It happened all at once. Lamina’s mother had sunk her fangs into Hazahnahkah, holding on with a death grip jaw as he was flung from Hwayoung’s hand. The marble of Dalagun’s Ramble had heavied each swing of his hammer, and with all the force within him, cracked it against the sword. Even Zalaster had turned on them. He kept his crossbow on Hwayoung’s back as he shouted at her not to move. This betrayal was vile. Hazahnahkah shuddered only with rage as Knife’s servants attacked him. Vengeance had made her simple minded. None of these people were a threat to him. None besides Bankanzaku.

  Hazahnahkah did not need a wielder to kill him. As the man’s arm whipped into a scorpion’s tail toward Hazahnahkah, the blade retaliated with his Second Terror. He created a sphere around his head that pushed out all oxygen molecules. Even with the lungs of a horse, Bankanzaku would die from his own carbon dioxide—a fitting end for such a self-destructive man. He gasped, his face lit up with purple, and he brought his arm down once again with such force the land rippled. Dalagun was flung off the earth and through a tree, while Lamina was knocked to her knees, but Bankanzaku still stood, grinning.

  “You have a debt, Sword.” Bankanzaku turned to chase Ysan, but then drove his scorpion’s tail straight towards Hwayoung instead. It didn’t pierce her. The tail was already severed. Hazahnahkah had activated his Third Terror to separate the space between the man and his arm. He did this thrice over, instead dividing Bankanzaku’s body into two. The man’s regeneration was quicker than a blink. He snarled, somehow with breath still in him, frothing at the mouth as he spewed up blood.

  “Tell Knife that her brother deserves respect,” Hazahnahkah said. “If she wants me and my wielders dead she can earn our deaths herself.”

  “What knife?” Bankanzaku asked.

  This took the blade by surprise. Nobody else had reacted to Hazahnahkah’s voice ever. He had not actually expected a reply. Before Hazahnahkah could demand an answer, the flesh of Bankanzaku’s raw stump bubbled into a reddish mass. Hazahnahkah activated his Third Terror again, pulling the man face-first into the dirt with gravity. He scrambled up, nose broken, teeth blood-soaked. Even with all my power, I can’t kill him conventionally without finding a way to stop regeneration. Hazahnahkah growled, utterly baffled as he scanned what was left of the land. The friction from his Third Terror had scorched it black, and drifting ash blanketed the bodies upon it with white.

  Bodies.

  Everyone was unconscious—their lungs spasming. Even Hwayoung’s. Hazahnahkah’s thoughts scraped against each other. He had inadvertently removed the oxygen far farther than he had meant. He reversed this process, and everyone gasped, alive. Hwayoung darted for Hazahnahkah while Zalaster was still struggling to get up. Lamina’s mother flung towards the girl’s ankle. She culled the serpent’s head clean off, but her leg went limp. She cursed as it writhed before her, its corpse shaping itself into two serpents now.

  “Her damn snake has a Ramble.”

  Hazahnahkah tried to reply with dirt words, but the two snakes splashed ash and debris about them. Hwayoung picked one and lunged. She missed completely. They were fast. She spun towards Lamina instead, steel flashing toward the woman’s throat. A third snake erupted from the dirt, its scales ringing against the blade. Teeth scraped against metal as Hwayoung wrenched Hazahnahkah free from another and split its head in half. Two more snakes. There were at least six now, and the black and white ground now squirmed with shapes far greater. It was the scales. Just one was enough to make another.

  Hwayoung leapt back, narrowly avoiding a swing from Dalagun.

  “We could have helped you find Nazaki,” the man said. “We still can.”

  “You’re the ones that need my help. Vrast is manipulating you!”

  “No, the dreams are real, and if we die for them, we must.”

  “You died last time, and this time I’m not bringing you back.”

  Dalagun snarled and swung upward. Hwayoung leapt back again, and Hazahnahkah activated his Second Terror—teleporting her to the edge of the highest hill he could see. Ysan was lost during that ambush and even at this height he still couldn’t find her. A cloud of dust draped the canopies below. Hwayoung turned towards the monolith, seemingly to run away.

  Hazahnahkah carved out large and burning words before her.

  WE MUST GO BACK. YSAN IS THERE.

  “And Nazaki is there. That’s where the dream led them.”

  KNIFE NEARLY HAD YOU KILLED.

  “Your last wielder nearly had me killed!” Hwayoung sang several curses, raising Hazahnahkah as if to pelt him to the mercy of the valleys before restraining herself once more. “Stupid sword! You’ll get us both killed!”

