Kota ran—not because he wanted to, but because if he stayed another second, he would die screaming. Every step was a blade driven through his ribs, every breath a barbed wire dragged through his lungs. His legs were half-broken, vision blurred, and there were holes torn into his arms where claws had raked across him. And still he ran, bounding down a jagged slope of stone, using his chained blades like anchors and grappling hooks, hurling them into canyon walls to yank himself forward. With a grunt, he tore a chunk of flame-baked wood from the ground and slung it behind him, igniting it mid-air before it exploded into a wall of embers. It gave him seconds, nothing more, before he heard the screech of talons through flame and the thunder of monstrous limbs behind him. He ripped a strip of his shirt, stuffed it in his mouth, and bit down hard—a crude brace against the pain. He couldn't scream. Not now. He needed to stay sharp. They were close.
The twins rampaged behind him like avatars of extinction, their bodies shifting mid-leap as they merged into half-forms of mythic beasts with ruthless abandon. Gunthr twisted into a centipede-lion hybrid, body long and chitinous, legs clawed and fast as scythes, fangs too large for his jaw—ripping through the canyon, biting into stone and climbing sideways across the cliffs. Zekka became a one-eyed bone-drake, his arm fused into a spear-pointed appendage made of calcified rage, vaulting with a reptilian screech, his taloned feet carving divots into the walls. They hunted with no rhythm—only instinct and hunger—switching forms mid-air, mid-swing, mid-breath.
And Kota watched, memorizing. Only one form at a time. No overlap. That was the trick. But it didn't help. Not yet. Not when they swarmed him like packwolves. He ducked, rolled, parried—nearly lost a hand. He ignited a patch of moss on instinct to blind them, but Zekka had already become something with echolocation, shrieking so loud Kota's knees buckled.
As Kota fled into the thorn-thick woods bordering the canyon's southern gut, he dragged a chained blade along the ground, using it to tear up roots and thorns and whip them behind him as makeshift traps. A falling log? He hooked it with his chain, spun around, and hurled it into the air—crushing nothing but air as Gunthr dove under it in the form of a feathered manticore.
The twin grinned mid-flight, tail lashing, and Kota barely ducked as a bone-hooked barb ripped through a tree and nearly gutted him. "We're the product of a dead mother's lie!" Gunthr shouted through animal breath. "Our kingdom taught us to carve truth into our bodies! When she lied, we burned her truth into our own marrow!" Zekka, leaping beside him in the form of a simian-raptor, shrieked through laughter, "We don't want freedom—we earn it by devouring our flaws!"
Every second, Kota was pushed closer to the edge. He was stabbed through the thigh by Zekka's bestial talon, slammed into a tree by Gunthr's shifting elk-form, dragged across bark and flint. He tried to retaliate, but every time he so much as readied his chained blades, they would lunge like beasts to grab them. He knew it. He knew if they got hold of the chains, it was over. So he thought, fast, bleeding, limping. He remembered the shouts earlier—the sound of the others.
'The inmates. They were hunting me too,' he thought, dizzy, stumbling.
'But the twins… they want the kill to themselves. They're like vultures with claws. They'll rip apart anything that tries to steal their prize. Like they did to their mother. I can use that.'
It was insane. But he had no other path. He sprinted harder, teeth clenched on the blood-soaked cloth, and turned sharp through the ravines, retracing his steps, barely dodging a swipe that cut clean through a tree and sent it collapsing behind him.
'Memorize their attack patterns….they both favor a certain area of my body, but I'm moving fast, so they end up hitting elsewhere on me…!'
And then—he made it. Up a narrow ridge, down a ravine bend, the noise swelled ahead:
The other inmates.
'There they are!'
Kota bolted through the gnarled root-arches and dived straight into them. A flash of confusion turned to chaos. Dozens of inmates turned, blades out, spells igniting, jaws wide. They saw the blood-slick figure dart through their ranks—and the twin monsters barreling in right behind him.
"Out of the way!" Kota exclaimed.
Gunthr, now part-rhino with saber arms, cleaved three men in half before they even raised weapons. "His head is ours!" He shouted as other inmates were starting to chase Kota.
Zekka, with the lower body of a serpent and upper torso of a crowned jackal, spun like a bladed cyclone, slicing a path of ruin. Bodies tumbled, screams rang out, and Kota didn't look back.
Zekka laughed, "Haha! You're all dying for nothing! You can't have our freedom!"
