Chapter 106: Fear.
The woods were quiet—too quiet, given the chaos still echoing from the checkpoint in the distance. Every now and then, a sharp blast or muffled roar reached through the canopy like thunder arguing with itself. But under the branches, beneath the twisted silhouettes of burned bark and wind-gnarled roots, it was still.
Amari moved carefully. His boots barely disturbed the undergrowth. The mask had come off somewhere between the fight and the tree line. Now his eyes were bare. Alert. Haunted.
He spotted them halfway up a low-sitting fig tree draped in moss.
Milo’s clone crouched on a thick branch, form flickering faintly in the chest where the binding glyph pulsed. The girl—still tied at the wrists and ankles—was curled near the trunk, pressed into the shadow of leaves. Her eyes were wide, but not crying. She was watching him approach like prey that had learned stillness.
Amari didn’t say anything at first. Just climbed up the tree, slow and silent, until he reached their branch.
The clone turned, head tilted like it was waiting for orders.
"I’ve got it from here," Amari said. No emotion. Just the words.
The clone didn’t argue. Didn’t blink. It shimmered once—like a candle guttering in the wind—and vanished in a low breath of air and light. The glyph snapped shut like a thread cut clean.
Amari sat down on the branch beside her.
The hall pulsed with heat and static as Rilah’s breath grew shallow. Her morphdrive had stretched thin—limbs shimmering between weaponry and muscle, every strike coming back slower, every counter a little less sharp.
She’d had enough.
Her eyes narrowed as her fingers clamped into claws—and then snapped wide. Light surged across her veins, red-hot, and her body convulsed once as if jolted by a raw circuit.