Ezra woke with his body throbbing.

  His eyes snapped open to darkness cut by thin shafts of starlight and the faint orange glow of the camp below. The forest canopy made a black mesh above him. His sensory net—the thin film of mana he’d laid over his skin before sleeping—buzzed like a kicked hornet’s nest.

  He froze.

  Two shapes circled above his branch.

  Hawks. Big ones. Each pass brought them closer, their silhouettes slicing across scraps of sky. Even half-asleep, he recognized the same breed as the one that had tried to haul him off.

  His internal check came automatically.

  Mana reserves are around half full. Better than I deserve after the night I’ve had.

  He was still piecing together a plan—stones, angles, whether he could reach the circle in one jump if he timed it right—when voices rose from below.

  “Up,” Phobos said. “Something’s wrong.”

  The tone stayed flat, but something under it made Ezra’s neck prickle.

  The sleeping knights jolted awake as if yanked from their dreams. Armor clinked. Someone cursed under their breath.

  “What is it?” Deimos replied.

  “The felbeasts,” came the answer. “They’re surrounding us.”

  Ezra kept his eyes up. A shift in weight would catch the hawks’ attention. He held his gaze on the birds and diverted mana to his ears, sharpening the sounds from the circle.

  “This area is usually quiet at night,” Deimos continued. “A few wanderers at most. Now…” He hesitated—rare, for someone who spoke with certainty. “Now they’re everywhere.”

  “Are they attacking?” Rycharde asked, voice rough and awake.

  “No,” Deimos said. “That’s what’s wrong. They aren’t tearing into each other. They’re… waiting. Watching us. This has never happened before.”

  “Aye,” Phobos said, low. “They should be killing each other. This ward’s always drawn the storm away, not pulled it in.”

  Ezra’s mind snapped back to the rabbit, the bears, the way his own thoughts had been hijacked.

  So I wasn’t imagining it.

  Whatever saturated the forest at night, it came with direction.

  “What do we do?” Rycharde asked.

  “We break out before they decide to test the ward,” Deimos said. “We dash for Anticourt. I don’t like the feeling of this.”

  A beat of silence.

  “Understood,” Rycharde said. “We’ll ready the horses.”

  He barked low orders. The knights moved quickly—rolling bedrolls, checking tack, calming restless steeds that scented predators beyond the invisible line.

  Ezra stayed still.

  The two hawks circled tighter, eyes catching faint light. Each dip of a wing tightened his muscles.

  So the bloodlust hits everything when night falls, he thought, gaze locked skyward. But it hits unevenly. The beasts are organized. The knights aren’t snarling at each other. The Demon Hunters have traveled here at night before.

  He swallowed.

  So what changed? Age? Heritage? Some threshold in mana control?

  His heart sped up.

  If they leave without me, I don’t get out, he realized. I either turn feral or get torn apart. I need them to know I’m here. I have to show myself and explain before they ride—

  The hawks attacked.

  They folded their wings and dropped, two streaks of dark cutting through branches.

  Ezra moved on instinct.

  He threw himself along the branch as claws slashed through the space where his head had been. One hawk tore past, shredding bark. The other adjusted mid-dive and came around for another pass.

  As the second hawk swept by, he kicked off the branch and grabbed.

  His hands closed on feathers and bone. The hawk shrieked and banked wild. Ezra swung with it and drove his dagger down—once, twice—into the wing joint.

  The cry turned ragged. Its left wing buckled.

  They fell together.

  The ground rushed up.

  Ezra rode the dying hawk for a few breathless seconds, teeth clenched, then shoved off at the last moment, turning a killing drop into a bruising tumble. He and the bird hit the forest floor in a heap roughly thirty meters outside the circle.

  Bloodlust hit like a wall.

  It poured in from every direction, thick and oily, drowning his earlier clarity. Each heartbeat felt like a drum demanding violence. The urge to finish the crippled hawk—tear, rip, stab—rose hard enough to make his fingers twitch.

  “This is bad,” he hissed. “I have to get back.”

  He hauled himself upright and forced his eyes off the hawk’s twitching body.

  That was when he saw them.

  Felbeasts. Dozens. Maybe more.

  Wolves the size of small horses padded between trees. Felboars, bristling and scarred, snorted and pawed the ground. Felbears loomed as hulking silhouettes. Felcougars moved along low branches, tails lashing.

  They ringed the ward-circle in a loose, shifting wall.

  They stood. They watched. They waited.

  This isn’t random, Ezra thought, forcing his mind to work past the pounding in his blood. This is formation.

  Beyond the ring, half veiled by trunks and shadow, something moved.

  For an instant, he saw it: a tall, human-shaped silhouette standing very still. The air around it warped like heat haze, blurring its edges. Watching.

  The bloodlust surged and ripped the thought away.

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  He turned toward the circle.

  “Is that—” Rycharde squinted through his visor. “Is that a toddler stabbing a boar?” He wanted to rub his eyes, to make sure his helm hadn’t fogged and his brain hadn’t started inventing nonsense.

