The moon was hidden behind thick clouds, yet a few faint rays broke through, casting a dim glow on the tattered clothes of the tribesmen as they dashed wildly through the forest.
Towering trees stood in eerie alignment, their towering forms creating a narrow, path-like clearing that resembled a rough dirt road.
The raiders pursued them with cold precision, their senses sharp, anticipating any sudden threat.
One raider calmly drew an arrow from his back, nocked it, and let it fly—striking a fleeing slave in the leg.
The man crumpled face-first into the dirt, clutching his bleeding wound.
Another slave skidded to a stop, reaching to drag him up—but then the darkness moved.
Something swift and monstrous lashed out, hooking the wounded man's body with terrifying force.
His screams rose, raw and desperate—then cut off abruptly as he was wrenched into the void.
"Hungers! Beware!" a raider bellowed, his voice sharp with warning.
Another snarled, "We can't haul back slaves if we're fighting those damned Hungers!"
"And we're dead men if we return empty-handed," a third shot back, teeth clenched.
Leaderless and divided, the raiders argued in hissed voices, their discipline fracturing.
Yet despite the danger, they pressed on—chasing the slaves through the shadows, every sense straining against the lurking threat of the Hungers.
The slaves ran as if each step balanced on the edge of death—one misstep, and they were lost.
At the front, the Tribe Leader and Ton charged ahead, their breath ragged but relentless.
Behind them, Kanaz stumbled forward, her chest heaving, surrounded by the last of their tribesmen—exhausted beyond measure, fueled only by primal instinct.
"Kanaz—climb on my back!" the Tribe Leader gasped, his legs burning.
He would give anything—his strength, his life—to keep his daughter alive.
Ton and the remaining warriors braced themselves, their world reduced to the moon's faint glow and the shadows that writhed within it.
Around them, the Hungers moved like specters, patient, conserving their strength for the kill.
The Raiders, trained hunters of men, closed in with practiced ease.
Everything in the night wanted them dead.
They maintained a short distance to each other, close enough to reach, to save—yet every second stretched thinner.
Some had already fallen, left behind to screams that ended too soon.
There was no mercy here.
To stop was to die.
To help was to join them.
The elders went first—their brittle bones forming a living barricade as they turned to face death with rusted blades and gnarled hands, their final breaths spent not in prayer but in guttural challenges that echoed through the trees.
Behind them,
The wounded dug in—men with arrows jutting from ribs and gashes weeping crimson planted their feet in the bloodied earth, swinging shattered weapons until their arms failed, buying seconds with screaming defiance.
The strongest now carried the future on their backs—children clinging like terrified monkeys to heaving shoulders, rendering warriors weaponless but still moving, still pushing forward even as small hands slipped in sweat-slick grips.
Between them,
Women staggered under the weight of exhaustion, their footfalls growing erratic, their breaths whistling through clenched teeth—each step a battle against collapse, each glance backward confirming another missing face.
The air reeked of crushed ferns and copper, of sour fear-sweat and the musky stench of Hungers closing in; every snapping twig might be death, every gasped breath might be their last, yet still they ran—not toward salvation, but simply away, because survival had been reduced to this single brutal equation: move or die, sacrifice or perish, leave or be left.
...
Hound—
He ran like a beast unleashed, legs driving hard against the earth, desperate to outpace the Raiders and the gnawing Hungers that followed.
Death's blessing burned through his veins—a power vast and untamed, thrashing against the confines of his ignorance.
He could feel it, wrongly—like a sword in the hands of a child, all weight and no skill.
Being blessed by a God elevates one to the same level as a Lesser Demon—far surpassing ordinary Demons, who merely evolve through raw emotion, while Demons are essentially humans who gain abilities through intense emotions, making them more like corrupted humans than true supernatural beings.
Hound's Incite of Blood surged through him—his heart hammered like a war drum, each thunderous beat forcing life and fury through his veins.
His mind sharpened, oxygen-rich blood heightening his vision to predator's clarity, his thoughts to lethal focus, his senses to near-painful acuity.
Every breath fed the beast within.
His Blood Instinct painted the world in pulsing crimson—the lurking beasts in the shadows, the Hunger and Raiders locked in brutal combat, his fleeing tribesmen gasping for survival.
But with every second of use, the ability drained him, his small frame trembling under the mounting exhaustion as his vision swam with fatigue.
But Hound—
The weight of his father's final words clung to him like an iron shackle, binding his will with an unbreakable grip.
It was no mere plea, no gentle urging—it was a curse, seared into his very being as if branded by fire, a single word etched into his father's dying breath with terrifying finality:
"Live."
And so, against all reason, against the weariness that should have claimed him, he obeyed.
His limbs carried him when his bones screamed to give out.
His chest rose and fell with ragged, unwilling breaths long after his lungs should have stilled.
The command was not a kindness—not a blessing, not a hope.
It was a lash of fire through his veins, a decree carved in blood and desperation, driving him forward when his body had nothing left to give.
Not a request.
Not a plea.
A demand—unyielding, merciless—that refused to let him rest, even when every fiber of his being begged for release.
...
Kalix, the Angel of Darkness, watched over Hound with silent vigilance.
From the darkness between moonlight and void, the Shadow Angel observed his charge's every movement.
An Adept of Black Arts, Kalix controls shadow like a second skin, his presence undetectable to mortal senses.
The night itself became his cloak, the faint silver glow his only companion as he stood guard.
No threat could approach unseen.
No danger would escape his notice.
For as long as Hound walked this path, Kalix would be his unseen protector—a sentinel who existed only when he chose to be known.