The trees ahead suddenly parted, and I finally saw what the bandits had been running from.
For one terrifying second, I thought the thing from the darkness had finally reached us. Then I saw the stripes. Six enormous tigers stepped out from between the trees, each one so large that my exhausted mind needed several seconds to accept that they were real. Their shoulders rose nearly to my chest, their paws pressed deep into the damp earth, and their bodies were built more like beasts from some ancient legend than animals that belonged anywhere near an ordinary forest.
Then I noticed the riders.
Men and women sat high on the tigers’ backs, wearing clothing made from layered hide and woven fiber. Feathers had been tied into their dark hair, carved pieces of bone hung from necklaces around their necks, and streaks of paint crossed their faces in patterns I couldn’t understand. Some carried long spears. Others had curved bows resting across their backs. Their movements were calm, and that was somehow more frightening than shouting would have been.
They weren’t charging.
They weren’t roaring.
They were simply watching.
The five remaining bandits had already stopped running. Their weapons hung loosely in their hands as they stared at the six tigers blocking the forest ahead. I could almost see the moment they understood what had happened. They had thought they were escaping from something in the woods.
They had run directly toward hunters.
One of the riders lifted two fingers.
The six tigers moved.
It happened so quickly that I barely followed it. Two beasts surged forward and cut off the road behind the bandits. Another pair moved around the sides, forcing the men closer together, while the final two remained where they were, their riders drawing their bows with effortless precision. There was no shouting, no confusion, no desperate exchange of orders. Every movement had already been decided before the bandits even realized they were surrounded.
They were organized.
One bandit raised his sword and screamed something at the riders. Nobody answered. Another turned to run between two trees, only for a tiger to step directly into his path. The man stumbled backward, lost his footing, and fell into the mud. Before he could get up, a spear struck the ground beside his head hard enough to make him freeze.
The leader of the bandits looked around wildly. I could see the calculation in his face as he searched for a gap, but there wasn’t one. A rider gave another silent signal.
The tigers attacked.
The fight was over almost as quickly as it had started. A flash of steel, a blur of striped fur, a cry that ended almost immediately, and then silence. One of the bandits dropped his weapon and raised his hands, but the hesitation came too late. Another tried to crawl backward through the leaves, only to be dragged from sight.
I stood where I was, too stunned to move.
I had spent the last half hour running from those men.
Now they were dead in front of me, and somehow I felt even less comfortable than before.
The forest became quiet again as the riders dismounted. They moved among the fallen bandits with the same calm efficiency they had shown during the fight, collecting weapons and checking the area rather than celebrating. One rider crouched beside a wounded tiger whose front leg had been scratched. The beast gave a low growl, but the rider simply placed a hand against its neck and examined the injury with practiced care.
That small gesture unsettled me in a completely different way.
These people weren’t treating the tigers like ordinary animals.
They treated them like partners.
The tiger lowered its head and allowed the rider to inspect its leg. After a moment, the rider said something softly and stood again. The tiger followed without hesitation.
I swallowed.
That explained absolutely nothing about what kind of people I had just encountered.
One of the younger riders finally noticed me.
His gaze traveled from my torn clothes to the package hanging from my shoulder, then to my empty hands. He said something sharply in a language I had never heard before and pointed his spear toward me.
I immediately raised both hands.
"Easy. Easy. I don’t have a weapon."
He stared.
I pointed toward the dead bandits and shook my head. "They attacked me. I wasn’t with them."
The rider said something else.
"I have absolutely no idea what you just said."
The expression on his face remained perfectly serious.
I tried again, pointing at myself. "Kain."
He frowned.
I tapped my chest. "Kain."
After a brief pause, he repeated something that sounded nothing like my name.
I stared at him.
"That was worse."
Another rider approached and said something to him. The first rider answered, and the two exchanged a few short sentences before both looking back at me.
Apparently my introduction had become a group discussion.
I sighed and pointed toward the direction the bandits had come from. Then I made an exaggerated gesture of someone attacking me, followed by pointing at myself and raising both hands defensively.
For some reason, one of the riders started laughing.
I stopped.
"You understood that?"
The rider said something to the others, and several of them laughed as well.
I looked around at the giant tigers, the spears, the bows, and the dead bandits scattered across the ground.
"Wonderful. I’m being held together by universal hand gestures."
One of the tigers suddenly stepped toward Asura.
I immediately looked down.
