The wilderness stretched in every direction, broken only by the scars left behind.
Ash moved through terrain stripped bare of game, the earth crushed into submission by hundreds of passing bodies. Not a single deer track crossed the path. No rabbit burrows dotted the hillsides. Even the birds had abandoned this corridor of land, their instincts warning them away from the passage of predators.
The Bloodguard had swept through like a flood.
Ash kept his pace, legs pumping in a rhythm that ate distance without burning energy he might need later. The message pressed against his ribs, tucked inside his coat where the leather kept it dry.
Mobilization.
The word alone carried weight. It meant blood and conquest and the kind of violence that reshaped borders. Gravitas needed to know. The entire troupe needed to know.
His ears swiveled, catching sounds most would miss. The whisper of wind through grass that had been crushed flat days ago. The distant cry of a hawk, miles off, hunting in territory the Bloodguard hadn't reached.
Nothing immediate. Nothing threatening.
Good.
A mountain range materialized through the haze, peaks thrust against the horizon like broken teeth. Volcanic stone, dark and sharp, the kind that shredded boots if you weren't careful about your footing. Ash had seen formations like this before, when he had scouted further south, where the earth still bled heat from old wounds.
The air changed as he drew closer. It took on a sulfurous edge that burned in the back of his throat.
He pushed harder, muscles responding without complaint. Months of constant movement had stripped away anything soft, leaving only function. The Bloodboil technique their master had developed had done the rest, carved them all into sharper versions of themselves. Ash had lost count of how many times he'd felt his control slip during those sessions, felt the wolf surge up and threaten to overwhelm rational thought.
But he'd held.
They all had.
The first guards appeared long before most would have spotted them. Frostscale warriors, lower bodies coiled in defensive positions among the rocks, spears held with the kind of casual competence that spoke to endless drilling. Their eyes tracked him across hundreds of yards, marked his approach without a flicker of alarm.
One raised a fist. Recognition.
Ash slowed as he reached their perimeter and nodded once to the guard who stepped forward. The tribesman’s scales had darkened since their defeat, patches of deeper blue spreading across what had been lighter coloring. Battle scars, healed over but visible. The warrior's pupils contracted to slits in the daylight, predator's eyes that missed nothing.
"Gravitas?" Ash asked.
The guard jerked his chin toward the mountain peak. "Up the hill. Sparring."
Of course she was. Gravitas had never stopped pushing, never allowed anyone to rest long enough to grow comfortable. He had watched her reduce the Bloodguard to shaking wrecks who could barely stand, then force them back to their feet and demand more. Bloodboil required that kind of pressure, pushed bodies past breaking points until something fundamental shifted.
In her defense, the person she pushed hardest of all was always herself.
Ash started climbing. The path wound upward through jagged outcrops, each step requiring attention as loose stone threatened to slide underfoot. Heat radiated from the rock itself, subtle but building as the altitude increased.
His nose caught the scent of sulfur more strongly now, mixed with something else. Smoke. Ash's lips pulled back from his teeth. An active volcano. Gravitas, that madwoman, had brought her company of cold-blooded snake people to an active volcano.
The sound of combat reached him before he cleared the next rise. Metal against metal, the sharp crack of impact against stone, and underneath it all—breathing. Harsh and controlled and timed to the rhythm of strikes.
Ash crested the ridge and found them.
Gravitas moved like water, her form flowing from one strike to the next without a single wasted motion. The violet glow of her eyes burned against blue skin, visible even through the veil she wore. A swarm of projectiles orbited her, weaving between offense and defense in seamless rhythm. Her control had improved again.
And yet, she wasn’t the one who commanded attention.
Her opponent met each assault with equal mastery—muscle and spear moving as one as Zelkara deflected a blow that would have shattered ribs.
The Trueblood had changed once again.
Months ago, the last daughter of Shassra had been a skilled warrior, dangerous but still mortal in her limits. Now she fought with something beyond mere skill. Every motion flowed into the next, each strike and counter executed with flawless efficiency. Her body moved at the perfect angle, her timing exploited every infinitesimal gap in Gravitas’s onslaught.
Even without using the venom in her blood, she matched Gravitas at full strength.
Neither had noticed him yet.
Ash shed his coat, letting it fall to the stone. The message could wait a few more minutes. He advanced without a word, feet silent on volcanic rock, and drove his fist toward Zelkara’s exposed flank.
She twisted, impossibly fast, and caught his strike on her forearm, the impact sending a jolt up his shoulder. But the distraction cost her. Gravitas’s next attack swept low, a cutting arc of force that would have shattered Zelkara’s knee if she hadn’t leapt back, creating distance between herself and both opponents.
“Ash.”
No surprise. No irritation. She had known he was there after all—probably tracked him from the moment he crossed the guards’ perimeter. “Two against one seems excessive.”
Ash grinned, the wolf stirring beneath his skin. “Then get stronger, Trueblood.”
They lunged together—Gravitas from behind, Ash from the front—moving with perfect coordination born of endless training. Zelkara met them both, a blur of motion, deflecting and redirecting every strike with uncanny precision.
Marvelous.
No matter how often he witnessed it, the awe never faded. Purebloods truly were different. Their growth had no ceiling, no wall to halt their ascent. One day soon, neither he nor Gravitas nor anyone else in the troop would be able to keep pace.
It was inevitable.
Their potential was capped. Hers wasn’t. And though he resented it, Ash knew he would have to accept that truth—someday.
But not today.
He pressed harder. His strikes grew faster, sharper, trading raw power for speed and forcing Zelkara to commit more fully to each defense. Gravitas adapted instantly, her projectiles flowing into the openings Ash created. Together they moved like predators, instincts intertwined.
