By the way, not all bats are brain-stab singers. Some just ping. Same Rune family, two different takes: one maps space, one pokes minds. Nature's patch notes, I guess.
Anyway, I had a makeshift rope, two very offended bats, and one extremely guilty-looking rat. The first bat died because my rat ate it (RIP, little sonar bro), so I found another one and did it right. The rat kept trying to go full plague influencer, so I kept it weak with small Defilement doses now and then. Just enough so I could tug its pattern when I needed.
The rat's trick? A rot that peels at physical constructs and at the essence sheath protecting the body. It's like my Defilement—except at range and with no class. Yes, I am comparing myself to a rat. Yes, I am winning. And yes, I'm going to ignore that Defilement basically does not do shit to flesh. No one's around; let me have this.
If a hundred of those things jumped you at once, though? Yikes. That's clearly the design. Swarm you, soften you, then dinner bell. Luckily I have Blink and a healthy disrespect for fair fights.
The Trial is still the worst tutorial. Kill a thing and it tells you the species. Maybe a name if the universe feels generous. Everything else, you learn by touching it with your soul and hoping your brain doesn't leak out your nose. Ten out of ten, would not recommend.
Also, note to self: when a bat screams directly into your thoughts, do not be on a branch. If not for Blink I would've tasted every root in a five-meter radius. Again.
Focus, Aren. The village. Resolve the situation of Namsai. Before another kitchen ghost tries to feed you a life lesson.
Drunk on new confidence—and also technically on adrenaline and mistakes—I decided to climb a tall tree instead of blinking up it. I am a man of culture. I appreciate a good tree climb. You wouldn't understand.
Topside: the fog thinned. The sky went pale, like washed milk. And there it was: a river flashing through gaps, water trying to make up its mind which way to go.
Where there's a river, there's a village. Where there's a village, there's a situation. Where there's a situation, there's me, apparently.
I headed that way.
Closer in, the trees opened to a torn red plain. The air tasted cold in a way that wasn't temperature. It wanted your heartbeat to pause. We're in Canada, baby.
And there was fighting.
Up ahead, something bellowed with a cold voice. Over that, two people were arguing.
Of course.
"You are among the first candidates," the Will had said. Somehow it didn't click that meant other people. I'm an idiot. In my defense, I got witch-stalked ten minutes in and my brain cells went on strike.
I crawled up a low rise and peeked over.
A wide beast, all ribs and ruin, crouched on a mound of bones. Each breath made the air go quiet. Not silence. Quiet, like a heavy blanket.
Shadows drifted off its breath and slid over the ground. Wherever they touched, frost spread and held.
"A monster with icy wraith summons, eh."
Two people moved around it.
One wore glasses, short blocky haircut, and the posture of someone who has argued with the universe and lost. He had two fingers at his temples, not chanting, not waving—just listening so hard his eyes looked smudged. When a drifting ghost leaned toward him, it faltered, like it forgot what it was doing.
"Some sort of disruption ability? Well, color me surprised."
The other guy held a nodachi the size of a bad decision. Sharp eyes. Steady feet. That annoying "I actually train" kind of movement. His cuts barely marked the beast at first, but each pass shaved away a little of the strange stillness around it. Small cuts. They added up.
They were also bickering.
"Stop testing the Ice Breath Field range," Glasses snapped, voice tight with cold. "It'll freeze you to death before I can even disrupt it."
"Then keep its dead pets off me, glasses," the nodachi wielder shot back, sliding under a paw big enough to park a bike on. His feet hit with deliberate cadence—heel, ball, twist—essence blooming through his calves and hips. "Some of us are busy keeping the bug guy occupied."
"My name is not Glasses, and some of us are busy keeping you from becoming a popsicle," Glasses shot back.
"[Absolute Dissection]." He didn't shout it like a spell; he declared it like a lab report. His eyes went slate-gray and fixed on a wraith. The air around his hand thinned. He stepped in, palm first.
The wraith screeched without sound. Where his hand touched, the frost-web holding it together came apart like bad stitching.
"I adjust my aura to interfere with your control," he said through clenched teeth. "Once I touch, you lose the fight."
The ghost shredded into rime-dust. Two more wraiths flowed at him—
"Blink."
Space hiccuped. I reappeared on the slope between them, boots crunching frost. Glasses' eyes flicked to me and did a weird little focus–unfocus, like he was reading footnotes only he could see.
"Friendly," I said.
He nodded once—already tracking the beast. "Ground fog steals resolve. Don't let it name you."
"Neat. I'll feed it someone else's."
Blink resets my rat link. If I want Rot, I have to Echoprint it again.
Knee down. Memory up. The rat's circuit—simple, hungry. I pulled [Hunt] into shape and sanded the edges.
"Defilement.""Echoprint."
All the practice paid off; the Plague Rat being weak from continuous Defilement also helped. It didn't take long to stamp the weave into my own head. Headache tax: medium. Worth it.
I put one knee to the dirt and touched the creeping frost that spread from a wraith's ankles into the ground.
"[Rot]"
Black decay unfurled like a tiny tidal wave, racing along the frost veins. When it touched the nearest wraith, I heard a thin scrape—like someone plucking fingernails. I assume that's what they felt. Good.
The glide in three wraiths stuttered. Their halos dimmed; they started to… stumble. Which is hilarious for ghosts.
Nodachi boy ghosted in, blade low, and shaved the air. He wasn't cutting flesh; he was carving the stillness off the Wailer in ribbons. Each pass loosened the blanket of cold.
The beast hunched. Its throat-sacks flushed winter-blue. It inhaled like it wanted to drink our movement.
