Barrett walked at the head of what remained of them, jaw tight as he listened to the uneven rhythm of boots and dragging feet behind him. The column stretched thin through the trees, a once-defiant force reduced to a ragged procession of limping silhouettes and makeshift stretchers. Bandages showed through torn cloth. Every few steps someone stumbled, and someone else reached out to steady them.

  Too slow, and too exposed.

  He shifted the weight of a sack on his shoulder and adjusted his grip without complaint. If they were going to make it to EverGreen, they would do it together. Grimm circled high above the canopy, a dark speck against the pale sky, sweeping wide arcs and sending down the occasional sharp cry as if to remind them he was up there.

  Rei walked beside him.

  She was quieter these days, the sharp edges of her voice filed down by pain and exhaustion. Her arms were bound tightly to the stumps beneath fresh wrappings, but she had insisted on carrying a satchel slung awkwardly across her back. Every step cost her; Barrett could see it in the tension of her shoulders and the tight set of her jaw.

  He didn’t say anything about it.

  He admired her for it.

  On his other side, a faint hum preceded Maku as he descended from his mana disk and dropped lightly into stride, boots barely disturbing the forest floor.

  “You seem awfully cheerful,” Rei muttered, breath hitching as she adjusted her pack.

  Maku glanced at the broken column behind them and then up through the branches where sunlight filtered down in fractured beams. “I can’t help it,” he said with a dramatic sigh. “There’s something…epic about this.”

  Barrett gave him a sideways look. “Epic how?”

  Maku spread his arms as if presenting a grand stage. “Imperator Donovan and his battered army marching through the forest after a pyrrhic victory. Bloodied. Defiant. Refusing to break!”

  Rei’s head snapped toward him. “Are you insane? People are barely standing. Take this seriously.”

  Barrett felt the irritation in her voice.

  Maku only shrugged. “It’s like Henry V in the Hundred Years’ War,” he said. “Outnumbered, exhausted, still pushing forward.”

  Rei blinked. “What are you, some kind of history nerd?”

  “Not really,” he replied easily. “Learned it all from video games.”

  Rei exhaled sharply. “Idiot.”

  Despite himself, Barrett felt the corner of his mouth twitch. There was something steadying about the banter, about the fact that they could still argue about nonsense while limping toward an uncertain future.

  Then he stopped.

  The forest shifted.

  He felt it before he understood it. Barrett inhaled once and let his focus drop inward as he focused fully on his [Deadeye Domain].

  The world above sharpened through Grimm’s eyes.

  Every tremor of leaf and branch clarified below, and then he caught it. Disturbances. The pattern of wind through the canopy separated from something that looked too deliberate and too coordinated to be anything but his worst fear.

  “You good?” Maku asked, the levity draining from his tone.

  Rei turned her head toward Barrett, eyes narrowing. “You see something?”

  KRAA—KRAA!

  Grimm’s cry cut down from above.

  Barrett didn’t need the warning.

  He saw even more movement rippling through the undergrowth behind them. Branches bowing inward as something forced its way through.

  Right toward them.

  Barrett’s grip tightened on his weapon as a cold certainty settled into his chest.

  “Shit,” he muttered.

  “We’ve got company.”

  —

  Barrett pushed through the shifting line of wounded and weary until he reached Eidel near the center of the column. Without a word, he slipped the bundle of extra supplies from his shoulder and handed it off to one of the less injured Handomeans, who took it with a silent nod and hurried back into formation.

  Eidel stood apart from the surrounding motion.

  She was upright, issuing no commands, eyes unfocused as though she were watching something only she could see. The forest light filtered across her sharp features, but the fire that usually lived behind her gaze had dimmed to ash. Zahir’s absence hung around her like a second cloak.

  Barrett stepped in front of her.

  “We’ve got enemies on our heels,” he said, voice low but firm. “You know the plan.”

  No response.

  For a heartbeat, he saw not the calculating heir of a Great House, but a daughter who had just lost her father.

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  He closed the distance and seized her by the collar.

  Steel rasped free in the same instant. One of her guards moved with lethal speed, blade pressing cold against Barrett’s throat. Another shadow shifted behind him.

  Eidel’s eyes snapped into focus. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “Waking you up,” Barrett shot back, shaking her once. “You’ve got a job to do, damn it. You don’t get to shut down right now.”

  “You have no right!” she snapped, anger flaring at last.

  “Put her down, Imperator!” a woman’s voice barked from behind him.

  “I’ve got every right I need,” Barrett growled. “My people are in your hands too. So lock in already!”

  For a long second the forest seemed to hold its breath.

  Eidel stared at him—hurt, fury, pride, and something colder passing through her expression. Then her gaze dropped. She inhaled once, slow and controlled, and when she looked back up, the look in her eyes had hardened.

  She gave the smallest nod.

  Barrett released her collar and stepped back.

  Without another word, he triggered [Raven’s Reversal].

  The world twisted. Grimm burst upward in a flurry of black wings where Barrett had stood, while Barrett himself reappeared in the crook of a nearby branch, boots settling into bark beside Maku.

  Below, the column shifted. Orders began to ripple outward again.

  “That was aggressive,” Maku muttered, crouched low on his mana disk just off the branch.

  Barrett watched as Eidel straightened fully, voice cutting clean through the forest as she began directing her guards into new positions.

  “She needed it,” Barrett said. “This isn’t a game.”

  Maku glanced at him sidelong. “That’s rich coming from you.”

  Barrett didn’t answer. He simply focused, eyes tracking Grimm as the raven flew to a farther limb.

  Another pulse of [Raven’s Reversal].

  The forest bent.

