I hit the ground.

  The impact registers in waves. Three ribs find the metal surface first, then my left shoulder wrenches from its socket with a wet pop that I feel rather than hear. My jaw strikes last, teeth cutting deep into my tongue, copper flooding my mouth before I can process the sequence of damage.

  Pain opens like a country with no borders. White and vast and absolute.

  Then the glyphs arrive.

  The torq's message blooms across my vision like frost forming on cracked glass. Precise. Uncaring. The accounting proceeds regardless of what my body is experiencing, the overlay settling over reality with alien indifference.

  Victorious.

  Opponents: Xal'rith Abominations (Thralled)

  Conquered: Blood Claimed. Flesh Claimed.

  Energy Assimilated: +90 Units

  The pain continues beneath the symbols. My shoulder screams. My ribs grind against each other with every breath. Blood pools beneath my cheek, warm against cold metal.

  The accounting proceeds.

  These are unrelated facts.

  Sound returns in stages, each layer building atop the last like sediment settling after flood. First comes my own heartbeat, massive and drowning, pulsing through damaged ears that register only pressure and vibration. The cold spreads through my dislocated shoulder in slow waves, creeping outward from the joint like ice forming on still water.

  Copper fills my mouth. I swallow. More replaces it.

  Then the muffled sounds clarify.

  Angry shouts resolve into young voices strained past breaking. Kiran fire screams through the clearing in sharp bursts that cut through the ambient noise. Bodies hit metal with wet impacts, some thrown with force that has nothing to do with momentum or physics.

  I open my eyes.

  The world resolves in fragments. Metal ground. Twisted trees. The false sky above with its absent stars. And suspended in the air before me, five young armigers hang motionless. Not Raven Five, these faces are new. Limp. Their weapons scattered on the ground below their dangling feet.

  No visible restraints hold them.

  Invisible vectors.

  I do not turn to look behind me.

  I do not need to.

  She is there. Binah. I feel her presence as temperature drop, as pressure change, as the particular quality of shadow that only she casts. Those shadows reach forward rather than backward, stretching past my peripheral vision, touching the edges of my sight without quite entering it.

  Her humming has stopped.

  The silence she leaves is worse than any sound.

  Power settles into me while I lie on the cold metal, not burning but integrating. Heat soaking into cold iron. I feel it spread through the thread, distributing across the body's vast emptiness in patterns I am beginning to recognize. The mathematics adjust themselves with each addition, the equation rebalancing toward a total I cannot yet calculate.

  Still nothing against what the void demands.

  But more than before.

  The Skathrith responds, not with hunger's scream. Something quieter moves through my chest, vibrating like a cat's purr felt through bone. Satisfaction. Anticipation. The promise of more to come.

  I push myself upright.

  My body thrums with borrowed strength. The damage registers even as they heal. Three broken ribs become a vague notion of yesterday. The dislocated shoulder pops back into place with a pang of pleasure. The wrongness of it all feels distant. Observed rather than experienced.

  Above me, the Skathrith hangs in folded sheets of space. It coos, a low battle-hymn that carries no urgency. Not demanding. Inviting.

  Hunger does not scream.

  Hunger sings.

  The boy stands at the center of the suspended Armigers.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  Lias. The name rises from memory with the face attached. Sandy hair falling into nervous eyes. Voice pitched low and conspiratorial. The child who approached me in the dining hall with questions about the First Baptism, who leaned too close, who did not see Binah until it was too late.

  That boy is gone.

  Or buried. Or revealed as costume discarded when no longer useful.

  This version stands taller. Moves with precision that belongs to someone older, someone trained, someone who has practiced control until it became second nature. His fingers conduct invisible orchestra, small movements that correspond to distant responses. The bodies hanging in the air shift slightly when his hands move. The thralls pressing forward adjust their advance when his attention flickers.

  His eyes glow blue.

  I study him the way I might study any opponent, cataloging details that my enhanced perception renders distinct. The white-knuckled grip on nothing visible. The too-careful breathing that comes in measured intervals. The shoulders held just slightly too high, the posture of someone expecting attack from directions they cannot quite identify.

  He is afraid.

  But the fear is drowned beneath something else. Discovery. Power. The narcotic certainty of control exercised from perfect safety. He has found something that makes him feel invincible, and that feeling has become more real to him than any physical danger.

  His Semblance is active.

  I watch his fingers move in small, deliberate patterns. Watch the distant Xal'rith thralls respond in synchronized waves. Watch the blue eyes flicker across hundreds of bodies in coordination that speaks of practice, of refinement, of time spent learning exactly how much pressure to apply and where.

