The stench was a heavy fog, making Trenn gag as he breathed through his mouth.

  He stood before the mountain of the Gem-Croc’s corpse, his boots sinking into the black sludge and faded scales that leaked from beneath its flank.

  His memory conjured phantom water that rushed over golden scales. The memory of crushing a rival god filled his jaws. Then, the sensation curdled. The soul bound to Trenn recoiled against the spectacle of its rotting remains.

  The Gem-Croc shrieked in his mind, a frantic plea for motion. It demanded agency. It wanted to rise from the mud, to feel its power. To swim one last time.

  The Wolf Kin leader stalked to the edge of the God’s Wake, his gaze fixed on the distant horizon where a thin plume of smoke rose from a Ratling settlement. Janaree paced behind him, her hand tapping a restless rhythm on the hilt of her pistol.

  A low rumble broke Trenn’s trance. "What do you mean by 'calling to you'?" Vavnaar growled, his massive frame shifting impatiently. "It's a giant corpse. Decaying meat."

  "The Red God moves fast," Janaree said, turning back. "Every second we stand here gawking, the trail grows cold. We go to the Ratling village, force them to build a transport for the ichor and cannons for the hunt."

  Trenn’s head remained turned toward the carcass. "No. We wait for Almitad."

  The words were quiet, but they landed with the weight of an anchor. Vavnaar took a heavy step forward, his hand dropping to the pommel of Silver Flash. The air grew thick with his irritation.

  "The piggy gives orders now?" he snarled.

  “Trenn, Almitad is in the city. She’s not coming back,” said Ezy, shaking her head.

  “She has her revenge,” confirmed Zeen. “She’s helping the souls of the dead—”

  Trenn finally broke his connection with the corpse. He turned, his gaze sweeping over the Wolf Kin pack. His brow furrowed. He searched the faces—the scarred snout of the leader, the red fur of the woman, the grey wisdom of the elder—and found nothing—a blank, empty slate.

  "Who are you guys anyway?"

  Zeen choked on his comment, dumbfounded by Trenn’s boldness.

  The question was genuine, laced with a weary confusion that was more insulting than any challenge. The fur on Vavnaar’s neck bristled. A low growl vibrated in his chest, and his hand tightened on his sword until the leather creaked.

  "I will—"

  "Vavnaar." Wutren’s voice was a deep rumble of caution. The elder Wolf Kin placed a heavy, restraining hand on his leader’s forearm. He stepped forward, his ancient eyes shimmering with a faint, internal light as he studied Trenn.

  He saw the hollow space behind the gaze, the man adrift in his own skull—and a complete lack of fear.

  "The God Soul is erasing him," Wutren finished, his voice flat with certainty.

  Vavnaar paced a tight circle around Trenn. The wolf’s eyes narrowed into yellow slits, his pupils dilating as they tracked the shimmering gemstones embedded in Trenn’s tail.

  A frantic pulse throbbed in Vavnaar’s neck. Through the tether, Trenn felt the wolf’s fear warring with cupidity. Vavnaar gestured toward Trenn with a dismissive jerk of his chin.

  “What’s your play then, Piggy?”

  Trenn ignored the pacing Wolf Kin. He turned to Wutren. “That’s true. I’ve been… forgetful, lately.” His gaze drifted back to the god-corpse. His focus was singular, a frantic search for a solution to the pull in his gut. He knew who held the knowledge he needed. He turned, his gaze finding the small, nervous form of the Rabbitling scout.

  "You, return to your village then," Trenn commanded. "Find Almitad. Tell her we need her one last time."

  The Rabbitling flinched at the direct order but gave a single, sharp nod and sprinted back toward the Quarry, glad to escape the tense situation and the dangerous Wolf Kin.

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  Vavnaar’s jaw tightened at the blatant disregard for his authority. He took another step, his shadow falling over Trenn.

  "We are not waiting for the floating bag of bones," he declared.

  Trenn did not answer. He simply stood his ground, his hand resting on the pommel of the God-Bone club at his hip. He raised his shield arm and pushed Skate lightly, tilting its position on his head.

  The movement caught Vavnaar’s eye. The seven-foot-tall Wolf Kin swept his gaze across the field.

  Mara stood to the side, encased in the chitin of the Husk, unimpressed. Further back, Ezy sat in the cockpit of the red metal Crusher, a walking siege engine. And then there was Trenn himself, his massive golden tail a coiled spring of muscle and divine metal resting in the dirt behind him.

  "Fine," Vavnaar growled. He stepped back. "But there’s a limit to my patience."

