Year – 7002 A.A | Location – Valleys of Mount Pire, Poisoned Clearing
The clearing was no longer just a clearing — it had become a stage. Every soldier who still clung to consciousness, every breath of wind that wove through the webbed treetops, and every mote of drifting dust seemed to pause in eerie anticipation.
The spider tracient's aura lay over the place like a suffocating blanket. The very air tasted of venom — a metallic bitterness that clung to the tongue and refused to leave. The dim, green-tinged light filtering down from the tangled canopy barely touched the earth, leaving the frost-speckled ground mottled with shadows that quivered and writhed as if alive.
Karadir stood at the center of it, transformed. His rocky skin shimmered faintly as though it had been polished by a mountain stream, and the gold glow from his horns caught and refracted what little light there was. It painted him in a halo of defiance, making him look both immovable and dangerous — the very embodiment of a mountain's resolve given flesh.
Across from him, the spider tracient was perfectly still. Her kimono swayed gently from a current that hadn't reached the ground, and her long, spidery fingers flexed once, twice — not out of nervousness, but as though measuring the length of an invisible thread. Her six eyes narrowed just slightly, each one focusing and refocusing on a different part of him.
'Even #3 among the Hazël was affected by my poison… But this ordinary goat wasn't?'
The thought tickled at her mind with equal parts irritation and intrigue. Her poison wasn't something a soldier — even a seasoned one — could simply shrug off. That was why she had woven it so subtly into the air, threads of it carried on the breath of the wind, so light and insidious it slipped past even trained senses. It had been working, too. She had seen Adam's posture falter, his skin pale, his breath shorten. She had watched the other soldiers drop to their knees as if their own armor had turned against them. Yet here stood a young goat tracient — no twitch of weakness in his stance, no clouding in his eyes, no tremor in his voice.
Her lips curved into something between a smile and a sneer, but before she could speak, Karadir's voice cut through the thick air.
"What's wrong, spider?" he called, his words measured, each syllable carrying weight. His voice wasn't loud — it didn't need to be. The valley itself seemed to carry it forward, bouncing it against the rock walls until it reached her like a cold wind. "Did I upset you?"
The remark wasn't crude or brash. It wasn't even truly mocking — it was something worse. It was confident.
Adam, still kneeling a few paces behind, felt his gaze drawn to Karadir's back. The boy's stance was firm — knees slightly bent, weight balanced over his hooves, shoulders squared. 'He's not trembling,' Adam thought in astonishment. He could sense no falter in the goat's mana either. If anything, it burned brighter now than it had moments before. There was something about that posture, that simple unwavering line from the crown of his horns down to the ground beneath his hooves, that sparked an unexpected chord in Adam's memory — the way Kon had once stood, the way Daruis had once faced an opponent far stronger than himself, not because he thought he could win, but because retreat had never been an option.
Karadir's gaze never wavered from the spider tracient. He could feel the edges of her power pressing against him like heat from a forge, trying to seep into the cracks of his armor, probing for weakness. But his will held fast. 'If I falter,' he thought, 'Lord Adam will be the next to fall. And if he falls, so does everyone here.'
The spider tracient's expression didn't change much, but her fingers stilled, and her stance shifted almost imperceptibly — a minute redistribution of weight that a casual observer would have missed. It was not the movement of someone afraid, but the subtle adjustment of a predator realizing its prey might require more effort than anticipated.
Her lips curled, revealing the faint gleam of serrated fangs. It was not the smile of someone pleased, but the anticipatory grin of a predator about to test the limits of its prey.
"You are quite something," the spider tracient said, her tone laced with a lazy malice. "Let's see what you can do."
She did not take a step. Instead, her wrist twitched with almost negligent grace — a flick so small it might have been mistaken for brushing away a stray hair. But the air snapped, and from her fingertips erupted a torrent of silken threads, each one no thicker than a hair yet glinting like forged steel under the dim light. They hissed as they cut through the air, an invisible swarm turned visible only in flashes, edges gleaming with venom.
Karadir tensed. The ground beneath his hooves shivered from the sudden flare of his mana, the air thickening around him as the pressure of his presence grew. A faint golden hue spread across the lines of his horns and the seams of his rocky skin, as though the earth itself was awakening inside him.
"ARCEM: Dağsever!"
The word rang out with the clarity of steel striking stone. His stance shifted — low, forward, kinetic — and then he was moving. The thunder of his hooves pounding against the frozen ground rolled across the clearing, echoing against the valley walls like distant drums. He drove himself forward into the oncoming blizzard of threads.
'He plans to rush through again?'
The spider's amusement deepened, her six eyes narrowing. 'How reckless. I wonder how long that will last.'
The first lines of silk reached him — threads so fine they seemed intangible, and yet the faint hum of their passage through the air betrayed their lethality. But before they could coil around his limbs, Karadir's voice boomed again, this time tinged with the guttural resonance of someone invoking power rooted in the marrow of the earth.
"Dağsever: Kayan Kılıç!"
