"I didn't allow you three in here."

Barbatos's words dripped like acid, each one laced with venom as her eyes narrowed at Morres, Ranah, and Temptation. Her tail lashed once against the stone floor, a clear warning.

"You didn't," Ranah replied, unfazed, brushing a strand of golden hair behind her ear with theatrical disinterest. "But we're here anyway. Let's not pretend you didn't see this coming."

"You're interfering with our student," Temptation added, voice smooth but tinged with exhaustion. "We don't like you having influence over him. You don't like us. Fair. But can we all admit one thing?"

"That he's special?" Ranah tilted her head with a shrug. "We don't have to like each other to agree on that."

Barbatos scoffed, lips curling. "He isn't. Not really."

Temptation's voice was a weary sigh, as if the subject bored her. "No. Not yet. Not in the way that matters. But potential? That, he has. Give us vision access. We just want to observe how he completes your trial."

"You already know what I'm doing." Barbatos's tone was syrupy now, honey-sweet but poison-thick underneath. "You always know. That's your game."

"Innocence is life's greatest illusion," murmured Morres, speaking at last. His voice was barely audible, a dream trying not to wake. "The second is believing everyone's dreams can come true."

Barbatos's fangs glinted as she smiled, slow and dangerous. "You're trespassing. Violating a Dominus's Divine Domain. I should report you to the administration. I doubt they'd take kindly to three failed mentors creeping around my garden."

"Do it." Temptation's expression flattened. "We already filed a request. We've been granted observational rights. So long as we don't interfere physically—and don't attack unless attacked—we're within full rights of intrusion."

The air cracked with tension as Barbatos's tail struck the ground again. Her scowl deepened, but she said nothing.

"If you're so clever," she hissed finally, "then tell me what I'm doing."

Ranah folded her arms and exhaled, bored. "You're awakening his beast-blood. Trying to nudge him into a partial merge with his hydra cube. Getting him over that crippling fear of magic by dragging it to the surface."

"We've all tried," Temptation added with a tired chuckle. "None of us succeeded. But your methods are… different. Violent, visceral. Maybe they'll work where ours failed."

"And if they don't?" Barbatos asked.

"Then we move on," Morres murmured, eyes half-lidded. "Or he dies. Either is a kind of peace."

Barbatos's tail coiled behind her like a whip preparing to strike. But her eyes flicked once to the distant glimmer of the trial field, where Alexander moved through the brush with a bow of bark and stone.

"…Watch if you must," she muttered, turning away. "But do not speak. Do not touch. Do not even breathe near him."

"No promises," Ranah said with a smirk. "You're not the only one invested in what he becomes."

***

The Hunting Grounds.

The name was too neat. Too clean. Like it belonged on a map, scrawled in thick script across the top corner of a children's book. But nothing about this place was fit for stories. The trees grew like spears, the air hung heavy with rot and tension, and every step I took felt like it woke something deeper.

Still, I moved quiet.

I didn't have much. Just my bark-bow, a few awful arrows, and a bruised sense of pride that never quite died. It didn't need to. Not here. Not now.

Barbatos told me to kill a hawk. Not trap it. Not study it. Kill it. Because something in me was still too soft, and she hated softness the way a fire hates damp wood.

I hadn't seen it yet. But I felt it.

Up ahead, a flash—silent, gliding. A shadow among branches. The air changed when it passed, as though even the wind bowed its head. It circled once, high above. Watching me. Waiting.

I dropped to a crouch. Slid under low-hanging limbs, boots quiet on the mulch. Every time I moved, I exhaled. Slow. Measured.

The thing about stalking prey is that you start to forget who's the predator.

I saw it again—closer this time.

Perched on a crooked trunk like a judge about to hand down a sentence. Its feathers shimmered like dusk—blue, grey, black. Light didn't touch it. Just got swallowed whole.

Too many eyes. I counted four, and then I blinked, and there were two. Then six. Then one. And I realized looking at it for too long hurt.

It turned its head slowly. I froze.

It hadn't seen me.

I eased the bow from my back. Nocked one of my crude arrows. Breathed.

No sound. No heartbeat. Just a moment stretched thin.

I pulled the string. Aimed. Released.

The arrow sailed like a whisper.

It missed.

Barely.

The hawk's head snapped toward me.

Its wings spread. It leapt.

And the world exploded.

It didn't fly so much as lunge, wings cracking the air like whips. It hit the ground where I had been an instant earlier—talons digging trenches through the moss and dirt.

