Gareth looked back as the centre folded in on itself. It was gone yet, but it was only a matter of time. With Camps 5 and 6 gone, the wedge stayed open and the beasts stormed in. They poured through in constant pressure, splitting the ramshackle perimeter wider with every impact and turning Gareth’s corridors into killing grounds. People stumbled through those narrow paths with blood on their hands and mud clinging to their legs, carrying the injured until their arms gave out and then leaving them where they fell. The outer ring had been built to buy time… clearly not enough.

  Gareth turned and continued moving. The wedge between Camps 1 and 4 was a gap that offered room to manoeuvre and when the camps were falling, room allowed for subtle escapes. Perhaps he could slip through and hide in the forest somewhere. He continued through the crowd with a handful of wardens close behind him, their red banners removed and stuffed away, their faces grey with the strain of pretending this was still controlled. Mira stayed near his shoulder, breathing too fast, eyes snapping from corpse to corpse to the shifting shadows where beasts moved in and out of sight. Gareth didn’t look back at the centre for longer than a heartbeat. Every time he did, the shape of the camp changed again, canvas flattened, poles snapped, bodies dragged away. He swallowed the fear and kept his voice steady.

  “We find an exit,” he said. “We don’t stop. We don’t get trapped in the madness.”

  The wardens nodded. They still thought they could survive, find a place and rebuild a defence… or like the first phase of the tutorial, hide away.

  On the other side of the camp, Elira’s walls held. It took hits and it did not fold. The extra bodies gained from Camp 3 had become a huge help. Her people now had time for rotations, time to rest. Dalen lay where he had been dragged, too stubborn to pass out, one hand pressed to his hip as blood ran through his fingers, his face tight with pain that he refused to show anyone else.

  There was no time for mourning… no time for saving others. Elira focused on those she could protect. Even then, it was only a matter of time. Camp 6 was fully overrun, Camp 5 was already dead, Camp 2 had folded under a single monster’s charge, and now the wedge was chewing through the centre. Her people could not leave the wall to help, because even one missing body turned a solid line into a weakness the horde would find. She stayed on her staff and on her feet, calling orders in short bursts, directing earth and fire where they mattered, and keeping her eyes on the shifting flow of beasts as they searched for the next seam.

  ***

  Kaizer chased. For the first time he’d inflicted some reasonable damage. The dagger in the Centaur’s leg forced a slower heavier retreat, and the poison from Fangs of Verdana sat under its skin now. It seemed that the centaur hadn’t noticed the poison yet. Patience and timing would be the key going forward. Kaizer had to make the Centaur focus on him, he had to keep up. The Centaur kept distance either way, it was a long-range specialist, and it understood the forest much better than Kaizer. It fired less often than before, saving its shots for moments critical to the fight, but every arrow still carried purpose. Kaizer felt the gap narrowing. The frustration on his face now feigned, seemed to be working. The Centaur continued its confident movements, denying Kaizer clean strikes.

  He threw himself through brush and over roots, boots slipping in wet leaves, hands tight on his spear haft until his knuckles ached. His ribs still throbbed where the Centaur had slammed him, and every deep breath pulled at the bruise. He didn’t slow. He didn’t let the pain decide his pace. He pushed forward and triggered Silent Stalker in short bursts, three steps at a time, letting his presence smear into the forest’s noise and then dropping it before it could drag him too far from himself. Each burst bought him forward but also cost him valuable essence.

  The Centaur’s voice carried back through the trunks, calm and cutting.

  “You learn quickly,” it called. “That makes this worse for the others. I’ll cut them down before long.”

  Kaizer bared his teeth and forced more speed through his body, pressing harder. He was unconsciously using Essence Coating on his muscles, helping him maintain control. He hit a small rise and saw the forest ahead open for half a second, a straight stretch between boulders with the Centaur’s back visible through the trees. The Centaur drew, released. Kaizer had but a moment and dodged with a roll. The arrow hit the tree behind him. Blue ropes erupted outward and snapped around his ankles in a tight cinch that stole his movement. He hit the ground hard enough to jar his shoulders, rolled, claws tearing at the strands, and forced himself up with dirt in his mouth and anger thick in his throat.

  “Stop running!” he shouted, voice raw. “Fight!”

