They settled fast.

  Day briefings at dawn. Patrol reports midmorning. Training drills folded into real movement. No wasted hours.

  The town never slept properly. Even at night, there was noise—boots on stone, low voices, the clatter of barriers and gates being checked again and again.

  Daytime drills to acclimate in the forest. At sundown, back to town for afternoon briefings and supply runs. Lysara learned routes quickly. Healer’s hall. Supply stores. Outer wall.

  And at night—

  She disappeared.

  No announcement. No permission.

  When the town quieted, Lysara slipped out through gaps she hadn’t consciously mapped. Beyond the torchlight. Beyond the wards’ edge.

  The forest breathed differently here.

  She moved low. Careful. Listening.

  She marked paths with crushed leaves, shallow cuts in bark, stones turned just enough to notice if you knew how to look.

  Before dawn, she returned.

  Curled up in her bunk, she slept like the ground had claimed her.

  Every morning, she started her day again.

  Until the hunt finally began.

  Glimmerhart Deer moved like light through the trees, the herd scattering exactly as expected. Formation adjusted smoothly. Scouts relayed. Mages held back. Knights flowed forward.

  Lysara stayed where she was told.

  Until—

  Something didn’t belong.

  She followed it.

  Thirty minutes stretched thin.

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  Then Lysara came running.

  “Veilclaws!”

  Her voice cut clean, breath controlled despite the pace.

  “Multiple pairs. Hunting pattern. They’re circling wide.”

  The assigned scouts arrived bearing the same warning a half minute later.

  Orders snapped out.

  Shadows moved where shadows shouldn’t.

  “Everyone check your positions!” Vern’s voice cut through the panicked chatter.

  Formation tightened.

  The forest went wrong.

  Veilclaw Panthers phased in and out of darkness, claws striking from impossible angles. One knight went down hard. Another screamed.

  Magic flared.

  Steel rang.

  The knights surged forward—too fast, too eager. One of the new ones broke formation immediately, chasing movement instead of holding line.

  Lysara reached the group edge just as the forest erupted.

  Veilclaws moved like smoke and muscle, black fur streaked with blue light. Steel met bone. Spells flared.

  Too many at once.

  Tessa released her spell early.

  The mana slammed outward—powerful, precise, and overreaching. The shockwave knocked one of the new knights off his feet and sent another crashing into a tree.

  Adeline stepped forward.

  Her spell did not bloom.

  It collapsed.

  The pressure forced a pair back—and folded the battlefield inward. The air went sharp. Heavy.

  Too heavy.

  Xyrion moved into the gap as the line buckled between the knights.

  Mana snapped tight around him and flashed white-blue as ice tore into being—jagged, compressed, violently bright. Xyrion did not react to it. He drove the force outward to meet the charge head-on.

  The first Veilclaw hit frozen resistance and staggered, claws skidding as frost climbed its limbs; his blade took it on the rebound.

  He held the ice in place, pressure unrelenting, forcing bodies back into alignment through sheer containment.

  The collapse stopped—not because it was repaired, but because it could no longer spread.

  Kayden swore once and moved.

  He was already pulling one of the newer knights out of the crush when the second pack struck from the flank. A scream cut through the chaos—short, sharp, then gone.

  Lysara didn’t stay to look. She was already moving.

  She dragged the injured knight behind a fallen log, fingers working automatically. Blood soaked through her gloves. Too much. Internal.

  “Stay with me,” she said quietly, voice steady, hands sure.

  Behind her, the fight fractured.

  Adeline held her ground, power contained now—cold, controlled. Tessa adjusted, face pale, jaw clenched, recalibrating too late. Two more new knights went down hard. Not dead. Not fine.

  Once a senior lifeward took over, Lysara shifted to a new safe range, eyes locked on the fight, intervening only when delay would cost lives.

  Minutes passed.

  She felt movement behind her.

  Lysara raised her hands—

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

  Heat burned behind her eyes.

  Purple-grey fog coiled outward, dense and wrong, the panther recoiling as if from a wound.

  It screamed.

  A broken, tearing sound—and fled.

  Lysara staggered, hands shaking as she swallowed from a vial. The burn grounded her just enough to stay upright.

  Behind her, steel and shouts still rang.

  She hid deeper between the trees until her world settled back into place.

  Until she was sure no one had noticed.

  Then she moved—quietly—to those who still needed her.