The moment SK's soul shard shattered inside Elias's Domain, something inside him tore with it.
He did not scream.
He did not have the luxury.
The hexagonal circuit carved into the wooden floor flared violently, white lines spiderwebbing outward as if the structure itself wished to collapse. The talismans pinned along the walls snapped and burned in sequence, their inked sigils blistering from the sudden backlash.
Jamie felt it first as heat.
"Why is it getting brighter?" she shouted, attempting to grip Elias's limp form as he hovered midair despite SK's warnings.
SK felt it as amputation.
A shard of his own soul had just been chewed through.
"Bloody hell…" he muttered, blood already trickling from his nose.
He tightened his grip on the core seal embedded in the center of the circuit. The exorcism framework had been designed for extraction—forceful, surgical removal of a foreign entity. What was happening now was not extraction.
It was consumption.
The circle buckled as pressure surged outward from Elias's suspended body. Black-gold flame licked along the inscribed runes, distorting their geometry. SK braced against the floor and poured Flow into the stabilizing arrays.
"Hold," he rasped. "Just bloody hold."
Jamie stopped her attempt to grab Elias and under SK's instruction covered the circuit in frost to prevent it from burning up.
The shack groaned as if alive with the intensity of what was happening.
Then, theyfelt something wash over the world. Cold. Heavy. Oppressive.
"What— what was that?"
SK knew immediately.
That signature.
That weight.
"Elara…" he breathed.
It had been years, more than a decade since he had last trained her, since she had stood before him bright-eyed and terrifyingly gifted. But some energies etched themselves into memory. Anti-Flow carried a different cadence. Hers had always been like distant thunder wrapped in velvet. This time around it was unrestrained and and raw.
The wave rippled through the forest and through his illusions alike. Jamie didn't know what was happening and only felt pressure and confusion. SK felt time collapsing inward.
Things were not looking good.
As if that were not enough, he felt another shift—fainter, but steady.
The forest talismans.
Throughout the winding path that led to his illusory glade, SK had planted dozens of layered sigils—alarm arrays masked as harmless charms. They were meant to burn and whisper to him should anyone approach. He had relied on them since that dishonoured had found his way in by following the two children.
But in recent weeks he had disabled several of the deeper triggers.
Why?
Because he had grown careless.
Because he had assumed only the children would find their way here.
Because for the first time in a long time, he had allowed himself to believe he was no longer prey. He had connected them remotely to serve as emergency anchors for the ritual.
Through them, he sensed it.
Four figures.
Steady, unhurried and closing in.
"Bloody marvelous," he muttered, teeth stained red.
The circle beneath Elias flared violently. For one terrible second, SK felt the Kitsune's presence push back through the tether, predatory and ancient.
Then—
Something changed.
A violent pulse rippled through the shack.
Not from the fox.
From Elias.
The circuit howled as if struck by lightning.
Jamie gasped. "He's—he's moving!"
Inside the ritual feedback, SK felt it.
Corruption. No, counter-predation.
The boy wasn't being consumed, somehow he was biting back.
"You mad little bastard…" SK whispered.
The pressure shifted. The collapse reversed. The Kitsune's force recoiled.
And then the circle stabilized.
Not cleanly, but enough.
SK sagged against the wall, blood dripping freely now. He could feel the absence where his shard had once been. The Kitsune had destroyed it.
That loss would never regenerate.
He held the circuit anyway.
Even shattered, it required maintenance. The backlash alone could have ruptured Elias's body.
He held it.
Until the boy's breathing returned.
The present pressed in around him like a tightening fist.
So, now that everything was said and done, he had five minutes.
Another talisman burned. The faint illusory layers woven through the forest shimmered. The four approaching signatures had triggered the outer nets. Those illusions were designed to create minor spatial delays—twisting paths, looping clearings, false glimpses of the shack just beyond reach.
Enough to buy him time.
If he ran now...
He looked at the two children. Jamie was crouched beside Elias, who was pale but conscious, leaning against her for support.
For a fleeting moment, something old and fragile stirred in SK's chest.
He had felt like a teacher again.
Like before.
Before the bounty. Before the role they had forced on him.
For a handful of weeks, he had not been prey, not been a relic hunted for his usefulness, not been a living key others wanted to turn in a lock of their choosing.
He had simply been a teacher again, like he was over a decade ago.
Not an object.
Not a bargaining chip.
A man with knowledge, passing it on.Before he became less a man and more a tool people chased to fulfill their purposes.
Another talisman burned.
Three minutes.
He exhaled slowly.
