"How about I become your sword?"

I wasn't joking.

Annalise raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

I unsheathed my blade and, without missing a beat, slid it into a position where it hovered just behind me like a shadow. "I'll be your blade. You throw me. I'll kill things."

Before she could respond, I launched myself toward her. One of the wolves lunged at me, but I was already there. My body was caught in her strings.

As soon as I was tangled, she pulled me toward one of the remaining wolves, and I reacted instinctively, spinning midair, and slicing its head off with a clean swing of my sword.

In the middle of the motion, I felt Annalise's strings wrap tighter around me, guiding my every movement.

"Don't actually get cocky," she hissed, voice strained as she pulled me again, launching me at another wolf that was trying to flank her. I sliced it in half with one clean motion, but we didn't stop there.

With a little more finesse, Annalise continued to control my movements like a marionette, tossing me at another wolf, and another.

We were a deadly dance. A man, and his strings. The wolves? Completely outmatched.

And then came Nora.

Nora had clearly been playing for the first few moments, as she always did, enjoying the chaos and destruction her power brought. But she was done wasting time now.

With a devilish grin, she held out her hand, and a massive ball of silver and orange light erupted from her palm, the size of a small boulder.

She hurled it at one of the remaining wolves with such force that the creature never saw it coming. It was blasted off its feet, sent flying through the air in a puff of fur and dust.

Before the other wolves could even react, she held out her other hand, summoning something far worse.

A literal meteor.

"Okay," I muttered under my breath, just before the massive chunk of rock collided with two of the wolves. The ground beneath us shook as if the entire cavern was trying to swallow us. The wolves were dead before they even had time to realize they were being crushed by a celestial rock.

I wasn't done watching her go full beast mode just yet.

Nora stepped forward with a gleam in her eye, summoning an eerie glow that pulsed with a kind of radiant destruction. She pointed at the last group of wolves, and they charged her, desperate for a fight they had no chance of winning.

She didn't even flinch.

With a grin, she simply waved her hand like she was brushing away dust. Ice, fire, starlight, and moonlight formed in a series of violent blasts, each one ripping into the remaining wolves, striking vital spots in their bodies with pinpoint precision.

Nora's grin widened with every kill until she was the last one standing, her powers crackling with intensity, every wolf she killed just adding fuel to her madness.

As the last one fell, I finally stepped forward and looked at my teammates.

"Well," I said, breaking the silence with a wink. "That was easy."

Kent was wiping his bloody face with a grin. "Can we not make a habit of this, Seb?"

Annalise, still looking annoyed but slightly out of breath, nodded. "Yeah, we need more strategies than whatever that was."

Nora was still glowing, a mad scientist's grin plastered across her face as she wiped some wolf blood off her hand. "More fun next time. No complaints here."

I just shrugged, glancing around at the wreckage.

"We survived, didn't we?" I said, smiling smugly. "Job's done. Just another day at work for us. You guys are welcome."

It was a good day.

Even if it was kind of… easy.

---

We'd been walking for hours.

The kind where your legs hurt, your soul hurts, and you seriously consider becoming a tree just to stop moving.

Kent and Nora were arguing again.

Obviously.

This time it wasn't the chicken-or-egg debate.

No.

That would've been too logical for the pair of dumbasses.

Today's masterpiece: "Is water wet… or does it just make other things wet?"

Truly, the intellectual titans of our generation.

Kent insisted water was wet because "it touches itself."

How could he even say that out loud without cringing? Does he even hear himself!? He could have phrased that sentence a hundred times better by just replacing a few words, at least give some context, dude.

Nora, being the virgin princess she was, completely disregarded that part and countered, saying that was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard and also physically impossible, which Kent argued proved his point.

Meanwhile, Annalise and I were leading the group.

Because someone had to have a working brain cell.

She was talking about actual important stuff.

Like whether we should attack the unknown group we were heading toward…Or try to talk to them like the "noble beings we are."

Her words.

Not mine.

"I mean," she said, casually twirling a strand of string between her fingers, "communication is key. We should appear diplomatic. Civil. Mature."

