The beams whispered beneath her weight.
She moved low across the rafters, shadow to shadow, breath held tight against the wood. Morning blurred below her — children's laughter threading with the ring of steel, the rustle of grain sacks carried to market.
Normal.
Too normal.
Her fur prickled along her spine, a tightening sensation coiling beneath her skin—the kind that only came before a storm.
Her nose twitched. Once. Twice.
There it was again — a thread of scent buried beneath the forge smoke and dusted bread. Not rot. Not blood. Fresher than yesterday. Sharper.
Alive.
She pressed herself flatter against the beam, tail coiling tightly against her hip. Her golden eyes narrowed to thin slits, locking on the narrow lane that twisted behind the smithy.
The humans wouldn't notice it. Not the way she did. They saw walls and smoke and chores.
She saw the ripple beneath it.
A distortion of breath. A seam pulled wrong.
Her ears flicked once, catching a sound no human would have heard — the faint shift of weight, a scrape of stone too soft to be wind.
Stillness followed.
Predator stillness.
She backed away without sound, every muscle honed by instinct. Every lesson from the wild stitched into her bones.
Not a hunter's move. A watcher's.
And watchers were always worse.
She slinked back through the lattice of beams, slipping behind the old smoke hole above the training yard, heart tight against her ribs.
Lilith would know. Valtor would listen.
They had to.
This was no longer a presence felt at the edge of waking dreams. It was here.
Breathing their air. Marking their walls.
No hesitation.
No doubt.
Not anymore.
The scent was too real. The presence too fresh.
The fracture was widening — and if they waited too long, they wouldn't be the ones hunting anymore.
They would be the ones being hunted.
The foxling dropped lightly into the hall behind them, breathing hard.
"it is not gone," she rasped, voice low and urgent. "Something moved behind the forge. I smelled it. Fresh. It watched. It listened."
Lilith's eyes sharpened immediately, shadows curling tighter around her.
"Did it cross the wall?" she asked.
The foxling shook her head sharply. "No. It's here. Inside."
Valtor's gaze narrowed, the muscles along his jaw tightening.
"Then it's already too late for hesitation," he said.
Not out of panic. Not out of fear.
But instinct. The kind of instinct forged under stars bloodied by war.
He crossed the longhouse in three strides, catching Lilith's steady gaze for a heartbeat — a silent trust exchanged, heavy with understanding — before he pushed through the heavy doors. Lilith moved to follow, her cloak dragging smoke in her wake, but he lifted a hand — a wordless command.
Stay.
The village needed her steady gaze now more than his blade.
Outside, the mist hung low and clinging. The sun should have burned it away hours ago, but it clutched the alleys and yards like a second skin.
Valtor tasted the air — deep and slow. The scent was there. Thin. New. Barely clinging to the stones.
Fresh.
He stalked toward the forge first — slow, deliberate steps that barely disturbed the dust. His tail lashed once behind him, carving a faint groove into the dirt.
A shadow darted ahead.
Too fast for a child. Too purposeful for a stray.
Valtor's hands flexed, claws glinting where they escaped from leather bindings.
Not here, he thought, eyes narrowing. Not among them.
A memory flashed — master at the hearth, Lilith by the high windows, Angela's laughter threading through smoke and stone. The fragile rhythm his master had begun to build.
He could not shatter it.
He would not.
If I fight here, Valtor thought grimly, I'll destroy what my master has built.
His lips curled back in a quiet snarl.
No.
He surged forward — faster than any human eye could follow — forcing the shadow back, herding it like a beast toward the southern gates.
The figure ahead slipped between carts and barrels, moving with a fluidity that spoke of old cunning. Not a soldier. Not a beast.
A whisper given legs.
Valtor let it run.
Let it think it was escaping.
But every step, every turn, every alley they passed drew it closer to the edge of the village. Closer to the blackstone gates yawning open just enough for a beast and its prey to slip through.
The mist thickened.
The walls fell away.
And beyond — the wilds opened like a wound beneath the rising sun.
Valtor bared his teeth.
Now.
With a roar that shook the sleeping trees, he lunged — no longer cautious, no longer guiding.
Hunting.
The ground trembled beneath the force of his charge.
And the thing in the mist turned at last to face him.
Not fleeing.
Not hiding.
But grinning.
The mist curled tighter around Valtor's frame, clinging like a second skin.
Across the clearing, a demon waited — half-formed, half-shadow, its presence leeching a cold, metallic tang into the mist, a wrongness that made the very air seem brittle. Its body shimmered between shapes, not stable, not real. A trick of sight, a fracture of mind.
It spoke without speaking.
You are alone. You are nothing. You are just a blade without a hand to wield it.
Valtor closed his eyes for a single heartbeat. Not to listen. But to harden.
"You cannot break a will already forged in flame," he thought.
When he opened his eyes again, they burned — twin embers lit from a furnace no corruption could reach.
He moved first.
No roar. No cry of challenge.
Just force.
He crossed the distance between them in a breath, claws tearing grooves through earth and stone. The demon shrieked — a sound that wasn't made for human ears — and blurred sideways, striking out with a lash of shadow that barely grazed Valtor's scales.
The draconian didn't flinch.
Pain was an old friend. Distraction was a stranger.
He swung low — a brutal arc meant not to wound but to cripple — but the demon twisted, escaping with a hiss. Its form warped, limbs thinning and stretching unnaturally, groping at the mist for purchase.
Illusions shattered around them — half-seen faces, old enemies, mocking whispers — but Valtor did not break stride. He knew what was real.
The earth underfoot. The weight of his body. The certainty of his cause.
The demon lunged, claws gleaming, aiming for his throat.
Valtor let it come.
At the last moment, he caught it mid-leap — a thunderous clash of scale against rotted flesh — and slammed it down into the dirt with a force that cracked the ground.
The demon writhed, screeching, trying to reform, to slither away into vapor.
Valtor pinned it with one foot, pressing down until bone gave way with a wet crack.
Its body spasmed once. Then stilled.
Valtor leaned down, his voice low, almost a growl.
"You were not strong enough."
There was no anger in him. Only certainty.
He released the pressure slightly, watching as the demon's limbs slackened, its form collapsing inward — unstable, broken.
Valtor crouched, one heavy claw gripping the demon's ruined shoulder. It weighed less than he expected. Cowards always did. Without ceremony, without mercy, he hauled it up like refuse and began dragging it back toward the village.
Each step carved furrows into the blood-soaked earth.
Behind him, the mist coiled back hungrily, eager to erase the evidence of the struggle.
He didn't see it.
Didn't feel it.
The faintest twitch. A slow, almost absent curl of one clawed finger.
A breath that shouldn't have been drawn.
But Valtor did not look back.
He had work to finish.
And the village would need to see what had dared trespass against them.