Kota vaulted over a flame-scarred altar, wrapped both chained blades around twin stone pillars, pulled with all his might, and catapulted himself out of the chaos like a comet. He landed rough—rolled through gravel, hit a tree—and finally let himself breathe. Just for a moment. Chest heaving. Body shaking. Blood dripping from his chin to his chest. His heartbeat sounded like war drums.
But he couldn't stop. He knew it. He had seconds at most. He pushed off the tree, wiped the blood from his eyes, and turned to move—
'—Go!'
—and an inmate dropped in front of him from the trees above.
She landed like a phantom, bare feet curling the moss beneath her, her breath slow, shoulders hunched forward like she had been grown from the forest floor itself. Her tattered white inmate uniform hung from her gaunt frame in long, ragged slashes, stained with green and earth, sleeves wrapped tight with fraying strands of bark-twine.
Her blackish dark green hair was knotted with bramble thorns and leaves, and vines snaked down the back of her neck like living nooses. Her face was a roadmap of scars—crooked, deep, and tangled, like something clawed her into being—and her dark green eyes glowed dimly like the bottom of a forest well, reflective, damp with madness, and full of purpose. Two twisting crests, one a muddy brown and the other a bruised purple, pulsed along her forearms in curling, root-like tattoos. As she raised her arms, bramble magic stirred to life, toxic and cruel—writhing coils of barbed flora, slick with venom, born not from the air but from her very breath. She moved like a slow, twisting ritual, her limbs flowing in serpentine arcs, conjuring the living bramble not with fury but with eerie grace.
"My name," she whispered with reverent disgust, "is Yerlana. The Witch Queen of Tharnum waits for me. I will not let her down. Your death will buy my final step into the coven." She stepped forward, each movement a dance, and her crests burned brighter, bramble magic blooming from her fingertips like a cursed flower, dripping venom into the moss. "We will create a world where free will is not a gift, but a weapon. Even if it means strangling every kingdom to the root. This kingdom and King Rellka would be first."
Kota's eyes narrowed. Witches. He already hated them. He didn't need the reminder. Yuniper's face flashed in his mind—bright eyes, soft voice, the way he caught her reaching into his thoughts like it was nothing. The date that turned into a bloodbath.
'Bramble and poison…? She gained two affinities from the god flowers..she sacrificed her soul twice to gain power that fits the witches aesthetic…she's serious…'
"You're all the same," he muttered, muscles tensing. "You take what you want and call it freedom. All the witches do." Blood dried across his chest. He could barely breathe. Couldn't run anymore. But she was going to kill him. And he wasn't ready to die. Not here. Not like this.
'She's in the way…and if she's devoted to the coven, the witches of Tharnum, there's no persuading her…'
Kota exhaled, slow. Then invited the shadow. His eyes snapped to pitch black, void swallowing the color. He heard it—the cackle, the grinding hunger. His grin widened. The chain-blades rattled like rabid dogs licking blood from their fangs.
Yerlana paused, watching him shift, noting the unnatural gleam in his eyes. No words were spoken. The battle erupted. "That power…is similar to a sister of the coven..the darkness…the same feeling…how…?" But then Yerlana smiled, "This might be a test..by the Witch Queen herself! Or the Witch Mothers under her! If I'm able to defeat someone as strong as you…they'll accept me. If I'm able to identify one who uses the power of the god of darkness in false ways…then I'll be accepted.."
Yerlana moved like a cursed ballet, arms circling, crests glowing. Bramble flared from her limbs like whips of sinewy muscle, thick and acidic. Kota lunged, chains screeching through the air. She pivoted, twirling low as her bramble danced around her in a cyclone, deflecting the first blade with a venomous snare and carving upward with a thorned lash.
Kota somersaulted over it, rebounding off a tree trunk, dragging his blade along the bark to shower splinters down as a distraction, and used them as a cover to vault in again. Her vines caught his ankle mid-air, but he twisted, kicked off a rock, and slammed downward, driving his blade into the bramble root at her feet. It detonated in a burst of toxic spores. They both reeled back, coughing—but Kota charged through the haze, snarling like a beast, his chains lashing in a crisscross, slicing bark and root and air. Yerlana ducked, spun, and coiled herself into a low spiral, then snapped upward, bramble vines arching like scorpion tails, aiming for the joints in his shoulders.