His forearms shuddered, then changed — the smooth, polished stone texture of his skin darkening, compacting, sharpening. In the space of a heartbeat, each arm had become a blade: stone fused seamlessly with metal, edges glinting with the cold promise of precision and weight. The transformation was so sudden it felt less like a change and more like a revelation — as though those blades had always been there, hidden beneath the surface, waiting to be called.
The first arc of his swing tore through the silken barrage. It wasn't a mere parry; it was a clean, unrelenting cut that severed multiple threads at once. The severed strands fell uselessly to the ground, twitching like dying snakes before dissolving into nothing.
He didn't slow. Each step drove him faster, the terrain itself seeming to lend him its strength. His shoulders were set forward, his arms moving in powerful, sweeping motions — not the frantic hacking of someone trying to survive, but the deliberate, rhythmic strikes of a fighter who understood exactly how much force and angle each cut required.
The spider's grin faltered, just slightly. Her eyes narrowed as she noted the subtle truth in his movements: his momentum wasn't diminishing; it was growing.
'He's keeping up… The nature of his Arcem… earth type, perfectly suited for this terrain. Every step gives him more strength, not less'.
She sprang backward in a fluid motion, the silk of her kimono whispering against itself as she moved. Her feet barely touched the ground before she twisted her wrists again, sending another wave of threads spinning toward him. This set glowed faintly — a soft, pale light that pulsed as they flew.
Karadir read the change instantly. His head dipped, his right blade sweeping across his body in a guarded arc as his left slashed outward, batting several glowing threads away. The rest he dodged with sharp, precise steps, never stopping his forward press. The sound of his movement — the grind of stone against stone, the thump of hooves, the hiss of silk parting — filled the air in a relentless cadence.
Their battle climbed the valley walls almost without notice. The rocky inclines, the uneven ledges, the frost-slick stones — none of it hindered either combatant. She moved as though gravity were a suggestion, her threads anchoring her to invisible points in the air. He moved as though the mountain itself shifted beneath his steps, giving way where he needed and holding firm when he struck.
Adam watched from his weakened position, his breath still uneven. Every muscle ached, his vision swam, and yet he could not drag his gaze away from the duel unfolding before him.
'Incredible… It's strange. I didn't sense this level of power from him until he activated his Arcem.'
He remembered the first time he'd met Karadir — the measured politeness, the quiet presence, the lack of any perceptible threat. The ranking system was designed to reveal the truth of power at a glance; the strength of an Özel or Hazël was never meant to be hidden from another of their kind. And yet, somehow, this goat had slipped entirely beneath that sense until now.
Karadir caught another cluster of threads on his blades, the motion sending a faint vibration through the valley floor. Several other threads slipped past, scoring across his arm and shoulder. The cuts were thin but deep, the edges of the wounds glowing faintly before gold blood welled to the surface.
Adam saw the blood, but what struck him more was Karadir's utter lack of hesitation. He did not recoil, did not falter in his stride, did not glance at the wounds as if acknowledging them might give them weight.
' So this is the strength of the strongest Özel… Rank #1…'
Adam's eyes narrowed slightly, the edges of his mouth tightening. There was a part of him — deep, quiet, and long unacknowledged — that had begun to suspect Karadir might not simply be buying him time.
The spider's voice lashed out like a whip, sharp enough to draw blood even from the air itself.
"Kesik Ağlar!"
At once, the sky above the clearing whitened. Threads—thousands of them—spilled outward in every direction, a curtain of death descending with the speed of falling stars. They did not merely drift—they drove themselves downward, each one taut with deadly purpose, weaving into a seamless lattice meant to choke all movement.
For the briefest instant, Karadir froze. His instincts screamed to dodge, to find the gaps and slip away—but there were no gaps. She had made certain of that.
The spider tracient's six eyes glimmered with the quiet certainty of a predator who has closed the last escape.
Adam's pulse quickened as he watched from the valley floor. 'No… not this. He can't cut them all. If even one catches him…'
Karadir's gaze swept the descending storm once—just once. And then, instead of retreat, his hooves thundered forward, pounding into the earth with a force that made the ground tremble.
"Earth Shaper: Kaya Dönüşü!"
The valley responded like a living thing. From beneath him, the ground did not merely crack—it heaved, shifted, and folded as if invisible hands were kneading the stone itself. Boulders the size of carts wrenched themselves free from the earth, jagged ridges sprang upward, and the terrain bent in impossible arcs.
The falling web met the rising stone in a violent embrace.
The impact was deafening. A blinding flash erupted as the threads, laced with volatile mana, tore against the moving rock. For a heartbeat, the valley was nothing but white light and the sound of silk ripping like the very fabric of the sky being torn apart. Then came the explosion.
It was not the clean crack of a blade strike, nor the dull boom of distant thunder—it was a rolling, bone-shaking roar that hurled dust and stone outward in a wave. The shock tore through the clearing, rattling armor, bending trees, and forcing even the spider to brace herself.
The valley lay in stunned silence, broken only by the faint patter of dislodged stones trickling down the jagged slopes. Slowly, the dust began to sink, drifting in curling ribbons through the air, catching on threads that still trembled faintly from the last exchange.
As the grey veil lifted, the first shape to emerge was not the spider.
