The hunting horn's echo was still shivering in the stones when the first orc appeared.
It didn't walk onto the ridge—it unfolded from the jagged shadows of a spire, a monument of corded grey muscle and scar-tissue. It stood a head taller than Fern, its skin like pitted granite, yellowed tusks jutting from a brutal jaw. Its eyes were not the dull pits of game lore. They were sharp, calculating, and swept over their party with the efficiency of a butcher assessing meat.
In its knotted hands was a serrated axe of blackened iron, looking chewed from a ruin.
"Ash-Hide Scout," Lura breathed, the name a curse. "Level 45. Fast. Vicious. Never alone."
A second, then a third scout melted from the rocks. A guttural, clicking language passed between them. The lead scout pointed its axe at Aeliana and let out a wet, rasping sound—a laugh.
Instinct.
The new, primordial stat flared in Sai Ji's gut—a compass needle swinging to true north. They see the healer as the soft center. The pack will strike there first.
The Wolf King, locked in dormancy, bristled. A snarl tried to form in Sai Ji's human throat. He choked it down, transmuting it into motion.
"Fern, anchor the line! Lura, flow and fracture! Aeliana is the priority!" The commands—part tactic, part King's ghost-memory—left his lips before thought could form.
Fern didn't nod. He took one colossal step forward, planting his boots. His greatsword leveled like a spear, its tip unwavering on the lead scout's heart.
Lura vanished. One moment beside Aeliana, the next a streak of grey and steel flowing over the black scree, not toward the scouts, but around them—disrupting, harassing, dissolving their formation before it began.
The lead scout's smirk died. This reaction was too fast, too coordinated. It bellowed, a sound that cracked the air, and charged Fern. Its flankers peeled off to encircle.
Sai Ji moved.
In his Wolf King form, he would have been a silver comet. Now, he was a ghost. The Mantle of the Unseen drank the sound of his footfalls. Wolf's Promise was an extension of his will.
He didn't run at the flanker heading for Aeliana; he intercepted its path, his sword a grey blur in a horizontal arc—less a stroke, more a fact of geometry.
The orc scout, expecting a panicked swing, raised its axe to parry.
[Fang of the Hidden King – Activates.]
Wolf's Promise met the black-iron haft.
Crack— like a giant icicle snapping.
The mythril edge didn't stop. It sheared through wood and metal, biting deep into stony hide. Thick, tar-like blood spattered the luminous moss. The scout stared, dumbfounded, at the stump of its weapon, then at the ruin of its chest. It crumpled.
[Defeated Ash-Hide Scout – Level 45.]
No time. The second flanker was on him, axe high for a crushing blow. Instinct screamed. Sai Ji didn't dodge—he stepped inside the arc, dropped his shoulder, and drove the wolf-head pauldron up into the orc's descending arm.
Crunch. Bone shattered. The axe flew. Before the scream could form, Sai Ji reversed his grip and drove the point up under its chin. The light fled its eyes.
Two down. Five seconds.
He spun.
Fern hadn't killed the lead scout. He had dominated it. The orc's axe lay ten feet away, a mangled scrap. Fern's massive hand was locked around the scout's throat, holding the kicking creature aloft. His expression was detached, analytical.
"Interrogation?" Fern rumbled, eyes on Sai Ji.
Before Sai Ji could answer, a sharp whistle—Lura's signal. From her perch, she pointed north, her hands flashing. Many. Close. Fast.
Fern's expression hardened. His grip tightened. A sickening snap echoed in the basin. He dropped the limp orc.
"Warband," he stated.
Well done, my King, Sal Vera's voice was a tense whisper. You fought with the Wolf King's mind in a mortal frame. But you must learn the difference, and swiftly. The warband will not be scouts. They will have a shaman.
Aeliana rushed to his side, hands already glowing soft green. "You're unhurt?" Her eyes were wide, not with fear, but with awe at the violence's speed and finality.
"I'm fine," he said, breathing hard. Not from exertion—from the crash. The stats were one thing. Feeling mythril part flesh and bone so easily… He looked at the two dead scouts. He'd just erased two level 45 mobs in seconds. As a "level 40" with locked powers.
[Combat Log: Efficiency Rating: 98.7%. Threat Neutralization: Optimal.]
The sterile feedback settled on him,colder than the armor.
"Lura," he called, voice steadying. "Numbers. Time."
She slid down, silent as falling snow. "Thirty. Forty. Grunts and skirmishers. Three minutes until their front runners are here. They move in a net. We are the center."
Trapped. In the open.
"Can we run?" Aeliana asked.
Nyx's voice came from an empty patch of shadow. "The net is wide. Stalkers herd from the ridges. Running is stepping into a noose."
