Far from the ash-rib trees, the forest changed.
Mist clung to the ground in thick, low sheets, cold enough to wet the lashes. It tasted like old metal when it touched the tongue. The black trunks here drank light instead of giving it back. Every step left a wet print that the earth tried to swallow, a soft sucking sound under the sole, as if the ground wanted the foot to stay.
Yuna was running again.
This time it was not random students.
Everything that had gone wrong had started yesterday.
She had not been hunting points. She had not cared about the board. All she wanted was Lucas. A few first-years had tested their luck on her anyway. She had killed them without slowing down. That was also how she had finished her rank-up quest and crossed into E-rank.
Then she had found Kira.
The twin-tailed healer had been cornered by a pack of Ashhowl Macaques — long-armed, charcoal-furred things with ember pits for eyes and teeth meant for cracking bone. Their musk was thick and sour, like wet fur held over coal. Yuna had almost kept walking. Then she thought of Lucas, of the shy girl he had paid to keep the team alive, and the thought landed heavier than the blood already on her hands.
She turned.
That was the trap.
The macaques were not wild.
They were tamed.
The girl holding their leashes stepped out of the mist with a smile that did not reach her eyes. Leather creaked at her wrists where the leashes bit. Sable Quinn. Beast-tamer. One of Damien Blackthorn's dogs. She had used Kira as bait and Yuna as the real prize.
Forget freeing the healer. Yuna had barely left with her life.
Now Sable's pack was on her again — the monkeys, and two more of Damien's first-years running the flanks like hounds. Breath steamed behind her. Branches whipped her cheeks. The mist kept closing over the path she had just taken.
"Don't lose her!" Sable called, voice bright, almost cheerful. "Blackthorn wants the pink-eyed one breathing if you can. Broken is fine."
Yuna did not answer.
Blood had soaked through the left shoulder of her outfit and run down to her wrist, sticky now, cooling against her pulse. The dagger in that hand shook. Every step sent a bright, ugly pulse up her arm, as if the wound were trying to keep time with her heartbeat. E-rank or not, a tamed swarm plus handlers was not a fair fight, and she knew it.
She cut left through the mist, pink eyes burning.
Lucas. Where the hell are you.
An Ashhowl dropped from a branch in front of her. Another came from the right. One of Damien's boys laughed and threw a net of glowing cord. The cord hissed when it cut the air. Yuna slit it, rolled through wet leaves that slapped cold against her cheek, and drove a dagger into the first macaque's throat.
SLICH—
Hot black blood hit her face. It smelled of iron and burnt hair. The second beast raked her already-hurt shoulder. She hissed — Nngh — and kicked it off, but her footing slipped on wet roots. Pain flared white behind her eyes.
"Got her!" Sable sang. "Don't kill the face—"
The third Ashhowl came from behind.
Yuna heard the claws first, a dry scrape on bark. She turned too late. Her good arm rose. It would not be enough.
WHSSS—
A sound like winter cutting silk.
The next second a frozen arrow took the Ashhowl through the eye. Ice raced out from the shaft, locked the skull, locked the spine. Cold sprayed across Yuna's face and burned the cut on her cheek. The beast died standing, a statue of black fur and white frost, then toppled past her shoulder and shattered on the roots.
CRACK.
Yuna's breath caught. The mist suddenly smelled like winter.
She searched the grey. No shooter. No bowstring. Only the fading hiss of frost. The others could not find one either.
She did not wait. She ran.
An Ashhowl lunged for her ankle as she hit the ridge. Before it closed, another arrow pinned its wrist to the ground. The beast screamed, high and wet. Yuna stamped its skull as she passed — THUD — and kept going. Bone gave under her heel with a dull, sickening give.
Sable's smile finally dropped.
"The Laurent girl is here. Fall back. If we can't see her, we can't stop those arrows."
She stopped.
The boys did not.
One of them scoffed and went after Yuna anyway, boots slapping wet stone.
"I'm not scared of some ghost in the trees. Blackthorn promised a rare artifact for the assassin. I'm not leaving that on the ground. And I'm not leaving her either."
