They were five in number—ghosts in midnight-darkcloaks, wolves in men's skin, each an extension of Duke Martel's icy, unyielding command. Their mission was stark, brutal, and simple: Retrieve the dragon's kin. Kill if needed. Bring back the corpse, if nothing else.
Most of their work never required questions; their hands were stained with the blood of diplomats, desperate smugglers, even defiant priests. But this mission felt different. Not harder—dirtier. Like they weren't chasing a dangerous, ancient threat, but merely hunting a young girl, albeit one whispered to hold impossible power.
Two of the five were demihumans—werewolves, their dense, ash-gray fur streaked with the deep, grizzled patterns of countless combats and years of silent command. Their human forms carried a primal density. The others were human, but no less formidable for it. They moved in terrifying tandem: quiet, almost preternatural steps, eyes as sharp and watchful as a hawk's, cloaks stitched with intricate, shadowypatterns designed to deceive the eye, boots fashioned for absolute silence on any terrain, and pouches laced with an arsenal of poisons, rudimentary spells, and cold, gleaming steel. They didn't use names. Names were vulnerabilities, graves waiting to be dug.
Lux, utterly unaware of the tightening net that drew ever closer, had just finished her early morning drills. Sweat clung to her brow and the fine strands of her hair, cooling in the morning breeze, as she pushed mana through her limbs—a new, experimental exercise to burn out the deep soreness from days of inactivity, trying to shed the clinging weight of the past week's trauma. She was a little leaner now, her nascent wings ached faintly from disuse, a phantom sensation, but her spirit burned hotter, fiercer, than ever before.
The moment was almost peaceful, the quiet hum of the forest a balm, until the very air changed—a subtle shift, a barely perceptible tension, followed by purposeful, almost silent footsteps drawing near.
Three cloaked figures emerged from the dense treeline, their faces carefully arranged into masks of forced civility. One even offered a thin, unsettling smile, a flash of white in the dappled light.
They wore the nondescript clothes of weary travelers, but Lux could smell the cold, sharp tang of steel beneath the silk of their cloaks, the subtle metallic glint of concealed weapons. These were not men who had innocently lost their way. These were men who had found hers.
She wiped her hands slowly on her tunic, drawing out the moment, then crossed her arms, her posture shifting from relaxation to challenge. Her mocking smile, a thin, feral curl, played on her lips.
"Oh? Morning hikers with a death wish, are we?"
The man directly in front, his features obscured by his hood but his vividblueeyes glinting, stepped forward. "Beast. You will be coming with us." His voice was low, devoid of inflection, a flat command.
"Then you'll have to make me want to listen," she retorted, her voice calm as a coiled serpent, deadly still, yet vibrating with unspoken threat.
That was enough. The pretense shattered.
One of them lunged forward—a blur of darkfabric and flashing steel, his dagger out, glinting with a faint, almost imperceptible greenish sheen along its edge, his cloak billowing behind him like an unfurling shadow. He was impossibly fast. But Lux, in her new, heightened awareness, was faster.
She pivoted, a seamless, almost liquid motion, grabbing his arm mid-strike with an instinctive precision. Then, she slammed her palm into his chest. Mana, previously a sensed current, now surged through her body, a breaking, untamed wave that radiated outward. The very air around her rippled visibly, distorting the leaves behind him. The man flew backward with a choked grunt, crashing into a thick tree trunk hard enough to snap the bark with an audible crack. He crumpled to the damp earth, utterly still. He didn't get up.
"Next?" Lux asked, her voice clear, her eyes burning with a nascent, terrifying power.
The other two hesitated, their confidence visibly wavering. A fatal mistake.
Lux surged forward, a whirlwind of motion. Her fist connected with one man's jaw—a sickening crunch—his hood flying back to reveal a face contorted in pain as he dropped to the muddy grass, twitching. The last man, agile, drew a shortsword, its steel gleaming, and ducked her next wild swing, slashing up to cut her leg. Steel met scale—her reinforced, draconic skin deflected the blow with a grating scrape—but it still stung, a sharp, angry burn. She didn't pause, her elbow snapping back to connect savagely with his throat, and his weapon clattered to the ground, lost in the mud.
Two down. One broken. One wheezing, gasping for air.
But something was wrong. An instinctual tremor ran through her.
The forest, previously silent, screamed now, a silent scream she could only perceive through her strained mana senses—a sudden, overwhelming surge of raw, predatory energy.
Too late, she felt the presence behind her—a blur of ash-greyfur and contained violence.
One of the werewolves, a silent hunter who had remained perfectly hidden among the gnarled trees, lunged from behind. He was massive, a terrifying blur of muscle and malice, his arms corded with immense strength, claws extended and glowing with a faint, sickly blackenedenchantment—a crude elemental magic meant to wound more deeply than steel.
He slashed her back open.
Lux screamed, a guttural, inhuman sound torn from her throat. Blood, vibrant and hot, sprayed in a wide arc across the damp grass, painting it in stark, viscouscrimson. She staggered forward, her vision swimming, the world tilting violently.
The pain was white-hot, an agonizing inferno that consumed her senses. Mana spasmed wildly in her veins, an uncontrollable surge of raw power. Her nascent, phantom wings flared out instinctively, a desperate attempt to balance her as she twisted, trying to face her attacker.
The werewolf, seeing her exposed, seeing the extent of his vicious blow, snarled, a low, guttural sound of triumph, thinking it over, calculating his killing strike.
Mistake.
Lux's eyes glowed, not with pain, but with a sudden, overwhelming surge of pure, molten fury, a primal response to the elemental magic searing her flesh.
Her body twisted low, blood trailing behind her like ribbons, a dark, shimmering stain on the earth. She brought her palm down in a sudden, brutal, mana-infused hammerstrike. The ground beneath them cracked, radiating fissures appearing in the damp earth as if struck by lightning. The wolf staggered, his powerful legs buckling under the unseen force. She followed up with a savage uppercut, lifting him momentarily off the ground. As he flew backward through the air, she lunged—her hand like a spear—and drove her newly hardened, clawed fingers into his chest. Not deep enough to kill, not yet. Just enough to end the fight, to crush the fight from his lungs.
The werewolf collapsed in a heap, gasping for breath, chest heaving, his ribs shattered beneath her savage blow.
She turned, her breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps, her vision blurring at the edges.
The final werewolf emerged from the trees, a silent and unreadable shadow. His eyes, predatory and cold, met hers—then dropped to his fallen kin, a flicker of something unreadable passing through them. He took a single, deliberate step back.
"You'll bleed out by nightfall," he said flatly, his voice a low growl, utterly devoid of emotion.
Lux smirked, a sliver of her own blood running down her side, painting her skin. "You first."
He vanished into the thick woods, a silent retreat.
The others lay still, either dead or unconscious. The hunt, for now, was over. But the true battle had just begun.