She found herself in a state of freefall, dropping through the vast expanse of sky—and something was wrong with her body. Not wrong like injury. Wrong like shape. She felt bigger and instead of limbs, she felt feathers—hundreds of them—rustling and flexing against the wind as though she’d been poured into a bird’s skin.

  Clouds stretched below her, not as obstacles but as pale roads she could skim and carve through. Her whole form thrummed with a feather-light vibration, thrilling and alien at once, like her nerves had been rewired for air.

  As she fell, a hard gust surged up and caught her, wrapping around her like a living thing. The very breath of the heavens seized her and flung her deeper into its embrace.

  By the Twelve, what the—

  Captain, language.

  MIMI! Thank the— I’m so glad to hear your voice.

  Not my voice.

  Oh, whatever, you know what I mean. What is this? As the thought hit, her wings tucked tight and she went weightless—one perfect, silent second—then her stomach dropped to her toes and she was back in a screaming plunge toward a spiraling purple beam.

  It’s a memory.

  Whose memory?

  The Raven, DUH!

  I’m gonna be sick.

  Ohhh—are you feeling everything?

  Y-y-y— Ellia couldn’t finish. Pressure built behind her eyes, as if the sky itself was squeezing her skull. The edges of her awareness darkened. Her mind slipped, fading out of the memory as nausea surged up hard and fast. It felt like—like—

  Think visuals and audio only!!

  Her consciousness snapped back with startling clarity, like a taut cord released. Whatever Mimi had just done—whatever Ellia’s mind latched onto—cut the overload cleanly. The sensation of feathers in the wind, the pull of rapid motion, even the phantom taste that had turned her stomach—gone. What remained was the Raven’s sight and sound alone, crisp and undistorted.

  So this is the… memory?

  Yeah! Crazy, huh? Mimi’s tone rang with pure thrill—child wonderment made manifest.

  To say the least. What was that feeling before?

  Everything all at once. But if you mean the wiggly-jiggly… I’m pretty sure that’s what feathers feel like in the wind.

  Huh. That checks out—because that was the weirdest part. It felt like each feather was sending information I didn’t know how to read. I almost blacked out.

  Well, DUH. You didn’t know how to read it. Have you ever been a bird before?

  No. Can’t say I have. Not literally.

  I passed out in seconds when I tried the first time. I think our brains can’t handle a hundred-percent plunge yet. You think—

  Wait. You passed out? Are you okay?

  Uhh—I’m here— aren’t I. Ellia didn’t know how Mimi managed to add inflection to thought, but that answer came with a heavy dose of teenage attitude.

  True. So now what—why is everything moving so slowly?

  The feed drifted forward, revealing Delos from above: an irregular patch of vivid emerald afloat in a boundless sea of cerulean. Commanding center stage in the panorama was a ring of pulsating violet light—a strange, storming halo streaked with lightning that danced and braided through its incandescent core.

  You can speed it up. You’re just focusing on the conversation.

  Wait. What about—why?

  Ellia’s thoughts came fast, stacking over one another, but Mimi cut her off.

  You’re going to have a bunch of questions. Like—a BUNCH. I mean, I have a bunch too. But we can talk after. Watch the memory first. Honestly, I don’t know how long I can hold this memory open. Like I said, I passed out earlier—it was too much.

  Ellia didn’t respond. She let the questions go and anchored herself in what she could see.

  Her attention snapped to the glowing violet sphere suspended between blues and greens. As the feed accelerated, understanding clicked into place—this was Delos, seen from a bird’s eye view. Before she could orient herself to landmarks, the radiating purple light surged outward and swallowed them whole.

  The beam washed through the Raven’s body as it plummeted toward the island. Tendrils of violet lightning lashed around them, intermittently striking feathers and sending ripples of static shimmer across the Raven’s form. Then—just as suddenly—the light vanished.

  A semi-collapsed stone tower rushed up to meet them.

  Impact felt inevitable.

