He exhaled softly and let his hands co up. No flashy weave. No elegant sigil. He traced the old, small curve that opened a seam between a shadow and the thing that cast it.
A fold, not a tear. He pulled one sliver of dark away from a fallen beam and set it where his thigh had been a heartbeat ago.
To the wolves, the shadow looked thicker there, and the thicker darkness felt like a weight. They took the bite.
Their eyes tried to correct for the blue insects’ glow bouncing off their own crystal. Their corrections sent them half a step wrong, which was enough.
He didn’t go for their eyes. He wasn’t here to be dramatic. He went for the front leg of the closest, right above the joint where the muscle gave way to the tendon.
His knife was practical and didn’t care about appearance. It bit and left, and the beast faltered.
Its body threw its weight back, and the crystal ridge caught the corner of a broken sill. The crack sounded like ice splitting on a pond.
He moved again because standing felt like bragging. The second wolf took its chance. He gave it one.
He let his shoulder dip. He let it believe he was slow on the turn. It ca in at his ribs. He bent at the waist, not far, just enough to let the worst of the bite pass.
He put the heel of his hand against the base of its jaw and pushed up and in while his knife went under.
No flourish. He felt heat and the twist of muscle and then a sudden slackness that told him he had cut the thing that carries the breath.
The third and fourth didn’t take the sa path. They were learning, even here. The sim paid attention when you moved cleanly.
It adapted when you showed that you could step twice without tripping, which he respected. He also liked it when tests tried to be better.
He backed into the partial wall he had picked for this mont and let it be the spine Elira had told them not to use. He wasn’t holding it up.
He was letting it hold him for a breath. The third wolf feinted, and the fourth used the stairs. He didn’t try to watch both with the sa eyes.
He let his system split the work. Panel lights blinked along the bottom of his thoughts: distance, speed, angle. He didn’t see numbers.
He felt them the way you feel a count settling in your hand. He shifted one foot half a palm-width. He lifted his chin one finger higher.
The third was launched. He cut low again, not out of habit but because low was where they were least proud of their armor.
The fourth ca down from the stairs with a weight that had been trained into it by a rule sowhere behind the curtain of the sim.
He could hear the rule in the timing. The pause before the drop. He raised his forearm with the knife reversed and let the crystal ridge et the steel.
It sparked faintly and scread in a way that was more about sound than pain. He stepped into it. People forget to step into the weight. He didn’t.
He let the beast’s own mass push it past the place where claws find purchase. They both hit the cracked line.
The glass sang again. He kept the note going by dragging his boot. The sound told the sim he was clumsy for a second.
He gifted it the lie it wanted and stole a clean angle while it believed him.
The last bite never landed. His knife did. His breath ca in a steady count. He made himself listen for the lie in the wind again.
It had shifted. It ca honestly now. That ant the room liked him enough to stop trying to pull tricks for a minute. Or it ant the next trick would not co from the air.
He stood still. He let the insects drift in their slow circles. He wiped the blade on moss because showy flicks throw blood and give you away in real places that don’t care about drama.
He crouched by the first wolf and set two fingers on the crystal spine. It wasn’t alive, not really.
The sim wasn’t pretending these were souls. It was pretending they were tests. He didn’t thank it.
He didn’t curse it. He nad it what it was and looked for the thing these versions kept. There.
A small pouch ford from hardened connective tissue near the shoulder. A resource node. The exam loved to hide them where you had to get a little dirty to reach.
He took a thin tool from his belt and eased the pouch free. Inside, a shard the size of a fingernail. Not worth much alone.
Worth more if you knew the right lock to feed it to. He slipped it into the flat pocket over his ribs. He didn’t look toward where he knew a cara would be in a real field.
He wasn’t playing for points on a board. He was building small truths that would add up when they were counted later.
"Water," he said softly, not because he was thirsty, but because saying the word kept it alive in his head.
He drank two slow mouthfuls, not more. His system blinked once in approval, or maybe he blinked with himself.
Either way, he knew better than to let early success make him careless with weight.
He moved through the ruin as if it could hear him, being foolish if he tried to be quick for no reason.
He put his feet where the ground would forgive him. He avoided the neat line of dust across a doorway because neat lines only live where no one walks.
He skipped a stair with a smooth center because smooth centers are lies that promise to hold and then fold.
The insects thickened near the mouth of a narrow street. He counted that as a warning. Light gathers where sothing wants to be seen or wants you to see sothing else first.
He sent a small sound down the street, not a thrown stone, just a coin of noise. A footfall that belonged to a person who didn’t know how to move quietly.
It hit the wall, bounced, and told him the alley had a second turn before the end that the map on the wall yesterday had not shown.
The sim enjoyed that sort of thing. He could almost feel Elira’s ledger line writing itself: found the second turn because he asked the wall to speak.
He stepped into the shadow and let his outline bleed along a broken column. He didn’t vanish. He let his eyes slide past him.
There’s a difference. Vanishing makes people curious, while slipping makes them bored. He waited a count of eight.
The insects shifted, and the tallic sll in the air grew a shade stronger. He rembered the forbidden zone again, the night he had counted exits with his teeth while sothing big tried to teach him what small feels like.
These wolves were tests, not mories, and still, they had the old shape. He let the mory stand in his chest for one breath and then set it on a shelf like Elowen does with pictures she ans to keep.
The next wave ca not as a rush but as a machine that had learned what a rush looks like and wanted to do it right.
Two shapes too smooth to be natural unfolded from a fallen arch. Not beasts this ti. Constructs, the kind you get when a clan captures a trick and puts it on a leash.
Thin, jointed bodies with fewer mistakes. No crystal along their backs. No eyes to read. Their faces were plates arranged to imitate the idea of attention.
They tested scent first with a hiss that lifted dust. They found nothing because the sim had not given them that tool yet.
Good. Sound would be their next choice. He gave them sound, but not the kind they liked. He gave them the irregular rhythm of a hurt thing that tries and fails to be quiet.
They tilted their heads together like birds. They stepped toward the lie. He moved along the wall, keeping the column between them and the line his breath made.
He felt the panel in his head blink a pattern he hadn’t seen often. The sim was adjusting to him, and it wanted to show that it had paid attention yesterday when Elira told them the world likes to lie about wind.
The breeze cut the other way and tried to carry his breath across their path. He put his lips against the inside of his elbow and exhaled there. Skin stole heat. Cloth stole scent. The small things helped.
He let one construct pass and marked the gap behind its knee where design had given way to cost. The second kept its knees closer.
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