The tree line looked like a scar.
Beyond the last muddy furrow of the village fields, the world turned grey. The Blight-Fringed Woods were not a place of green leaves and singing birds. The trees here were petrified nightmares, their bark turned to stone by centuries of Abyssal moisture leaking from the coast. They stood like twisted, agonizing statues, their branches clawing at the ash-choked sky where the sun struggled to push its warmth through the haze.
"This is a mistake," Rhea grunted, adjusting the heavy leather strap of her wood-axe across her shoulder. Her boots sank into the grey moss that carpeted the forest floor. It squelched, releasing a scent like old copper and rot.
"We need the Copper-Moss, Rhea," Nnael whispered. He walked half a step behind her, using her broad, muscular frame as a windbreak. He was shivering, not just from the cold, but from the effort of keeping his legs moving. His Stamina was pathetic. A blinking red bar in his mind's eye.
"Garrow will come back," Nnael continued, his voice raspy. "And when he does, we need coin. The apothecary in Black-Water pays double for moss that grows on Blight-Bark."
Rhea stopped. She turned to look at him. The grey light of the forest made her tan skin look paler, her dark eyes huge and worried. She looked at his thin frame, the way his tunic hung off his shoulders.
"You can barely walk, Nnael," she hissed, though her hand reached out to steady him, her fingers warm and rough against his arm. "If a wolf comes... I can't protect you and harvest at the same time."
"I'm lucky," Nnael lied, giving her a weak, lopsided smile. "You chop. I'll watch."
He wasn't lucky. He was calculating.
He had spent the last two days observing the wind patterns and the migration trails of the local fauna. He knew that the Tier 1 Grey-Skinned Wolves hunted in the lower valley during the midday sun. They were upwind.
Rhea sighed, a sound that rattled deep in her chest. She turned back to the path, her hips swaying with a heavy, powerful rhythm as she forced her way through the underbrush. Nnael watched her. He couldn't help it. The leather breeches she wore were old and tight, straining against the thick, corded muscle of her thighs and the firm, apple-round shape of her ass. Every step she took was a testament to her Vitality.
"Stay close," she muttered.
They moved deeper. The air grew heavier. It wasn't just humidity, it was Mana density. The Blight carried a corrupted form of mana, thick and oily.
[Skill Active: Pore-Breathing]
[Mana Cost: 1 per hour]
Nnael felt the drain immediately. His 2/50 Mana dropped to 1/50. But as the skill activated, his skin began to prickle. It wasn't the stinging pain of the cottage air, this was like being rubbed with nettles. The pores on his arms opened, drinking in the trace amounts of power floating in the fog. It was disgusting. It tasted like static electricity and old blood.
But it kept him upright.
"There," Nnael pointed.
At the base of a massive, stone-turned oak, a patch of iridescent blue moss glowed faintly in the gloom.
Rhea knelt, her knees sinking into the mud. She pulled a small iron trowel from her belt. As she bent over, the leather bindings across her chest creaked. Her tunic dipped low, revealing the deep, shadowed valley between her breasts, slick with a sheen of exertion sweat despite the chill.
Nnael stood guard. He didn't have a weapon. He had a stick.
But he also had his predator's memory.
He closed his eyes, filtering out the sound of Rhea's digging. He listened to the woods, hearing the wind rustles the stone leaves. He heard the distant snap of a twig.
Not distant. Close.
Nnael's eyes snapped open. He didn't panic. Panic was for Extras.
"Rhea," he said, his voice flat and calm. "Stand up. Slowly."
"What?" she asked, looking up, a clump of moss in her hand.
"Don't turn around. Just stand up and grip your axe. Two hands."
Rhea froze. She saw the look in his eyes. It wasn't the look of her sick little brother. It was the look of a man who was reading a map she couldn't see. She obeyed, rising slowly, her muscles coiling like springs.
From the grey mist, a shape emerged.
It was a wolf, but it looked like it had been flayed and rolled in ash. Its skin was grey and hairless, tight against its ribs. Its eyes were burning yellow, leaking a faint, smoky vapor.