  FEAR IS CLOUDING YOU. TOGETHER WE CANNOT DIE.

  Just because Ysan was with Knife’s servants didn’t mean she was one. Just because Ysan listened to Knife’s dreams didn’t mean she listened to them now. Hazahnahkah wanted to argue both of these points and more, but Hwayoung wasn’t going to listen anyway. She never listened, even though she could. This was somehow so much worse that all of his other wielders combined, who at least tried to understand, even if they couldn’t. Hwayoung was wrong about Ysan.

  Hazahnahkah activated his First Terror.

  Hwayoung: Friends 110/100

  Ysan: Lamented 100/100

  Hazahnahkah: Trusting 75/100 → Betrayed 60/100

  At first, there was resistance. It started with her arms. Those were Hazahnahkah’s now. Hwayoung’s jaw locked. Her back arched. She stumbled one step forward as she tried to unroot her other foot… for Hazahnahkah had taken it. He then took her other foot… her back… her stomach… her lungs… and finally… her face. With the exception of her heart and brain, Hazahnahkah had seized full control of her internal and external organs. She would be invincible, and he could save Ysan. It was terrible that he had to do things this way—that he had to take Hwayoung’s choice when he had no choice himself.

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  Hazahnahkah activated all his Terrors all at once. He teleported Hwayoung back to the battlefield, impaling Lamina into the air as a demonstration of their power. The snakes shriveled at this, attacking all at once. Hazahnahkah culled through them, and aimed at Dalagun next. The man threw his hammer, raised his arms, and lowered his terrorized expression before the sword could even make a threat.

  “I’m done,” he said. “I’m done,” he managed louder, backing up far and rapidly.

  Hazahnahkah looked around. It was a bit harder to do this with human eyes, rather than just sensing everything nearby. From what Hwayoung could see, Ysan was gone.

  The sword spoke through Hwayoung. This was the first time he had ever done this. It was the first time he had heard his own voice. It was Hwayoung’s, but his own came through. Her vocal cords were straining themselves, unnaturally strung deeper. His tongue was heavy, slow, stirring clumsily between two walls of teeth that seemed to encroach every movement, breath, and utterance that pushed up from his chest.

  “Where is Ysan?”

  Dalagun didn’t hesitate. “She fled west!”

  Hazahnahkah’s eyes narrowed towards where they had come, east. Placenta and safety were in the opposite direction. Furthermore, the monolith was north. Ysan’s actions didn’t make sense… or Dalagun was lying. But his eyes were no liar’s eyes. They were filled with horror and desperation, sinking into the pale sweaty surface of his face.

  “And Bankanzaku?” Hazahnahkah asked.

  “North—”

  Hazahnahkah teleported northward. There was no point in guessing where Ysan was or where she was going if he could just find Bankanzaku. The man was injured. He couldn’t have been far. His scent was thick, and his footsteps stank of iron. It was the very same smell from the scene before the city, where torn wings and tiger’s talons had littered a scarred earth. He was the human who had fought the white tiger, and he must have gone back towards the unnamed settlement to trick more women. Hwayoung could have stopped him, and she didn’t. Hazahnahkah had to do this now. He should have done this long ago.

  But a fight had created a clearing of trees freshly split. The cuts were almost as perfect as Hazahnahkah’s, and Bankanzaku had never been a man for precision. He was stuck, able to go no further past Galfarys, who had pointed Lahahm his way.

  Bankanzaku snarled. “This is my last warning, step aside.”

  “The deal was you destroyed Hazahnahkah. Go back and finish it.”

  “The deal was Yurreth helps me.”

  “She will.”

  “Then where is she?”be

  Galfarys frowned, and eyed Hwayoung. “Drop the Sword.”

  “I am the Sword,” Hazahnahkah replied. “Why does Knife want to kill me here, when she could have tried this vain attempt in Osayn?”

  This seemed to startle the words out of Galfarys. He glared at Lahahm. The spear screamed.

  “Hazahnahkah! Don’t use any more of your Terrors! Knife wants you to fight!”

  “Why?”

  “You have to leave that body! You have to leave it now—!”

  Galfarys submerged Lahahm’s edge into a creek nearby. “Stop talking. It’s your fault we’re doing this here. Vrast could have had us killed.”

  So Galfarys really could hear weapons! Then this was all because of him! Because Lahahm had been on the cusp of telling away Knife’s plans!

