The thought tasted bitter on my tongue, sharp and tallic, like swallowing rust. It lodged itself in my throat and refused to leave, making my stomach twist with guilt even as it ford.
How could I even think sothing like that?
I felt sick for allowing the idea to take root in my mind. Ashriel..... distant, infuriating, untouchable Ashriel.... dying here, in this cursed stretch of forest? The re possibility carved sothing raw and aching inside my chest. And the worst part was that it hurt more than it should have. Far more.
Before I could spiral any deeper, Elion moved.
He stepped in front of smoothly, not with dramatic flair or aggressive posturing, but with an instinctive, fluid grace. As if his body had made the decision long before his mind caught up. As if shielding was the most natural thing in the world.
My eyes barely registered his presence.
Because beyond the line of his shoulder, the Ape lood.
And gods... it was not rely big.
It was wrong.
Horribly, unnaturally wrong.
Ten feet of corrupted, primordial mass hunched forward like a creature that had long forgotten how to stand upright on two legs. All that brutal weight had been funneled into its massive, knuckle-walking fra, turning it into sothing ancient and terrifying. Its thick gray hide resembled hardened, petrified bark, scarred, cracked, and layered like ancient stone that had sohow learned how to breathe and move with malicious intent.
Beneath that hide, thick ropes of muscle shifted and coiled like living pressure, ready to explode into violence at any second. Its arms were grotesquely elongated, far too long and heavy for any natural creature, dragging along the ground with deceptive laziness before snapping forward with terrifying speed and control.
At the end of those monstrous arms were not hands, but weapons cunningly disguised as such. Each finger terminated in a wicked, curved claw that slid out with a faint, chilling tallic scrape, like steel being drawn from deep within bone. When fully extended, they glead darkly, looking less like animal talons and more like spears forged for the sole purpose of hunting and tearing apart anything foolish enough to cross its path.
Its face was sohow even worse.
A brutally sloping skull gave it a primitive, almost prehistoric look. Small, sunken red eyes burned like dying embers buried deep in its skull, eyes that didn’t blaze with bright fury, but smoldered with a slow, patient, endless hatred. They promised pain that would last.
And its mouth...
Gods, its mouth was a nightmare of jagged, uneven yellow tusks, stained with old blood and worse things, stretching impossibly wide whenever it exhaled a hot, rancid breath. The stench that rolled off the creature was overwhelming... thick, cloying, a nauseating mixture of old blood, wet rotting earth, and sothing far more primal. Like a predator that had been feeding endlessly for decades without ever feeling satisfied.
My thoughts kept spiraling uncontrollably as I stared, frozen in place.
I was never like this before.
I had never been the kind of person who constantly danced with thoughts of death and violence. But Altheris and Morvalis was changing . Slowly. Quietly. Insidiously. Like an invisible hand rewriting the very definition of what I considered normal, what I considered safe, what I considered bearable.
And the absolute worst part, the part that made my chest constrict with sharp, unexpected pain, was that the thought of Ashriel dying here...
It hurt.
Not just fear. Not cold logic or detached concern.
Real pain.
Sharp and imdiate, blooming hot behind my ribs in a place I hadn’t known existed until this mont. A tender, vulnerable spot I had no na for and no defense against.
Behind Elion, the others were still hesitating.
Thorne had taken half a step forward, his body tense with readiness. Ivy stood rigid beside him, eyes narrowed in calculation. But neither of them fully committed. They were asuring, weighing, debating in silence whether throwing themselves into this fight alongside Ashriel was worth the very real risk of dying with him.
That hesitation felt dangerous. Deadly, even.
Because Ashriel was losing.
He fought with nothing but a small knife... too small, too fragile, too painfully human against a monster of this scale. It looked almost laughably inadequate, like bringing a needle to a war. Every strike he landed was precise and controlled, yet each one forced him deeper into danger rather than pulling him away from it. There was strain etched into every line of his body now, exhaustion bleeding through his usually flawless movents.
And if he shifted, if he gave in and transford into his wolf form here in the middle of this fight..... sothing deep in my gut told it still wouldn’t end well. Not against this thing.
The Claw Ape swung again.
The ground trembled violently beneath the force of its blow.
Ashriel barely avoided it, rolling at the last possible second. Barely.
Sothing inside snapped.
Moon knows how long he had been fighting this....
Before rational thought could catch up, I dropped low, my fingers closing around the hilt of one of my twin blades. The tal felt cold and familiar against my palm.
"Nyx....!" Elion started, alarm flashing in his voice.
"Ashriel!" I shouted instead, my voice cutting through the chaos.
His head snapped toward for the briefest fraction of a second.
That was all I needed.
I threw the blade with everything I had.
Clean. Direct. No hesitation.
It spun through the air in a perfect arc...
And he caught it mid-motion, as if he had been expecting it all along.
Everything changed in that single heartbeat.
His posture shifted. Subtly. Not dramatically enough for the others to notice, but I saw it clearly. Sothing dark and dangerous clicked into place behind his eyes. The desperate struggle for survival suddenly transford into sothing far more lethal.
Intent.
The others finally moved.
Thorne first, charging forward with grim determination. Then Ivy, swift and silent. Then Elion, who cast one last worried glance back at before sprinting into the fray.
"Just stay here!" Elion called over his shoulder as he ran past. "You don’t have to prove anything!"
But I barely heard him.
I was still standing there, rooted to the spot like a coward, watching the battle unfold as if I were rely a spectator and not part of this nightmare.
Maybe he had said it to comfort . To soften the ugly truth I already knew in my bones.
But the truth sat heavy in my chest like a cold stone:
I was a coward.
And I hated myself for knowing it so clearly.
I took one trembling step forward.
Then another.
Then stopped again, my fingers clenching and unclenching at my sides.
I didn’t want to be the kind of person who simply watched while others fought for their lives. I didn’t want to be useless. I didn’t...
"Throw your blade."
The voice cut through the storm of my thoughts.... calm, clear, and unnervingly certain.
It wasn’t Elion’s voice.
It wasn’t Thorne’s.
It wasn’t Ivy’s.
It ca from nowhere and everywhere at once, smooth and authoritative, as if the forest itself had whispered the command directly into my mind.
"Throw it at the crook of its neck. Now."
My body moved before my mind could protest or overthink.
Like sothing inside had simply been waiting for permission.
I grabbed my second blade, drew my arm back, and threw.
Perfect angle.
Perfect timing.
The blade whistled through the air and struck true, sinking deep into the vulnerable junction where the Claw Ape’s thick neck t its powerful shoulder.
The creature roared.
Not just in pain, but in raw, disoriented fury.
Its massive body staggered, movents suddenly jerky and uncoordinated as confusion rippled through it.
For one brief, impossible second, the entire forest seed to hold its breath.
And then everything dissolved into pure chaos.
And it seems, instead of helping, I had only succeeded in creating far more problems for everyone.
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