  The Centaur laughed again, low and controlled, and Kaizer hated the sound because it meant the Centaur was still comfortable.

  Another arrow came in sideways, fired through a narrow lane in the trees. It struck a trunk beside him and burst into a spread of needle-thin shards. One caught his forearm and drove deep, sliding under fur and into muscle. Pain flashed hot. Kaizer grunted and ripped it free in a single motion that tore skin. Blood ran down his wrist, slicking his grip. He wrapped his fingers tighter and kept moving.

  A beast crashed out of the undergrowth ahead, heavy and low, shoulder plates thick with bark-like armour, tusks scraped down to jagged points. It came in fast, head lowered, aiming for Kaizer’s legs the way predators aimed for tendons. Kaizer side-stepped at the last moment and used Triple Thrust. The spear punched through armour and into soft tissue beneath. Kaizer twisted, ripped it free, and the beast collapsed into mud with a choked sound that turned into nothing. Essence bled out of the corpse in a faint spill that tugged at Kaizer’s awareness.

  He took one controlled inhale and let Essence Siphon skim the leak. The pull steadied him, not filling him with new strength, keeping him from dropping into empty too early. He moved again before the corpse hit the ground fully.

  The Centaur retreated through another pre-planned path and Kaizer followed, lungs burning now, sweat running down his back and into the collar of his vest. The burn mark on his ribs had reopened and blood was beginning to seep. The forest blurred into trunks, roots, and the blue streaks of arrows that kept forcing him into choices. He was gaining ground, but he was paying for it, and he could feel the bill piling up.

  The Centaur punished him for the gains with something dirtier. A shatter arrow struck a rock beside Kaizer and exploded into fragments that bit into his thigh and calf. One shard lodged near his knee, deep enough that it stayed. Kaizer stumbled on the next step and nearly went down. His jaw clenched hard enough to make his teeth ache. He slapped a hand to his leg, found the shard by feel, and yanked it free in one violent motion that made his vision flash. Blood poured down into his boot. He swore and kept moving anyway, but his stride changed. The Centaur saw it and fired again.

  This arrow was not aimed at Kaizer’s body. It hit the ground and released ropes that snapped around his spear haft, yanking the weapon sideways mid-run. The pull tore his shoulder and wrenched his grip wide. Kaizer fought it with pure stubbornness, forcing his hands to hold, forcing his core to stay dense and steady even while his body screamed. He tore the spear free and the strain left his arm shaking for a heartbeat. Kaizer was slowly starting to get the pattern down. The Centaur’s range of arrows was narrowing. Snares, magic and shrapnel were beginning to become the norm.

  The Centaur’s voice came back, quieter now, closer.

  “What’s the matter?” it asked. “Never fought a real hunter?”

  Kaizer spat blood and dirt.

  “Come down here and try,” he snapped. “Stop hiding behind tricks.”

  The Centaur did not answer. It didn’t need to. It stepped into the next lane, and Kaizer chased because there was nothing else he could do while the camp died behind him.

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  The Centaur stopped, fired an arrow straight into the air. The deep blue light cut clean. After gaining some height, it sheared off toward the encampment, straight and true.

  Kaizer felt his stomach tighten. He did not need to see what it hit to understand. The Centaur was not missing. It was firing arrows through and around him, through the forest, through everything, and the camp was paying the cost every time Kaizer failed to close or didn’t get in the way.

  A scream carried back on the wind. Then another. Then shouting that turned into panic.

  Kaizer’s vision narrowed. The frustration rose again, hot and violent, and he nearly charged straight down the lane in a blind sprint. He caught himself at the edge of it. He forced his breathing into a steadier rhythm. He kept Silent Stalker ready in bursts, used cover, used boulders and trees to break line-of-sight, and made the Centaur spend more to shape the lanes.

  It was working. The Centaur’s arrows came slower now. The ropes were thinner. The bursts were smaller. Its commands to the beasts felt sharper, tighter, as though it was forcing obedience from fewer reserves. Kaizer felt the change and didn’t smile. He leaned into it and kept pushing.

