194: No Name?! 

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The newly mutating Toad-beast convulsed, inflating with obscene speed. Muscle balloons swelled beneath splitting skin, eyes budding like tumors, and ribs cracked outward to make room for yet more rage-flesh.

Kai didn't give it the courtesy to finish.

He moved.

A single flash-step put him inside the fog of rupturing tissue. Obsidian claws carved a crimson wake in the air. Mid-mutation limbs flailed, but they were still half-formed—and half-formed things die fast.

SHRIP—SHRIP—SHRIP!

Three incipient arms hit the mud before they even understood pain. Kai's aura flared ivory-hot, cauterizing the splash of acidic blood before it touched him.

Azhara, battered and limping, let out a breathless laugh. "He's not letting the ugly blossom."

Akayoroi's antennae quivered. "He's… pruning the bud before it blooms."

Vel shuddered. "That's poetry and terrifying."