  At the last possible moment, the Raven flared its wings and cut hard to the side, slicing into the shelter of the surrounding trees. Branches blurred past as it threaded into the canopy, finally settling on a thick, time-worn limb. The world dimmed as leaves swallowed the light, enclosing them in the humid, shadowed understory.

  Below, animals scattered through the forest detritus—small bodies fleeing, aware of a predator overhead.

  Waiting, Ellia realized. It’s waiting.

  The Raven’s feathers rippled, a visible wave passing across its body as its plumage darkened from white to black. Once the transformation finished, it stilled completely, head dipped low to the branch.

  Voices.

  They carried through the trees—first faint, then clearer—followed by the snap of branches, the crunch of careless boots, and the constant clink of gear.

  A lot of clinking.

  Either these people had no sense of stealth… or the Raven’s hearing was phenomenal. To Ellia, they sounded like a herd of jackalopes crashing through the woods.

  Then—nothing.

  The disturbance stopped. The forest fell silent, breath held. To fill the void, wind slid through leaves, and beneath it all came the low, familiar hiss of comms—radio static whispering in the air.

  The Raven closed its eyes.

  The sound sharpened.

  “We have located the source of the ISO flare.” A pause, then the same voice again. “Mark coordinates. Map indicates an old lookout.” Ellia guessed he was speaking to Triarchy command. “Request permission to investigate further… Roger. We have clearance to proceed.”

  Within the platoon, no one spoke aloud. Communication flowed through quiet comm bursts and hand signals alone. A tense hush settled over the group.

  Then the Raven screamed.

  The cry cut through the stillness—sharp, raw, unmistakable. It began as a low, panicked wail, then fractured into a series of jagged, desperate shrieks, the sound of a creature dying badly and alone. The call repeated—once, twice, three times—before ending abruptly, as though the phantom animal had been silenced mid-death.

  Ellia didn’t understand the purpose of the performance, but she didn’t miss its effect.

  The woods held their breath.

  Silence returned—thick, expectant—until the squad leader finally broke it.

  “Keep moving,” the squad leader said. “From the sound of it, whatever got caught is only an hors d’oeuvre.”

  “A what?”

  A scoff. “Gods, they send you dumb as bricks these days. It’s an appetizer, dipshit. And I don’t think we’re interested in dinner.”

  A ripple of soft chuckles followed, brief and careless.

  The scraping of boots and the steady clink of gear resumed, their cadence quickening as the platoon pressed forward. But another sound slipped beneath it—subtle, almost imperceptible. The Raven sank deeper into the shelter of the branch, feathers drawing in as though settling for a long vigil.

  Rustling vegetation.

  A faint, irregular patter.

  Soft. Measured.

  Padded paws.

  Then—almost as if Ellia had summoned it with the thought—a Lythera stepped from the undergrowth directly beneath their tree.

  It was massive. Horse-sized, easily. A wolf-cat built for dominance, its coat a mackerel weave of greys and tans, broken by black serrations that traced its spine and ribbed its flanks like the outline of a skeletal cage. The pattern wasn’t decoration—it was camouflage, fracturing its silhouette into shadow, bark, and leaf-light.

  In this terrain, Lythera ruled.

  They were creatures designed for pursuit: bodies honed for speed, movement wrapped in silence, nostrils finely tuned to the layered scents of the forest. The beast paused, lifting its muzzle, drawing in the air as though tasting the woods themselves.

  The Raven’s focus sharpened.

  From a hundred yards up, detail snapped into clarity. Ellia could see the frayed edges of the Lythera’s ears, the shift from short, sleek fur along its face to the long, dense pelt crowning its neck and shoulders. One eye was ruined—a pale, ghost-white orb marred by an old scar, blind but alert.

  Its snout was an unsettling hybrid: the blunt power of a cat’s jaw stretched into the longer, snarling shape of a canine. Its teeth followed suit—thin, saber-like fangs for piercing, paired with thick, daggered molars meant to shear and tear.

  Alpha predator.

