Chapter 7: Raging Bloodhound

Sen stood motionless for a moment, his usual smirk faded, replaced by a wary glance toward Threm. The old swordsman hadn't moved much—just a slow lift of his thin, spiral-eyed blade—but there was something in the way his pale eyes gleamed under the gloom, something that made even a venom-tongued schemer like Sen shut up for once. Pyun, on the other hand, was trembling—not from fear, but from frustration.

"Okay, okay! I didn't mean scared like scared," Pyun said quickly, voice pitched high, her sharp teeth clenching. "Just… y'know. Nervous scared. Like right-before-the-fight scared. Don't look at me like that!"

Her gaze darted to Threm's slow advance, and then to Sen, who chuckled dryly, shaking his head.

"Pathetic," Sen hissed, but his voice lacked its usual sharp edge. "You'd break a continent in half just to make up for how scared you are."

"Try me," Pyun muttered under her breath, fists clenched. "I'll fold your arms backward."

"So scared.."

Suddenly, Threm's blade slashed down—not toward any of them in violence, but toward Sen in precision. Sen yelped, flinching back as Threm grabbed his collar and forced him to his knees, murmuring unintelligibly the whole time.

"Wha—!" Sen barked, squirming like a worm on a hook. "Vexxan! Get this creepy crypt keeper off me before I slaughter him!"

Vexxan stood nearby, arms crossed, the shadows hiding his eyes as usual. His voice was calm.

"Shut up. Let him work. I told you about this."

Sen flailed, half-panicking, but the spiral-eyed blade moved with eerie accuracy. Its edge never once cut skin—until it did. A flash. A hiss. A twitch. And the bug was visible for a moment, a metallic parasite curling out of Sen's neck, shimmering like an ink-drop in oil. Threm gripped the bug, and crushed it wordlessly in his hand.

Pyun leaned forward, practically bouncing. "Me next! Me next! Get it outta me, Grandpa! Rip it out!"

Threm just mumbled, not even glancing at her. He cleaned the blade slowly, reverently, like a ritual.

Then, without warning, a cold breeze shifted the dirt and dust—and a heavy footstep landed not far away. The air became sharp, dense. A figure stood ahead, not charging, not boasting—just watching.

Knight Captain Halven.

He was dressed in plated armor etched with frostbite cracks and wound-marks of wars long past. His greatsword hung low, the steel laced with four glowing blue runes, each humming with quiet energy. His eyes burned—not with rage, but principle.

"The people of Thálgrimr do not bury their dead," Halven said firmly. "We nail their bones to the mountain—to remind the living what the weight of the kingdom feels like."

He stepped forward once, his blade humming louder.

"Our kings are not crowned. They are iron-branded on the heart."

Pyun's eyes narrowed, her fanged smile returning. "So you're one of those knights. The loyal, lonely ones. The ones who think justice is just a sharper sword. Fuccckk. Corny."

Halven didn't look at her. He stared ahead, as if addressing the mountain itself.

"I serve King Rellka. I uphold his law. Retribution, judgment—those are not dreams, they are debts. And every prisoner here owes."

Sen, now standing again and rubbing his neck, tilted his head with a grin. "Oh? Is that what this is?"

He gestured at Threm.

"Looks like he's the one doing most of the work. You just show up to pick off the leftovers?"

"You've been clever," Halven said, eyes shifting to Vexxan. "You found the bugs. No one has in thirty years. Most of them don't even know they're being killed from the inside out."

His gaze hardened.

"But it doesn't matter. You're still criminals. And I am still the wall."

Vexxan's stare met his, unreadable. Not saying a word.

"Semantics," Halven continued flatly. "Your sentences were sealed when you stepped in Rellka's court. We have you a chance now, but you want to die for the sake of freedom. That's courageous. I would do the same if I were you. But I'm not."

Pyun cracked her neck and stepped forward, cracking her knuckles, ignoring the tension.

"I've always wanted to fight one of you Knights. You're type killed my kin. Burned 'em out of our caves like vermin. They didn't die screaming. Only silent. My people feel safe and sound when they feel pain, like me. Let's us know we're still alive, let's us know we still have time."