  He shifted again, deeper into the trees. Maku rose to follow, disk humming faintly as they moved in tandem above the marching column toward their pursuers.

  —Mordruk—

  Mordruk ran as only a BoreHead could run, low to the ground, breath steady, legs devouring the forest floor in long, tireless strides. The humans ahead of them might as well have dragged a banner behind their retreat; broken branches, churned mud, discarded wrappings from the wounded. It was almost insulting how easy the trail was to follow.

  To his left and right, his clan thundered through the trees in a loose wedge formation, massive shoulders brushing past trunks, boots crushing brush and root alike. The BoreHeads were not the strongest of Gabul’s war hosts, nor the most heavily armored, but none matched them in speed over broken ground. None tracked wounded prey better once blood had been spilled.

  Gabul had entrusted this hunt to them.

  Mordruk felt pride coil hot in his chest at the thought. The warlord’s strength had been required elsewhere. He had chosen them to finish this.

  Mordruk tightened his grip around the twin axes in his hands, their crescent blades nicked from a hundred prior fights. He could already imagine the humans’ panic as his clan fell upon them.

  Fools.

  As if the forest could shield them.

  Not much farther now.

  A yell ripped through the trees.

  Mordruk’s head snapped to the right. One of his brothers pitched forward, throat opened from ear to ear. For a heartbeat Mordruk thought he glimpsed something massive among the trunks. The shape of a human too broad to be real.

  Then the movement vanished.

  Only a black bird flapped past, wings beating lazily.

  Mordruk slowed, and so did the warriors nearest him.

  “Mordruk—why stop?” one of the younger orcs growled as he barreled up behind him.

  Mordruk pointed with one axe toward Skor’s fallen body. “There.”

  Before they could move, another shout echoed, this time from the left flank.

  Mordruk whirled.

  Another BoreHead stumbled from behind a tree, clutching his chest as blood poured between his fingers. He collapsed without a sound.

  “There!” Mordruk barked, already charging.

  Training took over. The clan fanned outward, forming a tightening crescent around the tree line where the attack had come from. Axes raised. Teeth bared.

  They circled.

  Nothing.

  No human. No scent beyond their own. Only the whisper of wind through leaves, and in the distance, the slow beat of wings.

  That same dark bird.

  “It is a forest demon,” one orc muttered, unease creeping into his voice.

  “A spirit. A curse,” another added.

  “Silence,” Mordruk snapped, though a prickle crawled beneath his own skin.

  “Sup.”

  The voice came from behind them.

  Every head turned at once.

  He stood between the trees as though he had grown there.

  A human—no, a giant among humans. Broad as a young ogre, long blond hair hanging wild around a bandana striped in red, white, and blue, stars stitched across it. A spiderweave coat hung from his shoulders like a war banner. In his hands rested a jagged black blade so large and brutal it might once have belonged to an orc.

  And on his shoulder, that same black bird perched calmly, red eyes gleaming with unnatural intelligence.

  Mordruk felt hatred surge through him like fire.

  The human grinned.

  Then he turned and ran.

  Mordruk did not need to command it. The BoreHeads exploded into motion as one, roaring, axes flashing as they tore through the undergrowth. They were faster. Everyone knew it. Their strides were longer, their lungs stronger.

  The human darted between trunks, coat snapping behind him, but Mordruk could feel the distance closing with every heartbeat.

  He smiled.

  This was what they were made for.

  The forest thickened, branches clawing at their faces. Some of the orcs hacked their way through snarled brush without slowing, splinters flying as steel bit wood. The human did not slow either, weaving, cutting angles, forcing them to spread wider to keep him boxed.

  Fool, Mordruk thought. You only delay the end.

  The trees suddenly fell away.

  They burst into a clearing.

  The human stood waiting at its center.

  Behind him yawned open air and a sheer cliff dropping into shadow, a long and unforgiving fall by the look of it. Wind howled upward from the depths below, tugging at his coat and hair.

  Mordruk slowed, axes lifting as the BoreHeads formed a tightening ring around the clearing’s edge.

  The human did not look frightened.

  He simply rested that massive blade across one shoulder and smiled at them as though they had arrived exactly when he’d hoped.

  The bird on his shoulder tilted its head, black eyes glinting with something almost amused.

  “KRAA—KRAA!”

  Then it launched itself upward in a powerful beat of wings and tore into the sky, banking away from the cliff and vanishing into the open air beyond.

  —

  Mordruk raised one hand, and his clan slowed, boots grinding into the dirt as they fanned out in a crescent. No rush now. No need.

  They advanced at a measured pace, axes low, savoring the moment the way predators savor the final steps before a kill. The human stood near the cliff’s edge, wind tugging at his long coat and wild hair, the drop yawning behind him like an open grave.

  When they were only a few strides away, Mordruk halted them with a grunt.

  The clearing fell quiet save for the wind and the distant crash of waves far below.

  “You are calm, human,” Mordruk rumbled, tilting his head slightly. “Most scream by now.”

  The human did not answer at once.

  Instead, he turned his back on them.

  Mordruk’s lip curled, tusks flashing.

  The human walked the last few steps to the cliff’s edge and looked outward. From this height, the world opened wide into the glint of the distant sea, and beyond it all, the pale silhouette of the great human city rising against the horizon.

  EverGreen.

  “It’s a beautiful view,” the human said lightly, as if they were companions admiring the sunset.

  Mordruk threw his head back and laughed, the sound harsh and triumphant. He loved this moment and the absolute certainty of dominance.

  “Enjoy it,” he growled, stepping forward so the shadow of his bulk stretched long across the ground. “You will not see another.”

  The human chuckled under his breath.

  Then, without turning around, he spoke again.

  “You might want to look behind you.”