  The Lythera’s whiskers twitched. Its teeth clicked—once, twice—sharp, deliberate signals.

  Then four more shapes flowed out of the brush.

  Ellia hadn’t seen them. Hadn’t heard them.

  They gathered without sound, falling in behind the first—pack complete—and turned as one toward the direction the Tri-Dominance troops had taken. Their movement was brisk but eerily quiet. Even through the Raven’s heightened hearing, their passage through the woods barely registered.

  Silent killers.

  They vanished into the foliage.

  Moments later, the forest screamed.

  Gunfire cracked through the trees in short, panicked bursts—then stopped. A bone-rattling shriek followed, raw and drawn-out, like the sound of an animal struck but not yet released from life. Ellia’s stomach clenched at the familiarity of it—she’d heard something like that once before, a cat pinned beneath a car, thrashing and crying until she’d ended its suffering herself.

  She flinched—

  —and remembered.

  Passenger.

  Just a passenger in a memory.

  The screams of man and beast tangled together, rising and tearing through the canopy, before dissolving into chaos she couldn’t intervene in—only witness.

  The beast’s cries didn’t fade. They were drowned.

  Overpowered by the howls of men.

  Ellia tried to understand the sound—tried to parse it into something familiar—but she had never heard torment like this. Images flared in her mind, half-formed and useless, her imagination utterly unprepared for the magnitude of pain carried in that voice.

  It began high and shrill, like a siren—air trapped at full capacity, screaming to escape. The pitch deepened as breath was forced out in ragged, agonizing bursts, each one slower than the last. It ended in a dry rasp, brittle and hollow, like a string pulled tight enough to draw a soul free of its body.

  A chill ran through Ellia.

  She couldn’t tell if it came from her physical body, a psychic recoil, or something deeper—something in her spirit answering the sound of death.

  Then the Raven dropped.

  It launched from the branch in a clean, decisive plunge.

  They glided for a breath, then flapped twice—hard—and burst through a gap in the upper canopy.

  Ellia’s breath caught.

  They were flying.

  Not falling. Not drifting.

  Flying.

  The realization sent a rush of giddy disbelief through her. This—this was freedom. Absolute. Unrestrained. Better than—well, better than anything she had ever known.

  She let the sensations flood back in.

  Wind brushed over her body like cool water. Air poured into her lungs, crisp and alive. Pine flooded her senses, sharp and resinous, pricking the back of her throat with a sap-burn tang. She closed her eyes and listened to the sound of air rushing past—fluttering at first, then smoothing into a single, continuous note.

  Peace.

  Serenity.

  Then—weightlessness.

  The wind vanished. The pressure ceased. Air no longer forced itself into her lungs. Sound dropped away.

  When Ellia opened her eyes, they were suspended in endless blue—clouds curling around the edges of her vision like a vast, open dome.

  The world tilted.

  Then flipped.

  In a heartbeat, trees, dirt, and city spilled into view—rushing closer by the second.

  Ellia reacted instantly, cutting her sensory feed before her body could revolt. Even muted, the force was overwhelming. Her eyes felt driven into her skull. Her stomach clawed for her feet. Her lungs expanded painfully, as if they might burst free of her chest.

  Then—gone.

  All of it vanished in an instant, leaving only a sharp whistle slicing across her ears and the treetops screaming closer.

  She laughed.

  A breathless, disbelieving giggle bubbled up before she could stop it.

  Moments ago, Delos had been a speck adrift in the sea. Now they were seconds from slamming into its soil.

  The Raven unfurled its wings.

  At the last possible moment, it snapped out of the dive at a near-impossible angle, skimming the ground so close its talons brushed stone. It touched down just long enough to trot twice—stabilizing—then veered smoothly around a boulder, momentum perfectly controlled.

  And then—

  Time slowed.

  Ellia tried to will it faster, convinced she’d lost focus—but nothing changed. Her thoughts raced at normal speed, yet the world around her thickened, movements stretching as though submerged in honey.