  Evered’s mace came down on a felboar’s skull with a wet crunch. He watched the body stop twitching before lifting his chin to follow Rycharde’s stare.

  “Impossible,” he said, clipped. Then, as the small figure ducked under a snapping jaw and drove steel into flesh again: “…What in the hells.”

  Dynham, further down the line, let out a short laugh that held more disbelief than humor. “Reckon the Grove’s gone and started throwin’ babes at boars. That’s new.”

  “Eyes front,” Oswyn said at once—calm, corrective. His polearm angled a hair, closing a gap before it opened. “We talk after we live.”

  The outer line of felwolves moved.

  A coordinated flow inward, bodies slipping between trunks until every gap filled—fur, teeth, low intent eyes. The ward-circle tightened enough that the horses screamed and stamped as the wall closed.

  “This isn’t good,” Deimos said. His whip was already in hand. His voice stayed level. “They’ve sealed every line of retreat.”

  Phobos cut in. “We thin them. Stay tight. Protect the mounts. Hold the line.”

  Rycharde’s mind snapped into constraints. No retreat. Horses panicking. The circle boundary holding—barely.

  “Hold spacing,” he called, short and hard. “Don’t bunch. Don’t chase.”

  Deimos pointed without looking. “Galwell—middle. Everyone else—steel on the line. Conserve mana. We don’t know how long this lasts.”

  “Aye,” Galwell said, already moving. He slid in behind the horses, taking the center of the ring where he could see over heaving necks. His bow was in his hand for half a heartbeat—then he judged the crush.

  “Too close for feathers,” he muttered, and slung it. His short spear came up instead, point steady, eyes unnaturally sharp as he tracked gaps between bodies.

  The first wave hit.

  Felwolves—twice the size of their mundane cousins—darted in short, snapping bursts, testing the boundary with their bodies and the men with their nerve. The ward didn’t stop flesh; it stopped nerve. The boldest crossed it with a shudder, hackles rising as if they’d pushed through cold water.

  Rycharde met the first one like he’d been waiting.

  He kept the swing tight. He stepped in, set his weight, and brought the hammer up in a compact arc.

  Impact.

  The wolf’s skull ceased to be a skull. Its body cartwheeled back into its packmates, scattering them in a spray of blood and torn fur.

  Rycharde recovered as cleanly as he’d struck, hammer back to guard before the next threat finished registering.

  Evered moved beside him with brutal economy, doctrine made flesh. Mace up. Mace down. Every blow placed to end—temple, jaw hinge, spine. When a wolf tried to slip past the hammer’s shadow, Evered pivoted half a step and crushed it on the line.

  “Lane!” he snapped once—reminder, not plea.

  Oswyn answered without words. His polearm shot into the gap, denying space. He hooked a wolf mid-leap and shoved it back across the ward-line, buying room like coin.

  “Two steps right,” Oswyn barked. “Give him room to swing.”

  Dynham’s blade flashed on the far edge of the ring, working where bodies met. He didn’t hold a perfect line; he kept it from breaking. When a felcougar dropped from a low branch, he met it with a short, vicious cut that opened its throat and sent it tumbling under hooves.

  “Don’t drift!” he bellowed. “Hold—hold—don’t you drift!”

  Galwell’s spear became a needle in the crush. It darted through fur and teeth, punctured eyes when wolves lunged too high, slid under jaws to punch through soft throat. He aimed for stops, not bodies.

  “Left—high!” he called once. The warning came a heartbeat before the leap. Evered’s mace was already there when the wolf arrived, as if Galwell had thrown the strike.

  On the other side of the circle, Deimos and Phobos fought back-to-back, a calm center in the storm.

  Two felcougars launched at them from opposite sides. They stepped aside together, letting the cats collide in midair in a tangle of claws. Deimos’s whip snapped—one savage loop around both throroats—and yanked.

  As the beasts choked and thrashed, Phobos slid in, efficient and merciless. Daggers flashed—two quick slits. Two bodies dropped.

  A felbear thundered into the gap their movement opened, claws raking where Deimos had stood.

  Deimos rolled under the swing and came up outside the arc with practiced smoothness. He skipped the bear’s bulk and cut what mattered, blade biting deep into the hamstring.

  The bear roared and spun, heavy and furious, throat open for the next strike.

  Inside the ward-circle, noise thickened—roars, snarls, steel on bone, men calling commands that sounded like prayer. Blood spattered armor and grass. The ground slicked under hoof and boot.

  Through it all, Rycharde kept his voice steady.

  “Hold the line,” he said. “Inches. Not yards!.”

  Ezra ran.

  He’d barely shaken the hawk off his arm before a felboar lunged from the side. He sidestepped on instinct, drove his dagger into its shoulder as it passed, and yanked free as it stumbled.

  The wound slowed it, but failed to stop it.

  He sprinted toward the firelight, breath ragged, shoving mana into his legs until his muscles buzzed.

