The forest air trembled as the skull-faced creature crouched on the branch, its blade gleaming in the mist. Rita slid back in the dirt, breath sharp, heart pounding like thunder trapped in her ribs. Beside her, Faro rose to one knee, the Ring of Falcon burning like a miniature sun in his fist. Leaves shook loose from the trees, orbiting him in a fiery spiral. The creature hissed, red hair writhing like furious flames. Faro didn’t blink. The glow spread up his arm. “Stay behind me,” he whispered. Rita clutched the earth. The forest fell silent, waiting for destiny to strike.
The forest seemed to hold its breath. Mist clung to every branch like ghostly webs, and Rita felt it on her skin, cold and invading. Her legs slid across the mossy earth as she scrambled back, breath ragged, dress streaked with dirt. She didn’t dare blink. The thing on the tree was watching them.
It crouched like a nightmare given flesh: a towering soilmen male with muscles knotted like ropes under pale skin, long red hair like wildfire whipping in the wind, and a skull where a face should be. Empty sockets stared down, black and endless. In its fist, a jagged blade glinted, thirsty.
Faro rose to one knee beside her, jaw clenched. He looked impossibly young in that moment, a soilmen boy with red hair and fear in his eyes. But fear wasn’t all. In his hand, the Ring of Falcon began to glow, a trembling spark at first. Then it flared, lighting the trees with a surge of orange fire like dawn breaking in his palm.
Leaves spun around his arm, drawn to the glow as if gravity had shifted. Rita felt the heat lick her cheek, warm and alive. “Stay behind me,” Faro whispered, voice shaking but sure. She heard duty in it. She heard destiny. She heard the echo of every Falcon before him.
The creature shifted. Bark cracked under its weight as it pressed forward on the branch. Its grin stretched impossibly wide across bone, a hollow threat. It raised the blade.
Rita’s fingers dug into the soil. She could not run. Even if she tried, her body refused. Something ancient in the forest was awake now. Something older than fear.
Faro stood, arm outstretched, the ring a burning star in the ruins of the night.
The forest fell silent.
Just before everything changed.