Rainie’s panicked cry tore through the camp, sharp enough to jolt everyone upright in the sa instant. Victor and Micah were on their feet before the echo faded, chairs scraping back as a black blur sliced across their vision and vanished toward the barracks.
"Enemy!" Micah shouted on instinct.
"It’s Blackie!" Victor corrected a heartbeat later, already moving.
By the ti the figure disappeared inside, Blackfin’s heart had dropped straight into his stomach. His golden revolver was in his hand without him rembering drawing it. Only after Micah’s shout did he snap his head toward Blackie’s seat, now conspicuously empty, and let out a shaky breath. If anything had happened to these guys leader under his roof, their combined fury would turn this entire camp into a smoking crater, and his own guilt made the thought unbearable. He knew exactly where that "fresh ga" had co from. His lieutenant’s hushed report echoed in his mind. They had crossed paths with the Apex Predators, and worse, they had fired first, wiping out an entire Apex patrol without negotiation. It was nothing short of a declaration of war.
The Apex Predators was the second-largest power in the jungle, fielding four to five thousand soldiers. Rumors claid that three of their four leaders were Mutants, with only the boss being a so-called normal human. Blackfin himself was a mutant, though his traits were understated, limited to a pair of eagle-sharp eyes and a single patch of scales on his chest. For a gunslinger, it was more than sufficient. In an age dominated by firearms, enhanced vision alone made him terrifyingly effective, or so he had once believed. Mutants were resilient, yes, but they could not outrun a custom bullet fired from his pistols.
That confidence had cracked the day he t Ethan. Before crossing paths with Mirage, he had believed no mutant alive could outdraw him unless they closed to within three paces. Before his fight with Shadowstrike, no one had even known about the scales hidden beneath his clothes. Being a mutant was never about how many visible changes one possessed. Shadowstrike himself was proof, a second-generation hybrid born of a pangolin mutant father and a hawk mutant mother, inheriting only fragnts of both while remaining mostly human. Hybrid mutants were widely considered a dead end, scorned by humans and dismissed by pure-blooded Energy Users, and that quiet, suffocating contempt was part of what had driven Blackfin to this lawless place.
Blackie had already burst into the barracks, with Micah right behind him and Victor a fraction of a second slower. Blackfin shook off his spiraling thoughts and followed, boots pounding the ground. Fifty ters disappeared in monts, and he reached the doorway alongside Victor, earning a flicker of genuine surprise from him. Blackfin could tell at a glance that Victor was a baseline human, though one shaped by military discipline, and also that he was past his physical pri, mid-thirties with the faintest softness around the waist. Even so, Victor had kept pace. Blackfin’s minor mutations still gave him an edge, but it was slimr than he would have expected.
Inside, Victor found Blackie, Micah, and Rainie clustered tightly around a bed, their bodies blocking his view. He pushed forward and looked down, his eyes widening at once. Ethan’s entire body was convulsing violently, muscles spasming as thick plus of steam poured off his skin like mist from boiling water.
"What’s happening?" Victor demanded, directing the question at Blackie rather than Rainie. Of everyone present, Blackie was the only one who might understand what he was seeing.
Earlier, during the al, Blackie had ntioned surviving his own Heart-Devil Tribulation. As an anomalous mber of the Illusionary Qilin tribe whose abilities were rooted in spellcraft, his soul was naturally strong, and he had explained that the Heart-Devil only manifested once Soul Power reached a certain threshold. If Ethan had been conscious, he might have connected this to the old legends that branded Soul-Wielders as harbingers of misfortune. When he first learned what he was, Celeste had spoken of it often, citing Vaughn Morgan, Director of the Ninth Division and leader of the Originalists, as the most powerful Soul-Wielder alive and one who had supposedly escaped that curse.
The truth was far uglier. Vaughn himself was the greatest misfortune of all, a man whose Heart-Devil had driven him to fratricide, violation, and filicide. The Heart-Devil was the darkest corner of one’s own soul, and resisting it demanded an ironclad will. Yet what Ethan was facing now was not a Heart-Devil at all. Blackie had misread the signs.
Ethan was a regressor, a soul that had looped back upon itself, and what threatened to tear him apart was an Obsession, the unresolved trauma of a previous life. It was the reason behind ancient myths of the Underworld and rituals ant to erase mory before rebirth so the spirit could walk forward unburdened. Ethan had skipped that rcy, carrying his old life’s weight with him, and this was the price.
Victor’s question lingered unanswered as Blackie stood frowning in silence. The steam rising from Ethan shifted from white to a faint, unsettling red, and the heat radiating from his body beca impossible to ignore, forcing Victor, Rainie, and Blackfin to retreat several steps. Ethan’s skin flushed to the color of a boiled lobster, his hair darkening from black to a deep blood-red, while thin wisps of crimson energy seeped from the corners of his tightly shut eyes.
"Blackie," Micah said, swallowing hard, "are you sure this is a Heart-Devil? He looks like he’s being boiled alive."
Before Blackie could answer, there was a sharp pop as a small rupture tore through the water bed beneath Ethan. A hissing sound followed, and the bed began to leak, water surging up around Ethan’s body only to flash into steam the instant it touched his skin.
"Sothing’s wrong," Blackie muttered, narrowing his eyes. "Can’t you feel it? What he’s giving off, it’s the aura of..."
"A Slaughterer. I know," Micah cut in, rolling his eyes and deflating Blackie’s attempt at dramatic buildup. "But explain the heat. You rember the Boss, when his killing intent leaked out it froze the air solid."
Blackie’s face drooped into a petulant frown. This ti he was not following his usual script. The absurdity being unserious at a ti like this almost made him wince. Who in their right mind would joke in a situation like this?
"I don’t know the specifics," he admitted at last, his serious act collapsing. "The Heart-Devil Shackle isn’t reacting, so he should be fine for now. You there." He waved sharply at Blackfin, who hurried closer. "Take us to your icehouse. Now."
As he spoke, Blackie reached down and hauled Ethan upright. Partially subrged in the cool water spilling from the ruined bed, Ethan’s convulsions eased almost imdiately. The searing heat rolling off him dropped to sothing bearable, and the tight, pained lines etched into his forehead slowly smoothed, as if even his body knew it had been pulled back from the brink.
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