Chapter 12: Unprecedented Clash
The beast's screech echoed through the ashen woods, primal and furious.
Kivas staggered slightly, wings still flared from her retreating slash, the warmth of adrenaline burning in her limbs.
Her breath came quick, ragged. But even as her pulse screamed for her to run, to move, to do anything, a thought gnawed at the back of her mind.
That strike should've failed.
The beast had moved too fast. Its leap had been deadly, deliberate. She shouldn't have had time to react, let alone wound it.
So what slowed it down?
Her eyes flicked to the beast, which now paced in jagged arcs, snarling low as blood trailed from the gouge on its oversized, human-like face. Its expression twisted with venom. But even then... its movements didn't feel quite right.
Too stilted. Like something resisted it. Not her—something else.
Fate Weaver?
The phrase pulsed in her mind like a half-forgotten whisper. A title—no, a power—she saw back in the Well of the Soul. Back when she first awakened.
Could that be what was bending the edges of this fight?