THE ARROW'S tip glinted beneath the soft light filtering from the trees, a deadly sliver of bone aimed squarely at Amara's throat. The archer holding it was unlike anything Gray had ever seen. Snow-white hair flowed past pointed ears, framing a face carved in serene, silent fury. Its skin was the color of damp wood bark, mottled in places, fibrous and smooth at once. The eyes were blank and milky, no iris, no sclera, just a shimmering sheet of white that seemed to reflect the world but not see it.
The creature wore a dark green suit, tailored and close-fitting, yet clearly made for war. The fabric looked thick and layered, stitched with sinew or root-like thread, resembling bark smoothed into cloth. Ornamental bronze trims lined the cuffs and collar, catching the light as it moved. A high-collared mantle flared at the shoulders, etched with curling glyphs in a pale silver dye, symbols that pulsed faintly, like echoes of a forgotten forest tongue. It looked like something out of a dream where nature and civility had struck an uneasy, stylish truce.
The only thing that entered Gray's mind was the most obvious he could name.
Engkanto.
The silence shattered.
Four more stepped from the trees, each one no less startling than the first. They were tall, taller than the kataus they had fought, and moved with the unnerving grace of trees bending just before a storm. Three carried long sibats, the spears crowned with rippling cloth streamers that fluttered like tongues of fire, red and ochre, stitched with markings. The last one, a female with a wild mane of brambled hair, nocked an arrow to her bow with casual precision, her face as emotionless as stone.
Gray instinctively moved back a step, his foot pressing into the softened forest loam. His eyes snapped to Amara. She wasn't looking at the engkantos. She was looking at Troy. And she wasn't panicking. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes were moving, the smallest shift left, then down, then a hard blink.
Gray's head turned sharply. Troy was watching her. Eyes narrowed. Focused. And just before the kampilan moved in his hand, Gray realized it wasn't hesitation in their stares. It was conversation. The kind only soldiers or people who've survived wars together could pull off.
"Should I start counting?" Gray muttered, barely audible, his voice directed toward Troy. He didn't get an answer.
"Kanye!"
The name cracked through the trees like a whip, and the hound answered before the echo could even settle. Black fur blurred across the clearing. Kanye launched forward like a shadow on fire, jaws wide, body tight with muscle. The engkanto archer turned just in time to see the beast collide into his chest with the force of a falling tree. The two slammed into the ground in a tangle of limbs and leaves, the archer's bow skittering out of reach.
But the second archer was already in motion. She loosed her arrow with barely a twitch, expression unreadable. It sliced through the air in a blur.
Troy stepped into its path without a blink. His kampilan rose, and the arrow met steel—not with a dull thud, but a flash. Sparks burst from the impact as if the weapon itself was sacred, rejecting the arrow's intent with contempt.
Gray didn't wait for the sparks to fall. He bolted forward, the world narrowing to motion and breath. One of the engkanto spearmen, taller than him, skin like polished bark, stepped to meet him with a sweeping arc of his sibat. Gray ducked low, dirt scraping his knees, the spear slicing the air overhead. He crashed into the engkanto's middle, a sharp grunt breaking from the warrior's chest. Gray wrenched the shaft, twisted hard, and sent the sibat flying from the engkanto's grip before snapping the haft cleanly against a tree trunk. He didn't strike again. The engkanto groaned and slumped, winded but conscious.
Amara's kris blades moved like ink in water. Fluid, quiet, impossible to track. She met the next attacker head-on, not with aggression but with brutal control. Her right blade parried a jab, her left dipped low, catching the engkanto behind the knee. He dropped to the forest floor with a cry, and before he could rise again, she spun the blunt side of her blade into the side of his temple. He crumpled. Alive, breathing, out.
Troy met the second archer with a roar. She drew again, but he was too close. His kampilan swept the bow aside before she could fire, shattering it into splinters. She stumbled back, trying to recover. Troy didn't strike her down. Instead, he pivoted and swept her legs from under her, pinning her with the flat of his blade against her chest. "Don't," he said. She didn't.
