Ezra had killed before.
He wasn't fragile. He wasn't untested.
He had bled. He had fought. He had survived.
But watching them—watching Nora ignite like wrath incarnate, watching Asli cut through monsters like he'd been born in shadow—
It made him feel like nothing.
Like a flickering candle caught between a wildfire and a storm.
The difference between them wasn't skill.
It was gravity.
They moved like the world bent to them.
And Ezra—
Ezra was still fighting not to be left behind.
He thought he had trained enough. Thought he had studied hard enough, bled long enough.
But the truth was clear now.
He was far, far below them.
Something snarled.
He didn't turn in time.
A beast—low to the ground, mottled skin stretched over bone, its eyes rabid with hunger—crashed into him from the side. It hit him like a hammer, knocking the air from his lungs as he slammed into the forest floor.
The stench of rot hit first. Then the weight.
It pinned him down, its jaws snapping inches from his face, acidic saliva dripping onto his cheek. Its breath was hot and wrong. Its eyes locked with his—empty, frenzied.
No
No more.
I will not be the one who falls behind.
With a scream, Ezra shoved the dagger upward. It jammed into the beast's neck—but he didn't stop there. He dragged it sideways, carving through flesh and tendon, splitting arteries and cartilage, cutting so deep it scraped bone.
The blood came fast—hot, metallic, choking.
It spilled across his face, into his mouth, down his throat.
He kept pulling.
The creature jerked once.
Then slumped.
Dead weight collapsed on top of him.
Ezra gasped, throat raw, chest rising like something inside him had broken loose. He shoved the corpse aside with shaking arms, sat up in the mud, soaked in gore and breathless.
And then—
The Archive spoke.
[The Archive Stirs]]
Kill registered.
Target extinguished.
Name: Carrion Hound
Classification: Thrall (Rank II)
Strain: Bonegnawer
The text flickered across his vision—cold, sterile, merciless.
Ezra wiped the blood from his mouth, fingers shaking.
One kill.
And yet all he could think was—
How many more?
There was no time to breathe.
More came.
Crawling. Charging. Clawing through the underbrush with mindless hunger.
He couldn't stop. Couldn't fall behind.
Not now. Not again.
He didn't even recognize himself as he raised his hands.
Light flared.
His chains burst forth—luminous and alive, lashing out with violent purpose. They coiled through the air like serpents, catching monsters mid-lunge, snapping bones, crushing limbs, dragging bodies to the mud.
The ground shook. Blood sprayed.
Something in him cracked.
He didn't fight like someone defending himself.
He fought like someone trying to prove he existed.