Talos breathed heavily, the air whistling through his teeth as he downed another potion.

  He felt an involuntary grin stretch his face when the Bat—that twisted thing of elongated limbs and pale flesh—rushed him. It took the bait.

  He crushed the empty glass vial in his palm, ignoring the slice against his own skin. With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the spray of jagged shards and alchemical fluid directly into the creature's eyes.

  It shrieked, the sound uneven and musical to his drug-addled ears. Talos backstepped the flailing claws, his hand knitting itself back together halfway through the motion of sinking his shortsword into the creature's gut.

  Then, the potion hit the bloodstream.

  Time stood still.

  It was a trait honed in the pits—given steroids by the concoction he had just downed.

  Its claw whistling in from the left. The soft whisper of a steel knife passing through an artery in the next room. The incredible, burning ecstasy of his own body knitting itself back together, cell by screaming cell.

  He knew what to do.

  He didn't block the claw on the left. He turned into it. He caught the blow with his shoulder, grunting as the talons punched through muscle and scraped against the scapula. He twisted his torso, locking the bone-claws inside his own skeleton.

  “Wasn’t very smart, was it?”

  The shortsword wrenched free of the creature's gut. It howled, trying to retreat, but Talos was already moving. He lopped through the arm that was still trapped inside his shoulder, severing it at the elbow.

  The creature staggered back, stump spurting, but Talos raised the blade with a wide, manic smile.

  He started hacking.

  The creature tried to raise its remaining arm to block, to stall for time while its flesh began to bubble and regenerate. It didn't matter. Talos chopped the arm off. Then he drove the blade into the skull.

  Once. Twice. Thrice.

  He didn't stop until the head was a pulped mess.

  He whirled. The world slowed again, his mind dissecting every sound and movement.

  Nomi, drifting back into the room like a ghost. The second creature—the one he kneecapped—trying to rise. The throb of his shoulder, already purging the foreign bone.

  Talos reached up and tore the severed, clawed hand free from his own shoulder with a wet squelch. He slammed the dead limb into the rising Bat’s face, stunning it, before sinking his shortsword into its skull to finish the job.

  The adrenaline crashed.

  The world sped up. The colors dulled. His grin vanished, replaced by the heavy, exhausting ache of rapid healing.

  Conversely, Nomi was dead calm. She stood over a corpse, cleaning her daggers with a terrifying, glassy stillness. A small string of severed Bat ears already hung from her belt—trophies taken from the things that used to hunt her.

  Her grin returned only when she noticed his attention on her.

  “...You know, this is a lot nicer than when I was a kid.” Her eyes glowed in the darkness, giving her the appearance of a Cheshire Cat.

  “Maybe it’s the company?” Talos rasped, swaying slightly.

  “You’re still out of it, huh?”

  “...A bit. You weren’t kidding about them looking like people.” Talos’s eyes scanned his now bloodstained and shredded cloak. “Wouldn’t have known if you didn’t warn me.”

  “It smells like their blood is rotting. I don’t know how to explain it.” She hummed, calm and relaxed. “How long do you have till your elixirs wear off?”

  “Fifteen minutes or so. Hear anything else?”

  “Mm. Yeah. But they’re chasing ghosts, seems like the sound traps were overkill, at least when it’s still day.” Her ears tilted towards him, and he realized her entire attention was on him.

  “I think you’re focused on the wrong thing.”

  He flashed a grin—sharp, chemical, and involuntary. Talos still felt uneven, the world saturated with colors that didn't belong in a grey city. The red of the blood was too vibrant; the shadows were too deep. His brain hadn’t quite reconciled the image of perfectly human faces twisting into monsters the second they were isolated.

  Nomi didn't look away. Her pupils were blown wide, swallowing the iris, black pools adjusting to the low light.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to stop taking the suppressants,” she murmured, her voice dropping an octave. It lost its playful lilt, becoming quiet and focused.

  She took a half-step closer, her head tilting not to look at his face, but to angle her ear toward his chest.

  “Let me enjoy your heartbeat for a second. It’s... loud. I missed it.”

  “You stopped taking them when we fought that… whatever that was… in the Dungeon,” Talos mumbled, his words slurring slightly around the edges.

  She pouted playfully, though her eyes remained sharp, scanning the shadows.

  “Tal, that was a whole week ago. Do you know how boring a week is?”

  “...Brat.”

  “Be nice.”