Sen raised a brow. "Aww, you're gonna cry."

"Shut it."

Halven slowly raised his blade, and the runes began to glow brighter, pulsing with quiet power. He spoke, and each rune lit in turn.

"Frostmourne – forged from the bones of drowned ancestors. Rimeveil – a rune of concealment, gifted by the last Whisper-Sage. Thornblight – poison of the snowroots, sealed in bladeform. And Mournglow – the god-flower rune. Infused by dwarven blacksmiths under the crown of Mount Vaerg."

He lowered the sword into stance.

"My power is retribution. And I have never needed backup."

He took one step forward.

"I was born alone. I bled alone. I was praised alone. But I became honored in the presence of royalty. Something I don't deserve but gained through serving debts in retribution."

Sen's smile returned full force. Without hesitation, he dashed forward, blindingly fast, hand outstretched like he meant to grip Halven's face.

A sharp crack—blue light exploded like a wildfire in snow. Dust and frost splashed out in a violent shockwave.

Silence followed.

The smoke cleared. Sen stood. Shaking.

His head twitched.

A line of blood ran from his throat, and then the skin tore open in a grotesque flower of gore.

His head toppled from his shoulders. His body collapsed.

Everyone paused.

Pyun blinked.

"Well… damn. My turn, I guess."

But just before she stepped forward, the body on the ground twitched.

Sen's headless corpse convulsed, and then the neck began to twist and stretch, the bones knitting in jagged crunches. Flesh spun like yarn, and a new head sprouted, fully formed and smiling wide.

"Good cut," he said, stretching. "Didn't know I could feel that much pain and still giggle."

Halven's eyes narrowed.

"You died once. That's how you saw the bug. But you all knew the king would send you all out for another hunt or to be on the frontlines of war, you waited until the right moment to try and take them out..clever. For a group of rats."

"You're sharp," Sen grinned. "Wanna see what else I got in me?"

Halven didn't answer. He stepped forward again, blade poised.

The battle was moments away.

Pyun exclaimed, "Oh yeah it's on!"

Meanwhile, far from the carnage, Kota was sprinting.

His boots kicked up dust and rock as he dashed through the canyon, the steep red walls enclosing him like a coffin. Behind him, the echoes of chaotic laughter, guttural roars, and the warped banter of inmates rattled across the ravine. He knew they were close. Not tracking—hunting.

He ran harder.

His breath burned, not from exhaustion, but urgency. Lyzelle's wound was stabilizing, but barely. That special fibrous material, bloodcradle wrap, could only hold for so long—half an hour at most. He needed the real thing. Something that could keep her alive until they reached the next healer in the next town.

He clenched his teeth.

'Hold on, Lyzelle. Just a little longer.'

And he kept running.

Kota's boots struck the canyon floor with heavy rhythm, a blur of momentum crashing through stone, dust, and heat. His twin chained blades—those impossible weapons forged from the fractured remains of a Cupid's bow and the ribcage of a forgotten god of desire—clinked and sparked at his sides. Each link flickered with that distinctive pink-white firelight, crackling with lightning that smelled faintly of burnt flowers and scorched silk. When they moved, they howled like heartache.

The canyon veined out before him in chaotic beauty—razor-cracked ledges, cliff walls like dried veins, crimson ridges that curved like flayed skin. Towering thorns of obsidian jutted from the earth like spears, and wind poured through hidden chasms with an almost human scream. Strange white fungus crawled over the walls in patches, blooming like ghostly moss under the twilight sun. The air stank of iron and old bones.

Kota kept running. Every tendon in his body pulsed with new strength, the contract with Lyzelle having pushed his limits far beyond mortal. He was faster now. Tougher. His legs didn't ache the way they used to when he ran. His grip never slipped. But still—he knew better than to be cocky. No contract gave you instincts. No divine bond taught you how to survive killers.

'They're not just criminals,' he thought. 'They're monsters in skin suits.'

He remembered what he'd seen just earlier—an inmate biting out another's throat mid-scream, someone else laughing while their spine was snapped. The brutality wasn't theatrical—it was surgical. They weren't fighting to escape. They were fighting because they enjoyed it.

