Hatku's blade slipped from his grasp.
Not by mistake.
His hands had gone numb.
The weight of the battle, the heat of the temple, the presence of the assassins—each breath he drew felt like dragging air through molten stone. Blood trickled from his temple, mixing with the dust and ash beneath his boots.
One of the attackers surged toward him, a double-bladed axe spinning overhead.
Hatku ducked—
But instead of retrieving his sword, he moved on instinct.
He caught the attacker by the throat.
Lifted him.
Not just lifted—hurled.
The masked assassin slammed into the far pillar, cracking the stone.
Hatku staggered back, stunned by his own strength. His hands glowed—not with flame, but with green fire now erupting from the center of his chest and trailing down both arms, coiling around his fingers like living snakes.
His heart skipped.
"The swamp," he muttered. "We… we won…"
He looked at Tashina, slumped near the center of the room. Her breaths shallow, body still flickering with corrupted flame.
Realization hit.
The creatures in the swamp weren't just beasts.
They were challengers.
And they'd won.
Which meant—just like every victory in the cruel game of the Universal Gods—
They had earned new powers.
But it also meant something worse.
Those creatures… hadn't attacked them by accident.
They'd been drawn by what was forming inside Tashina.
A fusion.
Of man and beast.
Of sister and something else entirely.
And now these assassins were here not for Hatku—
But for her.
To kill what she might become.
The air shifted.
Veins—black and vine-like—suddenly spiraled from the temple's cracked pillars. They slithered down like tendrils with purpose, wrapping gently but firmly around Tashina's limbs, suspending her inches above the ground.
A thunderclap cracked overhead.
The roof held, but the sky above it screamed.
Lightning flared through the stained windows. Rain didn't fall—it slammed sideways. The stone altar began to pulse with an eerie red glow. Sacred symbols carved into the walls of the Brajin Temple lit up one by one, like awakening eyes.
Smoke poured from Tashina's mouth.
Then her nostrils.
Her pores.
It wasn't just smoke.
It was something leaving her.
Something that had no name.
Hatku fell to one knee, shielding his eyes. The green fire roared from his back now, his veins shining through his skin like lightning trapped beneath the surface.
The attackers hesitated.
One by one, they stepped back as the smoke thickened. It moved with intention—rising from Tashina, curling in violent loops around the air. The very temple groaned in response.
It was rejecting her corrupted form.
Cleansing her.
A final flash of lightning burst through the ceiling—without breaking it—and black smoke swept across the entire chamber like a living curtain.
Silence.
The flames died.
The symbols dimmed.
The veins released their grip.
And there she was.
Tashina.
Collapsed.
Still.
But different.
Her hair, darker. Her skin, no longer grayed or veined, but marked with a single crescent-like scar near her collarbone. Her body pulsed with a strange energy—not corrupted, but not entirely human either.
Hatku rushed to her side, knees scraping stone.
"Tashina," he whispered. "Tashina, open your eyes…"
She stirred.
Groggy.
Blinking.
And as her gaze adjusted to the torchlit ruin around them, she saw it.
One of the attackers—his blade drawn—sprinting toward Hatku's back.
He hadn't seen it.
He was too focused on her.
She didn't think.
Didn't choose.
Her arm lifted instinctively, palm outstretched.
A sphere of shadow exploded from her fingertips—no flame this time.
Just pure, dense dark.
It slammed into the attacker, launching him across the room, where he hit the wall with a sickening crack.
Tashina gasped.
Her eyes rolled back.
And she collapsed into Hatku's arms—
Unconscious.