Vescrutia: Legacy

The dusk was beginning to settle in, a stark reminder of the coming of night, and the things that go bump within it. Yet despite the many horrors of the unknown chittering around in the veil of nighttime, Shabuto traversed the blackened land unabated. The murk of the swamp hindered him not in the slightest as the very gales circulating him, humid though they may be, answered his beck, centering themselves under the ball of his heel, allowing him to float through. He did not soar, however, even now he could feel the stirring breath of the many living things that called the swamps home, and though he could not see them with his eyes, he perceived enough to know that rushing through these lands could prove far more perilous.

"She once told me about this place...Mara." The words were a soft murmur, swallowed instantly by the oppressive humidity. He wasn't speaking to the swamp, but to the faint, dormant warmth that pulsed in time with his own heart. Red. The creature was a low thrum in his blood, a silent passenger that rarely stirred unless provoked by imminent danger or profound curiosity. Tonight, it was still, leaving Shabuto alone with his thoughts.

He remembered Mara's voice, bright and sharp as a bird's call, telling the story around a flickering campfire on Rudral. She had a way of painting pictures with her words, making even the most terrifying tales sound like wondrous adventures. Zane had scoffed, ever the pragmatist, but Shabuto had listened, filing away the details.

"These swamps are home to some pretty nasty bugs," she had said, her eyes wide for dramatic effect. "Not just the biting kind. Things that like to play tricks and lure people to their deaths..."

His eyes peeled, but sight was a luxury here. The fog, a constant companion in Vaeroth, was beginning to thicken with the fall of dusk, turning the world into a monochrome ghost of itself. Shapes resolved and dissolved within feet of him. A moss-covered log could be a submerged crocodile; a cluster of ferns, a crouching predator. He didn't trust his eyes. He trusted the wind.

It was his native tongue. The air carried scents—the pungent musk of a salt-deer's trail, the sweet decay of a fallen cycad. It carried vibrations—the heavy, rhythmic displacement of a large reptile sinking into the depths, the frantic, buzzing hum of an insect swarm. He navigated this invisible tapestry, deciphering its warnings and its promises. A sharp gust from the left warned of a narrow passage between mangrove trunks. A sudden stillness ahead spoke of a wider, more open bog, perhaps a part of the old Otter's Paw where the water was deeper and more treacherous.

He drifted through a grove of skeletal trees, their bark encrusted with salt-loving lichen that glowed with a faint, sickly phosphorescence. It was in this eerie grove that the wind's language changed. A new current joined the symphony, one that was not natural. It was too smooth, too melodic. It carried a sound, a faint, ethereal chiming that seemed to dance just on the edge of his hearing.

He slowed, his focus narrowing. The chiming grew clearer, resolving into a soft, sorrowful melody. It was a song of loss, of longing, a tune that pulled at a place deep within his chest. It promised comfort, an end to the weary journey. A soft, blue-green light began to pulse in the fog ahead, keeping time with the music.

A trick. Mara's voice echoed in his memory.

Despite the warning, he felt the pull. The melody was insidious, weaving itself into the tapestry of his own grief, plucking the strings of his memory of Mara, of Zane, of the life he'd lost to the storm on Rudral. The light beckoned, a safe harbor in the suffocating gloom. His control over the gales under his feet softened, and he drifted lower, the toes of his boots nearly skimming the water's surface. He could feel the cold breath of the swamp reaching for him.

A sudden, jarring heat flared in his veins. Red.

The monster within him stirred, roused not by curiosity but by a primal, predatory instinct. The warmth spread from his core, a surge of raw, untamable energy that burned away the song's cloying sweetness like fire to fog. The illusion shattered.

Shabuto's eyes snapped wide, his will hardening. He commanded the winds, not with the gentle persuasion he used for flight, but with a sharp, violent authority. A gale erupted from him, a focused blast that tore through the mist.