"Down," Glasses said—calm, certain. He didn't need to look at us to be obeyed.
I dropped. A spiral of fog unfurled—the Ice Breath Field. Sound died. Cold crept up my ribs with tidy little hands.
Nope.
I amped up [Rot]. The fog hit my stain and recoiled like it tasted something it hated. A way opened to the beast.
Ren slid through, heartbeat steady as a metronome. His footwork was rude in a beautiful way—eyes sharp like a hunter who lives outside. The sword drew a clean line across the beast's throat-sacks. Blue light cracked like warm glass.
The Wailer choked on its own stillness.
"Keep it from re-forming," Glasses called, already moving. He stepped into a wraith, palm to chest. "Absolute Dissection." The idea that it should exist fell apart. It snowed for a second.
"On it," I said, shoving Rot into the spill. The ice-logic that wanted to re-form tasted my decay and regretted its life choices.
The Wailer thrashed once. Twice. The field unspooled like a dropped blanket.
Frost sublimated in a hush. For a heartbeat, faces hung in the air—soldiers, beasts, a boy with a bell—then melted away.
We stood there breathing steam.
"You okay?" Glasses asked, eyes flicking to my hands. Practical. Respectful.
"Migraine from overuse. Hands shaky." I raised one. It trembled on cue. "Still handsome, though."
Ren rested the blade on his shoulder and eyed my rope. "Why do you have two bats and a rat tied to you like a discount traveling zoo?"
"Research."
He considered this, then nodded like it was the only reasonable answer. "Respect."
I severed [Hunt]'s connection to the plague rat; the world brightened a fraction. "Names," I said. "If we're not murdering each other today."
The one with glasses pushed them up his nose. "Leo Vale. Rune: [Ashen Mind]. Ability: [Absolute Dissection]." He hesitated. "I'd have loved to hide it, but you've seen enough. I read the intent inside abilities and take it apart. I can reach a little at range, but it works best on touch."
The nodachi wielder tipped his chin. "Ren Kisaragi. Rune: [In the Wild]. Ability: [Hunter]." His pupils were wide, breath even—the kind of calm you earn by running with the wind until your legs forget to argue.
"Aren," I said. "Rune: [Nestbreaker]. Ability: [Hunt]. I ruin patterns and borrow other people's homework."Ren snorted, eyeing the bats and the rat. "I see."
Leo thought for a moment. "From my understanding of abilities, that had to hurt. Each pattern has a harmony with the body, which I disrupt. Yours felt like a forced trace—it must be painful as hell."
"You bet," I said.
Somewhere far off, a bell rang backward.
All three of us flinched. My skin remembered how to crawl. She's close.
"Change of plan," I said, already moving. "Don't fight me."
Ren didn't ask. Leo started to, then saw my face and shut it. I grabbed Ren's shoulder with one hand, hooked Leo's sleeve with the other.
"She's here…" A shiver ran down my spine and, without delaying a second, I activated [Blink].
Space hiccupped hard. The plain tore sideways. Cold snapped like a rubber band across my teeth.
For one heart-stopping instant I felt the witch's rhythm try to catch my ankle—bell-beat pulling like a tide—so I shoved Defilement along the thread, made it corrupted, and kicked free.
We slammed back into reality on a slope above the river, knees buckling, breath ripping out of us in white sheets. The birch creaked overhead. The flag shivered once and pretended it hadn't.
Essence burned stupid fast; the only reason I made it was the wraith-top-up. Headache tax: deluxe. Hands: jazz quartet.
Leo steadied his glasses with two fingers, taking in my nosebleed, the heat snap in the air, the afterimages. "That was not standard teleportation. That was an uncalibrated phase-step with zero countdown and visible shear. Do you routinely abduct teammates without a waiver?"
"Short version?" I said, trying not to wobble. "Scary stalker witch with a bell has my number. I borrowed something of hers and she's mad. We don't do rematches."
Leo blinked. "Witch. Excellent. Love that for us." He pointed at my face. "Also you're bleeding from one eye. That's what happens when you brute-force a fold. Next time—countdown. Breathing. Words."
Ren rolled his shoulder like he was cracking ice off it. "Next time, cut the problem."
Leo gave him a look. "Yes, of course, I'll just dissect an undefined threat mid-yank while Mr. Sword Commercial practices his stoic nods."
"Talking wastes heat," Ren said.
"Breathing also wastes heat—should we stop that too?" Leo snapped. "You nearly got your lungs frozen because you keep 'testing the ice breath range.'"
"Range mapped."
"On your organs."
"Still here."
"By luck and my talent," Leo muttered, then louder to me, "Carrying two through your phase-step looked costly. Please refrain from heroic kidnapping unless absolutely necessary."
"its called [Blink] and It was necessary," I said. "You were both running on fumes. Even full, it wouldn't help."
Ren gave a short nod. Gratitude, Zoro edition. "Debt noted."
Leo folded his arms. "Fine. Noted, owed, logged. Filed under 'Warn the mathematician before you yeet the party through reality.'"
Downriver, fog pooled where roofs should be.
"Okay," I said, rolling my shoulders and pretending my brain wasn't doing percussion. "Namsai."
Ren was already moving, calm as a blade in its lane. "Move quiet. Wind's wrong."
Leo fell in step, still grumbling. "It's not 'wrong,' it's saturated with residuals—oh look, no one cares but me."
"I care," I said.
He brightened a micro-degree. "Thank you. Finally, a civilized person."
Ren didn't look back. "Talk later. Cut first."
Leo sighed like a disappointed professor and pushed his glasses up. "See? Ice cube with abs."
We headed for the bend.
Namsai waited.