Reo's face went entirely pale. The jovial shadow-walker didn't hesitate; the moment Luke uttered that sharp, commanding warning, Reo threw his hands out and frantically broadcasted a psychic recall command to his bonded beast. *"Alpha! Back! Now!"*
Across the strike team, the sudden shift in posture was instantaneous.
Maya's hands instinctively sparked with golden lightning, her posture dropping into a combat crouch. Lyra raised her staff, spinning a protective current of dense air around her shoulders, while Silvia's emerald-glowing palms pressed flat against the stone floor, coaxing thick, spiked vines to writhe upward from the cracks. Azula vanished from sight, her form melting seamlessly into the architecture, reappearing silently behind the frontline.
For a terrifying, heart-stopping second, the silence stretched to breaking point.
Then, the sleek, midnight-colored shape of the shadow panther appeared in Luke's mana sense, moving with fluid grace.
Luke closed his eyes, let out a slow, ragged breath of pure relief, and felt the white-hot spike of instinctual panic recede from his chest. His gut feeling had been wrong; the shadow was back, and everything was fine.
"He's in no danger at all," Luke said out loud, his voice carrying a wave of calm that washed over the team.
The tension instantly melted. Shoulders dropped. Maya let the lightning fizzle out of her palms, and Lyra exhaled. Luke turned away from the descending steps, fully trusting that the panther was returning as ordered.
Behind him, soft footsteps padded against the stone.
"Alpha," Reo muttered, a warm, relieved smile breaking across his face as he stepped forward, arms opening to welcome his bond.
"Stop."
Luke whipped back around, his hand snapping out to physically shove Reo behind him. His golden eyes had narrowed into sharp, dangerous slits, completely locked onto the beast that had just reached the top of the stairs.
"Back up. Slowly," Luke ordered, his voice dropping into a razor-sharp register.
Behind them, the rest of the cohort froze, weapons raised again. Azula's runed sword hovered silently in the air, her eyes locked on the creature with lethal wariness. Lyra and Maya, entirely confused by the sudden mood swing, nevertheless fell back into defensive geometry. In the center, Ingis blurred into her radiant bird form, long, violent flickers of golden-red flame racing hungrily across her burning feathers.
An earth sword materialized in Luke's grip, its jagged blade humming with dense, solid mana.
"What are you doing, Luke?" Reo protested, trying to step around his leader, completely missing the grave danger radiating from the air. "That's *Alpha*. Why are you all so tense? It's just my bond."
The creature stopped. It stared directly at Reo, its obsidian eyes gleaming with an intelligence that felt entirely wrong—too wet, too hungry, too analytical.
Reo tried to sidestep Luke's restraining arm, but Luke didn't budge an inch. "Reo. You say that's Alpha? Then give it a mental command right now."
Reo blinked, caught off guard. He looked from Luke's grim, unyielding face back to the creature standing mere feet away. A cold knot of doubt suddenly twisted in his stomach.
The creature didn't wait for the command.
It did something horrifying. It stood up straight on its hind legs, its sleek, feline frame violently distorting, elongating, and stretching upward like black wax melting in a furnace. Its skin became translucent, paper-thin, and wet.
From its blank, featureless face, a shrieking, glass-shattering wail tore through the air.
The mimic lunged straight at Reo's throat.
Luke moved with brutal, explosive speed. He planted his boots, threw his body between Reo and the monster, and brought his earth-stone sword up in a violent parry that knocked the creature's razor-sharp claws wide.
The ambush shattered the remaining hesitation.
The cohort swarmed the abomination before it could recover its balance. Silvia lunged forward, her hands slamming into the floor as a dense thicket of emerald vines shot up, wrapping tightly around the mimic's elongated limbs.
Luke and Azula engaged it head-on, their movements reduced to a dizzying blur of steel and golden light.
*SKREEE!*
From above, Ingis screamed like a dying star. Burning bright with searing phoenix-fire, she plunged straight down from the sky, her talons tearing through the creature's shoulder. The beast managed to twist away, but not before a deep, smoking wound was carved across its torso.
"Catch!" Lyra yelled, thrusting her staff forward.
A localized gale of razor-sharp wind slammed into the creature's flank, violently throwing off its center of gravity.
That was all the opening Maya needed. She flashed forward from the blind spot, her fist completely coated in crackling, blinding golden lightning, and hammered it directly into the side of the creature's head.
Stunned and battered, the mimic flew backward straight toward Luke.
Completely unbalanced, the creature had no way to dodge or block. Luke stepped into the trajectory, his earth sword sweeping in a swift, merciless arc.
*Schwing.*
The mimic's head spun off its shoulders. Thick, viscous green blood sprayed across the ancient stone floor as the headless body crashed heavily into the earth.
Luke kicked the twitching carcass aside to ensure it was dead, his chest heaving as he deactivated his weapon.
Reo walked up slowly, staring down at the green-blooded corpse in stunned silence. His voice was barely a whisper. "What... what about the real Alpha?"
Luke motioned toward the staircase with a flick of his chin.
A moment later, the genuine, midnight-black shadow panther came trotting cautiously up the steps, letting out a confused, low purr as it rubbed its head against Reo's knee.
Luke let out a long breath, finally letting the adrenaline fade from his system. He turned his attention back to the rest of the group.
"Maya, Lyra—inspect the corpse. Find out its anatomy, its composition, its weakness. We can't afford to be caught off guard by a shapeshifting mimic again." Luke looked over his shoulder. "Azula, Silvia. Come with me."
### The Runic Anchor
The team immediately split to execute their orders. Maya and Lyra knelt beside the smoking green carcass, knives and diagnostic runes in hand, while Ingis stood guard nearby.
Luke walked over to the far edge of the enormous iron gate, sitting down heavily against the cold stone. He pulled a pouch from his belt and spilled out eight smooth, uniform pebbles onto the ground beside his boot.
"We need to think of a foolproof way to identify ourselves and track each other if we ever get separated in this maze," Luke said, his voice grim. He looked up at Silvia, who blinked, looking momentarily lost as to why she had been specifically chosen for this task.
"You have the second largest mana pool in this strike team," Luke explained, gesturing to her. "Azula is exceptionally talented in runic sorcery, and I have a firm foundational grasp of it myself."
He picked up one of the smooth pebbles, turning it over in his palm.
"Azula is going to construct a localized resonance spell that links these stones, allowing us to see each other's precise coordinates and status. Because of the sheer mana drain required to pierce this city's spatial interference, Silvia and I will continuously pump our reserves into Azula to supply the spell if her own capacity falls short."
Silvia nodded tightly, understanding the weight of the assignment.
Azula stepped forward, picking up the eight stones and arranging them in a tight, geometric circle on the stone floor. She pulled a small wooden twig from her pouch and crouched down, her eyes narrowing in deep concentration.
With swift, practiced motions, she began inscribing intricate, glowing runes around the perimeter of the stones.
The ambient mana in the air immediately began to surge, swirling violently around them like an invisible vortex as the hungry runes drank it in, glowing with a bright, pulsating crimson light.
Silvia placed her palms gently on either side of the runic circle, closing her eyes as a steady stream of emerald-green mana flowed from her fingertips. Luke mirrored her position on the opposite side, channeling his own dense, golden-white energy directly into the matrix.
Azula didn't hesitate. Her hands blurred across the dirt and stone, carving deeper, faster, as the runic circle flared blindingly bright, binding their souls and locations into a single, unbreakable network.