The awe of his own ascension lasted only a heartbeat, shattered by the tremor in the rock beneath him and Anya's frantic voice in his ear. The vultures were descending. Ren extinguished the brilliant light of his new wings, plunging the cave back into darkness, his mind snapping into a state of cold, tactical focus. His Aether reserves were dangerously low, the forging and breakthrough having consumed nearly everything. He was a king with a new crown but an empty treasury, and his first challengers were already at the gates.
He crept to the mouth of the cave, peering through the curtain of petrified vines. On the high plateau where he had fought the Griffin, three figures landed with the silent, predatory grace of true professionals. They were clad in the severe, matte-black armor of the Spirit Lumina Pagoda, their faces obscured by emotionless, insectoid helmets. One of them, clearly the leader, held a compass-like device that glowed with a faint, angry red light, its needle pointed directly at Ren's position. It was an Aetheric Resonance Tracker, and the massive power surge from his breakthrough had been a deafening dinner bell.
"Three of them," Anya's voice confirmed, her tone grim. "All Disciples. I'm reading the two flankers at Rank 22, maybe 23. But the leader… his signature is denser. Rank 24, at least. They're an elite suppression squad. You can't fight them head-on, not in your current state."
Ren knew she was right. Hiding was not an option; the tracker made that impossible. A direct confrontation would be suicide. That left only one path.
He took a deep breath, and with a surge of will, he burst from the mouth of the cave. He did not run. He flew.
The Phantom Wings of the Storm erupted from his back in a silent, glorious flare of azure lightning. With a single, powerful downbeat, he launched himself into the grey, overcast sky of the Cinderwood. The initial sensation was one of dizzying, exhilarating freedom. It was not the instantaneous, jarring shift of Raijin's Flash. This was true flight, a feeling of commanding the wind, of the sky itself bending to his will. But it was also clumsy. He was a fledgling taking his first flight, his movements powerful but unpracticed.
The Pagoda Hunters reacted with flawless, disciplined speed. The squad leader barked a single command, and the two flankers immediately launched grappling hooks from their vambraces. They were not made of metal, but of a dark, solidified Aether, designed to ensnare and drain a target's energy.
Ren twisted in the air, his wings beating awkwardly, and the hooks shot past him. The squad leader raised his arm, not to attack, but to suppress. He fired a volley of heavy, black, teardrop-shaped bolts of energy. They were not designed to injure, but to impact and cling, their sticky, heavy Aetheric properties meant to slow him down.
The chase was on. Ren dove into the maze of petrified trees, the massive, stone branches a chaotic obstacle course. He was a blur of azure light weaving through a forest of black glass. The hunters pursued him on the ground, their movements swift and perfectly coordinated, using the tracker to follow his every move. They were herding him, trying to force him into a bottleneck where they could ground him.
He learned quickly. He used a short, sharp burst of Raijin's Flash in mid-air to instantly change his vector, dodging a volley of suppressing bolts that would have otherwise hit him. He beat his powerful lightning wings, not just to fly, but to create a powerful downdraft of wind and static electricity, momentarily disrupting the hunters' aim and kicking up a blinding cloud of petrified dust. He was adapting, learning, turning his new gift into a true weapon.
But it wasn't enough. He couldn't simply outrun them. They were professionals, their endurance vast, and his own Aether was still dangerously low. He needed to stop being the prey and start being the predator.
He soared high into the sky, seemingly trying to escape into the thick cloud cover. The squad leader, seeing this, did not follow. He simply watched his tracker, a cold, confident certainty in his posture, guiding his teammates on the ground as they prepared to intercept Ren wherever he might land.
It was the exact miscalculation Ren had been counting on.
High above the forest, Ren folded his wings and plummeted. He fell like a stone, a silent, controlled dive, using the massive, skeletal trees as cover, vanishing completely from their line of sight.
The hunters on the ground, momentarily losing their visual target, paused and began to spread out, their discipline breaking for the first time as they fanned out to reacquire him. He had separated the pack.
Ren's wings snapped open a hundred feet from the ground, catching the air silently. He was no longer a frantic target, but a silent, gliding hawk. He targeted the last hunter in the formation, the one furthest from the squad leader. He came from behind, a ghost riding the wind.
The hunter, his senses focused on the sky above, never knew what hit him.
Before he could even turn, Ren landed a single, precise, non-lethal Thunder's Needle in the man's knee. The Aetheric shock overloaded the joint, and the hunter cried out, collapsing to the ground, his leg disabled.
Fzzt.
Ren used Raijin's Flash to vanish back into the deep shadows of the Cinderwood a split second later.
The squad leader spun around at his subordinate's cry, finding the man writhing on the ground, his leg useless. He scanned the silent, black trees, his tracker now useless for pinpointing the static, teleporting target. The forest had not changed, but the nature of the hunt had. The confident certainty in his posture was replaced by a new, wary tension.
He was no longer the hunter. He was now the hunted. And his prey was a ghost who could fly.