  Every step drew eyes.

  Felbeasts that had been focused on the circle turned their heads as he passed. Their gaze locked onto him, and something in them named him prey. One by one, then in small packs, they peeled away from the siege and fell in behind him.

  By the time he reached twenty meters from the circle, ten beasts rode his heels—wolves, a boar, something cat-like with too many teeth.

  A wolf lunged from his right, jaws snapping for his thigh.

  He threw himself forward in a reckless dive, felt teeth close on air behind his boot, hit the ground hard, rolled, and staggered up without slowing.

  A second wolf darted in from the left. He twisted away, and the movement bled speed.

  A felbear stepped into his path.

  Ezra skidded, nearly tripping.

  His lungs burned. His legs screamed. Every thought balanced on a knife-edge between run and turn and rip and tear until everything is quiet.

  He felt the mana drain now—not just reinforcing his body, but holding his mind in place. Resisting the rage cost power.

  On the line, Evered crushed another felboar’s skull and stole a glance.

  “Is that—” Evered started. “A child running toward us? Great Omniscience. It is. I thought my mind was playing tricks.”

  Rycharde turned in time to see a small cloaked figure dart between beasts, dagger flashing.

  He saw the hair. The eyes. The size.

  His stomach dropped.

  “That’s Lord Ezra!” he shouted.

  A felboar slammed into his side as he looked. The impact staggered him, armor ringing. He grunted, grabbed the boar by the tusks, and heaved, hurling it into a knot of wolves.

  He leveled his hammer toward Ezra.

  “Oswyn! Dynham!” he shouted. “Cover him!”

  Oswyn and Dynham broke from their fights in the same instant, trusting the line to close behind them. Rycharde and Evered stepped up, weapons blurring as they filled the gap.

  Two felbears lumbered into Oswyn and Dynham’s path.

  The knights’ first strikes met raised paws instead of soft flesh. Steel bit into thick bone and fur, deep enough to draw blood, shallow enough to leave the bears moving. The bears focused on blocking, swiping only to keep the knights at bay.

  Oswyn growled.

  Ezra’s small figure vanished behind moving fur and muscle, his path narrowing with each heartbeat.

  A stupid idea bloomed.

  Oswyn committed anyway.

  He dropped his center of gravity and sprinted straight at his bear, planting his polearm in the ground at the last possible second. He vaulted, using the spear as a lever.

  The bear reared and swiped. The claw fell short as Oswyn sailed over its head.

  For a gorgeous, fleeting moment, it worked.

  Then a felboar launched upward like a battering ram and crashed into Oswyn’s chest midair.

  The hit knocked the breath from him and twisted his trajectory. He flew past Ezra and slammed into the ground, rolling through dirt and leaves, far from where he’d meant to land.

  He punched a fist into the earth, then scrambled up, already turning back.

  “Damn it,” Ezra hissed.

  He saw the circle now. He could almost taste it—the ward’s edge like a cool line against his overheated senses, sanity on the other side.

  Ten meters.

  Seven.

  Five.

  AMP stuttered in his vision.

  It tried to give him paths—thin golden lines through moving bodies, brief windows of time—but each time he locked onto one, another beast filled the gap. The projections fuzzed, vectors dissolving into static as his brain lost the race.

  The hawks stayed in play.

  Whenever he glanced up toward a branch, dark shapes swept low overhead, talons raking at limbs. They denied him even a heartbeat of clear air.

  The encirclement tightened.

  Wolves flanked him. The wounded boar lumbered behind, snorting and snapping. A felbear shifted into place ahead, filling his forward view.

  He backed until his shoulders hit a tree.

  “Great,” he said aloud, voice thin. “Perfect.”

  The bloodlust climbed his spine, urging him to stop thinking and start cutting until nothing moved.

  He fought it. Each second of resistance burned mana he couldn’t spare.

  If I push through, I die, he thought. If I stay, I die slower.

  For the first time since he’d woken, a cold, small thought surfaced.

  Am I going to die here?

  He tightened his grip on the dagger until his knuckles ached.

  “…Fine,” he muttered. “If I’m going out, it won’t be with my back against a tree.”

  He forced his foot forward.

  A shadow moved at the edge of his vision.

  He missed the bear’s swipe.

  A massive paw blurred in from the right, claws extended, aimed at his head. AMP flashed a red warning and a useless suggestion—duck—before his body locked, exhausted and slow.

  He flinched, eyes squeezing shut.

  The impact failed to arrive.

  Something slammed into the bear from the side with the sound of a battering ram meeting a wall. The paw snapped away, claws ripping through air above Ezra’s head.

  Ezra staggered, blinked, and stared up at a horse.

  A knight sat astride it, plate catching firelight from the circle. His lance stayed extended from the charge, tip buried deep in the felbear’s flank. His helm’s visor looked like an open-mouthed fish, ridged and unfamiliar, but the voice behind it stayed the same.

  “Lord Ezra. Let’s go home.”

  Evan had arrived.