The forest does not swallow them. It spits them out.
Liyen feels Luobo's neck muscles tremble between her thighs, feels the animal's sweat burn through her dress. Behind them, the underbrush no longer cracks like footsteps—it sounds like bones breaking. The wolf-men are no longer hunters. They are a flood and curse alike, a tide that cannot be shaken off.
"Keep moving!" Tessa screams ahead of them. Her voice tears in her throat.
But the trees stand too dense. The shadows between the trunks move with yellow eyes. Liyen counts five, eight, twelve—then she stops counting, because numbers pretend at safety, and no safety exists here.
The horses panic. They do not whinny—they scream. A Tigerheart horse throws itself sideways, hurls its rider, and before the man can hit the ground, a claw is already there, flicking him into the air like a pebble. Liyen does not see where he lands. She does not want to see.
"Circle!" Tarin roars. "Back to back!"
Too late. The wolf-men are already upon them. Their stench fills the clearing—rotting fur, spoiled saliva, the smell of copper and old blood. One of them stands before Liyen now. His muzzle twitches, drools, the yellow eyes fixing on her not as a person, but as prey. His paws dig into the earth, shovel-sized, claws clicking like knives being sharpened.
Liyen breathes in. Breathes out. Her bowstring pulls itself taut, muscle memory from a thousand hours of training. The arrow flies.
It strikes. Not the eye—the claw. The point pierces through the red horn, splinters bone. The wolf-man howls, a sound that vibrates in her chest like a second heartbeat. But he does not flee. He only grows faster. Pain drives him on, lets saliva drip from his fangs, now flashing white in the half-dark.
He leaps.
And rebounds.
Something silver punches through his skull from behind, exits through the mouth again, shining red. The wolf-man collapses like a slit sack. Behind him, on a trembling gray, sits Yaoming. His spear juts vertically into the air, transfixing the beast's neck. His hands bleed on the shaft.
Time does not freeze. It explodes.
"Yaoming!" The scream tears Liyen's throat. She feels no wound, no fatigue anymore. She feels only him.
Luobo surges forward, finds a gap between two other beasts. Liyen leaps before the horse stops, nearly falls, runs. Yaoming releases the spear, lets the dead wolf-man fall behind him, opens his arms.
The impact hurts. Her shoulders slam against his breastplate, her chin against his collarbone. She smells iron and sweat and him, that specific baking oil of his skin that she would recognize anywhere, even in a grave. His arms close around her, trembling, holding too tight.
"You're alive," she forces out. Her fingers dig into his back, searching for wounds, for proof that he is real. "You're alive, you're alive, you—"
"Liyen." His voice is raw, not a whisper but breathlessness. "We have to—"
She pulls back, only a little, and sees the blood. It is not the red of the wolf-man covering his hands. It wells from a gash beneath his armor, dark and sticky, spreading across his hip.
"You're wounded." Her voice breaks.
"A scratch." He smiles, but his face is pale beneath the dirt. "From a demon at the river. Nothing serious."
A shadow falls over them. Not the sun. Something large.
The next wolf-man steps from the bushes. He is somewhat larger than the other. His shoulders move wrong, grinding, as if bones rearrange themselves within the muscles. His eyes are not red. They are yellow, reflective, full of an intelligence more terrible than pure rage.
He does not leap. He stomps closer, the earth trembling, raises the paw—
Yaoming kicks. Not at the enemy. He kicks Luobo's flank, drives the horse on. Luobo cries out, stumbles, tears Liyen away with him, away from the paw that strikes where she had stood moments before. Earth sprays. Claws scrape stone.
"No!" Liyen yanks the reins. "Back!"
But Luobo obeys Yaoming. The horse turns, carries her away, five meters, ten. She twists in the saddle, sees Yaoming draw his sword, sees him leap upward, thrust the blade against the underside of the wolf's jaw.
The shot comes from her fingers before her brain gives the command.
The arrow strikes the beast's eye. A perfect hit she could never repeat, even if she tried. The point pierces the yellow, bores into the brain, explodes out the other side of the skull. The wolf-man freezes mid-leap.
And falls.
Forward.
Onto Yaoming.
The crunch when the body strikes is a sound Liyen will never forget. It is wet and hard at once, the sound of a wall collapsing onto a man. Yaoming vanishes beneath the mountain of fur and flesh. Only his boots stick out, twitch once, then still.
"No!"
Her voice does not belong to her. It belongs to an animal. Luobo whinnies, tries to keep riding, to leave the forest behind, but Liyen throws herself from the saddle. She hits the ground hard, rolls over roots, feels skin tear, yet rises.
"Liyen, no!" Tessa is there, grabs her cloak, pulls. "We can't—they're coming from everywhere!"
Liyen bites. Truly. Her teeth find Tessa's wrist, not hard enough to bleed, but hard enough to release. "He's alive!" she gasps. "He's alive, I saw him, he—"
A howl cuts through her words. Not from the wolf-men. This howl sounds... hollow. As if it comes from another world, from a throat that needs no lungs.
The Qi-Flame shoots across the clearing.
It does not move as before, not hesitating, not searching. It moves like a projectile, a comet's trail of white light that burns the air. And behind it—from it?—flows the Nothing.
The Noctusborn.