  She smirked, arching her back in a long, feline stretch that ended with a satisfying pop of her joints. She rolled her shoulders, the tension of the mask fully gone now.

  “Wanna keep hunting for a bit? There’s another one nearby. Two houses down.” She tilted her head, listening to a rhythm only she could hear. “Heartbeat is slow. It thinks it gets to sleep just because the sun is up.”

  Nomi mused, checking the sky through a crack in the boarded window. “And we still have time before nightfall. I still don’t hear anything more than acolytes and low witches. We should be fine to—”

  She stopped mid-sentence.

  Her ears flattened against her skull, and she winced, a visible shudder running down her spine as if someone had dragged a nail across a chalkboard inside her brain.

  “Nevermind,” she whispered, her voice tight. “Change of plans. Let’s go find a dark corner to cuddle in. Something less fun is hunting.”

  “Can we kill it?” Talos asked, his grip tightening on his sword.

  “Probably. But it’s not our job right now, darling. We hide.”

  “Right. Right.” Talos shook his head, trying to clear the chemical fog. “Bloodlust is a bit hard to manage right now.”

  He took a step back, intending to follow her into the shadows. Then he stopped. His eyes narrowed. He felt it—not a sound, but a pressure. A vibration in the floorboards that was too heavy, too rhythmic.

  “That’s…” Talos started, the realization dawning on him.

  “Yep,” Nomi popped the ‘p’, drawing her daggers.

  “It knows we’re here.”

  “Yep.”

  “So... fighting?”

  “It’s not approaching,” Nomi whispered, her head cocking to the side, ears twitching erratically. “I don’t think it’s a Bat. It’s hunting us. It’s waiting.”

  “Waiting for what?”

  “Hard to say. Maybe it’s trying to time out your potions?”

  Talos cursed under his breath. He squeezed his eyes shut, fighting through the chemical euphoria that demanded he run, scream, or kill. He tried to extend his senses, to force his brain to process the silence rather than the noise, but the drugs kept dragging him back into the kaleidoscope.

  “If it’s not a bat, what is it?” he growled, opening his eyes.

  “Maybe if you weren’t so addled, you could actually—”

  Nomi’s voice cut off. The smirk fell from her face like it had been slapped away. Her pupils constricted to pinpricks.

  “It’s a… Fox.”

  Her ears flattened, though not from a noise this time. A trace of something she would normally mask played through her eyes, her hands tensing.

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Nomi.”

  Talos’s voice was low, cutting through the panic.

  Her ears popped back up. She blinked, shaking her head as if dislodging water, and nodded. The mask slid back into place, though it was thinner than usual.

  “It’s alone,” she whispered, her voice clinical again. “But the heartbeat is… wrong. Stuttering. Too fast. It’s overmutated. It’s likely lost all higher cognitive function. It’s… Completely lost to mutation.”

  “So let’s set a trap.”

  “...Yeah.” Nomi drew a long, silver needle from her belt, her fingers trembling slightly. “Let’s put it down—”

  She froze. Her head snapped toward the wall.

  “It’s coming.”

  It must have heard them planning. The vibration of their whispers was enough to trigger the instinct.

  The wall didn't just break; it exploded.

  Splinters and plaster turned into shrapnel as a massive shape plowed through the wood and lath. Grey daylight spilled into the dark chamber, illuminating the carnage of the Bats they had just butchered—and the new nightmare standing among them.

  Talos moved. He was fast—his nervous system overclocked by the alchemical cocktail—but he felt sluggish compared to the blur that rushed him.

  He twisted, throwing his weight to the side just in time. The air hissed where his arm had been a microsecond before.

  Nomi’s breath caught in her throat.

  The thing was bestial. Wrong. It wasn't just a regression to an animal state; it was a biological glitch. It was spliced with fox mutagens but magnified, standing three times the size of a man.

  Patches of matted red fur clashed with pale, stretched human skin. But it was the face that stopped the heart. It had too many eyes—scattered across its brow and cheeks like a rash. Too many ears, twitching independently. A mouth full of needle-teeth that didn't fit the jaw.

  It was a Fox mutation taken to its terminal conclusion: absolute sensory awareness, trapped in a body that had grown too large to contain it, with a mind shattered from the constant stimuli and agony of simply existing.

  Nomi’s gaze went dead.

  It was her usual response to being absolutely overwhelmed—a total shutdown of the emotional centers to prevent a panic attack. But in this scenario, it was exactly what she needed.

