Cel pushed himself up from the dirt outside the hut, pain radiating from his back where the impact had landed. His eyes strained against the darkness, searching for the shape that had hit him.
He couldn't see it.
"Lior!" His voice came sharp and urgent. "Light!"
Silence stretched for a heartbeat. Then pale light bloomed inside the destroyed entrance.
Small. Barely enough to illuminate the space inside. A weak orb of moonlight hovering above Lior's trembling palm, throwing shadows that danced and twisted with each flutter of his hand. But it was enough.
The creature stood revealed.
Massive. Bulky in ways that suggested raw physical power concentrated into meat and muscle. It stood on two legs like something pretending at humanity. Twice Lior's height, maybe more. Its head encased in a grotesque helmet of natural armor, plates of bone or chitin layered so thick that no blade would find purchase there. The rest of its body lay bare in comparison. Skin stretched over corded muscle, no protection except its own density.
The thing turned its armored skull toward Lior. Started walking. Heavy footfalls that shook the floor with each step.
Cel moved.
Not toward Silent Moon - no time to search for where it had fallen in the chaos. Just forward, launching himself back through the destroyed wall into the hut's interior. His boots hit wood that protested under his weight, threatening to give.
The creature took another step toward Lior, and something in the boy snapped.
A shriek tore out of him, high and ragged, nothing like a battle cry. The orb of light slipped from above his palm as his hand clenched around the dagger.
Then he was moving. Charging at the creature with his dagger gripped in both hands, the blade pointed forward, moonlight catching on steel that looked far too small for what he faced.
The creature's arm moved. Casual. Like swatting an insect that had gotten too close.
The back of its massive hand caught Lior across his torso. The impact lifted him off his feet, sending him flying sideways.
"Lior!" His mother's scream tore through the space.
Cel had barely finished his stride when Lior's body slammed into his chest.
The collision knocked the air from Cel's lungs. The boy's body crashed into his chest, momentum transferring, both of them stumbling. Cel's arms wrapped around Lior instinctively, catching him.
For a heartbeat they were tangled together. The moonlight orb flickered, threatening to die.
Then sound exploded from ahead of them.
The creature had dropped. All fours now, massive body lowered close to the ground. Its armored head led the charge, a battering ram of bone and compressed violence launching forward with speed that shouldn't be possible for something so large.
Directly at them.
The distance vanished before Cel's mind caught up. His body moved first.
He threw Lior left, hard, and lunged right. The creature thundered through the space between them, close enough that the air it displaced dragged at his clothes. The armored head missed him by perhaps a hand's width.
The wall behind them exploded. Wood spraying outward as the creature crashed through, its charge carrying it outside. The hole it left was massive - big enough that moonlight spilled through, joining the weak glow from Lior's still-active orb laying on the ground.
Cel hit the floor rolling. Came up in a crouch, hands empty, Silent Moon still lost somewhere in the chaos. His heart hammered against his ribs hard enough to hurt.
Silence.
The creature was gone. Disappeared into the night beyond the new hole it had created.
Had it retreated? Found different prey among the village's chaos?
No. He couldn't be sure of it. It could still be out there. Somewhere in the darkness. Preparing another charge from an angle they couldn't predict.
Cel's gaze darted across the room, eyes jumping from shadow to shadow, hunting for a shape, a movement, a sound, anything. But there was nothing.
Lior lay where Cel had thrown him, curled on his side, one hand clutched to his ribs. His face was screwed up in pain, breath coming in short, wincing hisses. His mother knelt over him, hands hovering over his body as if she were afraid to touch him, her face a mask of worry and terror. Behind them, Lior's father stood with his back to the room's center, head jerking toward every creak of the wood, every whisper of wind through the broken walls.
"Everyone!" Cel's voice cracked out. "Form a circle!"
They moved with the desperate speed of people who understood that hesitation meant death. Lior scrambled up from where Cel had thrown him, his dagger held in shaking hands.
His father abandoned his position near the doorway, moving to join them. His mother followed, her face stricken with terror but her body responding to the order.
They formed up in the room's center. Lior's mother pressed into the middle, her husband and son flanking her, Cel completing the formation. All of them facing outward, watching different directions, trying to cover the impossible task of defending against something that could come from anywhere.
