A splitting headache, sharp and white, lanced through Leo's skull.
It wasn't a normal pain. It was a violent tug-of-war behind his eyes. One moment, he was in the dark, smelling dust and his sister's fear. The next, he was in the rain, smelling ozone and wet pine. The sensations crashed together—the rough stone wall against his back overlaying the smooth bark of a tree, Elara's warm hand clashing with the cold grip of a bow.
He groaned, clamping his hands to his temples.
"Leo?" Elara's voice was right beside him, laced with a new fear. "Your head? What's wrong?"
"Nothing," he gritted out, the word strained. He forced a weak smile, his human eyes meeting hers. "Just… the noise. It's loud."
It was a pathetic lie. The noise was the least of it. He was living in two places. The consciousness that was Silvan was calm, focused, assessing windage and distance. The consciousness that was Leo was drowning in sensory overload.
Focus on the hunter. Be the arrow.
He closed his physical eyes, leaning into the elven senses. The bunker faded a precious half-step further. The world became the clearing, the rain, the thrum of the twisted Threads.
Through Silvan's eyes, he studied the web. The Beast-Caller was a nexus, a brutal loom spinning strands of rage to his creatures. Shooting the man might stop him. Or it might make the beasts run wild, uncontrollable. He needed precision. He needed to unravel the weave.
The System's tutorial voice whispered in the shared space of their mind. "Direct intervention alters fate most sharply. Severing a primary influence Thread will cause significant dissonance in the affected entities."
A plan, cold and clear, formed in the hunter's mind. There. One thick, pulsing cord of yellow light connected the whirling fetish to a pack of three hulging wolf-beasts clad in spiked iron collars. They were the spearhead, crushing through a group of guardsman near the broken gate.
Silvan drew the bowstring. The muscles in the elven back pulled with a familiar, practiced strength. He exhaled, half the breath.
He didn't aim for flesh. He aimed for the Thread itself, where it met the fetish. In his mind, he pushed the last dregs of his awareness, his will, his intent into the arrowhead. A faint silver sheen, the ghost of his 100 spent Fate Threads, flickered around the tip.
Cut the string.
He released.
The arrow flew silent and true. It passed a hair's breadth from the Beast-Caller's ear and struck the knot of swirling energy.
There was no metallic clang. Instead, a sound like a gigantic, wet harp string snapping echoed through the clearing. The yellow Thread shattered into fading motes of light.
The effect was instant.
The three armored wolf-beasts, moments from tearing into a fallen soldier, skidded to a halt. They shook their massive heads, snarling in confusion. The rage in their eyes cleared, replaced by animal fear. One whined, backing away from the man it was about to kill. Then, as one, they turned and fled, crashing away into the night.
A wild, giddy triumph surged through Leo. It worked! He could change the flow! He wasn't just a boy in a hole!
The triumph lasted two heartbeats.
The Beast-Caller staggered, as if struck physically. A guttural roar of surprise and fury erupted from his throat. He stopped whirling the fetish, his head snapping around, milky eyes searching the trees. They locked not on Silvan's position, but on the space where the Thread had been severed.
He had sensed the interference.
The man raised a clawed hand, not towards the trees, but towards the web of remaining Threads. He grabbed the air and yanked.
A psychic shockwave, visible as a ripple of distorted, sickly light, blasted outwards along every connected Thread.
It hit Silvan like a physical wall.
Pain. Not of the body, but of the mind. It was a screech of corrupted energy, a feedback scream of severed magic. It burned through the elven senses and shot straight down the connection to the core of Leo's consciousness.
In the bunker, Leo screamed.
He convulsed, falling from the bench onto the cold stone floor. A hot, wet line trickled from his nose. Copper filled his mouth. Elara's scream joined his. "Leo! Father! Something's wrong!"
Alistair and Roland spun, their strategic argument forgotten. For a terrifying second, his father's stony face showed pure, undiluted alarm. Roland just stared, his calculative eyes wide.
The pain was blinding. But within it, forced down the violent connection, came a flash. An image. Not from the Beast-Caller's mind—that was a dim, bestial thing, full of hunger and the rhythm of the runes.
This was from behind it.
A glimpse of a warm, stone room. A fur rug. A goblet of wine. And a human mind, sharp and cold as a surgeon's scalpel, peering through the Beast-Caller's eyes, feeling the disruption in the web. A flicker of surprise, then intense, analytical interest.
Then it was gone.
The feedback wave ceased. In the clearing, Silvan gasped, his body trembling, every nerve screaming. He was not physically wounded, but he felt scorched, hollowed out.
In the bunker, the searing pain receded to a deep, throbbing ache. Leo lay on the floor, panting, the taste of blood sharp on his tongue. Elara cradled his head, her tears falling on his face.
"Anomaly." The word formed in his mind, half his, half borrowed from that distant, cold intelligence. They were no longer fighting a monster. They were fighting a man. A man who now knew someone had cut his strings.
Roland was the first to speak, his voice low. "What was that, little brother? A fit?"
Leo looked up, his vision swimming. He saw his father's expression hardening back into stern concern, his brother's suspicious scrutiny. He saw Elara's terrified love.
He had taken his first cut. He had learned he could win.
And he had learned, violently, that every cut had a cost. The shadow could be burned by the very threads it tried to sever. The puppeteer was not invisible. He had just brushed against another, and now that other was looking back into the dark.