Another engkanto lunged at Gray with a short blade, fast and sharp. Gray moved on instinct. He sidestepped, felt the blade graze his shoulder, and hissed, the sting hot and sudden. He didn't falter. He slammed his shoulder into the warrior's chest, forcing him back, then locked arms with him in a tangle of limbs. They struggled, twisting in a brutal rhythm. Gray didn't rely on precision, he fought like someone who had survived too many alleys. Elbows, knees, a shove to the throat. He twisted the blade from the engkanto's grip, kneed him in the gut, and planted him hard against the base of a tree. The engkanto slid down, dazed but breathing.
The last engkanto staggered. They were losing.
But the forest didn't let them celebrate.
The air shifted. At first, it was only a whisper. A tremble in the leaves. A subtle movement that didn't belong to anything alive. And then it hit them. A wind, cold and unnatural, roared through the trees. It didn't howl like regular wind. It sang like a scream muted by layers of cloth. It moved like a hand swiping across the earth, a god's breath caught between two syllables. It struck the group like a tidal wave.
Gray flew backward, his body dragged along the dirt, shoulder scraping tree roots, his breath knocked out of his chest. He rolled, landed hard on his side, then back again. He heard Troy grunt somewhere nearby, and Amara's body hit the ground not far from his own. Kanye skidded to a stop just beside him, claws tearing into the dirt, fur bristled.
Silence followed. The wind had passed. But what it left behind was the certainty of power. Not brute strength. Not magic thrown carelessly. This was a spell, deliberate and ancient. A warning. A curtain pulled across the fight.
The wind stilled, but the trees had not yet recovered from the violence of it. Branches creaked. Leaves spiraled from the air like wounded birds. Even the shadows around them seemed to crouch low in the soil, unsettled by what had just torn through the clearing. Gray pushed himself up from the dirt, coughing out a breath and brushing pebbles from his cheek. His side ached where he had skidded across the ground, and he could hear Kanye nearby letting out a soft, disgruntled huff. Troy groaned beside him, kampilan half-buried in the soil. Amara, always faster to recover than the rest of them, was already crouched low, her blades drawn, eyes scanning the edge of the clearing with the precision of a hunter preparing to kill.
That was when she stepped out.
Her hair was short, clipped neatly just above her shoulders, but tousled in a way that gave her the air of someone who always moved too fast for mirrors. Her face had that strange contradiction of softness and certainty. Cheekbones high, smile playful, eyes sharp as pins. She looked like someone who could charm a vendor out of a week's supply of goods with just a grin and a tilt of the head. And there was beauty, undeniable beauty, the kind that didn't need to try to announce itself.
She wore a faded cropped jeans jacket, the sleeves frayed at the ends, the buttons all mismatched. Underneath, a white cotton shirt hugged her torso with a simplicity that only made her look more untouchable. And though it made no sense in this jungle-soaked world of magic and blood, she wore a skirt. Not a flowing, ornamental kind, but one stitched with purpose. It was pleated in asymmetrical cuts, sewn with darker panels that hinted at hidden pockets or places for charms, perhaps even blades. Her boots were caked with dust, their laces fraying like they'd seen a dozen towns and kept walking. She didn't look like a warrior out of legend. She looked like a girl from the city who wandered into a battlefield by mistake and decided to win anyway.
And then there were her earrings. Delicate hoops of silver that caught the fractured light like ripples on still water. They shimmered faintly, pulsing with an inner glow that hadn't been there moments before, as if the spell that had knocked them all to the ground had been pulled directly from them. Obviously her anting-anting, Gray thought. Not carved bone or etched brass like the others. Just silver. Simple. Beautiful. Dangerous.
At first, she was filled with confidence, but the moment she saw the two people behind Gray, she stopped.
"Mayumi Alcantara?"