Nari's legs ached with every pounding step, muscles burning as if molten iron had been poured through her thighs. Her lungs screamed for air, each breath ragged and sharp, catching in her throat like broken glass. The dense foliage clawed at her limbs as she ran, twigs snapping underfoot, leaves slapping across her face. But she didn't stop. She couldn't.
Her wide, sharp eyes scanned the treeline with the frantic precision of prey and predator alike. Every rustle of leaves made her skin crawl. Every shadow could be another Athol. She didn't have the speed for this. Not really. She wasn't a runner. Her gifts—if they could even be called that—lay elsewhere.
Strength. Durability. Those were the blessings left behind after she'd absorbed the Accuh of the Rok-Howler at six years old, the day her mother died. That monster had shattered her home and her innocence, but when she'd seen her father drive a blade into its heart and she had inhaled the glimmering smoke it released, something within her had changed. Her bones had hardened. Her muscles thickened. Her strength became something unnatural. But not her stamina. Not her speed.
And now, sprinting blind through unfamiliar woods, that lack threatened to cost her everything.
The scream still echoed in her ears.
Jack.
That annoying, selfish , sick looking young man they'd picked up two days ago, with his weird dialect and crooked grin and complete disregard for self-preservation. She didn't like him. Not one bit. He was impulsive, inappropriate, and weirdly immune to shame. But Duri did. Her little brother had already started copying the idiot's swagger when he thought no one was watching.
And that was enough.
She'd left Duri behind with Gaeam, ordering him in a voice she *hoped* sounded steady to stay out of sight and stay quiet. She'd drawn her knife, curved and familiar in her hand, and ran toward the sound without thinking.
Without caring what she'd find.
The elder's voice rattled in her mind as she shoved through another thorny bramble: *"In a real fight, every second matters. Life and death fit into the span of a single heartbeat."*
She turned a corner, pushing past a thick bush with so much force the branches cracked like brittle bones—and stopped cold.
Her breath hitched. Her heart slammed once against her ribs, and then paused, as if too stunned to continue.
Blood.
It was *everywhere.*
Smeared across leaves. Spattered on the trunks. Soaking the earth in grotesque puddles of glistening red. The sharp, metallic scent of iron filled the air so thoroughly she could taste it on her tongue.
And at the center of the carnage lay an Athol—its oversized, bat-like form sprawled out grotesquely on the forest floor. The head was cleaved clean open, the haft of a weathered axe still embedded deep in the skull. Its wings were limp, twisted at odd angles, like a discarded cloak made of shadow and flesh.
Above its corpse, something beautiful shimmered.
*Accuh.*
The sacred smoke drifted lazily into the air, glowing faintly in hues of pink and purple. It moved unnaturally—too smooth, too intentional. Like it had a will of its own. Nari felt her skin crawl as it spiraled through the air in twisting, intelligent motions.
Accuh was essence. That was what the elders had always said. The final breath of a soul. The story of a life made smoke. It was formed slowly over years, even decades—built drop by drop, act by act, within a creature's being. When death came, it unspooled into the world like a final whisper, and sometimes—if the death was violent enough, or meaningful enough—some of that Accuh lingered.
It was *rare.* It was *powerful.* And it was drifting now toward the pale, crumpled figure on the ground.
Jack.
Nari's gut twisted.
He was alive. Barely. His skin was ash-pale beneath the blood, and his body was curled in on itself like a broken marionette. One arm—his left—was a mess of torn flesh and exposed tendon, but even that horror paled in comparison to what blazed along the wound.
Flames.
Not normal flames. Not fire from wood or oil. These were unnatural, magical.
They burned black at the center, deep and lightless like the void between stars. And at the edges—silver. Luminous, almost beautiful, like the edge of a blade catching moonlight. They curled around his wound like a living thing, burning without consuming, shifting without wind.
And Nari froze.
She knew those flames.
Not personally. No one *alive* did. But every child in the Archipelago had heard the stories whispered at night. Stories of a god that wasn't truly a god, but a fade —an accident of divinity too wild to worship and too loud to ignore.
*Gal'le.*
The Mad God. The God of the Unexpected. The god that wasn't a god, but a fleeting *moment*—born only when the twin gods of sun and moon aligned in eclipse. He was chaos incarnate. A divine contradiction. And he only appeared once every five thousand years.
No mortal could summon him. Not even the first mage whom had created astral spirits on a whim.
No being could *carry* his blessing. For not lived that long.
And yet…
It was *there.* In Jack's arm. In the silver-black blaze eating away the pain, rebuilding his body in defiance of all nature and logic. She'd seen paintings of Gal'le's fire in ancient shrines—long faded, retellings of its deeds.
And now it was here.
Pouring from the wound of some idiot boy with a shitty attitude and an even shittier grin.
Nari stared, numb. Her brain refused to connect the pieces. It was impossible. *Impossible.* Jack was a nobody. A drifter. A fool that had somehow made it onto that strange island before them.
But the flames didn't lie.
*Who are you?* she thought, heart pounding with something halfway between awe and dread.
She would question him. She'd demand answers. Where had he come from? How had he gotten a blessing from that god? Why had he not mentioned it before?Her mind raced with possibilities.
But none of that mattered *yet.*
Because if there was one Athol, there would be more. They moved in packs—silent, clever, merciless. The scent of blood would bring them. And Jack, fire or no fire, couldn't fight again.
Not like this.