Sai Ji's mind raced. Thirty. Forty. A stand-up fight was suicide. They needed terrain.
His Instinct flared again—not toward a threat, but toward a solution. It tugged him, a physical hook behind his navel, to the south-west. Toward the glitch-veined spires and the creeping, sentient fog between them.
"There," he said, pointing. "The miasma. The broken ground. We use it."
Fern grunted, approval. "Breaks formations. Shatters sight."
"It's also marked with hazard runes," Lura countered, tone analytical. "Soul-Ash Miasma. Confuses senses. Induces lethargy."
"It will confuse theirs more," Sai Ji shot back, the plan crystallizing. "They rely on sight and pack howls. We have you, Nyx, and…" He tapped his temple. "We have Instinct. We turn their net into a maze. We pick them apart in the grey."
A fierce grin split Lura's face. "Ambush the ambushers. I like it."
It is a risk worthy of a king, Sal Vera mused. Using the land's own poison as your ally. But the miasma will gnaw at you, given time. And Sol… its young spirit may recoil.
Sai Ji placed a hand over the warm egg beneath his armor. Stay strong. We move as one.
He looked at his pack. "We move. Fast and quiet. Nyx, you are our rear shadow. Make pursuit a regret. Lura, our forward whisper. Find the first kill-box. Fern, you are the unbreakable door. Aeliana…" He met her eyes. "You are the reason we walk out. Keep us standing."
Her chin lifted. Fear was gone, replaced by a fierce, glowing resolve. She nodded.
They ran—not as fleeing prey, but as a blade being drawn, slipping into the deeper shadows at the foot of the colossal spires.
The luminous moss died. The ground became cracked black glass. The wind's moan sharpened, funneled through stone teeth. Ahead, the Soul-Ash Miasma waited.
It wasn't fog.
It was a wall of shifting, pearlescent grey, shimmering with stolen colors—a dying dream given form. It whispered against the rocks, a sound of a thousand forgotten sighs.
Sai Ji didn't hesitate. A final glance back: on the far ridges, hulking shapes crested the stone, tusked faces scanning the empty basin in confusion. Their net had found nothing.
He led his pack into the whispering, beautiful gloom.
The world dissolved into monochrome silence. Sound muffled, directionless. Spires were dark smudges. His own breath was loud. A psychic cold seeped through his armor—ancient, numb emptiness.
[You have entered: Soul-Ash Miasma.]
[Effect: Sensory Dampening. Gradual 'Apathy' debuff accumulating.]
"Close formation," Sai Ji whispered, voice deadened. "Aeliana, watch our status."
They moved as a single, cautious organism. Fifty paces in, Lura's hand shot up—a closed fist. She pointed left. A narrow, crooked canyon split two spires. A perfect choke point.
Sai Ji nodded. The plan was set: lure, then slaughter. Break the net one bloody thread at a time.
They slipped into the canyon, a deep crevice of deeper shadow. Fern anchored the rear. Nyx vanished into the rocks above. Lura and Sai Ji flanked the narrows.
They waited. The miasma swirled.
Minutes dripped, thick and slow. The Apathy debuff ticked to 5%. A whispering thought suggested it would be easier to sit down. To rest. Sai Ji shook his head, teeth gritted.
Then—sound.
The clumsy, confident tramp of boots. Guttural voices, confused and angry, echoed down the stone throat.
Five orc skirmishers, forms blurred by miasma, blundered into the kill zone.
They never saw Lura, who dropped from above like a silent hawk, her blades opening two throats before her feet touched stone.
They never saw Sai Ji, who came from the side as a force of nature. Wolf's Promise was a grey blur. He didn't duel; he executed. A horizontal slash severed a spear-arm. A reverse stroke plunged into a side. His new stats made their hide seem like parchment.
The fifth orc, wider in bone-plate, raised a shield. Sai Ji didn't hack. He dropped low and lunged, the mythril point punching through the shield's lower rim and into the orc's thigh. As it roared, he wrenched the blade free and brought the pommel crashing up under its jaw.
Silence returned, broken by the drip of orc blood on black stone.
Five more. No alarm. The miasma had swallowed the sounds of the slaughter.
But as Sai Ji stood over the bodies, breath fogging, he felt it. A deeper tremor. Not in the ground, but in the pattern of the miasma. The grey coils flinched back from the canyon's mouth, repelled by an approaching foulness.
Then came the sound. A low, rhythmic chanting that made the air taste of ozone and old graves. The dry rattle of bones.
The miasma itself seemed to recoil.
Lura dropped beside him, face pale. All fierceness was gone, replaced by cold, primal recognition.
"Shaman," she breathed.
The warband hadn't just brought hunters.
They had brought their soul-caller. And it was walking straight into their ambush.
TO BE CONTINUED…