Date: April 8, 541, from the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored
The sticky, gray haze, born of the fog spirit, had finally flooded the clearing. Black Grove vanished, transformed into a world of ghostly shadows and muffled sounds. Dur felt the moisture settling on his face, mixing with the blood from the wound on his forearm. His forest senses, usually so sharp, failed him here: sound reflected off the dense curtain, disorienting, and the smell of the enemies drowned in the heavy aroma of rot and raw magic.
"Dur, don't move!" Maël's voice came from somewhere to the right, but it seemed to sound from all directions at once. "They're orienting by ground vibration!"
Maël's words were cut off by a whistle. Korgar the "Boar" launched another volley of his bone needles. Dur instinctively hit the ground, feeling two "bolts" tear through the air where his head had been a moment before. One projectile embedded itself in the ground next to his ear, trembling with excess energy.
Maël, at this moment, was at the very epicenter of chaos. His situation was desperate: the giant Ulf, blinded by the fog no less than the others, was simply smashing everything around with his hammer, hoping to hit the agile opponent. Each blow shook the earth, and Dur heard the crack of breaking roots.
But Maël had changed. His usual smile vanished, replaced by a mask of icy concentration. His Spirit of Adaptability, until now only passively aiding his body, under the influence of mortal threat and magical fog, began to evolve rapidly. The air around Maël trembled, but it wasn't the gray haze of the enemies. It was a transparent, barely perceptible distortion, like water flowing over glass.
Maël closed his eyes. He stopped trying to *see* the enemy. His Spirit began scanning space itself, adapting to the pressure of the magical fog.
"I hear you…" Maël whispered.
Suddenly, Maël made a sharp lunge forward. His body moved with a grace impossible for an ordinary man. This was his first active ability—**"Rhythm Shift."** Maël wasn't just running; his movements fell outside the general temporal flow of the battle. He seemed to glide between frames of reality, becoming elusive to attacks.
Ulf swung his hammer, aiming at Maël's shadow, but the lad simply flowed under the weapon's haft like mercury. He didn't waste time on the giant. His target was the fog spirit user.
Dur, seeing through the thinning patches of haze (where Maël passed, the fog dispersed), understood his friend's plan.
"Korgar's mine!" Dur shouted, overcoming the pain in his arm.
Dur drew his last heavy arrow. He couldn't see the leader, but he could see where the needles were coming from. He used Torm's forest trick: struck the steel tip of an arrow with his knife, creating a sharp, ringing sound. Korgar, like a true beast, instantly reacted to the sound and launched his entire remaining supply of needles in that direction.
Dur, at that moment, had already rolled behind a massive boulder. Korgar's volley went into the void.
"Maël, now! He's empty!"
Maël was already three paces from the Weaver. The bandit in the gray cloak raised his hands in terror, trying to create a shield of fog, but Maël activated the second stage of his resonance. His palm glowed with a pale light.
"**Adaptive Disruption!**" Maël shouted.
He struck the Weaver in the chest with an open palm. Maël's ability instantly adapted to the magical structure of the Weaver's Spirit and… inverted it. The fog, which had been protecting the bandits, suddenly became dense and heavy for its master himself. The Weaver choked on his own haze, his concentration shattered, and the fog on the clearing began to rapidly dissipate, turning into ordinary dew.
Maël didn't stop. Using the remaining momentum of his "Rhythm Shift," he spun towards Ulf. The giant was just raising his hammer for a final blow. Maël jumped, touched Ulf's shoulder, and, using his own colossal inertia, flipped himself behind him, simultaneously driving his knife into the joint of the armor under the arm.
Ulf roared, his hammer falling from his weakening hands.
"My turn!" Dur shouted.
Left without the fog's cover, Korgar the "Boar" was exposed. His "bristles" began to thin—the Spirit demanded too much energy after the volley. Dur loosed his arrow. It didn't kill the leader, but it pierced his shoulder, pinning him to a tree.
The fight turned into a bloody melee. Maël, operating at the limit of his abilities, darted between the remaining bandits. He took a knife wound in the side from the revived Glynth, but didn't even flinch. His Spirit of Adaptability began producing a natural anesthetic, forcing his muscles to work to exhaustion. He knocked the knife from Glynth, struck him in the throat, and immediately dodged a piece of hammer hurled by the wounded Ulf.
Dur didn't stand still either. He drew his knife and closed in on Korgar, who had managed to free himself from the arrow. It was a dance of death: the brute power of the "Boar" against the honed agility of the "Shadow." Korgar tried to hit Dur with the bone growths on his elbows, but Dur, remembering Maël's lessons on the "center of gravity," constantly dodged the line of attack, leaving deep cuts on the leader's body.
Finally, Maël delivered the decisive blow to Ulf, severing the tendons in his legs. The giant crashed down, shaking the earth. At the same second, Dur drove his knife under Korgar's jaw.
It was over.
A heavy, ringing silence descended on the clearing, broken only by the ragged breathing of the two victors. Dur sank to his knees, his left arm covered in blood, his pant leg soaked red from a deep gash on his thigh. Maël sat beside him, pressing his hand to his wounded side. His face was pale, but a weak, forced smile still played on his lips.
"Well… well, well…" Maël rasped, spitting blood. "Did you see… how I took out that… with the hammer?"
Dur smiled wearily.
"Saw you. You looked like a mad squirrel, Maël. If it weren't for your 'shift,' we'd be buried there."
Maël tried to laugh, but coughed instead.
"We… we did them, Dur. All those freaks with Spirits. We…" his eyes began to close from exhaustion.
"Hey, don't you dare fall asleep!" Dur shook his friend by the shoulder. "We need to get out of here. Horn's waiting for a report. If we stay, the smell of blood will bring beasts worse than these deserters."
Supporting each other, wounded, limping, leaving a bloody trail on the withered leaves, the friends slowly stumbled towards Ligra. Dur felt Maël's shoulder burning—using a Spirit of such complexity had burned the lad out almost completely.
They walked for a long time. The forest seemed an endless labyrinth. Night gave way to dawn, and dawn to a gray, overcast morning. When the outlines of Ligra's northern gates finally appeared ahead, Dur felt his legs about to buckle.
"Almost… there…" he breathed.
The hunt for the bandits was over. A history for which Dur was not ready was about to begin.