'If I stop running… I'm dead.'

The echoes chased him. Not just the pounding of distant feet, but voices—distorted by the rock, some of them close, others miles off but carried weirdly by the wind.

"He's fast—real fast."

"Did you see what he did to Caz? Split him right through the ribs!"

"No way the boy did all that. Probably turned 'em on each other. Hell, half of 'em hated each other already."

"Nah. I saw it. That fire—pink, man. Like love burning inside out. That's what those Cupid's have right?"

"He's still just one kid. He bleeds. He'll die like the rest. He has to be near death and weary by now."

They didn't know his name. That was the only mercy. To them, he was just the boy—a shadow of a threat, a myth starting to form in real-time. But he knew the truth: he wasn't strong enough to take them all. Not yet.

His pace didn't slow, but his eyes scanned the crags and outcroppings ahead. He needed to find it soon.

'Whalebone Grass… Come on…'

The old stories came back. Not from a book—no one in the canyon read anymore—but from an old herbalist he once saved in a borderland siege. 

'Whalebone Grass: tall and waxen, its blades curved like ribcage splinters, soft to the touch but with marrow-scented sap inside. It glowed faintly, smelled of petrichor and honey-thorn, and only grew where nothing else did. A single stalk could seal a wound faster than any potion. It had to be near—this wasteland was exactly its type of graveyard. I get it… get back to Lyzelle… wrap her up… maybe we live another day.'

But then doubt crawled in.

He shouldn't have left her alone.

Should he?

The cave had seemed secure—tight, hidden, a place only rats and desperate breath could crawl into—but the longer he was away, the worse the images in his mind became.

'What if someone finds her?'

'What if she bleeds out while I'm sniffing weeds in a graveyard?'

'What if this is exactly what they wanted—split us up, pick us off, like the jackals they are?'

He scoffed under his breath, gripping the handles of his chained blades tighter.

"Tch. Idiot."

He knew better than to spiral. Lyzelle would slap him for thinking like this. Or call him something stupid. Or both. She was tougher than half the men he'd killed. She wouldn't die easy—not without breaking someone's jaw first.

Still… the thoughts clung to him.

'Maybe I attract this shit. Maybe bad luck's just got a soft spot for me.'

He grit his teeth, eyes narrowing.

'Not now. Focus. Can't be distracted out here…'

But the canyon wasn't done with him yet.

A tremor quaked through the ground. Dust fell from the cliffs. The bones of the earth groaned.

'What the—?!'

From beneath the scarred stone, something moved.

It burst forth in an explosion of rotted soil and bone shards, emerging like a horror scraped from beneath the world. A towering bear, but nothing like nature ever intended. Its fur was matted with black rot and tarry ooze, rippling with patches of scale and exposed muscle that twisted like coiled ropes. Its eyes were bottomless pits, pitch-black, bleeding trails of obsidian tears that steamed where they touched stone.

Kota skidded to a halt, eyes wide. He knew what this was. He'd read of it once in a plague journal bound in stitched skin:

The Mour-Ursa.

A mythic bear said to rise only where curses fed on the bones of guilt-ridden men. Larger than oxen, older than language, and impossibly angry.

Its breath reeked of funeral smoke.

It lunged with a roar that shattered the canyon air. Kota barely dodged, leaping sideways as its jaws closed on empty rock, snapping the boulder in half like it was cake. One of its claws raked across his side—his armor caught most of it, but blood still burst from his ribs as pain shot across his body.

"Shit—!"

The force launched him backward, crashing through a line of boulders that cracked open like dried bark. He flew, tumbling, slamming shoulder-first into a slope that gave way beneath him. The hill collapsed like a dying lung, rocks and dust caving inward as Kota was swallowed in the descent.

He tried to slow the fall—his chained blades snapped outward, stabbing into stone, dragging sparks and pink firelight behind him—but the momentum was too great. His body smashed through a ledge, then another, bones groaning under the pressure.

And then he looked up.

The Mour-Ursa was above, standing at the peak of the ruinous hill, watching with its weeping eyes.