The second boy followed. Their steps were loud in the mist — thud, thud, thud — the kind of noise that told every living thing exactly where they were.
Sable watched them go, then turned back into the grey.
Idiots. They don't even understand the difference between a trained heir and commoners.
She did not wait for the result. Cold air closed behind her. The macaques' musk faded with her steps, leaving only damp leaves and old blood.
Yuna glanced back — Sable vanishing one way, two boys still on her trail. Blood from her shoulder had gone tacky down her wrist. The dagger hilt slipped once in her fingers. Her eyes narrowed.
The next second a doppelganger bloomed beside her like heat over stone. Pink mist, a soft huff, and two Yunas broke apart and ran opposite ways. The false one left the same wet prints. The same scent. Even Yuna felt the split for a heartbeat, as if part of her had been peeled off and sent running.
The spear-wielder cursed and snapped at his companion.
"You take the right. I'll take her."
The other nodded and peeled off, crashing through low branches — snap, whip, snap.
The spear-wielder chased the left. Mist tore around his shoulders, cold and metallic on his tongue. He was faster than he looked. Roots, drop, short climb — he almost had her. The black outfit flashed ahead, close enough that he could hear her breath, close enough to smell blood on her sleeve.
Movement behind. A thin whistle.
He spun. The spear came up. An arrow cracked against the shaft — CLACK — and died in a spray of frost that burned his knuckles raw.
He scoffed, steam leaving his mouth.
"So much for a ghost."
He turned back to the chase.
His face went pale.
A second arrow was already there, a finger from his forehead. Cold touched his skin before pain did. In that last instant he understood. The one he had blocked was the faint. This one was real.
WHSSS—
For a few seconds the only sound was his body turning to frost — a dry, cracking whisper as ice found bone.
Then footsteps came out of the mist.
Vivienne Laurent stepped into view. The rare-grade bow in her hands still leaked cold. Pale vapor rolled off the string and clung to her gloves. She crouched, pulled the bracelet from the spear-wielder's wrist, and transferred his points to her own. The glass chimed once, thin and clean in the fog.
She jumped to a low branch, leaned back against the trunk, and tore open an energy bar with her teeth. The wrapper crinkled. Cheap sweetness cut through blood and frost.
After a few minutes she chuckled softly.
"Looks like you handled the last one."
Yuna walked forward, pouring a healing potion over her shoulder. The liquid hissed on raw skin. Steam lifted, sharp and medicinal. Her jaw tightened until it ached.
"Just my luck. Now I get to listen to you gloat."
Vivienne tipped her head, still chewing.
"I saw a lost lamb running for her life. Leaving it didn't sit right."
Yuna stopped.
Heat crawled up her neck, worse than the potion. She had been the one hunting. She had been E-rank. She had still needed saving — twice — by a girl who had not even shown her face until the work was done. The shame sat under the anger and made it hotter.
"I wasn't running for my life."
"You were," Vivienne said, not unkindly. "The blood sold it."
Yuna capped the bottle harder than she needed to. Glass clicked against glass.
"Say that again, and I'll put a dagger through that bow."
Vivienne's amber eyes warmed, just a little.
"There. I was starting to think the fear took your teeth."
Yuna looked away first. The frost corpse cracked again behind them. Somewhere to the right, the second boy was still convulsing on the ground, both hands locked around a sliced throat that would not close. The wet sound of it was small and ugly. Neither of them looked for long.
Vivienne finished the bar and dropped the wrapper into her storage. She dropped from the branch. Wet leaves whispered under her boots.
"So. Who should I shoot next?"
Yuna glanced at her and offered a small, tired smile.
Vivienne didn't ask who they were. She didn't care whether Yuna was at fault or not.
Yuna turned toward the thicker mist, toward the direction Sable had gone.
"Come on. We have a real lamb to save this time."
An hour later, the mist thinned into a hollow.
Someone had built a proper camp — canvas tents taut with damp, a ring of cut stakes, a fire that did not smoke like wild wood. Fat hissed once in the flames. Steel whispered when the watch shifted.
In the middle, beside the fire, Damien Blackthorn sat on a body that had stopped moving. The beast-tamer knelt in front of him. Sable Quinn's lip was split. Blood ran down her chin and dripped onto the dirt with a slow, dark pat.
