The shadows between the trees warped and stretched toward us. My head pounded with a dull throb that made my vision blur every few seconds. I gripped the wooden shaft of the halberd until my knuckles ached, my boots sinking slightly into the damp earth.

Around me, the girls shifted into a defensive circle without being told. It was a practiced movement that made my chest tighten for a moment. They knew exactly where to stand when things went bad.

"They are here for me," I said. My voice sounded like I had swallowed a handful of dry sand. I could feel a heavy, greasy pull in my gut that synced perfectly with the movement in the trees.

"Do not be stupid," Celeste said. She stood slightly in front of me, heat haze shimmering off her skin. "We are all together. We are all targets."

"No," Astra whispered. Her fingers rested lightly against my sleeve. She looked like she was staring at a ghost. "Adrian is right. They are being drawn to him."

The first creature stepped out from behind a massive oak tree. It might have been a mountain lion once. Now its front legs were too long, ending in disjointed claws that scraped loudly against the stones.

Silver light pulsed under its skin in jagged veins. It lacked eyes entirely. Instead, two pits of swirling black mist leaked down its ruined face.

Two more followed it, twitching and spasming with every awkward step. They made a sound like a wet cloth tearing in half. Then the first creature lunged directly at us.

"Stay back!" Celeste shouted. She threw a concentrated burst of flame. The creature tore straight through the fire, smelling heavily of burnt hair, and kept coming for my throat.

I ignored the exhaustion in my legs and stepped forward. The halberd felt heavy and awkward in my hands. When the steel connected with the creature’s shoulder, a violent jolt of electricity shot up my arms.

My mana erupted. The dark energy I normally used had developed sharp silver edges. The moment it touched the beast, the mana flared white and hissed loudly.

It dissolved the flesh on contact, leaving a smoking hole in the creature’s chest. The beast hit the ground and rolled. It made that horrible tearing sound again as it tried to force its broken legs to stand.

[ WARNING: CORE INSTABILITY INCREASING ]

[ DRACONIC LEAKAGE: CRITICAL LEVELS ]

I ignored the pink screen hovering in my vision. My brain felt like it was rattling inside my skull, but I refused to just stand there. If this mess was connected to me then I was not gonna let the girls handle it alone.

"Adrian, stop!" Celeste called out. She moved to intercept a twitching wolf-thing trying to flank me. "You can barely stand right now!"

"I am fine," I lied. I swung the halberd in a wide arc. The weapon left a shimmering trail of distorted silver mana floating in the cold air behind it.

The enemy reacted with a panicked retreat. The creature recoiled hard the moment my mana touched it, like instinct was screaming at it to get away. It knew my energy was the same stuff rotting its insides, only far more violent.

The fight became a fast blur of physical noise. Celeste kept forcing the creatures back with short controlled bursts of fire, never wasting movement. She was using them to push the creatures back toward the center of the clearing.

Reika was a blur on the edges of the fight. She intercepted a smaller fox-like corruption mid-air. She drove her blade through its neck and used a pulse of ice to shatter its head into frozen chunks.

Valka stepped in whenever one of the larger things got too close to my side. She caught a cat-creature mid-leap and slammed it heavily into the dirt. The sound made my own ribs ache in sympathy.

Astra stayed in the middle with me. She used tiny, needle-thin beams of silver light. Every time she fired, a creature stopped dead in its tracks and dissolved quietly into ash.

The last of the creatures fell with a wet thud against the stones. As the life left it, the flesh began to bubble rapidly. It turned into a thick black mist that evaporated upward, smelling strongly like old copper.

"Do not touch it," Astra warned. She stepped around a puddle of dissolving sludge. "The corruption is incomplete. It is raw mana trying to find a shape."

She looked at me with a heavy, ancient expression. "It is attempting to become something capable of surviving your presence."

I leaned heavily on my halberd, my chest heaving with every breath. Sweat stung my eyes. My skin felt tight and uncomfortably hot from the exertion.

I walked over to the edge of the spring water to wash my face. The water felt clear and freezing against my hands. I looked down at my reflection and froze completely.

My face looked the same, but my eyes weren’t the same as I remembered. Around the dark circles of my pupils, thin rings of silver glowed faintly. They shifted and pulsed slightly as I watched them.

"Oh, that is just great," I muttered. I rubbed my eyes hard. The rings stayed exactly where they were.

Celeste came over and looked over my shoulder into the water. She placed a warm hand on the back of my neck to ground me. "It is the instability," she said softly.

"Dragon eyes do not appear accidentally," Astra said from behind us. She crossed her arms tightly. "You are becoming a vessel, Adrian. Whether you want to be or not."

Reika trotted over, tilting her head with a curious expression. She reached out and poked my cheek playfully. "They look shiny. Can you see better now?"

"Reika, not now," I said, rubbing the spot she poked. "We have to move," Valka said, cutting through the moment. "The forest is too quiet. Adrian is a beacon."

She was right. The oppressive weight was starting to lift, but it left behind a hollow silence. We gathered our things and started walking back toward the deeper parts of the trail.

I kept the halberd in my hand, using it like a walking cane. The world around me kept reacting to my mana like it was something invasive.

We had been walking for about twenty minutes when Reika suddenly stopped.

Her ears went straight up. She lowered her center of gravity and bared her teeth at the shadows. "Something is there," she whispered.

I stopped and gripped my weapon tightly. The air in the woods was completely still.

"Is it another manifestation?" I asked, trying to find my mana. "No," Reika said. Her voice was tight. "It is not a monster. It is watching us."

We all turned as one. I squinted through the thick fog rolling between the trunks. At first, there was nothing to see. Then I saw a massive silhouette shift between two ancient trees.

It was at least nine feet tall. It moved with a slow, terrifyingly controlled grace. It just stood there in the shadows, a heavy presence looking down at us.

Astra’s hand found my arm. Her nails dug deeply into my skin. She looked at the silhouette with pure recognition.

"No," she whispered. The silhouette stepped an inch closer. It knew exactly what it was doing.

[ ALERT: HIGH-LEVEL ENTITY DETECTED ]

[ CLASSIFICATION: PREDATORY ]

[ STATUS: EVALUATING TARGETS ]