  Was this how the Raven perceived the world?

  Slower?

  Or faster—so fast that reality itself appeared to crawl?

  She watched, transfixed, as each feather adjusted with impossible precision, every micro-correction rendered in slow, deliberate detail. It was absurd.

  Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

  It was incredible.

  Insane—absolutely insane.

  She and Mimi were going to have a very long conversation later.

  For now, the Raven drove its wings deep, climbing hard—

  And the battlefield rose into view.

  They were entering the fray.

  From what Ellia could see, the Tri troops held the high ground—but they weren’t winning. Not really. The fight was balanced on a razor’s edge. Both sides were down two, leaving three Lythera and four Tri soldiers still moving.

  Time crawled.

  For every ten seconds her thoughts unfolded, barely one second passed in the memory. The distortion was extreme—unnatural—but Ellia didn’t waste it. She leaned into the stretch, instinct kicking in, mind snapping into command mode.

  Analyze.

  First—the environment.

  The Raven had settled into a clearing where nature had reclaimed stone with quiet insistence. Sunlight filtered down in narrow shafts, piercing the dense canopy around the perimeter. At the clearing’s heart rose a jagged rock formation, a natural spire thrusting upward like a broken finger toward the sky.

  Weathered terraces spiraled around its base, connected by rust-stained stairways bolted into the stone long ago. The Tri troops had climbed the first staircase—barely three yards off the forest floor—using elevation as cover. The Lythera hadn’t followed directly.

  They flanked.

  Two beasts hugged the rock face to the left of the staircase platform. One lingered to the right.

  The Alpha.

  Ellia’s focus shifted to the casualties.

  A young Lythera lay sprawled across the first few steps, its fur pale as morning mist, now matted dark with blood. Bullet wounds peppered its torso. Its tail had been severed clean through. The tendon along its back leg was slashed, leaving the limb useless.

  Dead.

  …Maybe.

  Ellia couldn’t tell if the time distortion was playing tricks on her—or if something in her recoiled at the sight—but she could have sworn the creature still breathed. Barely. Hoarding what little life it had left.

  Past memory, she reminded herself.

  Whatever happened here was already decided.

  “Fuck it,” she muttered internally, forcing herself forward. Analysis first. Feel later.

  Halfway up the staircase, between the first and second terrace, another body waited.

  A Tri soldier.

  Impaled through the abdomen on a broken, rusted railing, his torso split open from navel to thigh. His spine arched backward at an impossible angle, chest thrust toward the sky, eyes frozen wide and glassy—forever staring at the heavens.

  Ellia swallowed.

  That scream.

  That had probably been him.

  Her gaze swept the battlefield again, searching for the fifth Lythera. She’d counted five earlier. Now she saw only four counting the dead one at the bottom of the staircase.

  Then she found the source of that blood-curdling scream.

  Behind the two Lythera to the left of the staircase lay a torso—helmet crushed, vibro-dagger still clutched in one stiffening hand. Several yards away, the man’s legs lay torn free, entrails strewn between the halves like something discarded after a game.

  Tug-of-war.

  Ellia’s stomach lurched. She fought the instinct to clutch her belly, to curl inward—but she was only a passenger here. Any physical reaction risked disrupting the feed.

  So she looked away.

  And that’s when she saw it.

  A black rock.

  A sword embedded clean through its crown.

  The moment her attention caught, the Raven’s vision sharpened—zooming in slightly, as if responding to her curiosity. The effect sent a cascade of questions crashing through her mind.

  Was the Raven guiding her perception?

  Or was she guiding the Raven?

  If her thoughts were influencing the memory… did that mean—

  No.

  That was insane.

  If she was affecting the Raven’s decisions inside a memory, then she wasn’t just observing the past—she’d be altering it. Altering time. Pfff…

  That’s balls-to-the-wall nuts.

  And yet…

  Ellia exhaled slowly.

  Given the last few days?

  Nothing felt impossible anymore.

  She shoved the thought aside.