[Tier 1 Blight-Beast: Grey-Wolf]
[Level: 5]
It growled, a wet, rattling sound.
"It's going to lunge," Nnael whispered. "Not at you. At me. I'm the weak link."
"Get behind me," Rhea snarled, stepping in front of him. Her [Primal Guard] ability flared, her shoulders broadening, her stance widening.
"No," Nnael commanded softly. "It wants you to overcommit. It's feinting left. Swing right, Rhea. Low."
"What?"
"Trust me. Swing right."
The wolf moved. It was a blur of grey muscle. It feinted left, just as Nnael predicted, its jaws snapping at the air to draw a reaction.
"Now!" Nnael commanded.
Rhea didn't think. She reacted to Nnael's voice. She pivoted on her heel, her thick thighs driving the motion, and swung the heavy wood-axe in a low, brutal arc to her right.
CRUNCH.
The blade met bone. The wolf, mid-leap into the space it thought would be empty, slammed chest-first into the steel. The impact shattered its ribcage. It yelped, a high-pitched, broken sound, and collapsed into the mud, twitching.
Black blood pooled around it.
Rhea stood there, chest heaving, staring at the corpse. She looked at her axe, then back at Nnael.
"How..." she breathed, her adrenaline spiking, her face flushed a deep, aroused crimson. "How did you know?"
"Lucky guess," Nnael said, leaning against a tree to stop his knees from buckling.
He wasn't looking at the wolf. He was looking at the sky.
The grey haze was churning. The clouds were turning a bruised, angry purple. The wind had stopped.
"Rhea," Nnael said, the air suddenly tasting of sulfur. "Grab the moss. We need to move. Now."
"Why? The wolf is dead."
"Not the wolf," Nnael pointed up. "The sky is bleeding."
A drop of rain hit Nnael's cheek. It sizzled.
Mana-Storm.
It was liquid, volatile magic, condensed by the Blight into a corrosive downpour.
"Run!" Rhea screamed, grabbing his arm.
They scrambled through the woods. The rain began to fall harder, hissing as it hit the stone trees. Every drop that touched their skin felt like a bee sting. Nnael stumbled, his stamina bottoming out. Rhea didn't let him fall. She hauled him up, her arm around his waist, carrying him.
"The cave!" she shouted over the roar of the wind. "By the ridge!"
They threw themselves into a narrow fissure in the rock face just as the heavens opened up.
The cave was small, barely a crawlspace that widened into a damp, cramped hollow. It smelled of wet fur and limestone. Outside, the world turned into a waterfall of hissing violet rain.
They collapsed against the back wall, panting.
It was pitch black, save for the occasional flash of mana-lightning outside.
"Are you burned?" Rhea asked, her hands frantic, checking his face, his arms.
"I'm fine," Nnael wheezed. "Just... tired."
But they weren't fine.
The temperature dropped. The Mana-Storm sucked the heat out of the air. The cave became an icebox within minutes.
Rhea was soaked. Her tunic was plastered to her skin, transparent in the gloom. She was shivering violently, her teeth chattering.
"C-cold," she stuttered, wrapping her arms around herself. Her Constitution was high, but her Mana was critically low from the fight and the run. She had no internal fire to keep her warm.
"Come here," Nnael said.
"W-what?"
"Body heat, Rhea. If we stay apart, we freeze."
He didn't wait for her to argue. He pulled her toward him.
The space was too small to sit side by side. Nnael sat with his back against the stone, and Rhea, driven by instinct and hypothermia, crawled between his legs. She curled into him, her back pressing against his chest.
The contact was a shock.
She was freezing on the surface, but underneath, she was a furnace of muscle and blood. Nnael wrapped his arms around her, locking his hands over her stomach.
"Closer," he whispered against her wet hair.
Rhea shuddered. She pushed backward, trying to burrow into his warmth. Her heavy, bound breasts were crushed against her knees as she curled up, but her back... her back was pressed flush against Nnael's chest.