  A wendigo stepped into the path ahead, tall and gaunt, antlers snagging vines as it moved. Its mouth opened and that hollow call scraped something deep in Kaizer’s skull, a sound that had once turned his body into stone. Kaizer didn’t freeze. He snarled and drove forward, spear point punching up under the jaw into the brain. The creature convulsed. Kaizer ripped the spear free and tore its throat open with Claws of Silver, two fast rakes that ended the sound. The wendigo dropped into the mud and Kaizer ran through its fall without slowing.

  The Centaur gained distance again, but less than before. The poison was doing its work now, unseen but real. Its hoofsteps were still clean, still sure, but the rhythm had lost its perfect edge.

  Kaizer reached to his belt with his blood-slick hand and pulled free a strip of cloth and a bandage pack as he ran. His thigh was bleeding hard, and if he let it go long enough his leg would turn heavy. He wrapped once, tight, yanked it down with his teeth, and tied it off in a brutal knot without stopping. It wasn’t clean. It wasn’t pretty. It kept his blood where it belonged long enough to matter.

  A rope-arrow hit again and snapped around his ankle. Kaizer ripped free, but the jerk tore the fresh bandage and reopened the wound. He roared and threw himself forward anyway. He could feel the Centaur’s calm trying to get inside his head. He could hear it in every taunt and every quiet laugh. He refused to let it settle.

  “Running doesn’t make you strong!” Kaizer shouted, voice cracking. “It makes you a coward!”

  The Centaur answered with a sharp whistle, and the forest shifted as beasts moved into the lane ahead, shoulder to shoulder, claws low, jaws open, turning the space between them into a wall. They weren’t mindless. They moved with timing. They moved with intent. One came in high to force Kaizer’s spear line up, another went for his legs, another circled to his flank to tear at his side.

  Kaizer hit them head-on. He drove the spear through the first beast’s chest, ripped it free, and pivoted into the second with a savage cut from Claws of Silver that opened throat and shoulder in one motion. The third beast reached him anyway, teeth sinking into his upper arm through fur. Pain shot down to his hand. Kaizer snarled and drove his forearm deeper into the bite, closing distance until the beast’s eyes widened, then smashed its head with the spear butt hard enough to crack bone. It let go and collapsed.

  More came in. Kaizer stopped trying to keep clean footwork. He fought in mud and blood, boots sliding, spear haft slick, claws tearing, fangs aching under his gums.

  A wasp the size of his forearm darted in and drove a stinger into his shoulder. The venom hit hot, then cold, then numb. Kaizer yanked the stinger free and felt the numbing spread down his arm. He didn’t let it. He pulled a small vial from his belt with his teeth, bit the cork free, and poured the potion down his throat while he moved. Bitter liquid burned. His core tightened. The numbness slowed, then stopped spreading. He swallowed hard and kept fighting.

  Another beast lunged, and Kaizer triggered Triple Thrust without thinking. Three fast strikes punched through hide and muscle in a blur of intent. The first killed. The second crippled. The third pinned the beast to the ground and Kaizer ripped the spear free with a wet sound and moved on.

  He felt Essence Siphon tug again from the bodies, a thin controlled pull that kept him steady even while he spent. The Centaur kept feeding him beasts to slow him down. Kaizer kept turning those beasts into fuel. The Centaur’s mistake stayed alive in every corpse.

  Kaizer broke through the wall of bodies and saw the Centaur again, closer than he had seen it since the bite. It backed away, bow lifted, eyes sharp. Its leg moved wrong, a slight hitch that it tried to hide. The dagger still sat in tendon and muscle, and the poison was creeping outward from the bite.

  Kaizer pointed his spear at it and shouted, voice rough and shaking.

  “Feel that?” he demanded. “That’s you losing.”

  The Centaur’s lips curled, and this time the smile looked real.

  “You finally understand what a hunt is,” it said. “Good. Now see if you can finish one.”

  Kaizer surged forward, and the Centaur fired a heavy arrow into the ground. Blue mist burst up in a choking cloud that stung Kaizer’s eyes and made his lungs seize. Kaizer coughed hard and forced his breath through his nose. He grabbed a cloth from his belt, wrapped it over his mouth, and pushed through the sting with his eyes watering.

  A shape moved in the mist, massive and wrong, vines dragging behind it. A Gravebloom Devourer pushed through, bulbs pulsing green under its skin, mouth opening wide enough to show teeth that did not belong in any living thing.