The fog ripped apart, revealing the source of the light and the song. It was not a will-o'-the-wisp or a friendly sprite. Clinging to the pale, dying trees was a cluster of insects, each the size of his hand. Their membranous wings, patterned with hypnotic, bioluminescent spirals, vibrated to create the enchanting tune. Their heads were a nightmarish collection of needle-like mouthparts and multi-faceted eyes that glowed with a cold, hungry intelligence—the Glimmerwings of Mara's stories.

They scattered before his gale, their song turning into a discordant shriek of frustration. Shabuto didn't linger. He pushed a steady, powerful current behind him, propelling himself forward and away from the grove of death. The thrum of Red in his blood slowly subsided, leaving behind a lingering warmth and the metallic taste of adrenaline.

He was deeper in the Vaeroth now. The air was heavier, the unseen life more dense. But his resolve was forged anew. Mara hadn't just been telling a story to pass the time. She had been giving him a map, a guide. He remembered another piece of her tale, something she'd spoken of in a hushed, reverent tone. A flower that bloomed only in the heart of the saltiest bogs, an orchid that fed on the rich alluvium and glowed with the light of a captured star. The Sunken Orchid. Once she'd never seen herself but always dreamed of. He took one with him; it would make a great gift when they reunited.

"She always did like a challenge," he whispered to the darkness. His journey was far from over. The horrors of the unknown were not just chittering around him; they were singing, and he had a promise to keep. With renewed purpose, Shabuto pressed on, a solitary figure borne upon the wind, disappearing into the vast, breathing blackness of the swamp.

Minutes became hours, and the expanse was far larger than a simple sprawl of swamp. It was a massive mound of intertwining life that seemed to span the breadth of a small nation on its own. Shabuto eventually came to somewhat of a clearing. Plant life bountiful as it was beautiful unfurled over the horizon. A path lined with bramble thorns before him. Eyeing it closly he leveraged his feet on the ground, testing the stability of the earth before landing on it.

“So it’s not just all muck,” he muttered, stalking through the thorn-lined corridor. Overhead, serpents coiled around rotting branches, their scales camouflaged in oily greens and browns. A moss-encrusted panther growled low in a hollow, blinking its bioluminescent eyes and showing yellowed fangs. Shabuto raised a hand in mock salutation. “Easy, big guy—your dinner’s farther down the road.”

He’d just given courtesy nods to three more predators when a sound—a scream that cracked the air like a palm-sized thunderclap—stole what remained of his half-hearted jesting. The words tore the hush of the swamp: “AHHHH!”

Shabuto’s heart thudded. Muscles coiled. His eyes roved over the curling fog—the ever-hanging cloak that veiled Vaeroth in mystery. For hours, he’d watched the mist thin and thicken, ebb and swell, but now it shivered under the force of screaming terror. In that shifting veil, he perceived her: a woman, racing toward him.

She had hair the color of immolated ruby, tumbling past narrow shoulders. Her skin was pale—almost translucent—like foglit ivory. Eye that flared like smoldering golds, she was Fae, he could recognize her spark nearly as though it was his own.

Shabuto leaned forward. “It’s okay—,” he began, but before the words left his lips, the air itself split in two. A whip of bramble, coiling and snapping, sliced through the fog in a bolt of soundless violence. Silver thorns glistened like poison-tipped steel. The weapon snaked around the red-haired woman’s throat, constricting with a sickening precision. Her gasp was cut short, her eyes bulged wide with pain.

“My, my—aren’t you a naughty pet, trying to flee your betters?” purred a voice edged in cruelty.

From behind the thorn-barrier strode another figure: a tall woman clothed in obsidian armor that gleamed dull red at every joint, an ornate cross-style emblem emblazoned on her breastplate. Her hair was as black as midnight oil, a coy bang hid one of her eyes—rubied and cold—fixed on Shabuto, widening at the sight of a second living soul in this deep in this forsaken swamp.

“What’s this— a civilian out here in the sticks? Human don't usually come this far in im told...” she mocked, taking a measured step closer. The bramble whip tightened. Each barb pierced the red-haired Fae’s skin; rivulets of blood hissed as they fell onto the weapons. “Unbecoming, little guttersnipe. And what’s with that wrapped arm?”