An iron chain ran from Damien's fist to Kira's throat.
The healer was on her hands and knees. The collar had already rubbed her skin raw. Tear tracks had dried into salt on her cheeks. Her twin tails hung limp. Her mouth was pale from fear. Every time the chain moved, the links clicked, a small, ugly sound that made her flinch before the pain even arrived.
From the ridge, Vivienne watched it all as if the distance were nothing.
[Hawk Sight]
Every bruise. Every twitch of Damien's fingers on the chain. Every student who was looking the wrong way. The fire painted Kira's face in ugly orange, and for a second the girl looked younger than she was.
"What a pathetic loser," Vivienne said quietly. "Beating girls who can't hit back and calling it a throne."
Yuna sighed beside her. The breath left her white in the cold.
"I tried to pull her out last night. The tamer caught me. Damien's alert now. She'll have told him you were in the mist. We lost the surprise."
The words cost her something. She had failed once already. Kira was still down there because of it.
Vivienne canceled the skill. The world flattened back to ordinary dark. She reached into her inventory and drew out a root the color of old meat. It leaked a sweet, rotten smell that made the air feel thicker, like fruit left too long in a closed room.
"Maybe not."
Yuna wrinkled her nose.
"What is that?"
"Carrion Bellroot. It has a nasty habit. Everything with a stomach in range comes looking for the meal. We drop it near their camp. When the hollow fills with beasts, we take Kira in the chaos."
Yuna stared at the root, then at the chain around Kira's neck. The healer's shoulders were shaking.
"If this goes wrong—"
"It will go wrong," Vivienne said. "That's the point. They can't hold a prisoner and a stampede at the same time."
Yuna's pink eyes cooled. The worry stayed, but it stopped being useful.
"Then we drop it."
Below, Damien looked at Sable Quinn.
He set his boot on her face. Dirt and blood smeared her cheek. She trembled, but she made no sound. Speaking would only feed him.
"So you caught a wisp of Laurent," Damien said, "and ran like a coward. Is that it, Quinn?"
He nudged her head once and took his foot away. The print of his sole stayed behind in the dirt and blood.
A few of the watchers laughed under their breath. This was the hour to shove her aside and climb. One boy clicked his tongue.
"A tamer who can't hold a trail. What's the point of the monkeys, then?"
Another muttered, loud enough to carry.
"Blackthorn's name on her back, and she still comes home empty."
Sable kept her eyes on the dirt. Her split lip pulled when she spoke.
"I'm a tamer. I don't have a skill that finds Laurent in that mist. Staying there only made it easier for her to put an arrow through me. Bringing the information back was the better call."
Damien's smile did not reach his eyes.
"You keep telling yourself that."
He flicked the chain. Kira's collar jerked. A thin sound left her throat and died. Her fingers dug into the mud and stayed there.
Sable swallowed blood.
"If Laurent is close, she won't—"
The ground shivered.
At first it was only a tremor under the stakes. Then the fire jumped. Cups tipped. Someone swore. The rotten-sweet stink rolled in ahead of the noise, thick enough to taste.
Far out in the mist, something screamed — not one throat. Many.
The hollow answered.
Beasts tore through the black trees in a wave of hunger, drawn by a smell that did not belong to the camp. Ashhowls. Ember Antlers. Things with too many legs. The first body hit the outer stakes, and the wood cracked like dry bone. Canvas snapped. Someone shouted a name and lost it in the roar.
"Positions!" Damien snapped.
The mockery died.
Sable's head came up, eyes wide.
On the ridge, Yuna's fingers closed on her dagger. The hilt was still sticky with her own blood.
Vivienne whispered, almost fond.
"Dinner's served."
***
Want more? 👀🔥
Join my Patreon for immediate early access to the next several chapters (already written and waiting for you!), along with a growing library of exclusive stories, bonus scenes, alternate endings, and spicy content you won't find anywhere else!
🔗 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/DevilsWhisper
🎨 Want to see the characters come to life? Join my Discord server for character art, visuals, and other story-related content!
💬 Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/QxdfzfBYB