The mountain path wound like a scar through stone.
Violet walked at the front, one hand trailing along the cliff face for balance. Behind her, three hundred souls moved in weary silence—mothers carrying sleeping children, warriors supporting wounded elders, the slow procession of survival.
Vael ranged ahead, scouting the path. Eivor brought up the rear, counting heads every hundred steps to ensure no one fell behind.
The sky above was beginning to pale—not quite dawn, but no longer full night. That grey hour when the world held its breath between darkness and light.
Violet paused at a fork in the path.
Left led deeper into the mountains—treacherous but hidden.
Right descended toward lowlands—easier terrain but more exposed.
"Left," she said quietly.
No one questioned.
They turned into the narrow passage, disappearing into shadow like ghosts returning to their graves.
Behind them, leagues away and worldsu apart, the valley burned.
***
Steel rang against claw.
Fire bloomed and died.
Blood turned snow to mud.
Bara roared as he brought both fists down on a knight's shield, crumpling it like parchment. The knight fell. Bara moved to the next target, his massive frame already covered in cuts that would have killed a smaller creature.
Beside him, Kari moved like water—fluid, impossible to pin down. Her claws opened throats. Her teeth found arteries. She was beautiful and terrible, a poem written in violence.
But it wasn't enough.
For every knight that fell, three more pressed forward. The mages hung back, hurling fire and ice from safe distances. And the monsters—gods, the monsters—pushed through Beastkin lines like reapers through wheat.
A Sabertooth lunged at a young Direwolf. The wolf shifted, grew larger, met it claw to claw. They grappled for three heartbeats before the cat's jaws closed around the wolf's throat. The wolf's eyes went wide. Then dark.
An Eight-Tusked Mammoth trampled through a cluster of Bear warriors. Their hammers and axes glanced off its hide like rain off stone. It crushed them beneath feet the size of boulders.
The Crocateers moved in packs, jaws snapping, dragging down anyone who stumbled or slowed.
Bara's eyes found Kari's across the battlefield.
She was bleeding. He was bleeding. Everyone was bleeding.
Around them, their people were dying.
The cavalry reformed for another charge. The mages prepared another volley. The monsters circled like sharks scenting blood.
Bara's jaw clenched.
Then he roared—not in rage, but in command.
"BREAK YOUR FANG!"
The battlefield stilled for one heartbeat.
Kari's eyes widened. Then she understood.
"MAGEI KARA!" she screamed.
The words rippled outward—ancient, forbidden, final.
Warriors froze. Some looked at their commanders. Others looked at their hands.
Then, slowly, understanding dawned.
A Direwolf reached into his mouth with trembling fingers and gripped one elongated canine. His eyes met his brother's across ten paces of bloody ground.
They nodded.
He pulled.
The tooth came free with a wet snap and a spray of blood. The wolf dropped to his knees, hand pressed to his bleeding gum.
Then he began to change.
All around the battlefield, Beastkin gripped their fangs—canines that had grown with them since birth, that marked them as predator, as warrior, as kin to the Great Beasts.
One by one, they tore them free.
And as the teeth fell to bloody snow, power answered.
***
Commander Theron watched from his horse, face carved from old campaigns and older scars. "What in the hells is that?"
The Commander-General—a man whose name was Gaius, whose reputation was built on never showing surprise—leaned forward slightly in his saddle.
"Magei Kara," he said quietly. "The Fang-Breaking Rite."
"Explain."
"A ritual incantation. They sacrifice half their lifespan in a single moment—compress all that vitality, all that potential, into raw power." Gaius's hand tightened on his reins. "The Beastkin you're about to face will be nine times—no, fifteen times stronger than they were moments ago."
As if to punctuate his words, the first warrior finished transforming.
His body swelled—not grotesquely, but perfectly, as if he'd suddenly become what he was always meant to be. Muscles coiled like steel cables beneath fur that now glowed faintly with inner light. Runic tattoos blazed across his skin—ancient markings that had been invisible before, now burning with borrowed vitality.
His eyes opened.
They were pure white.
He was no longer half-man, half-beast.
He was something between—something that belonged to neither world fully but drew power from both.
Around him, dozens more completed the transformation. Then hundreds.
The battlefield filled with light as runic tattoos flared. The air itself seemed to thicken with released power.
A transformed Bear charged.
The knight who'd been dominating him moments before raised his shield.
The Bear's fist went through the shield, through the armor, through the man's chest. The knight was dead before he hit the ground.
A Direwolf leaped—cleared thirty feet in a single bound—and landed on a mounted mage. The mage's protective ward shattered like glass. The wolf's claws opened him from throat to waist.
The tide was turning.
The imperial forces fell back. Cavalry scattered. Even the monsters hesitated before the sudden surge of predatory fury.
Commander Theron's face went pale. "What do we do?"
Gaius didn't answer immediately. His eyes moved past the battlefield, to where a figure stood in shadow.