Asura had been unusually quiet since the riders appeared. His black fur was still dirty from the forest, and his little metal identification plate hung from his collar.
The tiger lowered its massive head and sniffed him.
Asura slowly looked up.
For several seconds, neither moved.
Then the tiger sniffed him again.
I heard Asura’s voice inside my head.
"Remove that beast’s nose from my presence."
I bit the inside of my cheek.
The tiger sniffed him a third time.
Asura’s ears flattened.
"Kain."
"What?"
"It is smelling me."
"I noticed."
"I am an ancient existence."
"Yes, I remember."
"It is treating me like an ordinary dog."
I glanced at the tiger.
Then at Asura.
Then back at the tiger.
"I don’t think it knows about the whole ancient-existence thing."
Asura turned his head toward me.
"Tell them."
"I don’t speak their language."
"Then make them understand."
"With what? Mime?"
He looked offended.
The tiger sniffed him again.
Asura’s tail twitched.
"I hate this place."
I nearly laughed.
One of the riders reached toward his collar.
Asura immediately stepped backward.
The rider reached again.
Asura backed away faster.
I recognized that expression.
He was not afraid.
He was insulted.
The rider looked at me and said something while pointing at Asura.
I shrugged helplessly. "He’s... difficult."
Asura whipped his head toward me.
"I am difficult?"
"You are."
The rider pointed toward Asura’s collar again, clearly wanting to examine it.
I crouched and grabbed Asura before he could disappear between the trees.
"Hold still."
"Let go of me."
"They’re only looking at the collar."
"They have no right."
"You’re wearing the collar."
"I was forced into this humiliating body."
"You’ve complained about that every day."
"I will continue complaining until justice is restored."
I tightened my grip as he twisted in my arms.
One of the riders watched us with an expression that seemed dangerously close to amusement.
"This is humiliating," I muttered.
Asura’s head turned toward me.
"You are holding the King of Shadows like a house pet."
"You are currently shaped like a house pet."
His ears flattened.
I had never seen someone get offended so consistently while having absolutely no power to change the situation.
Eventually, the rider lost interest in the collar and pointed toward my shoulder bag.
My humor disappeared.
The delivery package.
The rider stepped closer and carefully removed it.
"Wait."
My protest meant nothing.
The package was small, wrapped in brown paper, and secured with the red wax seal I had been instructed not to break. The rider turned it over in his hands, examining every side without opening it.
Another tribe member came closer.
The moment that person saw the seal, something changed.
He reached out and caught the rider’s wrist.
Both of them stared at the red wax.
They exchanged a few quiet words.
I couldn’t understand a single syllable, but I understood their expressions.
The package mattered.
The older-looking man finally took it and examined the seal himself. His fingers stopped just above the wax without touching it. After several seconds, he returned it to the first rider and said something that sounded like an order.
The package was wrapped again and placed into a wooden box carried by another hunter.
Nobody broke the seal.
Nobody asked me what was inside.
That somehow made me even more nervous.
I looked at the box.
Then at the tribe.
Then at Asura.
"Well," I whispered, "at least they haven’t opened it."
Asura’s eyes remained fixed on the hunters.
"They are not interested in the contents."
"You know that how?"
"They are interested in who sent it."
I frowned.
Before I could ask anything more, one of the tigers growled.
Asura’s head turned sharply.
The playful irritation vanished from his face.
He stared toward the trees.
"We have many."
"What?"
"Enemies."
I looked around.
There were at least a dozen warriors surrounding us now, and more shapes were appearing deeper in the forest. I hadn’t even noticed them arrive.
Asura’s body lowered slightly.
His voice became quiet.
"Too many."
I knew that tone.
He wasn’t joking anymore.
"Asura, don’t do anything stupid."
He glanced at me.
"I was going to say the same to you."
Darkness gathered beneath his paws.
I immediately realized what he was about to do. "You’re running?"
"I am surviving."
"You’re abandoning me."
"I prefer ’retreating.’"
A shadow sphere formed beside him, smaller than the ones he had used against the bandits. It trembled in the air for a second before Asura released it toward the ground behind him.
The sphere burst silently.
Darkness spread across the roots and swallowed the space between the trees.
Several warriors reacted immediately, but Asura had already vanished into the shadows.
I stared into the empty darkness.
"You little bastard."
From somewhere far away came the faintest barking sound.
To everyone else, it was just a dog.
To me, Asura’s message was perfectly clear.
Survive.
I clenched my teeth.