Her tone turned from amusement to curiosity. “You, boy, assist me in capturing this…creature, and you shall be rewarded handsomely.”

Shabuto’s gaze flickered from the bramble whip to the bound Fae, kneeling in muck and tears—anguish kindled with fragile hope. He tasted the memory of another moment, back on Rudral, when he and his friend Haylin had watched a creature die because they could not see past its nature. The guilt haunted him. He would not commit that sin again.

The Fae woman’s trembling lips parted to plead. “Pl…please—”

Shabuto felt a tug at his heartstrings so fierce the wind attuned itself without his volition. The fog quivered, gathering into a spiraling current that thickened around his outstretched hand. A narrow blade of air, honed by elemental will, whipped forward—so fast it seemed a shard of glass or a trick of the light. It sliced the whip of thorns as if it were spun silk. The silver cord clattered to the ground in severed segments. The red-haired Fae coughed, gasped, fell to her knees, gasping for new air.

The soldier-woman’s lips twisted in outrage. “What—what was that just now? For an instant, I thought my whip—” She flicked her wrist, and it returned to her, seized the severed end, then smirking coyly as the bramble whip roiled and a spectral gleam danced along its length. Tendrils of bramble surged from the swamp floor, long vines twisting upward until they reknit around the handle, forging a living weapon anew.

The cross-bearing woman straightened with a snarl. With a crack of gauntleted knuckles—her dominant hand clad in a crystalline exoshell—she swung a crushing blow at the freed Fae. The impact unleashed a thunderous roar thatmade the very air seem to shatter, shook vines loose from ancient trees.

Shabuto took a single, poised breath and vanished. The lashing of the whip seemed to strike where he once was. But in truth, he had only placed himself a bit further ahead between the fae woman and her pursuer.

When the shockwave subsided, splashing mud and water in every direction, the silver thorned whip found itself ensnared around his wrapped arm instead of the Fae’s neck. His bandaged, glowing limb—brilliant with crimson static—blocked the onslaught. Shabuto held on to the whip, the energy seeping from it causing a sensation like burning on flesh, and his blood sizzled. She staggered backward, eyes wide in disbelief at the sight of this boy.

“Hey, lady,” Shabuto said, voice steady as a river’s edge. His black hair swayed with stray motes of fog. “You wouldn’t happen to be a bully, would you?"

As his dark eyes met hers, his cursed arm crackled with infernal energy. Knuckle to wrist, the Demistral bone glowed beneath the gauze—an eldritch artifact of archdemonic power. At that moment, the cross-bearing emblem on Ophelle’s armor vibrated with whispered resonance, as though recognizing its target. Her face blanched. His eyes shone, a ghastly intent emanating from him in cursed ebbs.

"Because I…hate…bullies.”

“You…are not a mere human—yet neither are you wholly Fae,” she hissed. “You reek of demons—”

She straightened, recovering composure. Her tone flickered between satisfaction and menace. “What luck that I was sent to capture one naughty Fae beast and instead discovered…you. My Master will be so pleased.”

Her eyes glinted a flicker of bloody intention.

“ I am Ophelle Bios, the Bramble Queen of Thorns…and I am a Demon Hunterof the Neveahn Order.”

Shabuto’s gaze never wavered from hers. The swamp around them shook with firefly-bright lightning dancing in distant clouds—his emotions feeding the storm overhead. Each heartbeat echoed in the thunder that grumbled on the horizon. He clenched a fist, Demistral shards quivering through the gauze.

“A demon Hunter?” he said quietly, “This woman—” he gestured to Fae behind him—“clearly isn't one .”

He said, tightening his grip on the whip, his strength increasing, his other hand engulfed in winds so thick they could be seen.

"Last chance...Leave."

Shabuto said his strength was threatening to pull her closer to him, as if he could force her to him at any moment. Yet Ophelle's resolve remained steadfast as steel.

Her red eyes glittered. A single silver thorn curled at her lip in a smile of derision. “I think not. You will pay for brutally severing my whip, Epine,” she said, jabbing a booted heel toward the vine-forged weapon. “Now, why don’t you make me leave, monster?”