And it was growing.

"No way…now…?"

Every second it roared, every stone it shattered, its body twisted larger. It pulsed with rot and ancient hatred. Its howl broke the sound around it, shattering birds mid-flight, shivering dust from the bones nailed into the mountain's walls.

Kota's ears bled.

His legs stung. He was limping now.

But he wasn't stopping.

He turned, breath heavy, and ran.

The cursed bear followed.

The Mour-Ursa barreled through the canyon like a living cataclysm, claws gouging into the red rock as it hurled itself after Kota with titanic rage. Its steps collapsed plateaus, split stone, and turned ledges into dust. Kota ran—no, vaulted—over broken roots and jagged ridges, his twin chained blades flaring behind him like streaming comets of pink-white voltage and flame. The celestial steel carved into boulders mid-leap as he spun off vertical walls and dove through narrow crevices. A claw the size of a grown man missed his back by inches, crushing the ground behind him into a crater of shattered bone and obsidian. Kota landed in a slide, flicking his chain around his ankle to snap-spin into a backward kickflip, narrowly avoiding a crushing bite. The beast lunged again. Kota lunged back. His blades spun out like orbiting stars, carving twin arcs into the bear's eye and shoulder—but it barely flinched. The gashes smoked and healed, rippling over with rot-black sinew as it reared up and swung, forcing Kota to brace, flip, and rebound off the collapsing canyon wall behind him.

Their battle became a mad, high-speed chase across death. Kota twisted between stone pillars, launching himself off cliff faces with acrobatic ferocity, every movement improvisational yet surgically precise. He vaulted off a ledge, hooked one blade into the side of the canyon, and slingshot-flipped over the beast's back as it smashed through a tree the size of a siege tower. As he passed over its shoulders, he lashed downward, both blades striking in an X at its nape. The flames detonated, white and pink searing in a thunderclap of light, but again—it only staggered. The bear roared, blood-black tears streaming from its void-socket eyes as its body bulged, split, and grew. Every blow it landed against the canyon caused more damage—and that destruction fed it. Kota hit the ground rolling, wincing as a broken rock sliced open his thigh. He spun back onto his feet, but his rhythm faltered. Blood ran down his leg. His breathing grew labored. He was burning through every ounce of strength just to stay alive.

Kota grit his teeth and forced himself to focus, ducking under a swipe that clipped his shoulder and sent him flying. He crashed through a stone arch, tumbled, flipped off the ruins and threw his blades outward mid-air, the chains spiraling around the beast's arm. In a blink, he pulled—spun—reeled himself in like a pendulum, slammed both feet into the creature's jaw, then vaulted off its face, dragging his blades through its throat as he went. Blood spurted. A good hit. But the wound sealed again like boiling tar. Kota skidded down a slope on his knees, blades trailing behind in a fiery grind. His body screamed in pain. His lungs were lightning. Every inch of his skin was bruised or cut. But he couldn't stop. Not now. Not like this. He refused to die here.

'It's learning,' he thought, panting hard. It's tracking my movement patterns. It adapts every time I land a hit. The more I move, the more destruction we cause—the more it grows. The canyon's making it stronger. It's not just a beast—it's a parasite to chaos.' His eyes darted. The terrain was collapsing, but the narrowing ridges offered potential bottlenecks. 

'If I bait it into a choke point… restrict movement… force vertical engagement… ' He clenched his fists, his mind spiraling into brutal calculation. 'My strengths: speed, verticality, unpredictability. Weaknesses: low endurance, shallow cuts, no blunt force output. Its strengths: regeneration, strength, mass. Weaknesses: limited field of vision. Overcommits. Can't follow tight angles.'

His gaze snapped to a fractured ledge overhead. 'If I climb to that outcropping—wait for it to lunge—chain bind a foreleg mid-jump, twist the mass against its own weight, bury both blades in the back of its skull from the air—!'

A low, wet laugh echoed in his skull.