  Vavnaar prowled the perimeter. He kicked at stones, his head snapping to the tree line at the crack of a twig. A splash of pink and yellow drew his eye. Atop the Gem-Croc’s rotting spine, Bomber meticulously cleaned one of its furry legs, its antennae twitching.

  Janaree dismantled her pistols on a flat rock and ran drills with the three pups, teaching them to reassemble the weapon.

  Wutren sat stone-still, but his eyes tracked the sun’s descent, calculating the lost daylight.

  Hours later, a teal shadow broke the monotony. Almitad approached with a stuttering drift. She was alone.

  As she drew closer, Trenn saw the cause. Within the patchwork cage of her ribs, the undead Mana Bloom was a withered husk. A lone, wilting petal clung to the stem, its necrotic light a faint, dying pulse.

  She settled to the ground, the landing less a controlled float and more a managed fall.

  "You're leaving us, Almitad?" Trenn asked, his voice rough.

  Her skull turned, the painted sockets of her mask fixed on him. "The One-Eye is dead," her voice was a dry rustle, the booming resonance gone. "I have guided the souls of the Goat Kin and Rabbitlings to the Other World. I am ready to follow them."

  "The scout?" Trenn asked.

  "He guided me to the ridge and fled," Almitad replied. "He muttered about 'suicidal madness' and 'wet dog stench' before sprinting back to the Quarry."

  Vavnaar and Janaree growled, but they remembered the necromancer well, and there was a powerful dead god beside them.

  Trenn gestured toward the colossal, rotting corpse. "I need your help. One last time? This... thing. It's pulling at me. A part of me recognizes it, and I have no idea what to do with this feeling. I'm lost."

  Almitad’s masked gaze shifted from him to the carcass. "The soul you're carrying is recognizing its mortal coil."

  The pull became clearer in his mind. "It wants to move. To swim. I can feel it."

  Almitad’s skeletal hand rose, a single bony finger pointing to the last petal in her chest. "I can’t reanimate it. The spell would consume the last of my fuel, and me with it." She lowered her hand. "But you… You’re a living Mana Source. You can attune to the Necrosis Element. You do it."

  "I can't," Trenn shook his head. "I don't know how."

  "You are soul-bound to the corpse. The link is already forged. I can guide you through the ritual, and scribe the bones for you… I would be the guide. You would be the fuel. Together, we could be the vehicle that drives the spell."

  She floated to the carcass, her movements slow and deliberate.

  From her robes, she produced a slender stylus. A dry, scraping sound filled the air as she began to etch a complex sigil into the bone's surface, a spiraling pattern of capture and command.

  "Come," she commanded. “Harmonize your hum with mine, Wild Mage.”

  Trenn knelt before the rune-scribed bone. The air around it felt wrong, a pocket of stillness that made the hairs on his arms stand erect.

  "Reach for the cold. Match its pitch. Pour your will into my runes."

  Vavnaar turned to Wutren, who nodded his head. “Be patient, young master,” the Grey-Fur said. “I can feel the power leaking from them.”

  Trenn closed his eyes. He ignored the distractions; he shut out the warmth of his own blood. He reached for the memory of the void, the marrow-deep chill he had felt when he first tried to heal Almitad's ribs.

  The dissonant hum returned, a psychic friction that grated against his own life force. He seized it, held it, and channeled the alien frequency into the runes Almitad carved into the carcass.

  The connection was like holding a live wire wrapped in ice.

  The runes flared with a blinding, incandescent light. Vavnaar recoiled, his boots skidding through the muck. A guttural, satisfied grunt erupted from Wutren.

  Trenn’s sonar painted a chaotic map of the pup’s retreat; they scrambled backward, their heartbeats accelerating into a collective, terrified staccato.

  The runes flared with a violent, black-green light. Trenn felt his mana being siphoned, a torrent of energy pouring from him into the sigils. The strain was immense.

  A wave of vertigo washed over him, and the world behind his eyelids began to tilt.

  "Hold it," Almitad's voice commanded. "Focus the energy. See the corpse swimming through the deep. Feel the water through its palmed paws."

  Trenn fought against the encroaching darkness. He pictured the golden god’s glittering gems as its powerful limbs pushed through the abyss. His hands, through the waters of his childhood pool. His feet, kicking upstream in the summer home’s river.

  He was free.

  Laughter drifted from the beach… his mother? His sister? He saw a smile and bright eyes reflecting the summer sun. The cold and the pain washed away. He had come home.

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