Karadir knelt in the churned earth, one knee pressed deep into the fractured ground, his breathing heavy and uneven. His rocky skin — once an unbroken armor of muted grey — was now marred with jagged cracks. In several places, thin rivulets of gold blood traced their way down, catching the light before falling to the soil. His horns, though still glowing faintly gold, had lost some of their brilliance.
Each breath was a labor, his chest rising and falling with visible strain. The mana around him, once a radiant aura flaring like a bonfire, now flickered like a candle guttering in the wind. He had poured everything into that last defense, and the toll had left him with little more than willpower to keep upright.
Across the clearing, the haze split apart like curtains parting for a queen's entrance.
The spider tracient stepped forward, not a speck of dust marring her silken kimono. Her hair was immaculate, each glossy strand in perfect place, the web-patterned fabric swaying gently as though she were strolling through a garden rather than a battlefield. Six eyes locked onto Karadir, their expression not of relief or survival, but of pure entertainment.
Her lips curled into a slow, deliberate grin — the sort that enjoyed savoring the moment more than delivering the killing blow.
"I'll be honest," she began, her tone syrupy with mockery. "İpekkan is impressed with your talent. You were a worthy foe."
Karadir tried to rise. His legs trembled under him, muscles screaming, but he pushed — only to falter and sink back to one knee. The very act of breathing felt like trying to draw air through stone. Somewhere deep inside, a stubborn ember urged him to keep going, but his body, drained and battered, refused to obey.
Her steps were unhurried, each one sinking faintly into the dust as she closed the distance.
"But in the end," she continued, voice carrying the weight of inevitability, "you are still an Özel. Even if you are the strongest."
Karadir's eyes tracked her warily, though he did not miss the deliberate cadence in her steps — the way she was drawing out her approach, letting the tension coil tighter and tighter around them both.
She lifted her hands, delicate as a dancer raising her arms to begin a performance. The white threads around her shimmered… and then the color bled into them, a deep, menacing crimson that pulsed like living veins.
The change was immediate — the air itself seemed to recoil. Heat radiated faintly from the scarlet strands, carrying with it the iron tang of raw destructive mana. They spread outward in a slow, deliberate fan, filling the space between her and Karadir with a cage of living blood-thread.
Her voice dropped to something near a whisper, though it carried clearly through the poisoned clearing.
"Also, I hope you didn't think I was fighting at full strength."
The grin widened — not friendly, not even triumphant, but almost feverishly delighted.
"İpekkan: Crimson Death…"
The threads moved.
No, they struck.
In the instant they launched, they went from the lazy sway of silk to something faster than thought, faster than instinct. There was no time to dodge, no space to retreat. Karadir's hands twitched toward a defensive stance… and stopped. He knew. He had already reached his limit.
He closed his eyes. The sound of the oncoming attack roared in his ears, an unnatural hiss like molten metal tearing through fabric. His head dipped slightly — not in surrender, but in the grim acceptance of a soldier who had done his duty.
'At least I slowed her down…'
But then—
"Fifth Fang: Kasırga Kesik!"
The words came like a blade drawn in the dark — clean, sharp, cutting through despair.
A sudden wind slammed into the battlefield, pulling at the dust, the threads, even the loose rocks beneath their feet. Then came the slashes — dozens of them, invisible save for the flashes of steel-like mana they left in their wake. They tore through the crimson threads in every direction, shredding them into fluttering fragments that dissolved harmlessly into the air.
Karadir's eyes flew open, disbelief mingling with relief.
From the settling dust, a figure emerged.
Adam stood tall, the weight of his presence alone enough to steady the air around him. Canvari rested against his shoulder, the blue and gold polished steel catching the dim light. On his tunic, the symbol of the Kurt Clan glowed faintly, as if stirred to life by his return to the fight. His gaze was fixed on the enemy, calm but unyielding — the look of someone who had already decided the outcome of the battle.
"I owe my life to you, soldier," Adam said, his voice carrying not only gratitude but the steel of command. He shifted the staff to his other shoulder with a movement so fluid it was almost casual. "Thank you for holding out. You can rest now."
Something in his tone broke through Karadir's resolve to keep standing. The younger tracient let out a long, uneven sigh, and as if that single breath carried away the last of his strength, he collapsed sideways onto the churned ground. His rocky form dulled, horns dimming as he slipped into exhausted unconsciousness.
Across from them, the spider tracient's aura flared. The air prickled with mana so dense it was almost tangible. Her six eyes glimmered like jewels in torchlight, but there was nothing warm in their light — only hunger.
"İpekkan is excited!" she cried, her voice rising into a giddy laugh. "Hahaha! Such intense aura coming from one tracient! This will be a feast!"
Adam's eyes, a piercing and unwavering blue, locked onto hers. He adjusted his stance, one foot shifting slightly, weight distributing with the ease of a predator preparing to strike. The staff dipped forward just enough to signal intent, his fingers tightening along its length.
When he spoke, it was not a shout — it was low, steady, and absolute.
"Let's go, number #14."
The wind seemed to pause, as if the valley itself were holding its breath.