Maari.
The traitor Direwolf, still in human form, watching his former kin slaughter the army he'd sold them to.
Gaius's mouth curved slightly. "Is this the trump card you mentioned?"
Maari nodded eagerly. "Yes, Commander. The ritual makes them powerful, but—"
"And the preparations are ready?"
"Yes, sir. Everything is in place."
Gaius raised his sword.
"Mages!"
The chanting began.
Not from the mages on the battlefield—they were retreating, dying, useless now.
This chanting came from behind the imperial lines, from a contingent of robed figures who had remained hidden until this moment.
The air shivered.
From the outer edges of the battlefield, totems rose.
Not clean, carved wood.
These were grotesque things—dead animals lashed together with sinew and wire, bones jutting at unnatural angles, flesh still clinging in rotted patches. And woven through them, barely visible in the pre-dawn light—
Beastkin bones.
Skulls. Femurs. Ribs. Finger bones strung like prayer beads.
The transformed warriors faltered.
Bara was mid-charge when his legs buckled. He crashed to the ground, hands clutching his head as if trying to keep his skull from splitting.
Kari's scream was animalistic—pure pain. She fell to her knees, claws digging into frozen earth.
All around them, the transformed Beastkin collapsed. Some clutched their chests. Others their heads. All of them writhing in agony that had no physical source.
One young wolf, his runic tattoos still blazing, stared at the nearest totem.
His sister's skull hung from wire, jaw slack, empty sockets staring.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
The power that had filled him moments ago turned inward, became poison. The bond of blood that made Beastkin strong—that connected them to ancestors and kin—now became chains.
Commander Theron stared. "Dark arts?"
"No." Gaius's voice was flat, clinical. "A cage for animals."
He turned to Maari. "Well done."
The traitor's face lit up. "Thank you, Commander. About the promise—the gold, and the—"
"Of course. The collar will be placed on the Leopard chieftain within the hour. She's yours to use however you wish. The gold is already prepared."
"Thank you! Thank you, I—"
Ice bloomed.
Not slow. Not gradual. One moment Maari was speaking. The next, he was a statue—frozen solid from feet to hair, his grateful expression preserved in crystalline blue.
The Princess stepped from shadow into firelight.
Her armor was unmarked despite the battle raging around them. Her hair was still perfectly braided. Her eyes were cold as the ice she'd conjured.
"I cannot abide the reek of treachery," she said, voice soft and sharp. "It spoils the air."
Gaius sighed. "Your Highness, he was still useful—"
"He was a dog who bit his own pack." She walked past the frozen traitor without a glance. "Dogs should be put down before they develop a taste for it."
She stopped beside Gaius's horse, surveying the battlefield.
Beastkin warriors writhed on the ground, trapped by pain that came from within. Imperial forces surrounded them, weapons ready. The monsters paced, waiting for the command to feed.
"So," the Princess said. "Where are we?"
"The finale, Your Highness."
She smiled and drew her rapier—thin, elegant, deadly. The blade gleamed silver-white, traced with runes that glowed faintly blue.
"Excellent. Kill them all. But not the three leaders." She pointed at Bara, at Kari, at—
She paused.
"Where's the Direwolf Da'ar?"
Gaius frowned. "Two sources of intense mana are present. There should be three. The third—"
A boulder the size of a wagon crashed into the mage circle.
Bodies flew. The chanting fractured. The totems wavered.
Then lightning fell.
Not natural lightning—focused, precise. Each bolt struck a totem, splitting wood and scattering bone. One after another, six lightning strikes in as many seconds.
The spell holding the Beastkin broke.
Rain began to fall—sudden, heavy, impossible. Within heartbeats, the battlefield was drenched. The fires guttered. Smoke billowed up like summoned ghosts.
From within the smoke, a figure emerged.
Tall. Scarred. Silver hair plastered to his skull by rain.
Runic tattoos blazing across every inch of exposed skin—brighter than any other Beastkin's, old beyond measure, pulsing with power that made the air itself hum.
Lightning crackled between his fingers like living serpents.
Kael.
His eyes—white from the ritual—fixed on the Princess.
In his other hand, he held something.
A head.
Human. Male. Wearing imperial colors.
He let it drop to the mud with a wet thump.
"I knew you'd use underhanded tactics," he said, voice carrying across the sudden silence. "So I waited."
He pointed at the head with one lightning-wreathed finger.
"That was the captain of your strike force. The one meant to slaughter refugees while we fought here. He and his men won't be completing their mission."
Behind him, Bara and Kari rose—slowly, painfully, but rising nonetheless.
The Princess's smile widened.
Not with fear.
With excitement,
She pointed her rapier at Kael, the blade's tip unwavering.
"Finally," she breathed. "Someone interesting."
Her voice rose, carrying to her troops.
"Don't make this boring."
The rain fell harder.
Lightning answered thunder.
And the true battle began.