He felt everything, the thick leather bindings of her chest digging into his ribs. He felt the curve of her spine, the firm, powerful muscles of her ass settling into the cradle of his hips.
And Rhea felt him.
She felt the hardness of his crotch. It was huge. He was thin, yes, but he was still a man. And right now, pressed against her lower back, there was rigid proof of his gender, something no amount of cold could suppress.
Rhea gasped, her breath hitching. She should have moved away. Instead, a bolt of liquid heat shot straight to her groin.
Her body betrayed her instantly. The friction of his chest against her back, the way his arms caged her, the urge to feel the huge hardness of his crotch... It all triggered something she desperately craved.
"Nnael..." she whimpered, her voice tight. "You're... you're hard."
Nnael didn't answer. His lustful instincts roamed unchecked, even as he tried to rein them in.
"Ignore it." His voice was calm, steady, betraying nothing as his blood roared beneath the surface.
She couldn't.
She shifted her hips, a microscopic movement, grinding her ass backward against him. It wasn't a conscious decision. It was an itch. A deep, maddening itch inside her that screamed to be scratched.
Her nipples hardened into painful points against the wet linen of her tunic. They rubbed against the leather bindings with every shiver, sending sharp zings of pleasure-pain through her nerves. She felt heavy between her legs, a wet, aching throb that made her thighs clamp together involuntarily.
She wanted to turn around, to straddle him. She didn't know why. It was wrong. He was her brother.
But the [Laborer's Brand] on her wrist pulsed, suppressing her higher logic, leaving only the animal instinct. Warmth. Strength. Mate.
"I... I feel weird," Rhea whispered, her head lolling back onto his shoulder. Her neck was exposed, the wet skin pale and inviting. "So hot... but cold..."
She arched her back, pressing her breasts out, her body seeking more contact, more pressure. Her hand drifted down, fingers brushing her own thigh, inching inward toward the heat.
Nnael felt her ass pressed against his hardening crotch. The sensation was pure ecstasy, sending shivers down his spine. He smelled her arousal, a thick, musky scent that mingled with the rain.
He could take her. Right now.
She wouldn't stop him. She would beg for it.
But he was a Predator, not a scavenger. He didn't take broken things. He fixed them, then he owned them.
"Rhea," Nnael whispered, his voice dropping an octave. He tightened his grip around her waist, stopping her hand. "Breathe."
He closed his eyes.
[Skill Active: Pore-Breathing]
He didn't just breathe the air. He pressed his chest against her back, and breathed her.
He opened the pores on his torso, visualizing the excess heat radiating off her feverish, aroused body as mana. It was raw, chaotic energy generated by her lust.
He inhaled it, drawing the heat out of her skin and into his own depleted circuits.
It was like drinking warm honey.
Rhea gasped, her body going rigid. The sensation of him pulling the energy from her was intense. It felt like his skin was sucking on hers, a thousand tiny mouths latching onto her skin. She felt incredibly arroused, overwhelming.
"Nnael!" she cried out, her hips jerking against him. "What are you... doing?"
"Saving you," he gritted out, channeling the energy, taking the violent mana from the storm. He filtered it through the heat of her body, and pulled it into his marrow.
His Mana Reservoir ticked up.
[Mana: 2/50]
[Mana: 3/50]
[Mana: 4/50]
Faster than the cost required to activate the skill.
He siphoned the fever from her blood.
She slumped against him, her head resting heavily on his shoulder, her body limp and pliable in his arms.
"You're warm," she mumbled, her eyes fluttering closed. "So warm..."
Nnael held her there as the storm raged outside. He looked down at the [Laborer's Brand] on her wrist.
It was dim now.
He had 4 Mana. He had survived the wolves, the storm, and the cold.
But as he looked out at the violet lightning tearing the sky apart, he saw something else.
Deep in the woods, illuminated by a flash of mana-light, the ground wasn't just wet. It was glowing.
A faint, rhythmic pulse of copper light was beating beneath the roots of the trees, leading back toward the village, toward their cottage.
Nnael smiled in the dark.