  “Tal.”

  His mind snapped into hyperfocus the microsecond the syllable hit the air.

  Time froze.

  But the monster didn't. It moved through the gelatinous air like it belonged there, a blur of red fur and gnashing teeth.

  It was faster than him. He couldn't dodge.

  So he didn't try.

  A grin pried his lips apart—a rictus of chemical joy. He shifted, not away from the claws, but across them. He swung his shortsword in a vicious arc, hacking a massive chunk of meat from the creature's ribs.

  At the same moment, he felt a wet, popping tear.

  The creature’s jaws clamped onto his left shoulder. With a savage jerk, it ripped his arm cleanly from the socket.

  Talos didn't scream. He didn't even pause.

  He followed the momentum of the tear, spinning with the force of the blow to clear Nomi’s line of sight. A flash of silver zipped past his ear.

  Nomi’s needle buried itself deep into the creature’s hind leg, piercing the thick muscle and skewering the sciatic nerve.

  The monster’s leg buckled.

  Talos tried to pivot, but the sudden loss of ten pounds of arm and blood threw his balance off. He was too slow.

  Nomi wasn’t.

  He felt a sharp tug on his collar. Nomi jerked him backward, pulling him a single, crucial step away from a claw swipe that would have gutted him from navel to chin.

  He stumbled back, gasping, and used the second of respite to rip the cork off a new vial with his teeth.

  “Thoughts?” he wheezed, the glass clicking against his teeth.

  “Yeah,” Nomi breathed, not looking away from the beast. "Kill it."

  The Fox-thing was already healing, steam rising from the stump of its leg. But Nomi’s needle stayed buried. It was coated in her own proprietary toxins—agents designed to numb nerves and necrotize flesh. The wound refused to close around the silver steel.

  The creature roared and lunged, but the liquid hit Talos’s stomach.

  It was immediate.

  Time stopped.

  This wasn't a standard draught. This was a rare vintage, brewed by the greatest Spider Witch of her generation, specifically for his physiology.

  To a human without mana channels, the sheer potency would oversaturate the nervous system, causing an instant, fatal seizure. To a mage whose channels were already filled with mana, the energy would ignite their mana pool, burning them from the inside out with magical toxins.

  Thankfully, Lillik’zeil’s canvas was neither.

  Born in the land of mages with the channels unique to Rethnians, yet absent from the lifeblood of mana that made up their cultural identity.

  For thirty-two heartbeats—until his nervous system shut down—he could match the speed of Nomi.

  He moved immediately. He shifted, perfectly dodging the claws, his lips tearing into a grin that made his face ache with the sheer biological perfection of it.

  No longer inferior. No longer a Null. A pure, perfect engine of speed and malice.

  Twenty-nine heartbeats left.

  He severed the front left leg with force human muscles should never be able to output.

  Twenty-five.

  He sidestepped a retaliatory swipe and wove to the right, opening a gap in the creature's guard.

  Twenty.

  He accelerated, driving a stab into the creature’s chest, then dropped to one knee. Nomi hit his back like a springboard, launching herself at the creature's face. As she fell back, he reached out, grabbing her ankle and yanking his Fox out of the air a microsecond before a claw could crush her.

  Fifteen.

  Eleven needles. One for each eye. The creature shrieked, thrashing blindly. Talos stepped into the storm. His arm finished regenerating, skin forming over the muscle thanks to the Last Gasp’s acceleration.

  He sank his blade into its neck, holding it in place.

  His grin widened further, a moment of savage joy just for him.

  Ten.

  He felt the creature's remaining claws tear into his ribs. It happened in slow motion—agonizing, grinding, wet—but he didn't flinch. He stomped on the clawed limb and used his spear to pin it to the ground, locking the beast in place.

  Five heartbeats.

  He tore the shortsword free from the neck muscle and raised it high.

  He hacked. Once. Twice. Bone crunched, but the neck was too thick.

  Two.

  He impaled the blade deep into the vertebrae, but it stuck.

  One.

  Nomi landed on the creature's shoulders. She didn't stab it. Instead, she slammed the pommel of her dagger onto the spine of Talos’s sword like a hammer striking a chisel, her whole bodyweight behind the blow.

  The force drove the steel through. The head severed.

  Zero.

  His mind snapped back to reality.

  The crash didn't hit him; it unmade him. His body screamed at being forced to move far beyond the red line of human limitation. His heart slammed against his ribs, fluttering wildly, threatening to explode as the four seconds of stolen ecstasy took their toll on the Null.

