Shadows on the Horizon
The icebound ruins were behind them, but Jerry couldn't shake the weight of what had happened inside.
The abyssal creature had lured him with a perfect deception, using Mike's face as bait. It had nearly worked.
It had made him hesitate.
He clenched his fists, glancing at his reflection in the blade of Backbone. His own golden eyes stared back at him, still tinged with the faint glow of power from his last transformation.
He had unleashed something in that fight—something raw, something primal.
The fusion of his bonds, the full integration of their forms into his own.
It had felt right. Natural.
Yet it also terrified him.
Was he even human anymore?
The others were watching him carefully. He could feel it.
Janice rode beside him, her fingers tightening around the reins of her horse. Selene trailed a few paces behind, scanning the horizon with quiet caution.
Vrkane and Bengala padded through the snow in their hybrid forms, their massive frames making no sound against the ice. Aviana circled above, her keen golden eyes tracking everything below.
They trusted him.
Even after what they had seen in that temple, after he had torn apart an abyssal creature with his bare hands, after the divine armor had reshaped itself to his will…
They still trusted him.
He wished he could say the same for himself.
---
The Road South
They traveled in silence for hours.
The tundra stretched endlessly before them, broken only by jagged cliffs and the occasional skeletal remains of trees long claimed by the frost.
No more attacks. No more whispers of the abyss.
But Jerry knew better.
This wasn't over.
The abyss wasn't done with him.
Vrkane growled lowly, breaking the silence. "Something's wrong."
Jerry tensed. "What is it?"
The wolf-man lifted his snout, inhaling deeply. "Smoke. Metal. Blood."
Bengala's tail flicked behind her, her feline eyes narrowing. "There's a battle ahead."
Jerry exchanged a glance with Janice.
They hadn't seen another soul for miles. If there was a fight happening out here, in the middle of nowhere, it wasn't a coincidence.
Selene unslung her bow, her voice tight. "We should avoid it."
Jerry hesitated.
Logic said she was right.
But instinct…
Instinct told him something else.
His grip tightened on Dismay's hilt. "No," he said. "We check it out."
No arguments. No hesitation from his companions.
They moved.
---
The Battlefield
They crested the next ridge—
And found hell.
The battlefield below was littered with bodies, blood soaking into the snow in dark, steaming pools. Broken weapons lay scattered among the fallen, and the scent of burning flesh filled the air.
But it wasn't the carnage that made Jerry's stomach turn.
It was the way the corpses had been arranged.
Circles.
Patterns.
Abyssal symbols carved into the frozen earth.
His pulse spiked.
Janice swore under her breath. "This wasn't a battle," she murmured. "This was a ritual."
Selene nocked an arrow, scanning the bodies. "Whoever did this might still be here."
Jerry stepped forward, his boots crunching in the snow. The symbols were intricate, drawn with precision.
But they weren't finished.
The energy was still lingering, waiting to be completed.
Waiting for something.
Then he heard it.
A whimper.
Jerry's head snapped toward the sound.
A survivor.
He moved before the others could stop him, rushing toward the source.
Beneath a collapsed wagon, barely visible under the wreckage—
A girl.
She couldn't have been older than twelve. Her clothes were torn, her body covered in bruises and frostbite. But her eyes—
Her eyes were wrong.
Pure black.
Jerry froze.
The girl blinked up at him.
Then she smiled.
"You came."
Ice shot through Jerry's veins.
The symbols—
They weren't waiting for just anyone.
They had been waiting for him.
---
The Trap
Before Jerry could react, the girl's shadow moved.
Not like a normal shadow shifting under the light—this thing twisted, stretching unnaturally toward him, its edges writhing like living tendrils.
Vrkane and Bengala lunged, their claws flashing.
But the moment their attacks struck the girl's form, they passed through her.
Not like mist.
Like she had never been there at all.
Jerry moved.
He grabbed Backbone, swinging the massive sword in a wide arc—aiming not at the girl, but at the symbols beneath her.
The blade struck the frozen ground.
A pulse of golden energy erupted outward, shattering the nearest runes.
The girl screamed—not a child's scream, but something wrong, something hollow and endless, as if a hundred voices had been trapped in her throat.
Her body flickered, distorting, twisting into something else.
Then—
She was gone.
Nothing remained of her but the broken lines of the ritual.
Jerry's breathing was ragged, his fingers still clenched around his sword.
The others surrounded him, eyes wide.
"What the hell was that?" Janice whispered.
Jerry exhaled. "A trap."
Selene swallowed hard, lowering her bow. "A summoning."
Jerry looked down at the ruined symbols.
Whatever they had been meant to call forth, it hadn't finished its process.
But that didn't mean it wasn't coming.
He turned to the others. "We're leaving. Now."
No one argued.
As they moved, Jerry cast one last glance at the battlefield.
The bodies. The runes.
The abyss had waited for him.
And next time…
It wouldn't miss its chance.
---