Nari gritted her teeth, stepped forward, and lifted the unconscious man that weighed twice her weight as he was not.
And to her annoyance she started running once more, her face red from escutcheon.
*skip*
Jack had never felt this bad in his life. And that was saying something.
He'd been beaten, burned, concussed, and had bad trips more than once—but nothing compared to this. His entire body was a pulsing mass of pain, from the deep ache buried in his muscles to the dull, skull-splitting throb that pounded behind his eyes like some tribal war-drum. Even his bones felt sore, as if they were bruised from the inside out.
He groaned softly, twitching in place as the sensation of fur beneath him registered at last. It was thick, coarse, and warm—a pelt of some sort. Not a bed, not a cot. Just a heavy animal skin draped over something soft enough to sink into. Jack, still half-lost in the fog of exhaustion, nuzzled deeper into its embrace. The comfort was simple and primal, like a child burying their face in a warm animal. For a moment, it was enough to soothe the ache.
Sleep dragged him under again.
Voices—muffled, distant, like echoes underwater—roused him from the depths. He blinked slowly, eyelids heavy, vision unfocused and filmy. His skin was slick with sweat, clinging to him like wet parchment. He felt like a bloated slug, sticky and feverish. Something moved his arm. A hand, careful but firm, shifted it slightly—
Then *pain*.
A white-hot jolt shot from his wrist, sharp and slicing. His body tensed violently as if struck by lightning. He might've screamed—he wasn't sure. All he knew was that something had cut him. And as blood left his body in a thin trickle, a wave of cold settled over him like frost biting his skin.
And then—darkness again.
The third time Jack opened his eyes, there was nothing. No light. No shapes. Just pitch-black void.
His head still throbbed with that relentless drumbeat, as if the inside of his skull was hosting a concert for sadistic percussionists. He exhaled softly and slumped deeper into the pelt, hoping that maybe, if he pretended hard enough, sleep would take him again.
But it didn't.
His heart was hammering now, faster than it had any right to. It echoed in his chest and rebounded off the walls around him, each beat bouncing like thunder in a closed space. Jack frowned, but then he *heard* it.His ear picked up every bit of sound in the room . As the rhythm of his pulse echoed in this space, it outlined the room in his mind.
It was wooden—definitely a hut. The shape was small, enclosed. He could *hear* the objects inside just by the way sound shifted around them. Vases along the far wall. Strange tools of varying lengths and angles scattered across a low table. The air smelled of herbs and something sweetly rotten, like dried fruit left out too long.
Sleep was off the table. Boredom—and instinct—kicked in.
Jack groaned as he pushed himself upright. The motion made the world tilt. For a heartbeat, his knees wobbled, and his vision turned to static. But he clenched his teeth and stayed upright. Pain flared through his joints, but he didn't fall.
He stumbled to the door, his fingers finding the handle by sheer luck. Without ceremony, he wrenched it open.
Light exploded across his face.
He cried out instantly, staggering back with a strangled noise. The sunlight hit him like a hammer to the skull—raw, blinding, and *loud*. It screamed through his eyes and drove into the headache already blooming in his brain. He doubled over with a low howl, shielding his face with one trembling hand.
The boy from Uhrmacher swore under his breath, waiting—blinking, breathing—as the pain dulled just enough to function.
When his eyes adjusted, he looked up.
A village lay before him. Simple. Rustic. *Primitive.*
Dozens of wooden huts dotted the clearing, their thatched roofs weathered and sagging under the weight of years. There were no roads. No cobblestone, no cement—just packed earth and narrow paths carved by footsteps. No modern structures. No electric lights. No signs of anything he'd call civilization.
And the people—if you could call them that—were *odd*.
They bustled about, each one shorter than him by a full head, maybe more. Their clothes were rough-spun and plain, mostly robes or tunics belted at the waist. And their hair—Jack squinted—was dyed or naturally colored in every shade imaginable. Moss green. Dusty lavender. Sky blue. Even a few with pink or bright orange streaks. None of them looked his way. They just went on with their lives.
Movement flickered at the edge of his hearing.
Jack turned his head—and stopped.
An old woman stood there.
Or rather, something that *used* to be a woman and was now more wrinkles than skin. Her posture was hunched, her spine curved like an old branch ready to snap. Only a few wiry strands of gray hair clung to her otherwise bald scalp. Her eyes were clouded, nearly white with blindness. But she *saw* him, somehow.
She opened her mouth—barely more than a slit in the parchment of her face—and spoke in a dry, crumbling voice that sounded like fallen leaves crushed underfoot.
"Ahh~ I see you're alive, foolish boy."
Jack blinked, unsure whether he was hallucinating.
"Nari said you absorbed some Accuh while injured. Foolish! Wild, *stupid* thing to do. Could've ripped apart your body , could've melted your mind —but you… hmm… *lucky.* Lucky enough to *digest* it."
She squinted at him, her toothless mouth curled into something like amusement—or was it suspicion?
"But I'm rambling…" she added, waving one gnarled hand dismissively. "Come, come. We've got much to discuss."
Then, with the confidence of someone a quarter her age, she turned and began shuffling away toward a distant hut—one that looked even older than the rest, leaning sideways with age like it had witnessed the rise and fall of entire nations. Its door was crooked. Its wood bleached gray. A raven sat perched atop its roof and cawed once, as if to mark the moment.
Jack blinked at her back.
He still felt like death warmed over.
But something told him he'd better follow.