Behind us, Nora had tried to drown Kent in a river they passed three minutes ago...just to prove a point.

"Yeah," I said. "Real paragons of maturity."

Annalise giggled that fake laugh. "Okay, fair."

Honestly, it was nice.

The forest was quiet.

Calming.

Almost peaceful, if you ignored the philosophical homicide happening behind us.

I stepped over a fallen log, brushing stray leaves off my wonderful, beautiful, comfortable cloak.

Sunlight filtered through the canopy in faint patches.

Demonic birdsongs echoed softly between the trees.

And then when it seemed things couldn't get better...they didn't, they actually got worse.

Everything went cold.

Not temperature-wise.

Just… instinct.

Something prickled at the back of my neck.

A presence.

A shift.

A whisper of mana that didn't belong to us.

I stopped walking.

Raised my hand.

Fingers flat.

Universal sign for shut up immediately, or help me burn this forest to the ground.

The group froze.

Nora's hand was still mid-grab for Kent's hair.

Then I clenched my fist.

Battle formation.

Instantly, everyone moved.

Training kicking in.

Positions shifting.

Breaths quieting.

Annalise slid beside me, strings loosening around her fingers like eager serpents.

Nora stepped forward, light already flickering at her palms.

Kent summoned his weapon with a soft metallic whisper.

The forest went silent.

Completely.

Unnaturally.

Something

Someone

Was ahead of us.

And getting closer.

I exhaled once.

Slowly.

"Get ready," I whispered.

The bushes rustled.

Annalise Astraeus

The instant the bushes rustled, Sebastian reacted first.

He grabbed me by the waist and tossed me aside.

Not gently.

Not politely.

No warning.

Just...yoink, and I was airborne.

I hit the ground, rolled once, and popped back up on my feet.

Annoyed.

Graceful, but annoyed all the same.

Before I could yell at him, Nora unsheathed her rapier so fast the air cracked.

Her blade met something in front of her with a loud, painful CLANG, metal on metal, like someone had just slapped a frying pan with divine judgment.

An arrow.

A big one.

Probably fired by someone compensating for something.

Kent didn't even wait.

He teleported toward the source of the shot the exact second the arrow hit Nora's blade.

Sebastian, of course, followed him.

Because those two together had the combined survival instincts of a rock and the enthusiasm of puppies.

I sighed and did what I always did: I cleaned up the chaos.

My strings shot forward, thin, invisible threads of mana harder than steel, wrapping around both Kent and Sebastian before they could vanish entirely into the trees.

A safety line.

A leash of responsibility.

The magical equivalent of those backpacks parents put on toddlers.

"Idiots," I muttered fondly.

And then…

Silence.

A few seconds passed.

I stared ahead, expression flat.

Emotionless.

Waiting for my cue like the reliable stagehand of this dysfunctional theater troupe.

Branches rustled in the distance.

A thump.

Then another.

I waited.

Then...

A scream.

A very sharp, very high-pitched scream.

The kind only glass and guilt could hear properly.

It did not belong to any man.

It barely belonged to any human.

"KENT?!" I shouted before I realized it was, in fact, Kent.

Kent.

Screaming like a girl at a haunted house.

Begging, genuinely begging for forgiveness.

"For coming too close??" he shrieked again, voice breaking in the middle like a dying flute.

I blinked.

Slowly.

What.

What?

What.

I was truly perplexed.

The kind of perplexed that made you question whether you were still sane or if the demon face forest had finally gotten to you.

And then I heard Sebastian laughing.

Not chuckling.

Not snickering.

Laughing.

Real, roaring laughter.

The deep kind that meant something stupid had happened.

The dangerous kind that meant the situation wasn't life-threatening.

Probably.

Hopefully.

I exhaled and brushed dirt off my robes.

"Fine. They're alive. Probably."

I tightened my hold on my strings just in case and began walking toward the direction they disappeared, steps steady, pulse calm, guard still very much up.

Because even if the boys weren't in danger…

Whoever made Kent scream like that was definitely dangerous.

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