  Violence through distance. Control without proximity.

  He thinks this makes him safe.

  "Eata."

  The name lands like a blade drawn from sheath. A weapon he has been waiting to deploy. The slur hangs in the clearing's charged air, sharp with malice and the particular cruelty of someone who believes they have won.

  I do not react.

  I let it slide off like water on oiled leather, let it find no purchase in my expression or my posture.

  The silence stretches.

  One heartbeat. Two. Lias's confidence flickers, just slightly, just enough for me to see. He expected something. A response. A reaction. Something to feed on, to validate the risk he took by revealing himself.

  I give him nothing.

  Then I speak, my voice conversational, almost gentle.

  "Have you ever watched predators feed?"

  The question lands strangely in the charged air. Lias blinks. His fingers pause their orchestration for just a moment before resuming their patterns. The suspended Armigers sway slightly in response to the disruption.

  I continue, tone clinical.

  "There is an order to it. They do not start with the face. That comes last."

  Edge's voice echoes through my memory. The nervous humor. The desperate attempt to deflect fear into something manageable. I understand now why he reached for that particular joke, why those images lived so close to the surface of his thoughts.

  "They go for the meaty parts first. The haunches. The belly. Work their way forward while the prey remains conscious." I tilt my head slightly, considering. "Aware. They let it watch."

  A pause.

  "It is very methodical."

  My tone never shifts. Never hardens into threat. Never rises into anger. I simply describe what I have observed, learned, understood applies here. Educational. Informative.

  Terrifying in its absolute calm.

  Lias falters.

  The distant thralls reveal it first. Their synchronized advance stutters, micro-hesitations rippling through the horde like wind through wheat. The bodies continue forward, the momentum of their approach still carrying them toward Raven Five's position. But the perfect cohesion fractures. Just slightly. Just enough.

  His fingers tighten. His jaw sets.

  "This is power you cannot fight."

  His voice carries an edge it did not possess before, reassurance directed inward, the kind of statement made to convince oneself rather than others.

  "You cannot touch what controls from distance. You cannot reach me. Cannot hurt me. Cannot do anything except stand there and wait while I decide what to do with you. With them." He gestures toward the suspended Armigers. "With all of it."

  I watch his hands move. Watch the thralls respond. Watch the blue glow in his eyes intensify as he pushes more power into the connection, asserting control through will alone.

  "You are not special," he continues, voice gaining strength. "Not unique. Not chosen. You are an accident. A mistake. A mongrel who stumbled into power he does not deserve and does not understand. I have been training for this since before you crawled out of whatever hole your mother dropped you in. I have been preparing while you were learning which fork to use at dinner. You cannot—"

  "More."

  I interrupt quietly.

  The word cuts through his monologue like a blade through silk. He stops. Stares. The thralls stutter again, their advance faltering as his concentration fractures.

  I take a step forward, simply closing distance with deliberate calm. Like approaching a merchant's stall. Like examining goods laid out for inspection.

  Behind me, Binah's shadows stretch.

  I feel them reaching past my shoulders, spreading across the metal ground like oil seeping through cracks. The suspended Armigers hang motionless above patterns of darkness that slide beneath them. Patient. Absolute.

  "Call more," I say, not commanding.

  Requesting.

  The distinction is somehow worse.

  Lias takes a step backward. The first retreat he has made since revealing himself. His fingers continue their patterns, but the movements have become jerky. Uncertain. The thralls respond in kind, their perfect synchronization degrading into something merely coordinated.

  "What?"

  "Call more." I take another step. "Three hundred is insufficient. It is not nearly enough."

  The clearing feels smaller. The air thicker. Behind me, Binah coils, gathering, compressing. The shadows that reach past my peripheral vision deepen, drinking light from sources I cannot identify.

  My voice drops lower, resonating from somewhere behind my sternum, from the space where the Skathrith's song has taken up permanent residence.

  Something human steps aside, not fully gone, but no longer steering.

  The Skathrith descends.

  Not physically. It remains suspended in folded space, visible only to me as sheets of brightness wrapped around dark core. But its presence intensifies. Tightens around me like armor that fits beneath skin. The cooing battle-hymn grows clearer. Louder. More real.

  The hunger surfaces.

  Singing.

  Lias stares at me across the clearing. His blue eyes wide. His fingers frozen mid-gesture. The thralls have stopped entirely now, their advance halted by the disruption of his concentration. Two hundred bodies stand motionless on metal ground, awaiting commands that are not coming.

  I let him see what looks back at him.

  "I am hungry," I whisper in a voice not my own.

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