"Right," he said gruffly. "Time for you to go kids ."
Jamie looked up. "Why do you sound like that?"
They still couldn't understand his earlier declaration of his time being up.
"Because...," he snapped then paused.
"Aughhhh! I can't explain everything. Simply put i have, adult matters. Bloody inconvenient but what can one do?" He shrugged.
Elias narrowed his eyes slightly. "So, you're leaving."
SK clicked his tongue.
"Yeah, I've something to attend to elsewhere."
Jamie frowned. "Is it that important?"
He met her gaze and nodded once.
"It's that bloody important."
She crossed her arms.
"Then why were you lazing around like some old bum?"
Elias added dryly, "He is an old bum."
In one smooth motion, SK gripped both their shoulders.
Hard.
They yelped.
"Cheeky little gremlins," he growled. "Show some respect for your elders."
Another talisman flared and died.
Two minutes.
He turned sharply and rummaged through his compartment, hands moving faster than his age suggested.
He pulled out a gold bracelet shaped like a laurel wreath. Intricate. Warm to the touch.
He tossed it to Jamie.
She caught it awkwardly. "What's this?"
"Grade five artifact," he said.
"Subtle probability skewing and modulation. Simply put, it's a good luck charm that'll nudge things in your favor."
Her eyes widened.
He then drew out the Obsidian Dagger and handed it to Elias.
The blade drank light.
"Also grade five," SK muttered.
"Just like its twin affects the soul, each cut affects the mind. Of course the other ones the only one with a domain fragment."
The Jamie tried to hold in a laugh, remebering the name he gave to said domain fragment.
Elias examined it silently.
Then SK hesitated only a second before removing the dream catcher hanging above the hearth.
He pressed it into Elias's hand.
"Grade four," he said more quietly. "Its a higher tier that puts targets to sleep. Allows dream manipulation if you know what you're doing."
Jamie's mouth fell open. "Hey, why does he get two?"
SK didn't miss a beat. "Because he's got a divine entity squatting in his soul."
She blinked.
"…Fair."
Still, he reached into his sleeve and produced a small silver ring.
"Pocket dimension. Storage."
Her annoyance evaporated instantly. "Seriously?"
"Yes, seriously. Now stop gawking."
One minute.
The forest outside groaned faintly as deeper illusions began to fray.
SK stepped toward the door and shooed them forward.
"Out. Both of you."
Elias held the doorpost, swaying slightly.
"We don't know enough," he said quietly.
"When are you coming back to teach us the rest?"
For a fraction of a second, SK faltered.
"I don't know,"
"But try to hone your crafts onyour own. Also seek help concerning the beast in your soul. Those bastards are hard to trust."
They didn't move.
Jamie bit her lip. "Will we ever see you again?"
He looked away.
Then back at them with a crooked smile.
"You'll encounter my name plenty throughout your lives."
It wasn't an answer.
The shack trembled.
"Go," he barked.
The floor tilted violently. A surge of illusory energy erupted outward, lifting both children and throwing them through the doorway in a gust of shimmering light.
They landed hard among trees.
The space shrank and the glade dissolved around them like smoke unraveling.
Then—
Two massive wooden legs burst from beneath it. The structure rose, towering above the treeline.
Jamie stared in awe.
"It really was Baba Yaga," she whispered.
The hut pivoted and began to run, each step shaking the forest.
She scrambled to her feet.
"We can follow—"
Elias grabbed her wrist weakly and shook his head.
"Let's go home."
He had no strength left.
So she carried him.
They slid across a sheet of conjured ice, Jamie balanced expertly as wind whipped through her hair.
She chuckled despite herself.
"Whatever, he… he'll be coming back."
Elias murmured, "Why?"
She pulled the Kitsune mask from her coat and glanced over her shoulder with a smirk.
"This is important, right?"
He stared at it.
"…Yeah."
Behind them, far deeper in the forest—
SK worked.
Artifacts clinked across the wooden floor as he prepared . Defensive seals. Detonation charms. Spatial distorters.
Behind him, trees parted unnaturally as the four approaching signatures pushed through illusion after illusion.
He could feel them clearly now. He had intentionally made the shack change into this shape so that attention would be drawn away from the two kids.
He paused midway through caliberating a rod-like artifact and glanced out the window.
The forest below shimmered silver under moonlight.
''It looks eerily… beautiful tonight.''
He heard Jamie's voice echo faintly in memory.
"Will we ever see you again?"
He smiled faintly.
Then he returned to work.
The shack thundered forward, carving a path through the night as the forest closed in behind it.
"Probably not," he muttered.