The Shaper's heart glowed brighter with each pulse, the crimson light seeping through the bone cage in its chest.The moss underfoot was heaving now, every swell of it pushing Kael off balance as if the ground itself wanted him to stumble into those grasping tendrils.
One of the archers screamed as a root burst from the earth beneath him, skewering his leg before dragging him into the moss. The ground swallowed him whole. His scream cut off.
"Close ranks!" Ryn shouted, firing another bolt. It hit the Shaper's shoulder joint and stuck, but the thing didn't even slow.
Kael's eyes locked on the heart. That was the only target that mattered. Everything else — the tendrils, the pulsing ground, the bone armor — was just noise.
The Shaper came at him in a blur. Tendrils struck like spears, forcing Kael to dodge left, then right. One grazed his ribs, scraping Stonehide hard enough to send a jolt through his bones.
He slashed at the closest tendril, cutting it nearly in half.
[C-Rank (Mid) | GP: 440 + 15 = 455]
The familiar surge of power came — but so did the moss's pulse, stealing some of that energy back. He felt it drain like water through cupped hands.
Ryn's voice cut through the chaos: "Kael! We need to cut the ground off from it!"
She was right. The moss was feeding the Shaper, but the connection ran through the ground. If they could disrupt it…
"Everyone, aim for the moss!" Kael barked. "Cut it, burn it, smash it — break the link!"
The hammer-wielder understood first. He roared and slammed his weapon into the ground, splintering the moss in a wide circle. It shrieked like a living thing, the sound coming from everywhere at once.
Kael saw his chance. He sprinted forward, leaping over the splintered patch before the moss could heal itself.
The Shaper's tendrils lashed at him, faster now, but the broken moss patch seemed to slow them slightly — as if it had lost some reflex.
Kael rolled under a swing, came up inside its reach, and drove his knife into the gap between two ribs in the bone cage. The blade met resistance — not from the bone, but from a translucent membrane protecting the heart.
The Shaper screamed, its voice shaking the air. Every tendril flared out at once, striking in all directions.
One slammed into Kael's back, driving him into the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of him.
Before it could pin him, Ryn's bolt hit the tendril's base. The thing spasmed and withdrew, buying Kael a breath of air.
[C-Rank (Mid) | GP: 455 + 15 = 470]
The moss pulse slowed slightly, but not enough. Kael forced himself to his feet.
"You want to feed off me?" he growled. "Then choke on this."
He charged again — but this time, instead of aiming straight for the heart, he went for the base of the Shaper's spine.
The tendrils reacted a beat too late. Kael's blade bit deep into a cluster of root-like nerves, and the Shaper's whole body jerked. The glow in its heart dimmed, just for a moment.
[C-Rank (Mid) | GP: 470 + 20 = 490]
"Now!" Kael shouted.
The hammer came down on the side of the bone cage, cracking one of the ribs. Two spear hunters rammed their weapons into the gap, forcing it wider.
Kael could see the heart clearly now — it was fist-sized, surrounded by a swirl of glowing liquid that didn't look like blood. It pulsed in triple beats, too fast to be natural.
The Shaper's scream rose higher, and the moss began to convulse violently.
Roots erupted from the ground in jagged lines, lashing at anything within reach. One took the hammer-wielder in the side, sending him crashing into a tree.
Kael didn't look to see if he got up. He vaulted onto the Shaper's chest, gripping the cracked rib like a ladder rung.
The heart pulsed again, almost beckoning him.
He drove his knife through the membrane.
The sound wasn't like flesh tearing — it was like glass breaking underwater. The liquid around the heart spilled out, splashing against his arms. It burned instantly, eating at his skin even through Stonehide.
The Shaper convulsed, tendrils whipping wildly. One wrapped around Kael's leg and pulled, but he braced himself and yanked the knife free — with the heart still skewered on the blade.
The world screamed.
It wasn't just the Shaper — the ground, the moss, the trees, even the air seemed to wail in pain. The glow from the heart flared blindingly, then began to collapse inward, shrinking rapidly until it was no larger than a pebble.
[C-Rank (High) | GP: 490 + 50 = 540]
The rank surge slammed into Kael's body like a lightning strike. His breath caught, muscles locking for half a second before the strength flooded in. Every nerve felt like it was on fire — but in a way that made him want to move.
The Shaper's body was falling apart beneath him, the tendrils going limp, the bone cage crumbling like rotted wood.
"Out!" Kael shouted, his voice carrying over the dying screams of the lair. "Move! Now!"
The hunters didn't hesitate. Ryn grabbed the nearest survivor and shoved him toward the treeline. Kael leapt down from the Shaper's chest, landing in the convulsing moss.
Every step was a fight as the ground tried to drag them under. Kael's knife cut through grasping vines, Ryn's bolts cleared the way ahead, and the hammer-wielder — bloody but alive — smashed through collapsing trunks.
They burst from the treeline just as the red glow behind them imploded with a deafening crack.
Kael turned in time to see the moss carpet peel back from the earth, shriveling into ash. The trees twisted once, then collapsed inward, leaving only a wide, blackened pit where the lair had been.
No Shaper. No moss. No pulse.
The surviving hunters collapsed to their knees, panting. Ryn walked up beside Kael, her crossbow still loaded but lowered.
"It's dead," she said, though her voice sounded almost like she was trying to convince herself.
Kael looked at the empty pit. "It's dead here."
"You think it had more than one heart?"
"I think something that old… doesn't put all its power in one place."
The commander's voice rang from the treeline behind them. She'd brought reinforcements — a squad of fresh hunters armed with heavy gear.
Kael met her gaze. "The Shaper's done. But we'll need to watch the marsh. If any of its work survived out there, it'll start again."
The commander nodded. "Then we'll burn it. Every last piece."
Kael turned back toward the pit. The smell of ash and rot was already fading, but the memory of that pulse still lingered in his chest.
He wasn't sure if it would ever leave.