The scouts will find her eventually. The gods will send bigger monsters. She’ll die the way everyone dies when they attract divine attention—messy, painful, alone.
The blood scent intensifies. More of it now. Too much.
My feet turn toward the border before conscious decision catches up.
Need to know what the scouts are doing differently. Whether their new patterns pose a threat to my actual territory. Whether this witch might draw attention I’d rather avoid.
That’s the reason.
The trail leadsthrough broken terrain—hills and ridges that mark the transition between my territory and the wastelands beyond. The ground is less stable here, more prone to rockslides and unexpected drops. Natural chokepoints that hunters use to corner prey.
The blood scent grows stronger with every mile.
I move faster.
The magic signature stutters ahead of me—bright, then dim, then bright again. Using power in short bursts. Conserving. Whoever this witch is, she understands her limits.
She’s still losing.
The fire curved around her without conscious direction on my part.
Interesting.
The aftermath hangsin the air—scout ash drifting gray, sulfur and char mixing into an acrid haze. The ones that escaped are already reporting. I feel their absence like negative space, the information they’re carrying back to whatever controls them.
The witch is on her knees in front of me.
I don’t point out that her magic nearly killed her anchoring a single scout. Don’t mention that whatever reserves she has left won’t survive another attack. Don’t acknowledge the obvious value of what she’s offering.
I turn and walk toward my territory.
She follows.
The bloodscent clings to her—copper and salt and that underlying note of Anchor magic. My senses track her presence without permission, noting details I have no reason to care about. The rhythm of her breathing. The pattern of her footsteps. The exact distance between us at any given moment.
Night falls in slow stages—orange bleeding to red bleeding to purple bleeding to black. The stars emerge cold and distant overhead. The temperature drops everywhere except my territory.
She must feel the gradual increase in temperature as we move deeper into my domain. The shift from cold wasteland to fire-baked earth.
She doesn’t comment.
Smart.
The path winds between ancient burn scars and newer ones.
The ash of burned interlopers. The silence of a place where only one predator is permitted to exist.
She keeps walking.
Her footsteps are quieter than mine—deliberate placement, weight distribution calculated to minimize sound. Hunter’s instincts, even in a body that’s clearly not built for hunting.
FOUR
KASTER
The cave offers barely enough space for two bodies with distance between them.
She settles against the far wall without prompting—putting maximum separation between us in the limited space. Smart. Also pointless. If I wanted her dead, distance wouldn’t save her.
