A fragile sense of normalcy had settled in the dusty inn room.
Leonotis, wrapped in his new badger-fur coat, was finishing the last of a meat pie. It was the first thing he'd truly tasted in what felt like a lifetime—the savory meat and flaky crust a welcome anchor in the swirling sea of his grief. The warmth of the food and the soft fur had rekindled a small, determined spark in his eyes.
Jacqueline had spread a crude, wrinkled map on the floor between the cots. They spoke in low tones, the setting sun casting long, deep shadows across the room.
"North is out of the question," Jacqueline murmured, her finger tracing a path away from their location. "The King will assume we're fleeing directly away from the Capital. His patrols will be heaviest on the northern roads."
"Which is exactly why we should go South," Low said, chewing thoughtfully on a piece of pie crust. "We do the last thing they'd expect. We head south for a day, maybe two. Toward the Capital. Then we cut west through the farmlands. It's longer, but it'll throw them off the scent."
Leonotis leaned forward, his gaze fixed on the map. He pointed a finger, still smudged with grime, at a dense patch of woods marked on the map.
"There. If we cut through the woods, we can meet the West Road here. It avoids the major towns."
His voice was rough, but it was his own. He was with them again.
But downstairs, in the fading light of the common room, their fate was being sealed with a soft, heavy clink.
The innkeeper nervously polished an already clean mug, his gaze skittering away from the man seated at his bar. The man was broad and dressed in scuffed leather armor, a long, jagged scar pulling one side of his mouth into a permanent sneer. He slid a gleaming gold sovereign across the worn wood, the coin seeming to absorb all the light in the dingy room.
"You're sure it's them?" the bounty hunter asked, his voice a low gravelly rumble.
The innkeeper swallowed hard, a bead of sweat tracing a path down his temple. He nodded, his eyes wide with a mixture of fear and greed.
"Positive," he whispered, leaning closer. "The boy with the orange hair… he's even got a little tree branch with him. Room seven. At the back, top of the stairs."
The bounty hunter, Gregor, let a slow, predatory smile stretch his lips. He pocketed the coin and stood, giving the innkeeper a look that promised a painful death if he was wrong.
With a silent signal—a mere flick of the wrist—he headed for the door.
Outside, the sleepy quiet of Irokoton was being methodically dismantled.
Gregor's crew of sellswords, a motley collection of toughs with eager eyes and worn weapons, fanned out from the inn's entrance. They were joined by the local town guard, six armored soldiers whose sense of duty was easily swayed by the promise of a share of five hundred sovereigns.
They moved with a quiet, practiced efficiency. Two of Gregor's men dragged a heavy horse trough to barricade the inn's front door, trapping anyone inside. The town guards, shields interlocked, formed a solid line across the main street, cutting off any direct escape.
In the back alley, two more mercenaries melted into the deep shadows beneath the inn's rear wall, their swords drawn and glinting like slivers of ice in the fading twilight.
The noose was tightening—silent and unseen by the children in the room above, who were busy planning a journey they would never get to take.
"...so if we follow the river south for a day, we can cut across the old logging trail here," Low was saying, her finger tracing a faint line on the map. "It'll be rough terrain, but no one will think to look for—"
She stopped abruptly, her entire body freezing mid-sentence. She held up a hand for silence, her head cocked, her eyes narrowing as she focused on a sound the others couldn't hear.
"What is it?" Leonotis asked, the warmth of the badger coat suddenly feeling insufficient.
"Quiet," Low hissed, her voice a low, dangerous whisper.
And then they all heard it. Or rather, they heard the lack of it.
The dull, constant murmur from the common room below—the clatter of mugs, the low laughter, the drone of conversation—had vanished. The silence that replaced it was heavy, unnatural, and deeply unnerving.
It was broken a moment later by a loud, grating scrape of heavy wood being dragged across a stone floor.
Low's eyes met Jacqueline's across the small room, her expression grim.
"They've blocked the door."
Panic, cold and sharp, lanced through the air.
Jacqueline was already moving, her lithe form crossing to the grimy window that overlooked the back alley. Her hands, usually so steady, trembled slightly as she pressed her fingertips against the cool glass.
"Aqua speculum," she whispered, her voice a melodic incantation that was almost lost in the sudden, tense quiet of the room.
A fine film of condensation instantly bloomed across the pane, pulled from the humid evening air. At her silent command, the moisture coalesced and bulged outward, forming a crude, convex lens.
It gave her a distorted, fish-eye view of the alley below, now cast in the deep purple shadows of twilight.
What she saw made her breath catch in her throat.
Two men in scuffed leather armor stood flattened against the opposite wall, their weapons drawn. Farther down, near the corner of the building, the firelight from the main street glinted off the steel helmets of two more figures—town guards, their shields held ready.
They weren't hiding; they were waiting. They were watching the window.
"Guards," she confirmed, letting the water lens dissipate back into vapor. Her voice was tight, strained. "At least four of them. They have the back exit covered."
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
A heavy fist thundered against their door, each impact making the old wood shudder in its frame and sending puffs of dust from the ceiling.
Zombiel flinched—a rare show of reaction—while Leonotis scrambled back, pulling the oak sapling closer to him.
A gruff voice, amplified by the righteous fury of the law, boomed from the hallway.
"In the name of the King, open this door! The fugitive Leonotis is to be surrendered to the Irokoton magistrate! Come out now and you will not be harmed!"