Shabuto's face slipped into a mirthy grin before a sliver of bone slid from the palm of his left hand, engulfed with wind. The gales fashioned a rune upon them before ebdding itself into the bone. It was then he yanked the whip as if he was going to pull Ophelle along with it, a feint for the moment she tugged back in retaliation, he tossed the bone dagger towards her. It was fast, crackling with lightning. The rune of Ur, lightning, to increase its sharpness and speed. His wrapped hand let go of the whip, which returned to Ophelle in an instant, just narrowly allowing her to parry the done dagger. Meanwhile, Shabuto pushed the red-haired fae woman out of the way via slipping into his Saltare, Dance Of Gales, which enougraged the winds kicked up by his leg placement to slide her out of harm's way.

"I thought you'd never ask."

The air currents of the swamp licked at Shabuto's heels as he crouched low, coiled like a jaguar ready to pounce. Every stray eddy of wind around him trembled, a testament to the Vareoth gales he had summoned. His fingers dug into the saturated earth, the pressure subtle at first, then rising—an anchor for the storm he would unleash. In that moment, he was an arrow: living, breathing, sharpened by purpose. A shimmering veil of gale wove around his form, a second skin born of salt-laden air and ancient Venkage ritual.

Across the bog, Ophelle observed him through the gaps in a curtain of broad ferns. She—red-haired, rabbit-eared, and unsettlingly calm—pondered his shifting silhouette. Lightning crackled faintly along the bone dagger she had just dispatched as if she carried the heavens in her grip. Now, she studied Shabuto's threefold mastery: wind, bone, and lightning. The combination fascinated her.

"Wind, Bone, and even Lightning manipulation… a curious combo," she mused, arms folded over her chest. Her right hand squeezed the base of her whip, Epine, the hairs of crimson-and-silver fibers bristling like coiled steel. "That arm of his… It's demonic. But this presence…" She tilted her head, narrowing her eyes. "Beyond any demon energy I've felt before...Well, save for.."

A cruel smile unfurled on her lips. Obsession crept into her gaze, a darker ember than mere curiosity, as a glint of recognition flared beneath her glare. "Ooh, I can't wait to dissect you… Find out what makes you tick."

She flexed, and the red-and-black plates of her armor responded, shifting with articulated precision as she extended her hand and the armor locked into place, revealing its mechanical nature. It was fashioned into a gauntlet covering her free hand. A mask locked on the lower half of her face. Shabuto's eyes widened just a bit at this light transformation. Something was bothering him about the armor, crest, and weapon she wore. It did not feel like normal technology; it felt... wrong. But that observation would have to wait; whatever it meant, she had to fall here. From the protection of a brush of large ferns, the red-haired fae woman watched. Two predators locked in a state of observance, pondering and considering the other's state of being, and how to best take the other down. A large leaf above her trickled a single drip of water.

As that drop fell in front of the fae woman's line of vision, both Shabuto and Ophelle moved. It was a blur of speed that defied vision. Had the fae not seen them standing but a moment before, she would have sworn they didn't exist. Ophelle swung Epine with extreme prejudice, a lightning-fast arc of silver and crimson stained the swamp as she tried to slam the whip in Shabuto's side. He narrowly avoided the strike, flipping forward, the sharp bramble tips of the thorn tearing at his cloak. Using the momentum and his newfound height to his advantage, Shabuto's leg was endowed with the gales from before, crashing down with a thunderous smite of a hammer kick. However, Ophelle, swifter and physically stronger than her appearance belied, used her armored arm to block his kick, the force of the blow barely pressing him into the earth.

"Hmp... subject other limbs are not as physically threatening... this suggests that aside from the evil arm, other appendages are normal... well as normal as anything Fae could be considered."

Shabuto sucked his teeth before using her armored arm as a prop to propel himself into another jump, just in time to avoid Ophelle trying to use said arm to grab his leg.