  Focus.

  The command barely registered before another thought surged alongside the sudden zoom, unsettling her even more.

  Was she choosing where to look?

  Or was she being guided—her attention dragged along the same path the Raven’s had followed in life?

  It felt like independence. Her thoughts moved freely, branching, questioning. Yet the instant she wanted a closer look at the black rock, her vision obeyed without delay—tightening, sharpening, answering a question she hadn’t voiced aloud.

  Too fast.

  Too seamless.

  The forces at play were far beyond her understanding. Each answer spawned a dozen more questions, spiraling toward places she didn’t have time—or mental space—to explore.

  Ellia cut the thread.

  Later, she decided. Her and Mimi would have a very long conversation later.

  She refocused.

  The black rock filled her vision now.

  And it wasn’t a rock.

  It was the fifth Lythera.

  Or what remained of it.

  Its fur had been burned into a brittle, obsidian crust, flesh reduced to a charred husk frozen in its final shape. Singed. Cooked. Killed so completely that even the forest hadn’t yet begun to reclaim it.

  Ellia steadied her breathing as her stomach rolled.

  She had seen ugly things before. War had made sure of that. But this—this single skirmish—was worse than anything she’d experienced firsthand. Not because of scale, but because of proximity. Because of how personal it felt.

  Beast and man.

  Predator and soldier.

  Different species. Same instinct.

  Both fighting to defend what they believed was theirs.

  A rising current lifted them gently, and the battlefield widened.

  Above the clearing, the Tri troops were arrayed along the upper mezzanine, weapons trained downward, poised like executioners waiting for the signal. The squad commander stood out immediately—his armor over-adorned, ceremonial flourishes clashing with the brutality of the moment. He moved toward the cliff’s edge with deliberate confidence, aligning himself directly above the Lythera below.

  At the top of the staircase, two Tri soldiers edged closer together, rifles angled down, fingers tight on their triggers.

  The fourth remained halfway up the steps.

  A woman.

  Sharp-eyed. Still. A sniper.

  She leaned over the railing just enough to keep the Lythera beneath the outcrop in her sights, rifle steady, breath controlled. Waiting.

  Then the Raven’s focus narrowed further.

  The platoon leader closest to the stone tower.

  In his right hand, a sword shimmered—its hilt alive with the turbulent crimson glow of Chaotic Prax. In his left, he palmed a compact cylinder.

  A flash grenade.

  Ellia understood instantly.

  Blind them. Overwhelm them. Let the troops rain death from above. Then descend personally—Prax-enhanced—to finish what remained.

  Efficient.

  Brutal.

  As time dragged, the captain became wreathed in a scarlet haze. It twisted around him, coiling like smoke caught in a vortex, before sinking into his body through his chest.

  His heart.

  He’s using Prax, Ellia realized.

  In reality, the transformation took less than a second. But through the distortion, it unfolded slowly—deliberate, ceremonial, terrifying. Ellia had only glimpsed Prax in battle once before, during the fall of Delos nearly a decade earlier. Even then, survival had been her only objective.

  She’d never had the luxury of watching.

  His armor ignited with glowing scarlet veins, energy tracing along engraved channels, converging at his boots. Then—without warning, without effort—he launched himself.

  Not down.

  Up.

  He vaulted skyward, clearing five full meters as if gravity had simply decided not to apply. And unlike everything else, he didn’t move in slow motion.

  He moved normally.

  Which considering the time dilation was still in effect meant he was moving Fast.

  Ellia’s pulse spiked.

  This was Prax.

  At least one expression of it.

  And if this was what a single shard could do—

  What else were they capable of?

  At that moment, their presence registered to everyone below, and the Raven stole all attention.

  Sensing the shift, the Raven struck.

  The time dilation shattered.

  Speed returned in a violent rush as they closed the distance to the airborne captain in a heartbeat. The next thing Ellia knew, the Raven slammed into him—talons sinking deep into his torso. The impact tore the flash bang and sword from his grasp as the Raven surged upward, wings beating hard. The crimson light that had pulsed from the blade into the captain tore free, snapping back toward its vessel as it tumbled behind them.

