“Crack, crack.” Medith trampled dead branches, pushing the green curtain aside and stepping deeper, a shadow threading a living tapestry. She passed many rare beasts, glittering like strange constellations under leaves, but she didn’t dare hunt.

Greed had burned her before; the memory tasted bitter. Snake meat once lured her like forbidden fruit, and venom nearly turned her bones into forest dust. A divine healer found the antidote in time, or a general would’ve died nameless among thorns, a cautionary echo in the hills.

It’d be cleaner to end with a blade than die a joke, she thought, yet hunger purred like a cat in her gut. Then a boar slid into her sight—tusks like pale fangs, breath steaming like fog.

She startled, then joy flared—quick and bright, a spark on dry tinder. She went in on silent feet, like a cat stalking rain.

Up close, the boar chewed at something unseen, snout lifting and lowering like a bellows. She stepped on a bleached bone; it crumbled to powder with a hair-raising crackle, like frost splintering at dawn.

The boar’s head snapped up like a stroke of lightning. It saw her and froze, a statue carved from fear.

“Damn.” Her curse was a pebble tossed into a dark well. Some poor soul’s bones had ruined her approach. But her killing intent sharpened, a cold knife in the chest. She fixed the boar with a predatory stare, her face all storm.

The boar stayed stiff, facing her like a wall facing a flood. Its cloudy eyes brimmed with dread, and it had no wish to charge. Medith’s emerald-gem eyes locked on, two chips of river jade, and the air held.

She exploded upward, a spark off steel, drew midair, and chopped down. “Awooo—” The boar shrieked and, by raw instinct, slipped the killing arc like water dodging a blade.

It shot toward the deeper woods, a dark bolt under green roofs. Medith stood stunned, disbelief pricking like nettles. A boar had dodged her clean strike. She hadn’t held back a drop. Even Haidra might not have escaped that cut. But this pig—

“Big sis is eating you today!” Shock boiled into fury, a pot left on high. She wheeled and chased. The boar wailed, feeling death skim its back like a cold wind, and ran flat-out. Their speeds held neck and neck, two shadows on one path.

Under a quarter hour, the boar’s strength guttered like a spent candle. It slowed, panting, hooves skidding on earth. Then a blade of sunlight fell through trunks, warm and gold. The boar halted, jaw slack, eyes brightening like glass in morning light—yearning, almost human.

“Odd Maneuver: Flash.”

The greatsword hummed, a hive alive. Two fractured tusks whirled in the air like ivory leaves, and that solid body toppled with a dull thud, earth swallowing the sound.

Medith slid her blade home and blew out a breath, the calm after thunder. She gazed at her spoils with the glow of a fire well-tended.

“Huh? It ran right out of the forest?” Surprise rippled like wind over grass. A mountain brook sang nearby; sunlight scattered like coins. A lake lay cradled in the hills, water clear as polished glass. Life crowded it—silver fish and quick shrimp, flickers of living light.

There were even unknown creatures, pincers like many small moons.

“What kind of monster is that? So gross...” She watched them scuttle sideways, pincers raised like little bandits, and her stomach turned.

“Whatever—wash the pig first, bring it back, give them a proper feast. Milia might cry. Real sweet mountain boar.” Thinking of Milia lit a lantern in her chest. She grabbed the boar and flung it onto the bank, a sack of meat on stone.

To keep the pool pure, she drew water toward the shore and rinsed it there, a gentle stream guided by stubborn hands.

“So this is Medith Waheit? Far prettier than the painting. She’s fierce as a hawk, and word says she favors women. If that’s true, she must be untouched, right?” A man of about thirty watched from the rear woods, eyes like needles in shade. The bait he’d set had worked, the forest itself nodding along.

“If I offer her to the Emperor, heh...” His grin was a knife’s thin curve.

“Medith, don’t blame me. Blame your arrogant eyes-above-your-head.” He let out a sly chuckle, yanked his longsword, and lunged, a sudden stinger in green light.