Cold slid down Lysara’s spine.

  The air thickened, as if winter had been dragged sideways through the trees.

  The forest didn’t darken.

  It emptied.

  Sound thinned first — leaves, wind, distant movement falling away until only one thing remained. Breath. Slow. Heavy. Too controlled.

  The world drained to grey.

  Trees, stone, sky — all of it flattened into ash and shadow, depth collapsing into distance without meaning. Even Kayden and Tessa blurred at the edges, their motion reduced to shape without weight.

  Only the wolf remained.

  Its fur held color where nothing else did — sickened tones clinging unevenly to its frame. Not warmth. Not life. Something bruised and wrong, pressed into the body instead of flowing through it.

  The wolf that stepped through was not Ashfur as it should have been.

  Its coat hung in uneven clumps, leached of heat, slick in places as if soaked too long in meltwater and ash. Frost traced the edges of its fur where no frost should form. Its spine rode high beneath the skin, joints too sharp, angles stretched past what they were meant to hold.

  Its eyes caught the light wrong.

  Bruised. Heavy. Pressed inward.

  It did not snarl.

  It did not rush.

  It moved wide, silent — circling toward the open space behind Kayden and Tessa.

  Breath was the only sound left.

  Kayden pivoted half a step without breaking his line, blade driving into the nearest wolf and forcing the pack back again.

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  Tessa’s mana snapped tight, a reflexive coil — spell flaring brighter, harder — pushing the wolves away, buying space.

  Three bodies pressed the line hard enough that there was no room for anything else.

  The corrupted wolf adjusted. Angle tightening. Pace increasing.

  Silent.

  Kayden and Tessa were committed. Turning them now would open their backs.

  So she moved.

  She broke from cover, boots slipping on leaf rot as she tore across the ravine’s edge, breath shredding in her chest. The distance collapsed unevenly — ground, air, impact — everything arriving out of order.

  The corrupted wolf turned toward her.

  Good.

  Let it look at her.

  She planted herself between it and the others, kit swinging hard against her hip as she raised her blade —

  And the world narrowed to breath and blood and the thing that should not exist.

  She felt her eyes flare, dark markings snapped into place along her skin, branching sharp and fast. A shroud of purple-grey fog appeared around her. It didn’t spread — it collapsed, drawn inward until it wrapped her close, dense as held breath.

  The corrupted wolf skidded, claws gouging soil as it forced itself forward anyway. Its scream tore out of it — broken, wet, wrong — and it lunged.

  Lysara moved.

  The fog peeled off her in a single, razor-clean line.

  It cut the space between them.

  Her blade came up through it, already coated, already humming as the fog burned cold along the edge. She stepped inside the wolf’s reach, past snapping jaws, and drove the strike through muscle and core in one continuous motion.

  No flourish. No pause.

  The fog followed the wound in.

  The scream choked off mid-sound.

  The wolf convulsed once and collapsed — but the corruption didn’t leave. Dark vapor clawed at the wound, thickening instead of fading.

  Lysara didn’t let it spread.

  She drew the fog back in, compressing it hard, forcing it down into the corpse. The purple-grey haze tightened, sank, flooded muscle and bone until the body went rigid beneath it.

  The wolf twitched once more — then stilled completely.

  Its flesh darkened, skin drawn tight over warped frame, corruption sealed inside instead of vented into the forest floor.

  Lysara held it there until her hands shook.

  Only then did the fog recoil — snapping back into her skin in a rush that burned cold, leaving her breath jagged.

  She staggered, reaching blindly into her satchel.

  The draught burned.

  In front of her, steel lowered.

  Mana dimmed.

  Kayden turned slowly.

  Tessa did not move.

  And in the space where the fight had been, something irrevocable settled between them.

  The clearing still smelled of blood and scorched earth, the ground pressed flat where the struggle had ended, not yet released by the forest. Lysara stood where she’d stopped, head lowered, breath shallow, fingers locked around the strap of her satchel like it might anchor her in place.

  She didn’t look at them.