Low flashed a grim, feral smirk.
"I bet you always say that!"
The promise was instantly proven a lie.
With a deafening roar of splintering wood, the door didn't just open—it exploded. Torn from its hinges by a coordinated, brutal charge, it flew into the room and crashed against a cot.
Framed in the ruined doorway stood the bounty hunter, Gregor, a cruel-looking war hammer held loosely in one hand. Flanking him, two town guards advanced shoulder-to-shoulder, their heavy shields forming a wall of wood and steel, their swords glinting in the lantern light from the hall.
"He's mine!" Gregor snarled, his eyes locking onto Leonotis, glittering with the promise of twenty thousand gold sovereigns. "The rest of you can have the scraps!"
The soldiers took a synchronized step forward, their heavy boots thudding on the floorboards.
But the cramped room, which they saw as a trap for the children, was a weapon in the right hands.
Before their second step could land, Jacqueline reacted.
Her fear transmuted into icy focus.
She thrust her hands forward, palms open—not toward the men, but toward the very air in front of them.
The humid, stuffy atmosphere of the room answered her call. Moisture, invisible moments before, coalesced with an audible hiss, gathering into a shimmering, solid bolt of water.
It wasn't a splash; it was a battering ram of pure, liquid force.
The jet, no thicker than her arm but moving with impossible speed, slammed into the lead soldier's shield. The impact was deafening—a wet CRACK that sounded like a glacier calving.
The heavy shield, meant to stop a sword blade, crumpled inward, and the soldier was lifted from his feet as if struck by a charging bull.
He flew backward, crashing into his shield-mate and sending them both tumbling into the crowded hallway in a heap of tangled limbs and curses.
The residual water from the blast instantly coated the floorboards in a treacherous, frictionless slick of ice, turning the doorway into a deathtrap.
The momentary chaos was all Low needed.
As Gregor, his eyes wide with disbelief at the sudden display of power, swung his war hammer in a wild, horizontal arc meant to clear the room, Low was already moving.
She dropped—the heavy weapon whistling through the air where her head had been.
She exploded upward from her crouch like a compressed spring, not with a weapon, but with her fist.
It connected with the side of Gregor's jaw with a sickening, wet crunch of bone and cartilage.
His head snapped to the side, his eyes rolling back. But Low didn't wait to see him fall.
She used his stumbling, stunned body as a springboard, planting a foot on his chest and launching herself over the slick ice at the door.
The remaining town guard, still trying to find his footing, looked up just in time to see her descending on him.
Her full weight, amplified by her raw, werebear-infused strength, slammed into him, and the two of them crashed through the ruined doorway and into the wall of the hallway with the force of a landslide.
Through the maelstrom, Leonotis's first and only instinct was not to attack, but to protect.
He scrambled from his cot, his heart hammering against his ribs, and snatched the precious oak sapling from the windowsill just as a stray crossbow bolt from the hall shattered the grimy pane of glass.
He clutched the small tree to his chest, its leaves trembling against his cheek, and dove behind the overturned bed frame, shielding the living wood with his own body.
A local warrior, seeing an opening and eager for glory, leaped over the groaning forms of the fallen guards in the hallway.
He was younger than the others, his face alight with a reckless confidence, a heavy wood-axe raised high.
"I've got one!" he yelled, charging toward Jacqueline.
Zombiel met his charge.
He didn't brace for impact or draw a weapon. He simply glided forward, his movements unnervingly smooth, and raised a single, pale hand as if in greeting.
The warrior's triumphant yell died in his throat as a focused lance of pure, silent, spectral flame erupted from Zombiel's palm.
It wasn't a fire that burned the air; it was a spirit of pure heat.
The flame engulfed the axe head, and in less than a heartbeat, the iron blade glowed a bright, malevolent cherry-red, then white-hot.
The warrior screamed—a raw, piercing sound of agony and shock.
The superheated metal seared his hands, and he dropped the weapon with a reflexive spasm.
It hit the wooden floor and instantly burned a black, smoldering scar into the planks.
He stumbled backward, clutching his blistered, ruined hands to his chest, his eyes wide with terror.
In a matter of seconds, the initial, confident assault had been broken—shattered by a torrent of power these fighters had never conceived of—leaving the cramped inn room a wreck of splintered wood, groaning men, and the chilling promise of far worse to come.
The brief, brutal victory in the room was just that: brief.
The hallway was now a clogged artery of armored bodies and drawn steel.
More town guards, their faces grim and determined, pushed past their fallen comrades.
Behind them, other bounty hunters and local warriors—seeing the chaos not as a warning but as an opportunity—surged forward.
Their initial fear was being rapidly overcome by the lure of gold, a greedy glint hardening their eyes.
They formed a wall of grim determination, swords and shields ready, pressing into the ruined doorway.
Jacqueline was panting, her face pale with exertion. The blast of water had taken a significant toll, and she knew she couldn't summon another like it.
To her left, Low was a whirlwind of controlled fury, a scavenged iron poker in one hand and a broken chair leg in the other.
She fought with a feral grace, but she was fending off two opponents at once—a mercenary with a long knife and a town guard jabbing with a short spear.
For every blow she landed, two more came her way.
They were being pushed back, their small pocket of defiance shrinking with every passing second.
They were hopelessly, undeniably trapped.