  At the apex of their climb, momentum shifted.

  The Raven released him.

  All that forward force carried through. The captain was flung like a projectile, his body hurled ahead with brutal precision.

  He traveled for less than a second before meeting solid stone.

  The tower had survived centuries. This flesh bag had nothing on Kronos.

  Dust erupted. Armor fractured. Bones gave way. Blood splashed dark across ancient rock. The body ricocheted like a rag doll, striking a protruding outcrop at the tower’s base before vanishing back into the chaos of the fight.

  That single move shattered the field.

  The death of their leader collapsed the Tri troops’ morale in an instant—a catastrophic blow to both command and strategy. The flash bang, meant to blind the Lythera below, fell freely instead, tumbling end over end before detonating directly in the line of sight of the two soldiers posted on the staircase. Light and disorientation swallowed them whole.

  Midway up the stairs, the sniper abandoned the plan entirely.

  She turned her rifle skyward.

  The crack of a shot split the woods as the round tore past. Ellia felt the Raven’s hearing sharpen, narrowing, locking onto the threat.

  The chamber cycled—metal humming.

  A fresh round slid home with a clean, final click.

  Leather rasped against steel as a gloved finger tightened on the trigger.

  Ellia flinched.

  Her gaze snapped upward, her mind assembling sound into shape—trajectory, position, intent. Then, without warning, her audio feed cut out.

  Silence.

  Dread flooded her.

  Had the Raven been hit?

  A sharp hiss tore through the void, followed by a scream that split the air. The Raven rolled into a flawless wingover, body inverting as it flipped, restoring vision in a rush and granting them a sweeping aerial view of the battlefield below.

  Unfazed, the Lythera pressed their advantage.

  The lone Lythera that had stalked the unseen sniper was now at the hunter’s throat, jaws locked tight as it shook the soldier like a broken doll. With a final violent snap, it released her. The body slammed against the rusted railing before plunging from the staircase.

  The impact echoed through the forest.

  Her limbs lay twisted at impossible angles—a final testament to the brutality of her end.

  Two remained.

  Under different circumstances, they might have stood their ground beside their leader. Now, their fate was closing in fast. One writhed in the dirt below, hands clawing desperately at his helmet.

  “MY EYES! MY FUCKING EYES!!!”

  The other had the sense to stand—more accurately, to stumble to his feet—one arm clamped over the visor of his helmet. Blade in hand, he swung blindly, cutting empty arcs through the air.

  The Lythera knew then.

  They had won.

  Now, they toyed with him.

  As he slashed without aim, a smaller Lythera—likely a cub—circled behind him, moving low and silent, shadowed by a vigilant adult. A series of rapid clicks followed, sharp and deliberate. At the signal, the cub sprang forward.

  It stayed close to the ground as it struck, jaws clamping down on the man’s calf with unyielding force. Mid-swing, the sudden loss of balance—paired with the savage bite—sent him pitching forward. His scream tore through the forest, raw and piercing.

  Where his calf had been, there was now a gaping, horseshoe-shaped cavity—flesh shredded, bone exposed—a grotesque testament to the Lythera’s precision.

  “NO—NO!!” he screamed. “I don’t want to be the main course!”

  The plea vanished into the uncaring vastness of the world.

  The cub did not resist its instinct.

  It began to eat.

  This was the creature that had helped kill its kin. There was no hesitation, no mercy. Teeth tore. Claws raked. Screams broke down into wet, choking sounds, then silence—punctuated only by the crunch of bone.

  One remained.

  The man who had been rolling moments before, hands clawing at his eyes, now lay still. Limp, as far as Ellia could tell.

  The Raven had settled atop the tower, amplifying its auditory senses as it watched.

  A heartbeat came through the feed.

  Wild. Irregular.