  Null.

  Fuck, right.

  His mind slingshot back to the present, violently elastic. The world spun. The floor rushed up to meet him.

  He didn't hit the wood. Something caught him.

  Nomi.

  She was hugging him. No, catching him. Her arms were hooked under his shoulders, dragging his dead weight.

  Isn’t he mad at her?

  She’s warm.

  His heart hurts.

  No, like physically. It felt like a fist was crushing his left ventricle.

  “—los?”

  Was that her voice? It sounded underwater. Distorted. Warped by the blood rushing in his ears.

  Focus. What is she saying?

  “Talos! Breathe!”

  Air. He needed air. He tried to inhale, but his diaphragm spasmed. He retched, dry and painful, his legs giving out completely as the black spots in his vision connected into a curtain.

  “Stay with me, you idiot! Don't you dare stop your heart!” Nomi’s voice was right at his ear now, shrill with panic, stripping away the Fox mask entirely. “We have to move! They heard that!”

  Understanding failed. Instinct took the wheel.

  He couldn't process her words, so he followed the pull of her hand. He matched her pace, his legs moving like rusted pistons, his eyes unfocused as the world smeared into streaks of grey rain and black stone.

  They slipped through the winding streets of the Outer District, avoiding the shadows that moved. Her hand clamped around his like a vice—a heavy, physical anchor reminding him which reality he was in.

  Name: Talos. Condition: Null. Age: Twenty...? Ish.

  Who’s with him? Nomi.

  Who is Nomi? His Fox. The one person he could trust implicitly. The one who watched his back.

  Wait.

  The circuit breaker tripped in his mind. That was wrong. She—

  He stumbled, but the hand pulled him forward.

  His eyes managed to refocus properly just as they reached the barricade of the Middle City. Torches flared in his vision. Armored hands—not Nomi’s—grabbed his tunic, hauling them both through the heavy iron gate before slamming it shut against the dark.

  Nomi was shaking. It wasn't the vibration of excitement or the twitch of suppressants wearing off. It was the tremors of a building about to collapse.

  “Your heart stopped.”

  “What?” Talos blinked, his tongue heavy in his mouth.

  “Your. Heart. Stopped.”

  She didn't wait for him to process it. Her hands dove into his ruined cloak, fishing through the inner pockets with frantic, invasive movements.

  He felt her fingers close around the cold glass of the remaining vials—the dull yellow liquid that Lillik called a masterpiece and Agon called a death sentence.

  He knew he should stop her. They were expensive. They were necessary. He should be stopping her, but the command got lost somewhere between his brain and his hands. He couldn't remember why it mattered.

  Nomi withdrew the two vials. She didn't hesitate. She spiked them onto the cobblestones.

  Crash.

  The glass shattered, the priceless alchemical fluid hissing as it ate into the stone.

  Her composure was gone. The grin was gone. The Fox was gone.

  She grabbed his face, forcing his head up, checking his pupils with terrifying intensity. Talos blinked, his eyes finally fixing on hers, seeing the raw, unmasked terror there.

  She let out a broken sound and pressed herself against him, wrapping her arms around his waist in a desperate, bone-crushing hug. She buried her face in his chest, right over the sternum, listening for the rhythm she had lost in the dark.

  “What— did you? Have you lost your mind?”

  Rinerva’s cold tone cut through the rain like an ice pick. She stormed out from the shelter of the guardhouse, her focus bypassing the blood-soaked, trembling mercenaries entirely to fixate on the yellow stain sizzling on the slick cobblestones.

  “What, by the Eternal Prisoner, happened out there? Why did you smash the Last Gasp?”

  Nomi refused to let go. She tightened her grip, shielding Talos’s body with her own.

  Talos’s eyes slowly tracked the newcomer. His brain struggled to connect the face to the name. Rinerva. His best friend. The woman he’d known since the Crucible.

  She looked furious.

  “I... can’t do this right now,” Nomi mumbled, the words a half measure while she seemed to still be verifying Talos’s heartbeat. “Rin, give me a minute...”

  “We don’t have a minute.” Rinerva stepped closer, her voice rising. “Tell me what happened, now, or we’re all at risk-”

  “Yes, I know, you heartless bitch!”

  Nomi whipped her head around, teeth bared, eyes wild and glossy.

  “Give me a damn minute!”