They do not fly. They glide, half material, half shadow, mist-bodies winding between the trees like smoke over the water. Liyen counts dozens. Small, broken shapes with too-long arms and mouths that gape too wide. The Qi-Flame does not lead them. It drives them before it, a drifting ember in a herd of nightmares.
The first wave crashes against the wolf-men.
It is not a battle. It is a devouring.
One of the wolf-men leaps. Not at Liyen—at Yan. The claws flash out, black sickles in the air, and Yan knows: This is too fast. He cannot dodge. He wants to close his eyes, but they stay open, transfixed by the yellow pupils enlarging before his face—
Something misty strikes the beast's back.
The female Noctusborn—the same who tried to drain Liyen at the labor camp—floats onto the wolf-man's neck. Her claws do not strike. They excavate. Again and again, mechanical, diligent, like a seamstress tearing fabric. Bone splinters. Black blood sprays.
The wolf-man roars, whirls, grabs the Noctusborn by the torso. His paw encloses her entirely, fingers pressing into her mist-body, grasping for substance that should not be graspable—and hurls her. She hits the ground beside Yan, bounces, rolls, lies still. Her body flickers, half-transparent, like a candle in wind.
The wolf-man turns to them. He stands between the trees now, five paces away. His chest heaves, his fur full of splintering wood and blood. He grows larger. His shoulders stretch, bones break and regrow, the muzzle lengthens into a gruesome grin. Yan stares into his gold-glowing, almost hypnotic eyes.
The wolf-man takes a step. The earth seems to shake.
Yan breathes. Once. Twice. His heart hammers so hard he believes it must break his ribs. He has never been with a woman. Never held a hand, never stroked hair, never dared even to look when beauty passed. And now—now Death stands two meters away, a mountain of teeth and hate, and in three seconds he will be torn apart. Forgotten. Devoured.
He turns his head.
The Noctusborn lies beside him. She stirs, tries to rise, but the throw has weakened her. Her face is so close he can see the missing pupils, the white that is not white but the light of a distant, cold star. She smells of ash and wet stone.
A woman, he thinks. Even if she is a monster.
He reaches over. His hand trembles so much he can barely control it. He grabs her arm—cool, almost cold, not solid but like mist between his fingers—and pulls her to him. She is light, surprisingly light.
"Thank you," he whispers. His voice sounds foreign, high, treacherous. "For... trying."
The wolf-man raises his paw. The claws click.
Yan closes his eyes and kisses her.
It is not a gentle kiss. It is hard, clumsy, his teeth striking her lips that do not move, that are cold as marble in winter. He tastes earth and something bitter, metallic. He thinks of sunsets he has never seen, of love letters he has never written, of the life that will end in three breaths.
The Noctusborn flinches, stares at him, behaves for a second as if 'humanly confused.'
Then—movement. Not from her. She does not move, she does not react, she is a tripod of shadow and staring. But the wolf-man roars, and Yan feels the beast's hot breath on his neck, feels the claw scythe down—
The Noctusborn vanishes. Just like that. Beneath his kiss, through his fingers like water.
The claw strikes only earth. Splinters fly, cutting Yan's cheek.
Behind the wolf-man, she materializes. Her claws bore into the beast's neck, deeper than before, furious, thrashing. The wolf-man turns, snaps at her, but she is already gone again, a black lightning dancing around the beast, taunting him, drawing him away from Yan.
Yan tips backward. He sits in the dirt, touches his lips with his fingertips, stares at the spot where she lay moments before. "Wait," he murmurs, and it is ridiculous, it is absurd, it is the stupidest thing he has ever said. "Wait, darling, where...?"
The Noctusborn does not answer. She fights. A cat-and-mouse game of mist and flesh, of blades and claws. The wolf-man turns in circles, grows angrier, slower, while she tears him from behind, from the side, from above.
Yan only sits there. And stares after her. Breathes. Lives.
And Liyen comes, grabs him by the earlobe, drags him back to reality. Turns, pulls. "Move!" she hisses. "This is no rescue, Yan. They are the hunters and we are merely their buffet, their appetizer!"
She pulls him up, realizes Zuo is already there, taking his other arm. Together they drag him back, to the horses, away from the carnage where Noctusborn and wolf-men tear each other apart, devour each other, destroy each other in a dance of death and shadow.
Behind them, beneath the dead body of the wolf-man, something moves.
A swordtip punches through the fur. Then a second cut, rough, unpracticed. Yaoming pulls himself from the beast's belly, blood-drenched, his face a mask of gore, his armor shredded. He breathes heavily, too heavily, each inhale a wheeze, each exhale a groan.
But he stands.
Liyen releases Yan. She runs. This time she does not fall, she nearly flies, the last meters, and collides with him. She smells death on him, the beast's innards that cover him, but beneath, very faint, the oil of his skin.
"Full," he gasps. "I am full of blood, little Li."
"Doesn't matter," she presses against his shoulder. "Doesn't matter, doesn't matter, doesn't matter."
He leans on her. His whole weight, heavier than ever before. "We must..." he coughs, spits red, "...get out of here. Before the victors grow hungry."
They turn. Tessa has gathered the horses, three of them, just enough. Zuo and Yan are already swinging onto one, holding each other like drunks.
Liyen and Yaoming follow, slowly, Yaoming's step more a shuffle, but forward. Behind them the carnage.
The Qi-Flame dances above the battlefield, a white star that watches, waits, guides.
They vanish into the forest, while behind them the mortal enemies slaughter each other.