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Chapter 11 - The Ones Without Pulse

The intruder's words hung in the heavy air.

"It was hunting you."

Karn kept his stance ready, senses stretched to the edge. The normal heartbeats of the Black Shore's beasts were still there — circling, cautious — but farther away, in the deep haze beyond the coral plains, other presences moved.

Pulse-less. Silent. Predators that didn't breathe, didn't live, didn't wait.

Karn's voice was steady.

"What are they?"

The intruder's smirk faded into something colder.

"The Unbound. Things that crawled out of the cracks between worlds when the first gates opened. Beasts without hearts, without hunger… because they're not alive. They exist for one purpose — to erase what should never have been born."

The wind here shifted, carrying a faint metallic tang. Karn could almost taste the threat in the air.

"And you think that's me."

The man's eyes glowed brighter.

"Not think, boy. Know."

He stepped closer, the violet light catching the ragged scars across his face.

"Do you even know whose shadow you walk in? That mark on your chest — the Sun's Scar — it's not a blessing. It's the echo of a curse older than the gates themselves. Once, long before this world bled into others, there was a man born under an unsetting sun. A warrior who could strike down gods and still stand."

Karn didn't speak, but a faint pulse in his chest — a golden warmth — seemed to answer the man's words.

"The world called him Karna," the intruder continued, "but the gods called him something else: the Defiant. He wasn't meant to be here either. He was… like you. Something they couldn't control. Something they feared."

Karn's jaw tightened.

"And you're saying I'm him."

The man shook his head slowly.

"No. You're worse. You're him again — carrying what's left of his power, and the thing in your veins that killed him. That's why the Unbound can smell you even through the gate."

A shiver of motion rippled across the horizon. Shapes — tall, thin, wrong — emerged from the violet haze, their outlines flickering like broken reflections.

The intruder's voice dropped lower.

"Every time you use that power, every time the Scar burns, they'll find you faster. And when they do… they won't stop. Not until there's nothing left."

Karn met his gaze.

"Then I'll kill them first."

The man actually smiled at that.

"Good. Because I didn't drag you here to save you. I dragged you here… to train you. And they've already found us."

The first of the Unbound stepped fully into sight.Its body was tall and skeletal, arms like obsidian scythes. Its face was a smooth void, no eyes, no mouth — yet Karn felt its attention like a spear point against his skin.

The intruder's cloak flared as he drew two curved blades from the shadows at his sides.

"Survive this, boy, and maybe you'll live long enough to learn what the Scar really is."

Behind the first Unbound, more shapes poured through the haze. Dozens.No heartbeats.No mercy.

And in the center of them all, still half-hidden, something massive moved — slow, deliberate. Its presence pressed against Karn's senses like the heat of a rising sun.

The intruder's eyes narrowed.

"The Huntmaster's here."

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