  It slowed when the man forced himself not to breathe. Spiked when panic won and air rushed back into his lungs. His heart sounded like it was trying to tear free from his chest.

  The Alpha approached.

  An older Lythera stepped aside without protest as the Alpha passed, movements silent, controlled. It came to the man and lowered its massive head beside him.

  The heartbeat nearly disappeared.

  Ellia could barely hear it now. Maybe he was using Diafotisi. Maybe it was instinct. She couldn’t be sure.

  The Alpha inhaled.

  The man’s heart spiked.

  Slow. Calm.

  A single paw pressed against the man’s chest.

  Ellia felt it before it happened.

  His heart was going to explode—

  —and then it did.

  The Alpha extended one claw. It pierced armor and flesh in a single, precise motion. No scream followed. No gasp.

  Only a sudden spray of blood, bursting outward like a tapped barrel.

  What followed unsettled Ellia more than the kill itself.

  Not the violence—but the restraint.

  The Alpha lifted its head and acknowledged the Raven—tilting skyward, delivering the slow, deliberate blink shared by all feline predators. Respect.

  This wasn’t dominance.

  It was recognition.

  The Raven returned the gesture with a short nod, then launched from the tower, gliding down to the base of the staircase.

  It landed beside the injured Lythera.

  Ellia had been right.

  The mist-gray beast still lived.

  The Raven clicked softly, mimicking the Lythera’s vocalizations, its gaze flicking between the Alpha and the lifeless body of the Tri squad leader before settling on the wounded creature at its feet.

  Bullet wounds riddled the Lythera’s torso and back. The edges of the injuries had begun to crust, blood clotting thickly against matted fur. The creature’s breathing was labored, uneven.

  A lung, Ellia thought.

  At least one.

  There was a large bump—no bigger than a peach pit—on the Lythera’s exposed side.

  The Raven stooped forward, pinched it delicately between its beak, then pulled and twisted.

  Blood burst from the new opening like a spigot.

  The Lythera didn’t cry out. It didn’t thrash.

  It breathed.

  Shallow at first—then deeper, steadier.

  The Raven lifted its head and turned toward the Alpha, who now stood directly behind them, the corpse of the Triarch squad leader at its feet.

  Something about the posture struck Ellia as wrong.

  The Alpha did not meet the Raven’s gaze. Its head remained low, body angled—not in challenge, not in submission, but in something uncomfortably close to reverence.

  That shouldn’t have been possible.

  Predators didn’t bow. Alphas didn’t defer.

  Was it gratitude for aid in battle?

  Respect for the kill?

  Or something older—something Ellia didn’t have language for?

  The Raven had summoned the Lythera by mimicking the death of prey. Ellia was almost certain the pack hadn’t realized that. And if they hadn’t… the Raven clearly had no intention of correcting the misunderstanding.

  Or maybe it wasn’t deception at all.

  Maybe the Raven already knew them.

  The thought unsettled her.

  Watching the way they communicated—clicks, stillness, shared attention—Ellia began to suspect how little she truly understood about Gaia’s creatures. Their intelligence moved beyond simple hunger or territory. This wasn’t mindless violence.

  It was structure.

  Hierarchy.

  Code.

  Compared to that, the kingdoms of man suddenly felt crude.

  Ellia felt herself shrinking in the face of it—not diminished, but humbled. And then the truth of her situation landed fully:

  She was standing inside a shared memory with a beast.

  That realization alone cracked the world wider than anything she had experienced before.

  Infinite potential.

  Unlimited paths.

  Instead of fighting for control or racing ahead to conclusions, Ellia let go.

  She watched.

  Blood darkened the Raven’s beak as it opened its jaws and released what it had drawn from the Lythera’s body.

  A bullet.

  Its surface was scorched black, its edges warped. The dozens of punctures marring the Lythera’s torso and back weren’t separate wounds, but entry and exit points—projectiles fired from above. This one had struck something solid.

  A rib, perhaps.

  More likely the spine.

  The Lythera’s fate had already been written.

