He walked directly into the shrinking space between the humans and the wolves.
The group stiffened. For an instant, they saw him only as another unknown—a new threat arriving at the worst possible moment. Then they realized he stood with his back toward them, facing the pack.
He drew in a slow, burning breath.
All the cycles he had lived through, all the trials he had endured, all the battles he had survived—they all lined up behind that breath. The Unknown Core inside him hummed, quiet but present.
He lifted his head and fixed his gaze on the wolves.
His eyes went hard and still, like blades waiting for the moment to move.
When he spoke, his voice cut across the clearing.
"Enough."
The word was simple. But the way it landed was not.
Power threaded through the sound in ways no normal ears could fully grasp. It carried a resonance born from a billion deaths, from killing gods and surviving absolute erasure. It sounded like a command the universe had already learned it was safer to obey.
To the wolves, it was not just a noise.
It was a command from a predator they could not hope to match.
Noctis locked eyes with the pack's lead wolf—a massive beast, deeper armored, eyes burning brighter than the rest. His gaze did not waver. His posture spoke clearly: this ground is mine, these prey are under my shadow, and if you stay, you die.
The wolves felt it.
Not a spell. Not a trick of light. Something older and simpler: the instincts of lesser predators confronted by something that has never lost a hunt.
A tremor passed through the front ranks.
Then chaos broke.
The lead wolf flinched first, a subtle step back, a flicker of doubt in its burning eye. That was all it took. Panic shot through the pack like lightning. Discipline shattered. The wolves turned as one, bolting into the undergrowth.
They fled not in an orderly retreat, but in a desperate scramble to get away.
Branches snapped under their weight. Stones tumbled. The sound of their retreat was a crashing thunder headed deeper into the mountains. Their leader limped, yelping orders that no longer mattered, lost in the sudden stampede.
In seconds, they were gone.
The forest shook itself, leaves settling slowly back into place. The echo of snarls and claws faded into distant noise.
The humans remained where they were, weapons half-raised, breathing hard, eyes wide.
They looked at Noctis as if a story had stepped out of the dark.
To them, he was something between nightmare and miracle. A stranger who had walked into certain death and made the impossible stop with a single word.
The leader was the first to recover.
She lowered her sword, though she did not sheathe it. Her voice was rough from shouting, her breath uneven. Even so, she forced herself to stand straighter, to meet his gaze without flinching.
"Who—who are you?" she managed. "What are you doing here?"
There was awe in her tone, and caution, and a hard core of authority that did not want to be lost, even in front of someone like him.
Noctis weighed his reply.
Then he smiled.
It was not a warm smile. It showed just enough teeth to remind them that the one who had saved them was not necessarily safe himself. His eyes did not soften.
"I am Noctis," he said. "I live here. This is my ground of hunt."
He spoke simply, each word clipped and firm. It was not an introduction seeking friendship. It was a declaration of fact, a boundary drawn in the air between them.
Shock moved through the group like a small wave.
One fighter stared openly. Another's mouth opened, starting a question that died unfinished when he realized he didn't know how to ask it. The youngest's gaze flicked from Noctis to the forest where the wolves had vanished, then back again, full of tangled fear and gratitude.
Before they could all start talking at once, Noctis raised a hand slightly.
"Silence," he said.
His voice was not loud, but it needed no volume. It carried the same calm certainty as his earlier command.
"Follow me."
The leader hesitated, thinking fast.
She glanced at her people—wounded, tired, still alive because of this stranger. She tested the air, weighed risks. Finally, she nodded once, her motion sharp and decisive.
"Move out," she told her group. "Stay tight. Do what he says."
Noctis turned and slipped into the trees.
They followed.
He led them through the forest with the precision of someone who had walked every path a hundred times. He did not just take the shortest route—he chose ways that broke scent trails, ways that let them move quietly, ways that kept them out of open sight.
He brushed aside hanging vines and let them fall back into place behind the group. He kicked loose leaves over their footprints. He adjusted their line without needing to explain, knowing where the ground dipped dangerously or where certain plants attracted unwanted notice.
When the forest floor dipped into a shallow gully, he raised his hand. The group halted instantly.
High above, the light dimmed.
A shadow passed over the yellow sun, dragging gloom behind it. The air changed—the wind shifted direction and pressure, carrying a new scent of ozone and raw force.
The wyvern descended.
It cut through the sky like a blade—massive, its wings beating with enough power to drag small whirlwinds behind them. As it dropped lower, those whirlwinds became full tornadoes of disturbed air, leaves and dust spiraling helplessly.
Its cry ripped across the canopy.
The sound was ancient and furious, a proclamation that everything below it belonged to its sight and hunger. Trees shivered under that cry. Birds exploded out of branches, fleeing in every direction.
Noctis's hand flashed a different signal.
Down.
The group understood. Without questions, they scattered into the positions he had shown them earlier in gesture-only drills.
Two slid under the thick, arched roots of enormous ferns whose fronds hung heavy and low, hiding them in shadow. Others squeezed into shallow burrows, gaps in the earth left by old creatures. One lay flat in the hollow of a fallen trunk, covered in moss.
Noctis himself pressed into the side of the gully, half-buried in ferns, watching upward through narrow gaps.
The wyvern swept low.
Its scales caught the light, shimmering in complex patterns of iridescent color. Heat shimmered around its body, distorting the air. Its eyes glowed like pale jewels, scanning the forest with deadly focus.
It hunted for heat, for breath, for movement.
It huffed hot air through its nostrils. The gusts shook leaves and snapped small branches. Each exhale carried a chemical tang, sharp on the tongue even from a distance. Its tail lashed through the air, hooked tip carving lines through the canopy.
But Noctis had been planning for this.
For weeks, he had observed the wyvern's patterns from afar. When it flew. Where it hunted. How it reacted to certain smells and reflections. He knew this sky predator as well as he had known the wolves' patterns.
Before leading the humans on this path, he had prepared the ground.
He had ground certain monsters' bones into dust and scattered that dust along false trails. He had broken and placed reflective shards from one of his obsidian oracles in specific angles where the wyvern's gaze would catch them.
Now, as the beast passed overhead, those shards winked and flashed.
They distorted the wyvern's sense of depth and distance. Heat patterns bounced oddly. Scent lines twisted, clinging to rocks and leaves where nothing living hid.
The wyvern grew agitated.
It roared again, swooping lower, jaws snapping at empty air. Its tail cracked a fallen trunk in half like kindling. It tore up chunks of ground with its claws, scenting the earth, but the trails it found were confused and broken.