He blocked, barely—wrapping his chains around a branch mid-motion and yanking himself sideways. Yerlana followed, her magic dragging the terrain with her, thorny limbs tearing up roots and earth as she pursued him in a sideways crawl, hurling venomous lashes like flails. Kota spun, slid beneath her swing, drove his foot into her ribs, then hooked a blade behind her leg, yanking her downward—only for her to catch herself with a vine, twist mid-air, and fling herself over his shoulder, trying to strangle him with her bare arms and burning crest. He slammed her into a boulder. She clawed his face. He roared. She screamed. It was feral, a death-dance under stormlight and madness.
Yerlana's mind raced. 'He's not just fast—he's feral. That black-eyed shift isn't just power, it's instinct. It rewrites how he moves. He doesn't block conventionally—he flows. He slips between attacks, reroutes momentum, breaks patterns. I can't corner him unless I change the battlefield itself. Her eyes scanned the trees—dense, low growth, uneven terrain. If I move in a spiral, pulling vines behind me, I can restrict his movements. His blades need range. I need to shrink that range.'
She continued to think, 'Three turns. Constrict the area, wrap the bramble into a dome, then catch his arm mid-swing. If I catch his arm, poison seeps. He'll burn from the inside out. Even if he kills me, I win.'
She smiled to herself through bloodied lips.
'And when I reach the coven, I'll burn every palace down for the children whose tongues were ripped out. For the girls taught to love their chains. Even if the world must drown, we'll make it ours.'
But it was too late. Kota snapped out of her trap mid-step, eyes locking onto her spiral path. He snarled, yanked his chain beneath the earth, looped it behind her legs, then vaulted high, wrapped his entire arm in the blade's burning metal, and crashed down like a guillotine. She blocked with vines—he shattered them. She twisted to counterstrike—he cleaved through her side. She gasped, staggered back, vines drooping. Her leg gave out. She summoned more bramble—but Kota was already behind her, his movements ghostlike, monstrous. A flurry of slashes carved across her back. She screamed. Still she fought. Until he grabbed her by the throat, hoisted her up, and drove his chain blade through her gut. It carved through her crest, severing the root of her magic. She went still, eyes wide, lips parted. He let her fall.
Kota stood over her broken body, breathing heavy, soaked in her blood and his. His black eyes stared into the endless gray sky above, and for a moment—he smiled. It was over. But then—Lyzelle's voice, soft, cutting, disappointed. Not real. But it sounded real. "Kota…?"
And he blinked. The shadow cracked. His eyes returned to normal. He looked down at his hands. Blood. So much blood. Yerlana's body still warm. Her mouth still twitching like she wanted to speak.
Kota spoke, "I had no choice," he whispered. "I had no choice…" But the words didn't feel true. He had let it happen. He'd let the hatred in for an advantage, to be puppeteered by the darkness. "What's wrong with me? I got desperate…" he said to himself. He shook his head. Desperate again. Like always. Letting that thing take over. He kept saying it, trying to believe it: "I had no choice… I had no choice…"
But there was no time for grief. He grit his teeth, wiped his mouth, and moved. The material. The thing Lyzelle needed. He had to find it. The twins were still back there. He couldn't waste this opportunity. He forced himself to walk, then to jog, then to run, blood trailing behind him into the trees.
….
In that same area with Kota already a ways away from there, Gunthr knelt, fingers curled into the blood-slick moss, his back rippling with the slow transformation of myth. Fur burst along his spine like smoke unraveling backward, silvery-gray and feathered at the edges, etched with faint swirling glyphs that shimmered like breath on glass. His shoulder cracked as it bulged into a lupine form, limbs elongating and hardening, half-man and half-myth, his face splitting into a long, narrow snout with jagged black fangs jutting out past his cheekbones. One eye turned radiant orange, the other remained human, twitching erratically as he sniffed deep and low, dragging his elongated tongue across the blood in the dirt.
"The boy's not far."
Zekka stood behind him, arms crossed, dark hair covering most of his scarred face, lips curled into a smirk that didn't reach his half-lidded eyes.
"He's hurting. Sloppy!"
Gunthr bared his teeth in a wide, animal grin, his claws flexing.
"I love the chase."
Far from that thrum of primal hunger, Kota limped into the mouth of the cave. His shadow dragged behind him like a broken banner. Every step felt like a lie told to his own legs. His shirt was torn, soaked in drying blood, and the chains clinking at his waist were dull with dried viscera. But in his hand—gripped like a final prayer—was the Whaleborn grass, its iridescent stems still flickering faint blue in the darkness, glowing faintly in the cave's silence.
There she was. Lyzelle, motionless, lying flat on the cave floor, blindfold still tied snug over her eyes, her chest barely rising. Her back had a crater of dried blood where the wound had bled clean through her. Kota didn't speak. He just collapsed to his knees beside her, breathing heavy, eyes locked to the wound. Then he got to work.
