Dawn bled into the sky, white sun rising from behind the twin peaks that cast long, black shadows over the forest. Mist clung to the undergrowth like breath unwilling to fade. The air was still, almost reverent, as if it sensed what was to come.

  Ren and Seth moved silently through the veil of ferns, the soft crunch of dead leaves underfoot muffled by tension. Seth’s voice came low, almost a whisper, as if afraid the trees themselves might overhear.

  “We’re hunting a python today. One with poison resonance.” He stopped, crouching behind a crooked tree root. “All pythons are venomous in their own right, but the blessed ones… they breathe poison. It seeps from their skin, hangs in the air. Gas. Liquid. It’ll melt you alive.”

  Ren nodded. His expression betrayed little, but he filed away the information with meticulous care, the way a craftsman might handle a blade too delicate to test with force.

  These past days, Ren had struggled to uncover his own resonance—probing the invisible, tapping into instinct, failing more often than not. But on the third morning, something shifted.

  While meditating beneath the wind-bent willow near Kareth’s eastern stream, he felt a ripple—not on his skin, but in the space itself, like air had memory, like silence had weight. He reached out and saw something few ever would: a shimmer, a distortion in the stillness, like spider silk dancing just out of sight.

  Ren pressed his palm into the ripple.

  Within it, threads.

  They weren’t visible in the conventional sense. They shimmered with translucent hues, each vibrating with meaning. One pulsed like breath. He touched it—wind—and as he pulled, it coalesced in his hand, condensing into a swirling draft that howled and screamed for escape.

  Seth had stood nearby, dumbstruck.

  “Do it again,” the hunter had demanded.

  Ren did. This time he touched a scarlet filament. It flared, turning into a flickering orb of fire in his palm. It warmed his fingers and danced with a life of its own.

  “That’s... not summoning,” Seth muttered. “Not exactly conjuring either. But it looks similar. Just—different. Like you’re pulling it directly from the world.”

  His gaze lingered on Ren, not with suspicion, but with the sort of fear a man shows when the world tilts sideways and reality stretches too thin.

  ---

  Now, they moved again.

  The jungle thickened around them as they approached a clearing where plants had withered to pulp, their colors drained into a film of decay. A warning sign.

  The python was near.

  A subtle hiss slithered through the air. Then—movement.

  Seth shouted, “Dodge!”

  Ren reacted before thought. His pupils contracted; time slowed. The serpent’s body shot forward like a ballista bolt, scales shimmering with an iridescent sheen. With a sidestep no wider than a breath, Ren slipped past the lunge and rolled beneath a half-fallen log.

  A sizzling sound came from behind him.

  Seth had thrown enchanted masks toward them—gifts from Eva, imbued with purification magic. Ren secured his quickly. The scent of flowers and steel filled his nose as the filter engaged.

  The python coiled itself around a massive root-covered tree, emerald eyes fixed on them like twin lanterns of death. Its body steamed, thick poison weeping from its scales. Where the droplets fell, moss blackened, bark peeled, and the soil hissed.

  Then the poison lifted, rising in translucent sheets and wrapping around the beast like an ethereal armor.

  Seth gritted his teeth and conjured a flame, sculpting it into an arrow of condensed heat. He loosed it with a sharp twang.

  The arrow struck—and sizzled out. Dissolved before contact.

  The serpent’s maw opened wide, revealing twin fangs as long as daggers. It lunged at Seth, who barely evaded, the serpent’s teeth shearing through a boulder behind him with the ease of slicing fruit.

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  Ren, breath calm, reached out again. This time, a green thread shimmered in the ripple he summoned. He pulled. It took shape—vines, wet with dew and imbued with vitality. With deliberate motion, he wove them toward the python, snaring it mid-coil. The creature thrashed, writhing violently, but the bindings held… for now.

  Seth tossed aside his bow and drew a longsword—a weapon glimmering with faint runes.

  “An Emiliod,” he said. “Amplifying Sword. E-Rank. One charge only.”

  He poured his spiritual energy into the blade. The runes flared to life, blazing with resonance. Flames danced from the hilt to the tip, heat thick enough to make the air waver.

  With a roar, Seth charged.

  The python reacted, spewing a wave of poison in defense. Seth slid beneath it, the liquid hissing as it missed him by inches. Ren reinforced the vines, channeling more plant essence. They thickened, pulsed, held the beast in place.

  Seth brought the sword down.

  The blade met poison armor—and cleaved through it. With a hiss that split the air, it burned away half of the serpent’s skull, melting eye and bone alike. The python shrieked—a sound too low and guttural to be from any natural creature.

  But it lived.

  Mad with pain, it tore free from the vines, blind and desperate. It slammed into Seth, throwing him like a broken doll into a stone slab. A wet crack followed. Seth didn’t rise.

  His chest heaved. Blood dripped from his mouth. His arm twisted unnaturally, ribs caved inward.

  “Run…” he groaned, tears leaking from his eyes. “Ren. Idiot. Save yourself…”

  Ren’s steps were silent.

  He passed Seth without a word, hand unclenching. Not from cowardice, but clarity.

  He picked up the discarded Emiliod.

  Seth, delirious, blinked. “It won’t work. Not without resonance…”

  Ren didn’t respond.

  He turned to the serpent—its ruinous head still smoking, its gaze twitching toward sound. It opened its mouth again, venom dripping like candlewax.

  Ren reached toward the world.

  But this time, he didn’t pluck a single thread.

  He tore them—five at once, all of wind. They flailed wildly in his grip, rejecting containment. With the sword’s structure in mind, he twisted them into the hilt, binding the storm into steel.

  The sword screamed.

  Wind roared down the blade, turning it into a vortex of pressure and howling force. Ren dashed forward, slipping past the serpent’s convulsing coils, and drove the sword deep into the ruined eye.

  Explosion.

  Wind ripped outward, amplified by the Emiliod’s core, feeding on the python’s remaining poison and igniting the lingering heat. A cyclone erupted. Fire danced inside it like vengeful spirits. The python twisted—and fell.

  It did not rise again.

  Smoke drifted from its remains.

  Ren pulled the sword free and walked to Seth, who still clung to breath.

  “You’re… insane…” Seth coughed, then laughed, half-choking on blood.

  Ren was already searching the corpse.

  “There,” Seth rasped. “A-7. It made a core… should be near the heart.”

  Ren tore into the still-warm flesh, ignoring the bitter scent of poison-charred skin. Near the heart, he found it—a pulsing clump of dense tissue, still throbbing faintly with spiritual power.

  “The flesh core,” Seth confirmed. “Used for D-rank weapons. That one… two, maybe three silver.”

  Ren nodded, storing it carefully.

  Then, without complaint, he lifted Seth onto his back.

  The forest was quiet once more. Only the echo of that impossible wind remained, circling faintly through the leaves like a forgotten whisper.

  They did not return to Seth’s home.

  Instead, they made for Hera’s.