  The Raven moved with calm purpose, flipping the Triarch leader’s body onto its back, cracked chest plate facing skyward. The armor was damaged, veined with fractures—but far from useless.

  Ellia’s thoughts flickered briefly to Niko. She could already see him salvaging the plates, reforging them, turning Triarch steel into something new. Something theirs.

  The helmet, though—split clean through. The HUD glass shattered inward, fused with blood and bone. That part was beyond saving.

  As Ellia mentally cataloged what could be recovered, the Raven reached for a cylindrical container fastened to the leader’s hip.

  Metal.

  Wrapped in worn leather.

  One side of the casing was exposed, revealing two concentric rings set into the surface. With a careful nudge of its beak, the Raven pressed the inner ring.

  The outer ring sprang free.

  A soft hiss followed—like a soda can cracking open.

  From within, a glass tube slid into view, cradling a radiant spectrum of Prax crystals.

  The crystals were meticulously organized within the tube.

  The largest compartment held a single shard—ominous, crimson, and faintly pulsing.

  Chaotic Prax.

  The lowest-frequency paradox particle. The most common. The most volatile.

  Beside it sat the middle compartment, housing three medium-sized shards of rich amethyst.

  ISO Prax.

  More stable. Far more so than red. That stability allowed a denser concentration of paradox particles per crystal—making them rarer, stronger, and infinitely more desirable. ISO Prax was the fuel of advancement, the kind the Triarchy hoarded to enhance Diafotisi. Super leaps. Reinforced strikes. Short bursts of the impossible.

  Those abilities burned Prax to function—usually fed by the abundant Chaotic variant—but true growth favored ISO. Ellia didn’t know why Chaotic Prax couldn’t advance Diafotisi. Only that no one sane experimented long enough to find out.

  She certainly wasn’t eager to try—if her Diafotisi ever awakened.

  Then there was the final compartment.

  Luminous Prax.

  The shard was small—no larger than a kernel of popcorn—but it radiated a hypnotic neon blue that seemed to bend attention toward it. Not light, exactly. Presence.

  Ellia felt it before she understood it.

  She had read that ingesting Luminous Prax didn’t merely evolve Diafotisi—it changed it. That it granted something else entirely. A divine endowment. A gift drawn straight from source.

  Those traits made Luminous shards vanishingly rare.

  Invaluable.

  And this Triarch leader had carried one.

  She wanted it with every fiber of her being.

  The realization unsettled her.

  Naturally—that was when the Raven plucked it from the container.

  Without hesitation, it turned back to the wounded Lythera. Delicately—almost reverently—it placed the shard into the opening where the bullet had been torn free, then stepped back.

  Neon blue light erupted from the wound.

  It raced through the Lythera’s body in branching veins, illuminating muscle and bone from within. To Ellia, it was unmistakable—the same ethereal energy that had threaded through the temple’s stone when Mimi had presented her offering nights earlier.

  Muscle knit.

  Torn flesh sealed.

  Congealed blood was pushed aside, replaced by new scar tissue.

  The Lythera howled.

  Not in pain.

  In triumph.

  The sound carried weight—a declaration. A reclaiming.

  The beast rose, as though waking from a deep and ancient sleep. Its eyes burned neon blue, the glow spilling into the shadows beneath the canopy. Then its body expanded. Muscles swelled. Bone shifted beneath the skin. It nearly doubled in size, claws lengthening, veins bulging as viscous blue light pooled at the corners of its jaws.

  In that moment Ellia realized what she’d read of Luminous shards barely scratched the truth.

  The pack gathered instinctively.

  Two Lythera took watch along the embankment above. The Alpha remained beside the Raven.

  Together, they howled.

  The reborn Lythera joined them, its voice harmonizing with theirs in a resonant note that vibrated through the clearing. This was no simple cry—it was an announcement.

  Ellia’s thoughts reeled.

  If a shard so small could reshape a beast pulled back from death’s edge…

  What could a larger fragment do to a human?