The porcupine barrels toward him, earth shredding beneath its claws.
Quills flare.
Red-tipped.
Vibrating.
Eylin doesn't step back.
He leans forward.
"Alright… let's see if that was luck."
It closes the distance in a heartbeat.
Too fast.
But the world—
The world lags.
Just slightly.
The beast's charge stutters again in his vision.
Not slow motion.
Not time stop.
More like reality buffering.
His heartbeat pounds once.
Heavy.
LOUD.
He shifts left before the porcupine fully commits.
The charge overshoots by inches.
Claws rake across his side anyway—
Hot pain tears through him.
He grits his teeth and drives his second dagger down.
This time into the creature's shoulder joint.
The moment steel meets flesh—
CRRRRK.
The impact fractures.
Not bone.
Space.
A spiderweb of faint, glowing cracks splinters outward from the wound like shattered glass.
The porcupine shrieks.
Its body jerks unnaturally.
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One of its forelegs twitches—
Then spasms out of sync with the rest of it.
Lady White's eyes sharpen.
"…He's not cutting it."
She leans forward.
"He's breaking it."
The porcupine thrashes violently.
Quills erupt outward in all directions.
Eylin barely throws himself backward.
Two quills punch into the tree behind him.
One tears through his sleeve and slices skin.
Blood spatters.
He lands hard.
Rolls.
Loses one dagger.
"Shit—!"
The porcupine recovers faster than it should.
Despite the fractured shoulder, it charges again—wild, furious.
Its injured leg moves wrong.
Like a puppet on tangled strings.
Eylin sees it.
That hitch.
That delay.
There.
He doesn't think.
He runs straight at it.
Lady White blinks.
"…Oh?"
At the last second—
He drops.
Slides under its body as it lunges.
The quills scrape across his back, shredding fabric but missing flesh by inches.
He looks up mid-slide.
Sees the underbelly.
Soft.
Unguarded.
He slams his palm against it.
"Burst!"
The glyph patch ignites in his hand.
Light detonates upward.
But this time—
The explosion doesn't bloom outward normally.
It implodes first.
Compresses.
Then ruptures through the porcupine's body like reality rejecting it.
The cracks spread violently across its torso.
Jagged.
Glitching.
Chunks of its form flicker between solid and fragmented.
The forest goes silent again.
The porcupine lets out a broken, distorted roar—
And collapses.
Hard.
Dust erupts around them.
Eylin rolls out from beneath it, gasping.
He scrambles away, expecting it to rise again.
It twitches once.
Twice.
Then stills.
The red glow fades from its quills.
The fractures dissolve into nothing.
Just flesh again.
Dead flesh.
Eylin stays frozen for several seconds.
Waiting.
Nothing.
His chest rises and falls like he just sprinted for miles.
He looks down at his hands.
They're shaking.
But not from fear.
From energy.
From something still humming beneath his skin.
"…I didn't stab it," he whispers.
He looks at the corpse.
"I broke it."
Above him, Lady White stands silently on a branch, the roasted ox forgotten at her feet.
Her playful grin is gone.
For the first time—
She looks thoughtful.
"…Interesting," she murmurs.
Very interesting.
Eylin staggers to his feet, wincing as he pulls a quill from his shoulder.
He looks at the dead beast.
Then at his dagger.
Then at his palm.
A slow, disbelieving grin spreads across his face.
"…Okay."
He exhales.
"I might survive two months."
Behind him—
The air flickers.
Just once.
Like a corrupted frame trying to load.
.
---
And somewhere deep in the forest—
Something older shifts.
Aware.
The air behind Eylin flickers.
Once.
Twice.
Like a corrupted frame trying to load properly.
Then—
SPLATT.
Blood erupts from his mouth.
Not a cough.
Not a trickle.
A violent spray across the dirt.
His body jerks forward.
Pain detonates in his chest.
Not surface pain.
Not wound pain.
Internal.
Wrong.
His heartbeat misfires—
One.
Two—
SKIPS.
Then slams back in double force.
His vision fractures at the edges.
The forest bends.
Warps.
His knees buckle.
He crashes to the ground, clutching his chest.
It feels like something is clawing inside him.
Not at his heart—
At something deeper.
His ribs feel too tight.
His veins burn like molten wire.
And beneath the physical agony—
His soul feels stretched.
Pulled.
Like threads being yanked from fabric that isn't meant to tear.
He gasps—
Another rush of blood spills past his lips.
His fingers dig into the soil.
"Ha… ha…"
A broken laugh escapes him.
Wet.
Shaking.
"There it is…"
His body trembles violently.
"Backlash…"
His heartbeat pounds again—
But this time it echoes.
Like two rhythms overlapping.
One his own.
One… not.
"Fuck… it hurts…"
The cracks he forced into the porcupine flash faintly across his own skin.
For a split second—
Thin glowing fractures crawl across his chest.
Then vanish.
Lady White is on her feet instantly.
Her eyes narrow.
"…So that's the price."
Eylin's grip weakens.
His vision dims.
The trees blur into smears of green and black.
He laughs once more.
Soft.
Self-deprecating.
"Two months… might've been ambitious…"
His body finally gives in.
Consciousness slips.
And he collapses face-first into the dirt.
Still.
---
Silence.
Lady White drops down beside him.
No theatrics now.
No teasing.
She crouches.
Places two fingers lightly against his chest.
His heart beats—
But irregularly.
Like something foreign is trying to sync with it.
Her gaze drifts to the dead porcupine.
Then back to him.
"…You forced the world to miscalculate," she murmurs.
Her expression is unreadable.
"Of course it would correct the error."
The air around Eylin flickers again.
Softer this time.
Unstable.
As if he is slightly… out of alignment.
Lady White exhales slowly.
Then smiles.
Not playful.
Not mocking.
Genuinely intrigued.
"Well."
She stands.
"You're either going to die…"
She glances down at him.
"…or become very inconvenient."
Above them, the forest remains still.
Watching.
Waiting.