Cel's breathing came too fast. His mind raced, searching for a hint, for some way to predict where the next attack would come from.
If he only had divine energy...
Then he could feel the corrupted energy that marked the creature. Then he could track its position, know where it circled, anticipate the charge before it came.
But he had nothing. No sixth sense. No way to perceive what his body had been built upon.
Useless. The familiar bitter taste of inadequacy flooded his mouth. His dysfunction had never mattered more than right now, standing in a destroyed hut trying to protect people who couldn't protect themselves. People he had come to care about.
Wait.
He didn't have divine energy. But Lior did.
"Lior." Cel's voice came urgent. "You need to track the creature's corrupted energy."
"What?" Lior's response carried confusion and fear in equal measure. "I don't—"
"You can sense it. All Chosen can. Feel for the corruption and find it."
Lior's eyes squeezed shut. His face twisted with concentration, the moonlight orb flickering as his focus divided between maintaining it and searching for something he'd never consciously tried to detect before.
Each time the light guttered, Cel felt the faint strength in his limbs gutter along with it. It was a small thing, barely a pulse, but he noticed the difference.
Lunar Vigor. Was his trait reacting to Lior's moonlight?
Seconds stretched. Cel's attention swept between the holes in the walls, searching for movement, for any sign of the attack he knew was coming.
Lior's eyes opened. "I can't do it. I can't feel anything except—"
"You can." Desperation sharpened Cel's tone. "Concentrate and—"
The wall to their left exploded inward.
Wood erupting in a shower of splinters. The creature burst through, already charging, armored head lowered, massive body compressed into a living battering ram aimed directly at Cel.
No time.
Not even a heartbeat to process what was happening. Just the immediate understanding that if he moved - if he dodged left or right - the creature would plow straight into Lior and his family standing behind him.
They wouldn't be fast enough to react. Wouldn't survive the impact.
Only one option existed.
Cel pulled his head back. Set his feet.
Then launched forward.
His forehead crashed into the creature's armored skull.
Pain exploded through Cel's head - white-hot and all-consuming, radiating from the point of collision outward in waves that threatened to black out his vision entirely. His skull felt like it had split open. Blood sprayed from his forehead, hot and immediate, sheeting down his face and into his eyes.
The world tilted. Spun. Refused to hold still or make sense.
But the creature had stopped.
The charge had been arrested mid-momentum, Cel's enhanced body providing just enough durability to absorb the impact without his skull caving inward completely.
The creature stood up. Rose to its full height on two legs, towering over Cel's swaying form. Its massive arms came together overhead, hands clasped, forming a club of flesh and bone that blocked out what little light remained.
Then it brought them down.
The double-handed strike caught Cel in his stomach. Force compressed his organs, drove air from his lungs in an explosive gasp. The floor beneath him gave way and he crashed through into the shallow space below. Blood surged up his throat and burst from his mouth in a hot, retching spray.
Lior's father charged in from the side. The wooden stool raised overhead, face set with determination that bordered on madness. He brought it down on the creature's bare back with everything he had.
The stool exploded. Shattered into pieces that scattered across the floor, achieving nothing except drawing the creature's attention.
Cel tried to move. But his body refused to cooperate. The dizziness was overwhelming - world spinning in directions that didn't exist, floor and ceiling trading places. Everything felt distant. Disconnected.
The creature advanced on Lior's father. Slow steps. Like it had all the time in the world to kill everyone in this room.
Cel's thoughts spiraled. Fragmented. Tried to organize themselves into coherent order but kept sliding away.
They were going to die. All of them. Lior and his parents, the family that had welcomed him with genuine warmth, the people who'd shown him what love looked like when it wasn't twisted into weapons and shame. They were going to die because he couldn't protect them.
'No.'
The word crept through the wreckage of his thoughts like a stone breaking the surface of a flood.
'Not like this. Not them.'
His hand shot out. Desperate. Uncoordinated. Fingers closing around something solid - the creature's bulky foot, planted on the floor as it advanced toward Lior's father.
Frost bloomed from Cel's palm. Spread across skin with crystalline speed, racing along the creature's foot while simultaneously freezing the floor beneath it. The cold burned through Cel's hand - the familiar pain of his authority expressing itself - but he held on. Poured everything he had into the manifestation, freezing the creature's foot to the ground beneath.
"Only over my dead body!"