I rolled. Came up kneeling. Tried to nock another arrow. Too slow.

The hawk came again—fast, savage. I didn't have time to shoot.

So I used the bow.

I swung it like a club. The wood struck its wing with a sickening crunch. It screamed—sharp and shrill—and whipped a claw toward my face. I ducked. Another swipe tore through my sleeve, raking skin.

We fought like animals.

I jabbed with the bow. It pecked, eyes wild and furious. The smell of it was metallic—iron and ozone. Not natural. Not right.

I saw an opening. Reached for an arrow—not to fire it. To stab.

I drove the point into its flank. Not deep. But deep enough.

It shrieked. Beat its wings. Backed off.

It flew.

Not far. Not fast. Not high.

Wounded.

I could've let it go.

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But Barbatos wouldn't have.

I raised my bow, hands shaking from the strain. Nocked another arrow. Sighted the center of its chest as it flapped unevenly, silhouetted against the strange half-light of the trees.

I breathed in.

Let it out.

Thwip.

The arrow struck true.

The hawk lurched mid-air. Twisted. Fell.

It hit the ground with a heavy thud, feathers scattering like ash. For a heartbeat, it twitched—claws curling, wings spasming.

Then it stilled.

I stood there.

Bow in hand. Arrow gone. Chest heaving.

My mouth tasted like copper and dirt.

I didn't feel good. I didn't feel bad.

I just felt.

The world didn't celebrate. The forest didn't sing. There was no fanfare. Just the quiet of something ending.

And I wondered, not for the first time, if that was what Barbatos wanted most from me.

Not the shot.

Not the kill.

But the moment I realized I didn't need a reason.

Only resolve.

The hawk's body was heavier than it looked. Not just in weight, but in presence. I carried it by the legs, wings dragging behind me, the arrow still jutting from its chest. My knuckles were scraped, and one of my arms ached from the recoil of blocking it mid-swoop.

When I stepped into the clearing, Barbatos was already waiting.

So were the others.

Ranah leaned against a tree with her arms crossed, chewing on a stem of mint like she was bored out of her mind. Temptation perched lazily atop a broken column, one leg draped over the other, eyes half-lidded. Morres lay sprawled across the forest floor, expression unreadable, like he had sunken halfway into sleep and hadn't decided whether or not to wake up.

Barbatos was closest. Her tail flicked once. Twice. Then stopped.

I dropped the hawk at her feet.

She didn't look at the corpse. She looked at me. Long and slow. As if seeing whether I understood what I'd done.

"I told you to kill it," she said. "Not box it."

I didn't answer.

"You're lucky," Ranah chimed in, stretching her arms overhead. "If it had been a touch more aggressive, you'd have lost an eye. What was that little jab with the arrow supposed to be? A warning? The thing wasn't going to surrender, Alex."

"Didn't realize I was supposed to bring a sword," I muttered.

"You weren't," said Temptation, smirking. "But you could have made a spear. Longer reach, less effort. A simple haft with a lashed-on stone point. What's that skill you love so much—Origami? Fold some bark, bind it around a shaft, create structure through shape. Use your mind."

"I used what I had."

"You had time," Temptation replied, tone as smooth as velvet and just as cutting. "You had hours of stalking. Don't act like you stumbled into this."

Morres stirred from his bed of moss and leaf. "Violent," he said quietly. "Messy. Emotional. No clarity of method. No elegance of form."

"I'm not here for elegance."

"No," Morres whispered. "You're here to bleed."

Barbatos finally crouched beside the body. She pressed a single claw beneath the hawk's jaw and lifted its head, studying the final wound.

"You aimed for the chest?" she asked.

"Yes."

"You got lucky again. That shot should've bounced. You missed the sternum by a thumb's width. If its feathers had been thicker, that arrow would've cracked and you'd be eating crow instead of hawk."

"Noted."

She rose to her full height, tail slowly wrapping around her ankle, eyes burning like coals soaked in whiskey. "You flinched during your first shot."

"I didn't—"

"You flinched," she repeated. "That's why you missed. You anticipated failure and invited it in."

I didn't argue. What was the point?

Ranah dropped the mint stem. "You're improving. Ugly, but improving. Honestly, I've seen Walkers get taken down by less. Just—next time? Shoot before it's in your face."

"Maybe don't stare at the damn thing like it owes you money," Temptation added with a shrug. "You gave it too much time to notice you."

