Even in Ruin, He is Deadly

The fourth struck.

Low. Deep.

Right below the ribs.

The sound of flesh parting was almost too quiet, but the pain was not.

Heat. White-hot. Blinding.

Then, cold.

He staggered.

Not just from the wound.

From what came with it.

His limbs began to lock.

His fingers stiffened on the hilt of his blade.

Poison.

Fast-acting.

Paralyzing.

Engineered.

His breath turned ragged.

A fine tremor lanced down his spine.

Muscles failed him, not from lack of strength, but from precision sabotage.

Still, he raised his blade.

Still, his eyes burned through the mist.

But even as he turned, his legs buckled beneath him.

From the veil of fog, they emerged.

Black-cloaked. Silent. Absolute.

A dozen shadows, or more, stepping from the mist like ghosts conjured from nightmare.

No breath.

No heartbeat.

Just the glint of steel beneath obsidian fabric, and the unmistakable stench of intent.

Kael's hunters.

Elite. Indoctrinated.

Marked with the sigils of betrayal and blood, scorched into their armor and branded into their skin.

Each bore the insignia of obedience twisted into zealotry.

They weren't there to fight.

They were there to end.

And at their front, Dagon.

His grin split his face too wide, teeth glinting with something wet and wrong.

[ANALYSIS: CORRUPTION LEVEL—CRIMSON PACT DETECTED.]

[HOSTILE ENTITY: UNKNOWN.]

Once brother-in-arms.

Once bound by honor.

Now?

A revenant draped in muscle and madness.

Just because he was beaten on the duel against Lyra. Went unconscious for months, and now wanting to give the same special treatment to whoever, whatever, or whomever that's close to her.

He stepped forward with too-fluid motion, something unnatural coiling beneath his skin.

His flesh was pallid, slick with sweat that steamed in the night air.

And veined Crimson glyphs pulsed just beneath the surface, alive, moving like serpents under ice.

His eyes, once brown, once human, now burned with a sickly, irradiated light.

Not flame. Not life.

But corruption.

His presence didn't chill the air, it sickened it.

"You shouldn't have trained her," Dagon hissed.

His voice was wrong, low and coiled with venom, laced with something older than hate.

"You're chasing a false Luna.

We are the real pack.

Kael's pack."

Ciran didn't answer.

No insult.

No warning.

Just the shift of his weight, subtle, like a whisper before a scream, and the flicker of a blade catching light.

Ciran moved.

Despite the arrow embedded in his side, its shaft quivering with each breath.

Despite the poison, cold and coiling, slowing his nerves, dulling the edges of thought.

His stance dipped low, feral.

One leg braced, one foot sliding slightly in the wet loam.

A predator's posture.

There was no elegance now.

Only instinct.

Only pain.

When he struck, he didn't strike like a man.

He struck like memory, something ancient and violent clawing its way back from the dark.

A memory of war.

Of how flesh parts under steel.

Of where arteries lie.

Of death dealt quickly, efficiently, without remorse.

His dagger punched through a throat, clean, merciless.

The man gurgled, staggered, and fell into the muck.

Another tried to cry out, but the sound ended in a wet gasp as Ciran's blade found the hollow beneath his ribs.

Warm blood spilled over his fingers, slick and pulsing.

Still, they came.

A blur of motion, an arrow hissed past his cheek, another bit into his shoulder with a solid, meaty thud.

He didn't flinch.

Steel flashed, too fast to parry.

It carved a line across his thigh, deep enough to burn, to bleed.

A fist collided with his ribs. Something cracked.

Then a knee, hard and fast, smashed against his jaw.

His vision stuttered, white at the edges, ears ringing with the impact.

He spat blood and a tooth into the mud.

His breath came rough now, torn from his lungs.

The poison crawled deeper, coiling through his veins like molten frost, freezing and burning all at once.

His heart thudded like a war drum missing its rhythm.

Everything blurred, faces warped, colors bleeding at the edges.

But still, he moved.

A blade rose toward his face. He ducked, barely.

Drove his dagger into a gut, twisted.

The man's scream was cut off by the sick crack of a knee into his chest.

He stumbled.

Fell to one knee.

Steel clanged.

Teeth bared.

Fangs lunged.

He struck out blindly.

Steel met something soft, then bone.

A howl, then silence.

He rose again.

Barely.

Blood matted his hair, his jaw, his chest.

His arms trembled, blade low, breath shallow.

And still, they came.

His body failed before his will.

A step. then another, then the world tipped sideways.

He fell, not like a man who lost, but like a weapon finally dropped.

Still deadly.

Even in ruin.

Blood pooled beneath him, warm and wide, sinking into the root-veined soil.

Not a puddle.

A shadow, growing with purpose.

[System Alert]

Companion Status – Ciran: Critically Wounded.

Far away, in the heart of the sacred grove, Lyra stumbled.

Her lungs seized.

A gasp tore through her lips, not air, but fire.

Her body convulsed, her mark flared to life, blazing with silver-white agony.

It wasn't light.

It was a flare of pain forged from bond and blood.

She felt it.

"Ciran…"

The name cracked from her throat, not spoken.

Ripped.

Her hands curled against her chest, as though she could pull the pain from her ribs.

And then she screamed, a sound of soul-breaking recognition.

The forest shook.

The trees bowed.

The wolves raised their heads to listen.

She ran.

Faster than thought.

Faster than fate.

The ground blurred beneath her feet.

Branches snapped behind her.

The wind clawed at her cloak but couldn't keep pace.

Because something had been taken from her.

And the Luna does not forgive.

She does not plead.

She does not retreat.

She hunts.

Lyra reached Black Hollow as the sky tore open.

The storm did not descend, it detonated.

Rain fell in bladed sheets, sharp and ice-cold, hammering the shattered earth with the fury of war drums.

Thunder cracked above her, low and savage, a beast's snarl wrapped in lightning.

The sky split again, jagged bolts carving through the clouds, each flash illuminating the battlefield in ghost-light pulses.

And there, Ciran.

Collapsed in the mud, his body crumpled and still.

Blood pooled thick beneath him, too much, too fast.

His breath came in faint stutters, shallow and fragile, as if death waited just beyond his next inhale.

Around him, Kael's hunters encircled like vultures, their black armor slick with blood and rain.

Their eyes gleamed with hunger.

Their blades dripped with triumph.

Lyra's breath hitched.

Then, snapped.