"Slippery little demon, aren't you. But in mid-air like that, you won't be able to dodge this. Epine, Treble Of Terror"

She snickered, her whip, Epine, at her side once more. It was then that she unleashed a barrage of attacks, each faster and sharper than its predecessor. Like lightning cascading in an aria of three, the cracking of her whip reverberated throughout the Vareoth Swamps. Shabuto's face became twisted in shock, his eyes filled with horror.

"Heh, as if..."

He said as his facade of despair melted away into a cheeky smirk of indifference. Shabuto managed to evade the first strike by using the current under his feet to create a small, powerful but precise burst, allowing him to perform evasive maneuvers even in mid-air. He dodged to the left, then to the right, placing him upside down in the air, and as the last lashing, faster and far more furious than the other two, came to strike him, he forced the wind to shoot him spiraling towards the ground.

"Dance Of Gales..."

Yet, instead of crashing into the murky earth of the swamp, Shabuto, with the accumulated momentum of his earlier evasion, fell upon the earth with the grace and finesse of a gymnast landing on the palms of both his hands.

"Twisting Talon!"

He contorted his body, flowing into a Windmill, unleashing the tailwind in a sweeping low kick with enough power to tear through the swamp. A horizontal twister raced towards Ophelle, rampaging, rending stone and bark to dust.

Epine, her whip of eerie, pulsing material, snapped back to her side with a hiss—nigh instantly, as if drawn by invisible gravity. The weapon’s form shimmered, retracting into a coiled serpent of obsidian and silver ember, its surface threaded with veins of something older than steel. Shabuto watched it, muscles taut. There was power in that lash, yes—but more disturbing was the scent it left in the wind: a low, guttural resonance, like the echo of a scream trapped in stone.

And it hurt Fae.

That was what gnawed at him as he pressed forward. Ophelle was a hunter of demons—so why pursue one of the fae? And why did Epine, clearly forged to counter infernal beings, wound the spirit-born like a blade dipped in blasphemy? His mind turned the question like a bone caught between teeth. Was it possible his entire understanding of demons had been wrong? That the line between fae and fiend wasn’t drawn in blood or origin, but in purpose? That a fae could become a demon not by birth, but by surrender?

Thoughts for another time. And even if they were, it didn't matter.

Because Ophelle wasn’t waiting.

Evil was evil, and the dark calls to the dark.

Her armor, forged from luminous plates that hummed with refracted light, reconfigured with liquid grace. The plating on her right arm unfolded like concentric petals, revealing not flesh, but a core of radiant ether that glistened like a burning amber. With a breath, she planted her feet—and bloomed.

Light erupted from her arm, unfurling in a wide, glossomar dome. Not just a barrier. But an exhaling of light. vast and pulsing, like the sigh of a dying titan. The wind—one of Shabuto’s oldest allies—was thrown back, roaring like a leviathan denied passage. The swamp erupted around the shield: mud, roots, shattered reeds—everything not bolted to the earth was flung skyward in a spiraling tempest of debris.

Shabuto gritted his teeth. The shield held, stopping his advance cold. He slid back only a few meters—braced, trained, thinking—but the force was monstrous. And then… he heard it.

Beneath the screech of wind and the crack of strained energy, a voice. Faint. Pleading. Screaming.

His eyes narrowed. Not illusion. Not echo. There was something—trapped, tormented.

“You carry the augur of the dead...,” he said, voice low, gravel-edged. “I thought only demons did that.”

Ophelle turned her head, the grime of battle already sliding from her shield as it collapsed into a handheld disc. Her gaze was merciless. “I must say,” she said, calm as a winter lake, “your command over the wind is most impressive. What type of monster are you? A wind spirit, perhaps?” A pause. Her lips twitched. “No… those eyes.”

She stepped forward, unafraid. “Children of wind barely remember their left from their right. Surely incapable of eyes that glare with such hatred.”

The insult landed like a knife in old wounds.

Shabuto’s breath hitched. That look—superior, clinical—was one he hadn’t seen in a while but one he would never forget. She was toying with him, and it was working. He...had made peace with the fact that he knew life differently than most Venkage tend to experience. The carefree life of a child of the mother was stolen from him by the very same type of eyes this woman before him carried, the stench of her superiority complex painted across the winds, a foul odor to his soul, like those of his former master...the entitled ownership over the lives and wills of others.