  Hazahnahkah couldn’t trust a single soul who had been given Knife’s dreams. “How can you hear Lahahm?”

  “Do you mean my spear?” Galfarys pulled Lahahm up, and before he could speak again, was plunged into the water once more. He grunted. “I have always been able to hear you, Haz. That’s why the best thing you can do for both of us is to give up—”

  Knife’s voice boomed overhead.

  “Pilfer.”

  Lightning struck two paces from Hazahnahkah. It wasn’t lightning, it was a human—Nazaki. He was so fast the wind’s scent burned. Hazahnahkah activated his Third Terror to teleport Knife out of Nazaki’s hand.

  It didn’t work.

  In a frantic attempt to predict Knife’s next move, Hazahnahkah perused the vibrations, glimmers, and swings of her and her wielder. Knife had enhanced Nazaki. Her stats were obviously superimposing his entirely:

  Health (source of vitality and abilities): 700,000,000,000

  Energy (source of stamina and abilities): 700,000,000,000

  Agility (speed of actions): 1,900,000

  Regeneration (rate of recovery per hour for Health and Energy): 100,000,000,000

  Tenacity (resistance to unwanted effects): 100,000,000,000,000

  Strength (physical or mental reality manipulation potency): 1,000,000,000

  [Knife’s Abilities]

  Incarnate: A living object. Conventional methods of damage don’t apply.

  Unobservable.

  The world pulsed around Hazahnahkah as he tensed to all his past mistakes. This information would have been useful to know before. He should have listened to her electromagnetic waves when they’d first met in the closet—but now was no time for regret. If she could hide her abilities from him now, it was likely she had always been hiding them. And why did she consider herself as “Knife” and not “Vrast”?

  Nazaki and Knife allowed Hazahnahkah not a lightning strike to think. The boy thrust Knife forward in several blinding blows. Hazahnahkah parried each one. Hwayoung’s bones and organs shuddered. The ends of her hair and skin seared at the speed they were forced to move. Hazahnahkah couldn’t even heal her with his Second Terror. Something was wrong. He should have realized sooner that what had happened with the Seasonal was no fluke. That this had all been put together ahead of time, orchestrated to look seamlessly like fate. All of those with Knife’s dreams were with her, Galfarys most of all. The man had been holding their hands since he turned them towards the settlement. His Ramble’s safety field wasn’t being used to keep them safe, it was there to make sure they were being tracked.

  Galfarys was a living human net.

  Knife echoed again.

  “Maim.”

  Before the sword could react, his blade was riddled with holes. Pain. It resounded throughout the sword so invasively he couldn’t spare a thought from it. He flailed out with Hwayoung’s arms, slashing at everything around them in a blind attempt to make it end—it didn’t. Mountains evaporated, clouds tore, lakes sank into chasms. The pain dug into him further, deeper, gnawing at both his and Hwayoung’s insides. The brain-scrambling torment of it forced Hazahnahkah back into the spider nests of his mind, desperate in an attempt to get some clarity of how he had just been attacked. He gasped with Hwayoung’s mouth instead, her eyes sore to the sheen of Knife’s flashes, flickering like the glare of a sun. The next moment, Hazahnahkah was screaming, fists buried in the terrible itching deep inside his eyes. Screaming. Screaming. Only screaming. He had no tears for he did not know how to spill them. He was still inside Hwayoung—his own body in his hands, ruined. Even so, it was his, and he tried to return to it but couldn’t. None of his Terrors were working. He was trapped, and everything was painful. His joints ached, his flesh opened, his eyes sore. Everything hurt. Even the light.

  Attuned: Has a reciprocal relationship with Hwayoung where one may be particularly sensitive to the other’s feelings and thoughts.

  Cherished: Both Hazahnahkah and his wielder have improved capacity to improve attributes, develop powers, and ideate new abilities via symbiosis.

  ???: A mysterious ability based on Hwayoung is developing through [Cherished]. Fully developed when the relationship reaches 100.

  (Debuff) Maimed: +50% damage from all sources. → Maimed (x4) +200% damage from all sources. Source: Vrast.

  (Debuff) Libeled: Regeneration slowed by 50%. → Libeled (x4) Regeneration slowed by 200%. Source: Vrast.

  (Debuff) Pilfered: The following ability has been [Pilfered] by Vrast and cannot be used: [First Terror]. Source: Vrast.

  (Debuff) Disassociation: Hazahnahkah has no recollection of events preceding Ysan picking him up. Source: Unknown.