He stumbled, one foot dragging. His vision flickered. His fingers trembled with cold fury. Somewhere deep inside him, a pit opened—something ancient and wrong clawing toward the surface. Hatred curled through his spine like smoke. Hatred for the bear. Hatred for the canyon. Hatred for everything. Fate. The gods. The curse of survival. A pitch-black shadow swelled behind his ribs and climbed toward his throat. He let it. His eyes began to fade into bottomless black, and his pulse surged like a war drum. The heat around him warped. The flame on his blades went from pink-white to pitch-scarlet. He welcomed it. Welcomed the dark.

But—

Her voice.

Her stupid wild and manic voice.

That too-loud laugh. That dumb way she flopped around when she got excited. Lyzelle. Bleeding. Waiting. Alone.

Kota snapped. He roared in defiance, the darkness inside him retreating as he choked it back down. Not now. Not while she was still depending on him. His eyes flared back to life, silver-ringed with fury. He twisted mid-run, flipped onto a vertical cliff, used the chain like a grappling line and vaulted upward, spinning into an arc that slammed both blades into the beast's temple in a devastating downward carve. The flames ignited, detonating with raw voltage, sending cracks spidering across the bear's face. Kota hit the ground hard, rolled, limped—but grinned through blood.

'Go!'

He had it now.

One final move—he'd bait it near the sinkhole below the outcropping, force it to rear up, then trip it into the ravine. The chains would lock it down. The flames would burn deep into its brain. He set it up. Ran. Drew its rage. It followed. Roared. Jumped—and Kota turned, hooked the chain around its leg, yanked, and vaulted for the killing strike.

But he was too slow.

The beast twisted its body mid-air—unexpected—and swatted him from the sky.

Pain exploded across his ribs. Something snapped. He hit the earth with enough force to crater the rock beneath him, blood exploding from his mouth as he gasped, vision swimming. His body wouldn't move. He saw the Mour-Ursa above him, saliva dripping from fanged jaws, its mouth opening wider than possible—

And then—

A blossom of blood erupted from its stomach. Then another. Then five. Then ten.

Shapes blurred through its body—human, jagged, fast, cleaving through it with high-velocity slashes that blurred like blades of light. Inmates. Multiple. Their bodies carving the beast apart from the inside out with savage, unrelenting precision.

The Mour-Ursa screamed.

And Kota, gasping, bleeding out, watched as the slashing continued…

Kota didn't move at first—couldn't. He lay there on his stomach, crushed beneath his own weight, eyes wide and blood clinging to the lashes. His ears rang with the echo of roaring and flesh being torn apart. He stared down at the dirt just inches from his face, watching his own blood drip in thick strands onto the dust-caked stone. The canyon air trembled with every swing, every wet slash from behind him, every gleeful snarl and cackle from the butchers tearing into the Mour-Ursa's insides. The creature's dying screams were long gone, now replaced with the pulpy squelch of overkill—organs being reduced to soup, limbs cleaved just for sport. And the laughter.

'Inmates….I gotta go, but I can't move!'

That laughing. It crawled under his skin.

'Get the fuck up,' he thought to himself. But his body didn't listen. His arms twitched. His legs trembled. His spine was seized with a raw ache like fire had been poured into the bones. His ribs were shattered. His lip was split. Blood was leaking from more places than he could count. But worse than the pain was the pounding in his chest—the fear. A primal, shrieking thing inside him begging him to move, to crawl, claw, drag his broken self away before the laughter turned its attention to him.

He pushed. His arms gave out. He collapsed again.

He tried again, gritting his teeth, and this time managed to slide an inch, then another, dragging his ruined body like a dying animal across the dirt. He heard one of them shout something behind him—unintelligible, wild, happy. The sound of blades still hacking through meat. He didn't look. He couldn't. He could only feel it. Feel the presence getting closer. Feel that countdown ticking in the marrow of his spine.

A burst of blood mist sprayed behind him. One of the twins howled with glee. Kota felt his limbs lock. His heart was hammering now—hammering. Louder than the laughter. Louder than his breath. Every splatter made it worse. Every crunch made him flinch. He was trembling, dragging himself forward with one arm while the other clutched at his blades. His legs barely responded. His vision was fading in and out. He reached up to a boulder to try and stand—slipped—fell to one knee again.