This... evil, like the kind festering in men who dressed tyranny in virtue, was the reason he had fought. It was for this very reason that he gave his gale to Red...

With a slow, deliberate motion, he began to unwind the bandages around his right arm. Layer after layer fell to the mire, swallowed by the murky earth. Beneath—his skin was no longer flesh. It was a forge: deep crimson, threaded with obsidian veins that pulsed like magma beneath volcanic rock. The arm trembled—not with pain, but with power. Ancient, ravenous.

“You people,” he growled, raising the limb skyward, “beholden to some cause, always feel like your ideals matter more than the rights of others.” Lightning cracked from his fingertips—red, jagged, alive. It danced along his bones, feeding the furnace within. “I can't stand the ambitious...”

Ophelle smirked, but it was not amusement. It was a predator’s baring of teeth. Her crimson eyes gleamed beneath the cowl of her light-woven armor, the ethereal glow of Neveah humming beneath her skin like a hymn.

With a twist of will, bone erupted from the palm of Demistral—a jagged protuberance of smoldering ebony bone. Shabuto seized it with his left hand and, with a wet snap, pulled free a length of chain forged from his demonic naten. Another spike tore from his forearm, and from it, the second segment of his nunchaku birthed itself into being. The weapon was alive—pulsing, hungry.

"Imperious...."

The name he would dub his new creation. For in this blackened world, where might made right, he would take back his power...and any power stolen by oppressor.

By no other authority but his own. Sanguine spark danced all through the newly forged weapon. Menacing aura carrying the subtle howls of the profane around it. Sigils engraved on the nunchaku in a language foreign to this plane.

Kawaki- the Infernal word for thirst...

The demon's true power is able to feed on the essence of others, taking their life force as its own. Each blow would not only wound. It would feed. His enemies’ vitality would seep into his Demistral, fueling his strength, his speed, his very breath.

"People's lives aren't your playthings!"

And so, the dance began anew. Ophelle smirked with a nigh snarling smile as she unleashed a cacophonous onslaught of lashes of Epine.

Shabuto accosted her.

The Vaeroth Swamp shuddered.

It's thick, briny mist coiled like serpents through skeletal trees, drowning the planet Vescrutia’s dying sun in a veil of gray. Here, in this land of sunken spirits and forgotten gods, the air was never still. It pulsed—wet, heavy, alive.

And in its heart, two forces collided.

He moved like a jagged typhoon.

Shabuto didn’t run—he erupted. Wind surged beneath his feet, lifting him in short, explosive bursts, each step a detonation in the sludge. He zigzagged through the air, a crimson blur snaking between the dripping mangroves, evading the sonic crack of Epine, Ophelle’s whip, which tore through fog like a blade through silk.

The lash sang—again—slicing air, carving bark from ancient cypress. But Shabuto was already gone.

Reappearing to her right, he spun his nunchaku—Imperious—in a wide arc. The twin bars of blackened Demistral, forged from living nightmare, hummed with hunger. The final crack of the swing screamed through the air, aimed at her skull.

Ophelle reacted on instinct.

Her vambrace flared—light blossomed.

Not fire. Not magic as mortals understood it. This was the Light of Neveah—divine, unbroken, woven from the breath of celestial order. A radiant dome erupted around her, shimmering like auroras caught in glass.

The impact hit like thunder.

Crack.

And light flickered.

A hairline fracture spiderwebbed across the shield’s surface, thin and terrible as a dying star’s last pulse.

Ophelle’s breath caught.

Impossible.

Neveah’s light was pure. Eternal. Nothing could break it.

But Shabuto felt it.

A surge—warm, bright, intoxicating—coursed up Imperious, flooding into his cursed right arm. His veins ignited with stolen life, the biomaterial Demistral drinking deep, feeding the infernal furnace beneath his skin where Red, the Arch Demon, dwelled.

