Kamcy

  The wind tore against my face, sharp and cold, biting through sweat and grime. The world blurred into a frantic mix of green and brown, everything smearing past me as I ran. The ground barely existed anymore—just motion, roots, and chaos. Behind me, the forest shook with pursuit. The bastards were still coming.

  Both castes.

  Figures of twisted muscle and malformed rage. The smaller, faster ones loped on all fours, howling with bloodlust, while the heavier brutes thundered after them—flesh-armored giants that made the ground quake with every pounding step. The air stank of wet fur, rot, and their breath, a mix of copper and decay.

  Seriously, bastards couldn’t handle losing and immediately called in your big bros to jump me, I thought bitterly, breath ragged. Not like you didn’t already have the numbers advantage. Goddamn sore losers.

  I vaulted over a fallen tree, catching my weight on one hand as I swung my legs through the air. My muscles screamed in protest, but momentum carried me clean over. The ground met my feet again in a roll, and I burst forward without slowing.

  Behind me, the goril-things didn’t even bother jumping.

  They blew through the tree a heartbeat ter, smashing it apart like rotten wood. Bark and splinters rained through the air as massive bodies crashed forward, their howls mixing into something almost rhythmic. Their anger pulsed through the forest like thunder.

  I cursed under my breath.

  The day had darkened fast. The sun had slipped beneath the canopy, leaving streaks of dying light swallowed by shadow. Without the gre, they could see clearly now—no more blind stumbling.

  I should’ve waited till morning, I thought. Tested my limits when the odds weren’t bullshit stacked against me.

  Too te for regret.

  My senses fred. That primal tingle at the edge of awareness screamed danger.

  Without a gnce, I poured energy into my bde. It burned through my arm, flooding the metal with a dull white hum. I sprinted toward a massive tree on my left, boots pounding dirt. At the st second, I kicked off the ground and ran up the trunk, bark splintering beneath my soles.

  Gravity tried to drag me down.

  I ignored it.

  My body flipped backward off the tree. Mid-spin, upside down, I finally saw them.

  And my heart froze.

  A monster with a single, bulging eye barreled toward me. Its face looked half-formed—flesh hanging like melted wax, veins pulsing beneath gray skin. That grotesque eye gred up at me, wide, unblinking, bloodshot. Its massive hand—if you could even call it that—was more like a sb of muscle tipped with jagged cws, and it swung for my chest, cws gleaming wet in the dark.

  I sshed.

  Energy exploded down my arm, my bde cutting the air with a shriek. The edge met flesh and split the creature’s eye open like a water balloon filled with pus and blood. Fluid burst outward in a hot spray, speckling my arm and face as I twisted through the air.

  The beast roared. Not in pain—in rage. Its cws tore through where I’d been an instant ago, smming into the tree trunk behind me.

  The tree shattered.

  Wood burst apart, chunks of splintered bark raining down like shrapnel.

  Before I could even breathe, another one lunged out of the dark. It had seen what happened to its kin and was faster—smarter. Cws came in a brutal cross swing, aimed to tear me open midair.

  I folded, forcing energy from my core and pulling my body tight. The cws missed me by a hair, wind slicing across my back as I twisted through the narrow gap between death and survival.

  The third one didn’t even aim for me.

  It was already moving, predicting where I’d nd. Its hulking body pivoted, cws scraping across dirt as it turned to cut me off.

  And behind them—damn it—the wolf-like castes.

  Twenty-one of them, each easily the size of a horse, charging in unison, tongues hanging in froth, hunger thick enough to choke the air.

  I couldn’t even swear loud enough for this.

  The second my boots hit dirt, I didn’t hesitate.

  I dumped everything into my legs.

  Energy surged through me like lightning. Muscles bulged, bones groaned, the ground cracked beneath my feet as I bsted off in a single explosive leap. I hit the ground again mid-run and kept going, sprinting like a madman through roots and rubble.

  I could feel them. Every single one.

  Their presence pressed against my back like heat, their snarls closing in. No matter how fast I ran, they stayed on me—shadows that refused to break.

  A cluster of colpsed trees came into view. I dropped my center of gravity, sliding feet-first through the narrow space beneath. Bark scraped against my back, dirt filled my mouth, but I shot through, rolled once, and came up running.

  In one fluid motion, I swung backward.

  Energy flowed into my bde, and I let instinct guide my arm.

  Something growled—too close.

  The bde met resistance. A wet crunch followed, then a tearing sound that vibrated up my bones.

  I didn’t stop to look, but the noise—and my senses—told me enough.

  The bde had entered through the wolf’s open mouth, split its jaw clean in half, and continued through its torso, slicing it from mouth to tail. I felt the warm spray of blood hit my back as I ran.

  Behind me, I heard its two halves hit the dirt separately.

  Didn’t matter.

  I kept running.

  The scent of water hit next—a faint metallic tang carried by the wind. I could hear it too: the rush, the churn, the rhythmic crash.

  About two hundred meters.

  I aimed for it like salvation.

  Branches whipped against my arms and face as I broke through the st line of trees. My boots hit wet earth, and I nearly skidded straight off the edge.

  What y ahead wasn’t a normal waterfall.

  It was wrong.

  The cliff dropped into a violent river that carved through stone like a bde. The edges weren’t smooth—no gradual erosion—just sheer, sliced rock, like something had cut the nd apart deliberately.

  Definitely artificial.

  Across the gap, roughly six hundred meters away, I saw another stretch of nd—trees, roots, a glimmer of light.

  I didn’t think.

  Didn’t have time to.

  I bent low, poured every shred of energy I had left into my legs, and leapt.

  The world fell away.

  For a brief second, I was airborne, suspended between sky and chaos. The roar of the water below swallowed every sound. Mist exploded upward, dampening my skin as I looked down—and immediately confirmed my suspicions.

  The river churned unnaturally, white foam thrashing against bck depths. The cut wasn’t erosion. It was a wound, jagged and bleeding, like the earth had been split open.

  Not natural.

  I looked forward again. The other side was closing fast. I braced for nding.

  My feet hit the ground hard.

  The impact sent a sharp jolt through my legs. I barely had time to register the pain before my instincts fred again, screaming.

  I didn’t think.

  I just moved.

  Arms up. Crossed in front of me. Energy reinforced muscle and bone in a fsh.

  Then—impact.

  Something unseen smmed into me with the force of a bus crashing straight into my body.

  Pain exploded through my forearms and chest. The world spun. I was thrown backward, skidding across dirt and debris. My back smmed into the ground hard enough to knock the breath out of me.

  I rolled once. Twice.

  Stopped.

  Every nerve screamed. My body trembled, lungs burning, heart hammering in my throat.

  I spat blood into the dirt and forced my shaking arms up, bde angled in front of me.