  Kaizer didn’t hesitate. He drove Essence Coating into his spear point, stabbed into the pulsing bulbs, and ripped sideways. Foul fluid sprayed across his arm. The Devourer shrieked and lashed a vine that wrapped Kaizer’s wrist and yanked hard. Kaizer let it pull him in, stepped into the force, and tore the vine apart with Claws of Silver. He rammed the spear into the creature’s core mass and twisted until resistance gave. The Devourer collapsed, still twitching, mouth snapping at air that it could no longer reach.

  Kaizer took one hard inhale, felt Essence Siphon catch the spill, and steadied himself again. He moved out of the mist and saw the Centaur retreating, but the retreat wasn’t clean. It was controlled damage control. It was choosing lanes that demanded less strain from its wounded leg. It was limiting arrows. It was saving essence.

  Kaizer felt the shift and it fed his anger into something sharper.

  He ran again, not blindly, cutting the lanes the Centaur preferred, forcing it to turn, forcing it to step harder on the wounded leg. The Centaur fired ropes that snapped short, ropes that broke under Kaizer’s claws faster than before, ropes that felt thinner because the Centaur was rationing its power. Kaizer tore through them and kept gaining.

  A beast lunged from the side and caught Kaizer’s shoulder, claws sinking deep. Kaizer pushed forward, claws digging deeper. Pain flared, hot and deep, and he felt skin tear. The beast tried to rip away. Kaizer didn’t let it. He clamped his jaws down on its throat, bit through tendon and flesh, and ripped sideways until it went limp. He spat blood and staggered one step, then forced himself forward again.

  He was bleeding now, properly bleeding, thigh soaked, shoulder torn, forearm punctured, ribs bruised, and the pain was starting to stack into something that dragged at his focus. He reached to his belt again and pulled a second potion, smaller than the first. He drank it in a single gulp while he ran. Heat spread through his chest. His breathing steadied enough to keep him moving.

  The Centaur’s taunt came again, and it sounded closer now, less amused.

  “You still think you deserve a duel,” it said. “That’s why you’re late.”

  Kaizer’s eyes burned.

  “I’m here now,” he growled. “And I’m done chasing.”

  He cut through a narrow lane between trees and saw the Centaur ahead, forced into a tighter path by the terrain, forced into a half-step that it tried to hide. Kaizer lunged, spear driving forward, and the Centaur knocked the strike aside with its bow, metal ringing hard. Kaizer didn’t chase the spear line. He shifted and raked with Claws of Silver, carving across the Centaur’s flank where armour gaps showed. Blood welled dark and quick.

  The Centaur hissed, the first real sound of irritation breaking its calm. It shoved Kaizer back with brute strength and sprang away, leg hitching, hooves striking stone too hard.

  Kaizer followed, breath coming in rough bursts, blood dripping from his claws, spear tip stained dark. He could feel the shape of the fight changing now. The Centaur was still faster. Still cleaner. Still in control of distance. The distance wasn’t endless anymore. It was measured. It was breakable.

  Kaizer reached for a throwing dagger again, felt the remaining weight on his belt, and kept it there. He didn’t throw yet. He held the intent in his hand and pushed a thin line of control into it without releasing. The sensation was faint, crude, more instinct than technique, but it was real. He could feel the path in his mind before the blade left his fingers. He could feel how to bend it, how to nudge it, how to make it lie.

  The Centaur glanced back and saw the knife in Kaizer’s hand. Its eyes narrowed.

  Kaizer bared his teeth.

  “You taught me,” he said, voice shaking with rage and satisfaction. “That was your mistake.”

  The Centaur didn’t answer. It retreated again, bow lifting, conserving, calculating, waiting for Kaizer to overcommit so it could punish him and buy another minute for the camp to die.

  Kaizer didn’t give it the minute. He kept closing, step by step, forcing the wounded leg to work, forcing the poisoned body to spend, forcing the forest to become a cage instead of a runway.

  Behind them, the distant screaming rose again, and the sound of collapse didn’t stop.

  Kaizer didn’t look back. He didn’t let the Centaur have that.

  He ran, bleeding and furious, and the gap kept narrowing.