Zelkara’s breathing quickened. Sweat glistened on her skin now, the first crack in her flawless composure. Her parries came a fraction slower—not enough for an amateur to see, but Ash felt it in every impact, in the subtle loss of force behind her counters.
She was tiring.
It was the only path to victory without casualties. Cowardly? Perhaps. But what did cowardice matter when survival was the prize? The laws of the wild favored strength, not honor.
Together, they drove her back—step by step—until her spine pressed against the rock wall, no room left to retreat. Her eyes flicked between them, calculating angles and timing with surgical precision.
Then, she dropped her guard.
Gravitas froze, her fist hovering inches from Zelkara’s face. Ash halted too, knuckles poised near the Trueblood’s temple.
For a heartbeat, none of them moved. The world seemed to hold its breath.
"I yield." Zelkara's chest heaved with each breath, sweat dripping from her chin to darken the stone beneath her feet. "That was impressive."
"Not as much as you." Gravitas stepped back, lowered her hand. "If Ash hadn't joined when he did, you would have had me in another minute."
Zelkara pushed off the rock face, rolled her shoulders to work out the tension. "Perhaps."
Ash retrieved his coat, pulled the message free. "Master sent word. He needs us."
That got their attention. Both women turned to face him fully, the casual atmosphere of training evaporating like water on hot stone.
"When?" Gravitas asked.
"Now. He wants the troupe ready to move within the week."
Zelkara's expression shifted, something predatory flickering behind human features.
The Soul contract that bound her to Zeke's service had reshaped her loyalty at a fundamental level until serving him had become identical to serving the Progenitor she'd lost. Ash had watched that transformation with mixed feelings, seen the fanaticism take root and flower into absolute devotion.
It unnerved him, sometimes. The completeness of it.
"We'll be ready," Zelkara said. "The Bloodguard has never been stronger."
Ash believed her. He'd seen what Bloodboil training had accomplished, watched warriors who'd been merely competent become something that approached the truly dangerous. The Frostscale tribe had been formidable before their defeat. Now, bound to a new master and pushed past their limits again and again, they'd become something worse.
He looked past both women toward the mountain peak, where heat shimmer distorted the air. "Why are you here?”
Gravitas turned and followed his gaze upward. "I thought that it might help him. After the war, after what happened..." She trailed off, left the sentence unfinished.
Ash remembered. Vulcanos had been magnificent during the defense against the Frostscale assault, had turned entire sections of the battlefield into molten hellscapes that forced surrender through sheer dominance.
But the cost had been high.
Vulcanos had burned too hot for too long, pushed his abilities past safe limits, and when the fighting ended he'd been diminished. The lines across his skin had dimmed to barely visible glows, his control over heat reduced to a fraction of what it had been.
"Any progress?"
"Don't know yet." Gravitas motioned toward the peak. "We brought him up there three days ago. Lowered him into the caldera. There's been no word since."
A sound interrupted them. Distant, muffled by stone and distance, but audible. Like someone drawing a breath. A deep, endless inhalation that went on far longer than lungs should allow.
"…That's been happening," Gravitas said. "Every few hours. Sometimes more frequently."
Ash frowned, extending his senses outward. The temperature had dropped. Not much, barely noticeable, but present. The volcanic heat that should have been building as they stood here discussing things had diminished instead.
Wrong. That was wrong.
"Show me."
They climbed together, all three moving with the silent efficiency of trained warriors. The path grew steeper. It soon required hands as well as feet in places where the stone had broken into fragments too unstable to trust with body weight alone. Ash's claws extended without conscious thought, dug into cracks for purchase that fingers couldn't find.
The sound came again.
That same impossible inhalation, drawn from somewhere deep within the mountain. This time Ash felt the temperature drop clearly, watched his breath mist in air that had been almost uncomfortably warm seconds before.
Zelkara hissed, a sound that emerged more serpentine than human. "Something's changed."
They reached the summit and looked down into the caldera. Molten rock filled the crater, churning slowly in currents that painted the stone walls in flickering orange light. Waves of heat rolled upward, slammed into them with physical force that made sweat bead instantly across exposed skin.
"The level's lower," Zelkara said. "It was higher this morning. I'm certain."
The sound came again, and this time they watched it happen. The surface dipped, sank downward by inches as if something beneath was drinking it down. The temperature plummeted, dropped so fast that Ash felt frost form on his coat collar.
Then again. And again. Each inhalation pulled more lava down into depths that shouldn't exist, drained the caldera in gulps that defied physical law.
The stone walls emerged from beneath the molten surface, exposed to air for what might have been the first time in centuries. The three of them stood transfixed as impossible became reality, watched the pool shrink from an ocean of fire to a lake, from a lake to a pond.
The final inhalation emptied it completely. One moment lava remained, glowing sullenly at the bottom of the crater. The next, only bare stone stretched beneath them, blackened and heat-cracked but solid.
And in the center, legs crossed and arms resting on his knees, sat Vulcanos.
The lines across his body blazed. Not the dim glow they'd been reduced to, not even the bright burn of full power. These lines carved through the darkness like fractures in reality itself, so intense that staring at them directly made Ash's eyes water. Heat radiated from Vulcanos in waves that pushed back the cold he'd created, warmed the air until it danced and shimmered around him.
Vulcanos opened his eyes.
Then belched. The sound echoed through the caldera, bounced off stone walls and rolled across the mountain range beyond. Ash saw birds take flight miles away, startled by noise that carried further than it should have.
"That," Vulcanos said, his voice rough from disuse, "was exactly what I needed."