plain, and sketched dark lines between shadowed edges the low shade of a fallen fin, the narrow bar under a broken plate. Those lines tightened into tripwires. The first lances hit that web and slowed, like a rush of traffic meeting a smart red light. Others tangled and snapped. Shards rattled harmlessly across his boots.
The avatar answered with sound: not a voice, but the hiss of force rubbing against will. It reoriented. The second volley came in lower, angled to slip under the web. Henry stepped away from the anchors and spread his hands.
"Moon Werewolf."
The change started in his bones. Joints opened to a broader range; tendons took a new pull. White fur unfurled over his skin and lay smooth, like frost laid by a calm night. His frame rose, shoulders rolling wider, spine lengthening until he stood a full five meters high. The claws that slipped from his fingers were clean and surgical.
His breath steamed. He ran.
"Lunar Blur."
The plain could not hold him. He slipped through nearby shadows as if they were doors, then came out already moving. The volley bit empty air. The white shape reached the avatar's feet.
"Pounce."
He climbed the last ten meters in a single spring and slammed into the avatar's shoulder. Facets cracked. The giant staggered one step. Henry dropped, turned, and cut.
"Lunar Rend."
His claws carved a wide cone across the torso. The wound refused to knit. The dull red lines that had crawled inward went still. The avatar's core pulsed again, harder, as if sensing the denial and pressing against it.
The counter was clean and fast, a black blade unfolding from the giant's forearm with the smooth certainty of a guillotine. It fell toward the line of Henry's spine.
"Wraithwalk."
He loosened his hold on the world for the length of a heartbeat. The blade passed through the idea of him and cut only air. He came back a pace to the right and drove his shoulder into the avatar's ribs. The plain boomed underfoot, a drum hit with a heavy mallet.
Pain found him anyway. A second blade flicked out from the avatar's hip, low and mean, and traced a hard line along his thigh before he could twist. Heat flashed through the muscle and left his leg feeling wet and heavy.
He swallowed the grunt and stepped forward instead of back. He rode the avatar's shadow up its spine.
"Whisperfang."
He crossed both arms and slashed at the seam under the left collar. The cut opened and spilled thick black light that hissed when it kissed the plain. There was no voice inside that spill, but a pressure in the air dropped, like a chant cut mid word. For a moment, silence felt deep.
The avatar twisted hard and threw him. He hit the glass in a slide, claws scraping pale lines that sang like a bow on a string. When he stood, his left leg dragged a fraction. The scent of his own blood, clean and iron, touched the air.
He bared his teeth "Blood-Scent."
The Brand thickened in his head. It gave him the giant's weight shifts before they finished. It tasted like cold metal and slow rage. He limped toward it and made himself run again. The hurt in his leg sharpened his focus. Every step after that, he took with intent.
The avatar made a new law. Hairline cracks ran across the glass in a grid, fine as lace. The grid thickened and fell as a net between them. It wasn't a thing he could cut. It was a rule that said nothing should move closer.
"Nightglass Camouflage."
He went still for a breath. The world lost its outline and chose the wrong place to obey its own rule. The net closed a meter to his right. He shifted left, as simple as that, and the rule cut nothing.
The avatar answered by widening the fight. Three black suns opened in the air around it, holes drilled through sight. Gravity bent. Shards at Henry's feet lifted, turned, and began to drift toward those new mouths. His injured leg tried to slip sideways. He forced it straight and dug claws into the plain.
"Umbral Tangle."
Shadow vines erupted at the avatar's knees and ankles, cinching down and pulling. The suns wavered. One shut with a soft pop. The others pulled the plain in greedy rings but slower now. The vines didn't last. Razor ridges slid out along the avatar's shins and sawed through them. The cuttings fell like black leaves.
Henry took the window. He stepped and vanished.
"Slipchain."
He reappeared on the far side of the giant, momentum preserved, at a shard of his meteor arrow lodged deep in the glass. He ran at the avatar's flank. The giant leaned into him with its hip, a simple weight check that would have flattened a truck. He went low, but not low enough. The edge of a plate clipped his ribs and sent a shock through his chest. Something popped. Air left him like a punched breath.
He pulled a new one in. It tasted like hot stone. He kept moving.
"Lunar Rend."
He cut across the outside of the right knee and felt the joint loosen. The avatar's stance faltered. It compensated with a pillar that erupted from the plain under Henry's feet and turned floor into wall.
"Wraithwalk."
He stepped through the vertical moment and came back on the far side running. Heat ran under his fur. His left thigh kept trying to hitch. His ribs ached in a sharp circle where the plate had hit. Regeneration rode behind the pain, knitting as he pressed the attack, but it lagged because the giant kept making him defend. He needed to take space, not just cut it.
The avatar aimed past him. A spear formed in the air, already there, the point lined at Irene and Hans. It was the kind of simple line that killed people who were looking somewhere else.
"Phantom Step."
He blinked into its path and smashed it aside with his forearm. The edge ripped through fur and skin and bit bone. His hand went numb from wrist to knuckles. The spear broke in flat chunks that skittered and sang under Hans's boots. Irene pivoted and drove her greatsword through the largest shard, pinning it to the plain.
Henry shook sensation back into his fingers. Blood dripped from his forearm in a thin ribbon. The plain took it without stain. The ache in his ribs gnawed while he breathed. He turned the pain into timing.
