Kael stood upon his perch, his body still shimmering with the afterglow of awakened mana. The energy thrummed beneath his skin, alive and eager, like a caged beast finally tasting freedom. He willed it into his right hand, watching as his fingers pulsed with a dim blue radiance. Clenching his fist, he felt the power humming in his veins—raw, intoxicating. At last, he thought, a smirk curling his lips, I'm no longer at the bottom of the food chain.
Night had fallen again, but this time, the darkness did not feel like a predator. It felt like a cloak. With a thought, he channeled mana to his eyes, the irises shifting into a luminous blue. Shadows peeled back like rotting flesh, revealing the world in stark, unnatural clarity. The trees, the leaves, even the skittering insects—all laid bare before his newly gifted sight.
He turned his focus to his ears, and the night screamed into existence.
The rustle of leaves became a thunderous crash. The distant hoot of an owl vibrated like a war horn. And then—there. A squirrel, perched on a branch opposite him, its tiny heart hammering against its ribs like a drumbeat of panic. The forest was no longer silent. It was a chorus of terror, and for the first time, Kael could hear every note.
Emboldened, he pushed mana into his legs, his muscles coiling like steel springs. Then—launch.
The world blurred as he shot forward, his body cutting through the canopy with unnatural grace. Branches bent beneath him, leaves whispering against his skin as he danced across the treetops. The sensation was electric—freedom and power intertwined.
But the night was not done with him yet.
He landed silently atop a gnarled oak, his gaze dropping to the stream below. The doe's corpse lay where he had left it, now a bloated, stinking ruin. Flies swarmed in a black cloud, their buzzing a grotesque hymn to decay. The air was thick with the stench of rotting meat and something else—something wrong.
Then—movement.
A rustle in the undergrowth. Slow. Deliberate.
Kael's breath stilled.
The creature that slithered into the clearing was an abomination stitched from nightmares.
Its lower half was serpentine, scales glistening with a slick, oily sheen, as if its very flesh were sweating poison. But its upper body—oh gods, its upper body—was a mockery of man. Thick, corded muscle bulged beneath pallid skin, stretched too tight over a frame never meant to walk upright. Two arms jutted from each side, ending in three-clawed hands, the talons long as daggers and black as sin.
And its head…
A cow's skull, bleached white and hollow-eyed, fused to a living thing. No horns. No flesh. Just bone, grinning eternally into the dark.
Kael's stomach twisted. Mystclaw rank. He could feel it from the creatures mana.
The creature's forked tongue flicked out, tasting the air. Then, with a wet, clicking sound, its jaw unhinged, splitting down the middle like a butchered carcass. A clear, viscous fluid dripped from its maw as it leaned over the doe's corpse, slathering the body in its poison.
The effect was instantaneous.
Flesh melted. Skin sloughed off in bubbling sheets, muscle dissolving into a rancid slurry. The creature's tongue lashed out, wrapping around the liquefying mass, and with a grotesque gulp, it swallowed the doe whole.
For a moment, there was silence.
Then—
A shudder. A retch.
The beast convulsed, its jaw splitting open once more as it vomited forth the remains. Bones clattered to the ground, half-dissolved, pockmarked with holes where the acid had eaten through.
Kael's fingers dug into the bark beneath him. This thing doesn't just kill. It consumes. It erodes.
The creature's skull-head suddenly snapped up.
It knew.
Eyes Kael hadn't even seen before flared to life—two pits of hellish crimson, burning with malevolent intelligence. A bloodcurdling hiss tore from its throat, a sound like nails on bone, and then—
It moved.
Not with the clumsy lumber of a beast, but with the terrifying precision of a hunter that had scented prey.
Kael's blood turned to ice.
Run.
Every instinct screamed it. But something deeper, something darker, whispered: Follow.
He hesitated—just for a breath—before sanity won out. Whatever this thing was hunting, it was beyond him. Far beyond him.
With one last glance at the nightmare slithering into the shadows, Kael turned and fled.
But the forest no longer felt like his ally.
It felt like a hunting ground.
And he had just seen what else lurked at the top of the food chain.