But it wasn’t hers.

Her life force… was hollow. Distant. This energy—this radiance—it came from elsewhere. Drawn through her, channeled, as if she were a conduit.

She’s not the source, Shabuto realized. She’s borrowing power. Siphoning it from something… or someone… beyond herself.

His lips curled.

Then she struck.

A snarl tore from her throat as she kicked—blazing fast, armored heel aimed at his temple. He brought Imperious together, the nunchaku locking into a short staff, a makeshift shield. The blow landed with bone-jarring force.

But Shabuto didn’t resist.

He yielded.

Let the momentum roll through him. Twisted. Used her power to launch himself backward, flipping through the air, vanishing into the thickest roll of fog, where the swamp’s breath grew thick and blind.

Drawing deep on his Anthem—the path of wind, the breath of the storm—he commanded the mist. Tendrils of vapor curled from the water, thickening, rising like arms from a buried god. They coiled around Ophelle’s boots, climbed her legs, swallowed her vision.

“Face me, you coward!”

Epine lashed out—a crimson arc of leather and sinew, snapping through the fog. Shabuto spun, Imperious whipping around him like a spinning blade. The chain deflected the strike.

But not perfectly.

The tip grazed his shoulder—burned through cloth, seared flesh.

Pain bloomed.

Then vanished.

Because Red consumed it.

The wound sealed instantly, new tissue knitting in shades of obsidian and ember. The stolen pain, the spilled blood—it fed him. Strength surged. Heat coiled in his core.

Strike. Siphon.
Dodge. Recharge.

In this fray, his own Saltare was being woven. A dance of scared gales, of harrowing lightning and scathing waves.

A shadow in the storm. A phantom in the marsh. He flitted in spirals, untouchable, striking when least expected, vanishing before the counter could land.

He feinted—high. Spinning wide.

Then dropped low. The chain of Imperious snaked out, coiling around Ophelle’s ankle.

Yank.

She backflipped—agile, trained—but not fast enough.

Imperious caught her calf.

Blood welled, dark against the fading dusk. Her armor flared—neon glyphs blazing along the seams, screaming warnings.

And Shabuto drank.

Life surged into him—rich, radiant, laced with something holy. Not human. Not even mortal. It burned like starlight through his veins, pouring into Demistral. The forge in his arm roared to life. Red lightning arced along his limbs, weaving into the wind, turning the air brittle around him.

It was time to put an end to this.

Arms rose. Anthem rose with them.

Gales shrieked. The swamp answered. Logs tore from the muck. Stones lifted. Clumps of peat spiraled upward, feeding a vortex. A localized tempest—a cyclone of mud, wood, and fury—erupted in the heart of the marsh.

Ophelle braced. Shield high. Armor flaring.

But the barrage was relentless.

Mud pelted her face. Shards of wood shattered against her plating. Light dimmed under the onslaught, flickering like a candle in a hurricane.

And Shabuto closed in.

He leapt atop a falling log, used it as a springboard, and spun—crimson blur and shadow twisting through the storm’s eye. Imperious lashed out, wrapping around Epine mid-swing.

Weapons locked.

Then—the scream.

Not Ophelle’s.

Not his.

But hers.

A bellow of raw agony echoed in the space between their collision. It came from within Epine.

A voice.

Faint. Felt.

Like a soul trapped in leather and sinew.

Shabuto froze—just for a breath. His speculation becomes more concrete with every clash of their respective arms.

It’s alive.

But he wasn’t trying to disarm her.

He was drawing her in.

With a vicious yank, he dragged her forward. She stumbled—off balance.

Impact.

Elbow to the sternum. Knee to the gut. She gasped, breath torn from her lungs.

He didn’t let up.

Spinning low, he swept her legs.

She fell to one knee—just as he raised Imperious.

The nunchaku glowed—pulsing with stolen energy. Red lightning crackled along the chain. The air warped—pressure rising, reality trembling—wrapped in a crimson aura that flickered like a newly forged star.

Shabuto’s voice was a whisper in the storm.