"I'm back…I'm back…" Kota said weary. "Hope you don't mind, I used some of myself. Who knows if I'll be fighting again. I need to be at least 70 percent.."
He tore open the grass bundle with trembling fingers, and inside were the silver-veined membranes of the Whaleborn's root skin—paper-thin, sticky with a natural balm. He remembered the way old Hunter medics used it—laying it over gashes like a second skin, letting it bond to the flesh like a coral shell. He gently pressed one membrane against Lyzelle's back, then wrapped his chains around her torso just tight enough to keep it flush. Next, he pulled her over with care, threading another patch over the hole in her chest. Her face stayed still. Eyes covered. Skin pale.
"Come on…" he muttered, voice low and cracking. "Don't be fucking dead.."
He worked for minutes, sealing the patches with bits of his own blood to bind it faster, then just held her. Waiting. Dreading.
"Lyzelle?" he whispered again, voice breaking. "Can you like, wake up? I already got so much happening to me. I don't think I can handle you being super dead."
A cough. Then… a low giggle. Then full-blown laughter—wild, bright, maniacal, echoing off the cave walls like bells made of dynamite.
"BAHAHA!! I GOT YOU! You thought I was dead, Kota?!" Kyzelle cackled.
Kota screamed like a kicked dog, falling back on his ass and crawling a full foot away, wide-eyed and red-faced.
"Y-Y-You absolute psychopath!"
Lyzelle sat up with a lazy grin, blood still drying around her mouth. "HAHA! You should've seen your little human face!"
Kota grumbled, burying his face in his hands. "Tch!" Then he grinned, he was glad to see her like this instead of hurt and in pain bleeding out. Lyzelle not smiling didn't fit her, it made everything feel..weird?"
"You love it." Lyzelle hummer with a smile. Her voice was light, but then her eyes flicked downward. Her smile faded.
She looked at him—really looked—at the bruises mottling his neck, the lashes across his arms, the dried trails of blood along his ribs and face.
"Kota…" she said, softer now, her voice almost too light to hear. "I'm sorry."
He looked up.
"Why?"
"Because I made you worry. Because I let my guard down. Because I made you go through hell just to keep me breathing. I hate that I wasn't strong enough to stop it. That I didn't even try to fight back. I just… I wanted to live. Maybe I sound selfish again, and I hate it, but I got desperate."
Kota's breath slightly hitched at what she said, she was more similar to him than he realized. Desperation.
Lyzelle's fingers twitched like they wanted to reach for him—but didn't. "I don't have anything to offer you right now," she whispered. "But…" She reached up slowly, fingers slipping behind her blindfold. "This is against the rules. Like, big-time against the rules."
Kota leaned in.
"What are you doing?"
She took a breath, then tugged the blindfold free. Kota blinked. Then froze. Her eyes were pink—but not just pink. They pulsed like lantern glass dipped in starlight. Her pupils were white runes, ancient and spinning like delicate constellations caught in slow orbit. They shimmered with emotion, like each glyph hummed with a melody only she could hear. They weren't just eyes. They were spells made flesh. Kota swallowed hard.
"W-Wow."
Lyzelle smiled, but a hint of worry lingered in it. "You like them?"
"They're… incredible…I never seen anything like this…so you're not supposed to show these?"
"Only when we use our powers. Never just for show. It's forbidden."
"So why break that rule?"
She gave a quiet laugh, brushing hair behind her ear. "Because I already broke the biggest one when I left home without permission. Also, I couldn't stop thinking about you out there, alone. So I had to prank you just to hide how scared I was. And I had nothing to offer for what you just did for me, so I felt breaking a rule could maybe measure up to what you did. Though it's probably not enough." She looked into his eyes. "No one's ever gone this far for me. I'm… I'm glad you're alive. You're the best contract bound human ever! I'm glad to have a friend like you….Kota."
Kota chuckled, "Contract bound human…huh."
And for a moment, the air went still. They just looked at each other. Into each other. The pink of her gaze reflecting the flickering cave light, his dark eyes softening in the quiet. But then—cackling. Low. Familiar. Mocking. From the dark, two figures strolled in.
Gunthr grinned, his canine muzzle half-formed, blood on his claws.
"Aw, don't stop the staring contest now."
Zekka tilted his head.
"We've been watching. We saw the moment, the drama. It was cute."
Their smiles widened in unison.
"We're gonna ruin it."