The saw screamed past Ren's shoulder, hot metal shaving the air where his rib had been a breath before.
He rolled, dirt spitting into his mouth.
The blade nicked his tunic with a sound like salt on stone.
Breath hammered in his chest; the pendant at his throat flared—a quick, hungry ember against skin.
The cliff's night filled with the smell of burned grain.
"Keep him busy!" a pirate snarled through a rusted mask.
His boots pounded the packed earth.
Ren spat grit, yanked himself up, and met the pirate's next swing with the haft of a hoe.
Wood bit meat; the pirate's armored forearm shuddered.
The man laughed—wet and pleased—like a beast tasting blood.
"Worth a scrap," the pirate muttered, eyes glinting behind glass. "Tiny cliff-dweller with grit."
Ren answered with motion: a feint, a low sweep to displace balance.
The hoe arced, kissed the pirate's knee; the man staggered but steadied, weight like an anchored hull.
"Kira!" someone called from the shattered fence. "Hold the little ones!"
"Ren—left!" Kira's voice came sharp, tinny with panic and iron.
She moved like oil through gears—fast, economical—hand slamming a hook into a post and jerking a child free of falling debris.
The pirate advanced, a grin of missing teeth.
His saw spun, a hungry whisper.
Ren drove his shoulder into a pellet bin, forced the man's path off-center, and the blade grazed his sleeve, dragging threads.
"You think you can stop us with dirt tools?" the pirate taunted, pushing until Ren's ribs burned.
Ren shoved back, knuckles white.
Dirt ground under his boots.
The world narrowed to the ring of the pirate's saw and the heat at his collarbone where the pendant prickled.
The scar along his jaw—old and thin—tugged like a tight wire.
He pressed his teeth together and moved.
A woman screamed as a roof beam splintered.
Heat licked the air, sticky and sharp.
Smoke filled Ren's throat; the taste of salt and metal coated his tongue.
He lunged, swinging the hoe, and connected with the pirate's halberd.
Wood cracked under impact.
The man staggered, one boot slipping in the churned mud.
"Now, push!" Li's voice boomed. "Push them off the grain!"
Ren's shoulder rang with pain where a shield had clipped him; sweat plated his brow.
Muscles that had just woken now screamed for calm.
He forced them to obey.
A gale funneled through the terrace, carrying ash and the reek of burning rope.
Ren's breath came in sharp pulls.
The pendant at his throat flamed—hot like a skillet—then cooled like a tide.
He pressed it beneath his shirt, thumb digging into the edge as if to steady the heat.
"Ren!"
Kira's hand grabbed his sleeve and then her voice dropped: "Don't lose the line—get the family down."
"I'm on it," he gasped.
He moved, ropes and people and smoke sorting themselves into a jagged rhythm.
The pendant thrummed against bone, a tiny drum under skin.
Then an inside sound—no, a voice—rose, low and rough, like wind through a hollow reed:
"BLOOD… DANGER… AWAKE?"
Words not spoken aloud, but pressed into him like a tongue probing a bruise.
The whisper scraped across his instincts.
Ren's jaw worked. He didn't stop.
The whisper came again:
BLOOD… DANGER… AWAKE?
A pirate threw his weight, driving Ren toward the old grain silo.
The silo's side hit his back hard; dust exploded at his shoulders.
Hands fumbled for grip.
The saw slashed an arc across the wooden face, sending splinters like silver rain.
"This one's got fight," the pirate snarled, lunging. "Make him quiet."
Ren rolled with the momentum, elbow catching the pirate's wrist.
Pain flared, hard and honest.
The pendant burned through his shirt, a coal under skin.
The voice in his head swelled into a tide:
BLOOD… DANGER… AWAKE?
Heat unfurled from his chest like a living thing—blinding, raw.
Not a beam. Not a bolt.
A force that pushed outward from his sternum in a hot, clenched wave.
Ren didn't think; every muscle obeyed an instinct older than plan.
He slammed his forearm up into the pirate's saw arm as the blade came down.
The saw met something that answered as if with bone.
The blade screamed once, then folded—metal curving and snapping with a sound like a struck bell.
The pirate barked, surprise ripping through his throat.
He staggered back, his saw a useless, twisted thing in his hand.
Ren's arm trembled.
Skin where the saw hit didn't split.
Pale, irregular plates—scalelike—glimmered for a blink across his forearm, then softened into ordinary skin like tide smearing light.
Heat radiated down his arm; a raw throb followed, as if cold had been burned into muscle.
"What…?" the pirate rasped, fingers fumbling at the broken saw. "What are you?"
The whisper retreated into Ren, small and satisfied.
BLOOD… DANGER… AWAKE? folded like a map and slid away.
Silence snapped the terrace into sharper focus.
Villagers stared wide-eyed.
A child pointed at Ren's arm, a line of mud down his cheek.
Kira's breath hitched; her hand went to the little hammer at her belt.
"You look at that!" one man whispered, too loud. "Scales—did you see?"
Ren drew in air heavy with smoke and salt.
The cost of that wave uncoiled in his limbs: his heart cavorted with a fierce ache, a hollowing that made his knees less steady.
Sweat stuck his shirt to his back; his fingers shook around the hoe as if they'd been dipped in cold water.
Each breath tasted like effort.
"Stay back!" a pirate snapped, pushing forward despite the broken saw.
His voice trembled with greed and a new layer of fear.
Kira's eyes locked on Ren.
For half a beat she looked afraid and then furious.
"What did you do?" she demanded, half accusation, half plea.
"Something hit back," Ren managed, voice rough.
The syllables scraped his throat.
"Good." Kira's grin was too sharp. "Then use it to clear a path. Don't show off—get them off the terrace."
Ren drove himself forward, the ache across his ribs flaring where the pirate had struck earlier.
Hands slick with mud, he looped a rope, heaved, shoved.
The villagers obeyed the opening like prey taking a gap in a net.
One pirate, younger and thinner, lunged at Kira as she shoved a child through a gap.
Ren moved, but the world trimmed into knife-edges: vision narrowed, sounds flattened.
The pendant at his heart thudded; his left forearm no longer felt like his.
The pirates regrouped with snarl and malice, knives flashing.
Li's shout braided with Kira's barked orders.
The terrace became a machine with too many hands—some pulling, some dragging, some striking.
Wood cracked, jars shattered, the smell of fried fog-fish and burnt rope mingled into a heavy, acrid stew.
Ren pushed off a fallen post and sprinted, each step hammering the dull pain into a steady drum.
Splinters grated his palms.
A pirate with a gas-mask and a serrated belt cut across his path, eyes cold and businesslike.
"Don't let them take her!" someone yelled.
Kira fought beside a heap of sacks, hair stuck to her temple with sweat.
She parried a hook, spat dirt into a pirate's face, and kicked a man into a broken wheel.
For an instant she smiled—a cracked thing of defiance.
That smile broke into a choke as two pirates cut off her route.
One shoved her against a post; the other leveled a hooked weapon.
The hook glinted, cruel and patient.
Ren's breath caught like someone had folded the air in half.
The world tightened until the only things that mattered were the pendant, the hook, the thin space between.
A sharp scream tore from Kira.
She was cornered, the hooked weapon pointed straight at her face.