'Get up! These people are crazy! Insane! I can't fight them both! Not in this state!'

Behind him, the slashing finally stopped.

Only the wind now.

And footsteps.

He turned.

Two massive figures stepped out from the veil of carnage—soaked in gore, their bodies slick and steaming. The Mour-Ursa was a gutted mountain behind them. Its organs spilled like rivers. Its head was gone. One of the figures was licking blood off his forearm, the other flexing clawed fingers that glistened like obsidian. They walked in unison, barefoot, grinning wide with too many teeth.

Twins. Towering. Muscled like lions starved of war and fed at last. Their bodies were covered in hair, their arms wrapped in old tribal cords and fang-laced bandages. Their sharp fingers clicked as they flexed them. Orange hair like sharpened fire swept back into wild, spiked manes, and their light brown eyes glowed like mud baking in sun. They were identical in form—yet their movements mirrored in reverse, one favoring the left, the other the right, every motion perfect and unnerving.

"Last gut was mine, Zekka!" Said one, voice like bark splintering.

"Don't lie to me, Gunthr," the other sneered, licking red from his teeth. "I carved the wishbone. It screamed with my name."

Kota tried to rise again, and this time made it halfway up before crashing back to his knees. He gasped, coughing blood into the dust, clutching the hilt of his chained blades with shaking fingers. As he looked up at them, his eyes widened.

He knew them.

"Gunthr and Zekka," he muttered. His voice was hoarse, barely audible. "From… Eidhvarrok."

The Beast Matrons.

He had read of them once, barely believing the accounts. Rellka used to drag the worst inmates from the dungeons to the front lines of wars, unleashing them like plagues upon enemy kingdoms. But these two were legends. Even among monsters.

Eidhvarrok. Eastern marshes drowned in red soil and vines that grew flesh instead of flowers. A land with no cities—only blood-courts traveling on bone-wheeled caravans. Where men were born only to sin, and women ruled with sacred, ancient vows written in unborn dreams. Where to break an oath was to give birth to a malformed god—and where children earned names only by killing the lies told by their own mothers.

"You two," Kota said, spitting blood. "You were locked up… for killing an entire blood-court. They said your mother tried to revoke her vow—"

Gunthr grinned, teeth wide as a beast. "She lied to us."

Zekka nodded, pacing in a circle around Kota. "Said we weren't born for war. Said we were children of stillness." He chuckled. "We split her open from the neck and searched for the vow inside her heart. Never found it."

"We killed lies," Gunthr whispered. "So many lies."

"And then Rellka set us free."

They laughed again, thumping their fists to their chests, painting gore across their skin.

"Sent us to war," Zekka growled. "To the mountain tribes of Ibbal-Kosh, to the sewers of Drezneil, to the Ash-Tombs of Boruun. We killed everything. Sat on hills of corpses and laughed at the sky."

"And now," Gunthr said, pointing a bloody claw at Kota, "we'll be free again. Rellka issued the kill order to us and the entire dungeon. On the Cupid. And you."

Zekka leaned closer, tongue flicking over cracked lips. "He promised us freedom if we bring him her head and yours wrapped in the chains of her fire."

Kota's breath hitched. He tried to stand again, but collapsed. Blood spilled down his face, hit the ground like steady rain.

"Can't even stand," Gunthr mocked.

"Shame," Zekka added. "The chase is better when the prey bites."

"Fuck off…" Kota scoffed.

They both stepped forward.

And then—they helped him up.

'Huh…?'

They each grabbed an arm and lifted him like a corpse on hooks. Kota's body was screaming. His legs barely worked. The moment he was upright, his knees trembled under his weight. Their hands were like iron claws. He couldn't even blink. Couldn't speak.

"You're afraid," Gunthr whispered, pressing his head to Kota's. "We can hear your heart. It sings to us."

They let him go.

Kota almost fell again—but he dug his chained blades into the dirt, breathing hard, body shaking. He looked up at them, jaw clenched, teeth bared.

"I don't like running either," he muttered.

The twins howled with laughter.

"Good!"

"Then fight!"

And they darted forward like beasts unleashed, eyes wild with joy.