"I really hate that you’re sometimes the sensible one."
Two warriors stepped toward me.
I considered running.
Then I looked around.
There were too many.
I thought about the bandits.
I thought about the giant tigers.
I thought about being dragged through the forest while blindfolded.
And finally, I thought about how spectacularly badly this trip had gone so far.
"I should have stayed at the estate."
One warrior said something and reached toward me.
I took one step back.
Another appeared behind me.
I turned.
A third was already there.
My senses warned me of every movement, but that only made the situation more frustrating. I could feel the shift of grass beneath someone’s foot. I heard the faint creak of a bowstring. I noticed the spear coming from the side and twisted away before it could strike me.
For one brief moment, I thought I had an opening.
Then I realized there had never been an opening.
They had been driving me toward the exact spot where they wanted me.
The realization came a second too late.
A wooden shaft struck my legs from behind.
I lost my balance.
Someone caught my arm before I could recover. Another seized my shoulder, and a third pressed something hard against the back of my neck.
I struggled.
Not because I thought I could defeat them.
Because being captured was a terrible idea.
Unfortunately, six tigers and several trained warriors had a rather different opinion.
My senses could tell me where each person was, but they couldn’t create another body for me to use.
I twisted free of one grip only to find another waiting.
A cloth pressed over my mouth.
The world blurred.
The last thing I remember was hearing one of the riders shout something while the others carried me away.
When I woke again, the first thing I noticed was that I couldn’t see.
A cloth covered my eyes.
My wrists were bound, though not tightly enough to hurt, and my body was moving with a slow rhythm that took me several seconds to understand.
I was riding something.
Something very large.
The motion was smooth, powerful, and strangely comfortable.
Then the animal beneath me stepped over a fallen branch.
I nearly fell sideways.
A hand immediately caught the back of my coat and pulled me upright.
I froze.
"Thank you."
The rider behind me said something I didn’t understand.
I decided silence was safer.
The journey continued.
At first, all I could hear were footsteps and the soft movement of vegetation. Then the forest slowly began changing around me.
I heard running water.
Not a stream.
Something wider.
Wood creaked beneath us, and a moment later we crossed what sounded like a bridge. The air smelled different on the other side, carrying smoke, cooked grain, animals, and something sweet that reminded me of roasted fruit.
Voices began appearing around us.
At first there were only a few.
Then there were dozens.
Children laughed somewhere nearby.
An animal bleated.
Someone shouted.
Another voice answered.
Wood struck wood repeatedly in a steady rhythm.
The deeper we went, the more sounds surrounded us.
This wasn’t a hunting party returning to a temporary camp.
There was a settlement ahead.
I could hear people living their lives.
One particularly loud child ran close enough for me to hear bare feet slapping against the ground.
Someone shouted after him.
The child laughed and ran even faster.
A chicken exploded into a furious series of clucks nearby.
A woman shouted something.
The child shouted something back.
I almost smiled.
It sounded absurdly normal.
The tiger beneath me suddenly stopped.
I felt the rider dismount.
Hands reached for my arms and helped me down.
My boots touched something flat.
Wood.
People moved around me.
I heard conversations on both sides, cooking utensils, footsteps, laughter, the low grunts of animals, and somewhere farther away, the deep steady beat of drums.
Someone removed the restraints from my wrists.
Another hand reached toward the cloth around my eyes.
I felt my heartbeat quicken.
For the first time since entering the forest, I didn’t know what I was about to see.
The blindfold was removed.
Light flooded into my eyes.
I squeezed them shut immediately.
"Why did nobody warn me the sun was this violent?"
A few people laughed.
I waited several seconds before opening my eyes again.
At first everything was blurred.
Then my vision slowly adjusted.
The first thing I saw was a wide wooden path stretching through the middle of the settlement. On both sides stood sturdy houses built from timber, woven material, and stone, each one decorated with carved symbols and hanging ornaments. Smoke rose from several rooftops. People carried baskets between buildings while children ran along the paths. Animals moved freely around fenced areas, and hunters rested near large wooden structures where weapons were being repaired.
There were gardens.
Storage buildings.
Water channels running beside the paths.
Large wooden tables where people prepared food.
A group of villagers sat together beneath a shelter while another group worked with bone, leather, and wood.
Someone was beating a drum near the center of the settlement.
Someone else was dancing.
For a moment, I simply stood there.
I had expected a tribe hidden deep inside the forest.
I hadn’t expected a civilization.