Morres murmured, "He was watching. Not calculating. Not truly present. His mind was elsewhere. Half in the kill, half in the self."

Barbatos stepped forward, tail lashing once more. She tapped my forehead with the back of a claw. Not a strike. A reminder.

"Focus. If you cannot bring yourself to kill cleanly, then at least kill with control. Not fury. Not luck. Control."

"I did what you asked."

"No. You survived what I asked," she said coldly. "You did not master it. There's a difference."

Ranah sighed. "Gods, you're dramatic. Let the kid breathe, Barbatos."

Barbatos didn't look away from me. "He'll breathe when he learns to breathe right. Until then, every breath is wasted."

I swallowed hard. My hands were still trembling, faintly. The adrenaline had left, and in its place was something sharper.

I bent, pulled my arrow from the hawk's body. The shaft cracked. Useless now.

But the head was intact. That was what mattered.

I looked at them all.

"Am I done?"

Barbatos smirked. Not kind. Not cruel. Just knowing.

"For now."

***

"There, cat-witch," Ranah exhaled, arms flaring wide in irritation. "We did what you asked. Criticized the kill, nitpicked the form, the hesitation, the missed shot. Even though—let's be honest—it was a damn efficient kill against a soul-tier predator flying two realms above him."

Her tail lashed once behind her, more expressive than she'd ever admit.

"Correct," Barbatos murmured, not rising to the bait. Her golden eyes didn't leave the bloodstained field where the hawk had fallen. "But I'm not just trying to eliminate his fear of magic. That's only the beginning. The deeper issue is that he doesn't even realize his cubes aren't sealed."

Ranah blinked, ears flicking back. "Wait—what?"

"I blocked them once," Barbatos continued, her voice softer now, almost thoughtful. "Told him there were laws. Told him it was forbidden in this domain. He believed me. Never even questioned it."

Temptation leaned forward slightly, a spark of amusement glimmering in their eyes. "So he's been afraid of breaking a rule that doesn't exist?"

Barbatos nodded. "That mask he wears—it's not just decoration. It's imprinting on him. The more he uses it, the more it interfaces with his system. It's feeding data. Reading. Cataloguing. One day, it'll reflect the truth back at him. And when it does… he'll have to confront the system he's never known he's been building all along."

"And we all know what it is, right?" she asked quietly, gaze drifting from one of them to the next. "We've seen the patterns."

"We have ideas," Temptation admitted, slowly, carefully. "Nothing fully confirmed. But we're circling the same drain. We believe it's transactional. That his entire foundation is about exchange. About give and take. That lines up with the Truth that echoes behind his aura."

Barbatos didn't interrupt. She let the pause stretch.

"But there's more," Temptation said, voice now lower, less playful. "We think it's not just about trading power—but lending it. Borrowing it. Temporarily. Permanently. Shared ownership. Debt. Contractual links."

"Which is insane," Ranah added flatly, "because with the right skillcubes and mana compatibility, that could effectively remove the cost of magic."

"And rewrite the entire concept of skill ownership," Temptation finished.

There was a moment of silence then.

Even the forest stilled.

It was Morres who broke it. No longer lounging in his usual torpor, his voice was clear. Cold. Awake.

"If that system fully manifests," he said, "it won't just change the rules of battle. It'll shatter the economy of war. Above, it will end the current struggle for power. Below... it could spark one no one is ready for."

Barbatos didn't argue.

She just watched the place where Alexander had stood.

"That's why he needs fear," she whispered. "Fear makes you cautious. But more than that—it makes you curious. And curiosity is the root of evolution. He's not ready to open that door. But he's already knocking."

Ranah made a face. "Ugh. You're still cryptic."

Barbatos gave a small smile, her fangs just visible. "That's because you're still impatient."

Ranah snorted and looked away, but she didn't argue.

"He'll figure it out," Morres murmured, more to himself than the others. "Or he won't. And then it won't matter. Because someone else will."

"No," Barbatos said, shaking her head once, slow and deliberate. "It has to be him. That system is woven into his bones. No one else could survive it. Or wield it."

Temptation stood, stretching like a lazy cat, arms behind their head. "Well, now I'm interested again. Let's see if he breaks from the next thing you throw at him."

"Oh," Barbatos murmured, her eyes glowing faintly. "He won't break. Not yet. He'll bend. He'll burn. But he won't break."

"And what if he does?" Ranah asked.

Barbatos smiled, slow and sharp.

"Then I'll kill him myself."

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