"Quietus Shot."
He flicked a pale dart from between his fingers. It snapped into the air and struck the avatar at the corner of its jaw. The space around the impact went soft and silent. A forming sound inside the giant cut off, the way a held note dies when a bow lifts.
The avatar answered by trying to fill his whole world. Two polished planes unfolded from its forearms, wide as doors. They swept inward to crush him. He could not step left or right. He could not step back without giving up the line to Nox.
"Wraithwalk."
He let the planes close through emptiness and came back in time to take the heel of his palm to the crater he had made. Pressure boomed. The rim crumbled into a wider, jagged edge. The core pulsed again and reached for him with clean cold. His fur along the forearm it touched went stiff and brittle. Hair broke. Skin tightened. The cold wanted to keep him.
He tore free and lost a strip of white fur in the giant's chest. The skin under it went raw. Pain lanced in and stuck around. That cold was a kind of wound that liked to last.
"Echo Pin."
He snapped a small pin high. It fell and bit the glass. A clean hum rose under his feet and drew a near map in his head: stress lines, weight shifts, places the plain would choose to lie. He ran with that hum as guide.
The avatar lifted both hands and called more of the plain to move. Rings of glass stood up around Henry like the ribs of a beast, layered and close. They tried to close and grind him into grit.
"Phantom Step."
He blinked through the first ring, then the second, and came out in the space between, where force had not yet decided to meet. He bucked a rib with his shoulder and sent it skidding. The edge clipped his knee and lit it with fresh pain. He ignored the flinch and kept to the line the pin sang.
"Blacklight Flare."
He rolled his fingers and let a small cold star drift out ahead. It washed false edges clean for a few breaths. The invisible threads the avatar had spun to tug the plain showed themselves as faint glass veils. He cut where the threads bunched and made them slacken.
The avatar changed cadence. A heavy note ran across the plain, deeper than the earlier bell, and threw Henry's heart off by a beat. The giant threw its weight without warning, shoulder checking him with the whole side of its body. He went airborne for the length of a blink and hit the ground on his wounded thigh. The leg buckled. His vision pin-pricked and then cleared. Pain soaked in like water through cloth.
He laughed once, short and without joy. "Hunt Howl."
The sound he poured into the air wasn't rage. It was a command to nervous systems to drop whatever rhythm they were building. Men on a distant ridge flinched and looked away from the fight they could barely follow. The avatar's inner hum stuttered and lost the new cadence it had almost set. The rings of glass around them slowed and did not close as hard.
Henry pushed up on a knee that didn't want to take weight. He made it. He rose and went back in.
He aimed low and fast. He scraped claws across the giant's right ankle, then backhanded the inside of its left knee, then stepped with a limp that turned into a feint and drove his shoulder into the hip he had already loosened. The avatar answered by dropping an elbow like a falling beam. It caught Henry across the back of the neck, bright pain and heat. He saw white for half a breath and then nothing but the plain where he forced his balance to land.
Regeneration worked, but slow now. The cold that had kissed his arm kept the skin tight and unfriendly to change. The thigh stopped bleeding but stayed heavy. The rib that had popped earlier rasped when he drew air for the next sprint. He could still run. He could still cut. He could still think. That was enough.
"Phantom Step."
He stole two meters for free. The avatar threw a spear. He knocked it away on instinct and felt the edge grab fur from his wrist again. He was losing pieces in a steady drift. Every lost piece meant a new sting a tax on speed.
The giant bled in its own way. The crater across its chest had widened into a ragged bowl rimmed with dead red. The left arm moved with a hitch. Hair-thin cracks ran from the collar to the jaw; each time it turned its head, a brittle noise ticked, like ice in a glass. The lines that fed it from the plain kept breaking where Henry cut them. When it tried to pull itself together, the places he had raked with Lunar Rend refused to listen.
Neck to neck. Each time he took ground, it charged him a price. Each time it gained space, he made it pay with a joint, a line, a rule.
He needed one more shift to set the rest of the fight. If he dragged this part too long, the giant would claim more of the plain and the rim under Hans and Irene would slide. He would not allow that.
He rolled his shoulders. He steadied his breath. He made a small promise to himself and to the three behind him.
"Moonless Curtain."
Darkness fell across the glass in a gentle sweep. It was not heavy. It was complete. Irene did not lose sight. Hans did not lose his hands. Their steps went soft. The glare the avatar had used to read edges died. The plain drank light without tricks.
The giant paused. Not fear. Recalculation. Henry saw the shift not with eyes but with the Brand in his mind the way weight settled, the way lines of force softened while the avatar listened.
He took one step and knew steps would not be enough. His thigh throbbed. His rib rasped. His forearm stung with cold where fur refused to grow. The giant was still tall, still stubborn, still drawing pieces of the world to patch its frame anywhere he had not denied it. He had to change the scale, or the battlefield would keep edging toward the wrong end.
He stood straight, white fur silvered by the night he had dropped. The larger outline that lived under his ribs rolled, slow as a tide under ice. Bone remembered a broader geometry. He raised his head. The word left his mouth as a simple truth, not a roar.
"Wolf of Artemis."
Moonlight moved through him like surf under stone, and the endless black glass plain filled with the first shadow of a wolf large enough to use the horizon as a pillow.