“It’s your turn to scream…”

Then, might of Shabuto's Silvaner magic awakened.

Inscribed along the twin bars of Imperious, ancient sigils flared—etched in blood-born script, older than nations. They ignited in a conflagration of scarlet flame—red as spilled life, hot as divine wrath.

En, meaning Flame.

Fire born not from heat, but from consumed vitality.

It wasn’t combustion—it was immolation of life itself. A spell so forbidden, so potent, that few could wield it without madness. But Demistral thrived on it. Red feasted on it.

And Shabuto—he became one of the first to hold it within his hands.

Wind slammed him forward—speed amplified, body a blur. The first strike—right shoulder—cracked her light plate. Energy siphoned. Her armor dimmed.

The second—reverse swing—hammered into her ribs. She coughed—blood at the corner of her lip.

Third—the chain wrapped, yanked her close—then the weighted end slammed into her jaw. Head snapped back.

But the final blow—devastating.

He compressed every drop of stolen life—his, hers, the phantom well she drew from—into a single, focused burst. Energy coiled in the nunchaku like a caged star.

Then, he drove it home.

With a cry that echoed the fury of his people—the lost, the cursed, the betrayed—he plunged Imperious into her chest.

Light erupted.

Circuitry screamed. Her armor shattered at the seams. The shield detonated—collapsing into motes of dying stars.

Ophelle was thrown back—skidding through mud, gasping, blood at her lips.

She looked up.

Shabuto stood silhouetted by storm and lightning. Imperious still humming with her energy. His demon-wrought arm blazing like a forge. The wind curled around him, obedient. The fog clung to his boots like a mourning cloak.

And in that moment, she saw not a monster.

But a force of nature—elemental, inevitable, born of wind and hunger and ancient wrath.

Her fingers tightened around Epine.

The whip twitched.

Responding to her rage.

A dark power stirred within it—ancient, forbidden. The material changed—scales forming along the leather, veins pulsing with black flame. Fae-flesh awakened. The whip breathed. It was no longer a weapon.

It was becoming a beast.

She would end this.

Even if it costs her soul.

But then—

A pillar of light.

Not from her armor.

Not from the sky.

It erupted from the marsh itself—pure, white, divine. A column of radiance split the storm, blinding, sacred. The wind died. The mist parted. Silence—sudden and absolute—swallowed the swamp.

Ophelle froze.

Her breath came in ragged bursts.

The transformation halted.

Epine pulsed once—then stilled.

She looked at Shabuto.

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak.

But his eyes—those hateful eyes—held no triumph.

Only exhaustion.

Only sorrow.

The light faded—quick as it came.

And Ophelle knew.

This was not the end.

With slow, deliberate motion, she rose.

Wiped the blood from her lip.

Clutched Epine tightly—now just a whip again, though it shivered, resentful.

“You’re not what I expected; that you've managed to push me even this far is an insult I shant forget...nor forgive.” she said, voice colder than the salt marsh. “ Your...taint will not be suffered in this world long. I will make sure of it.”

She stepped back.

Then again.

“I will learn what you are, boy.” Her gaze locked with his—unflinching. “And when I do—I'll be sure to graft you into something truly...divine. We will meet again.”

And with that, she turned.

Vanished into the fog.

Epine coiled at her side—like a serpent in wait.

Shabuto exhaled.

The storm broke.

Rain fell—soft. Cleansing. Washing the blood from the mud, the fire from the air.

He looked at his arm.

Demistral pulsed.

Still hungry.

Still craving.

Inside his mind, Red stirred—tired, but not sated. A whisper, layered beneath his thoughts.

“More. We need more....so...much...more....”

Shabuto closed his eyes.

He remembered the scream—from within Epine.

A trapped soul.

Like him.

Like the fae, whose flesh now served as a hunter’s weapon.

Like the nameless, whose life force powered divine light.

They were all bound.

Consumed.

Used.

And as the rain soaked through his clothes, as the swamp exhaled around him, Shabuto whispered into the night:

“Next time, I won’t hold back.”


The hunt wasn’t over.

Far from it.