The ruins lay in silence. Amatsu's breath, slow and deliberate, carved through the stillness.
He felt it—the weight had vanished. The watcher, ever so close, had finally slipped away.
His eyes swept the shadows. Gone.
A soft hum broke the silence. Light, teasing.
Eto stepped forward, swaying on her heels, hands clasped behind her back like a child caught sneaking sweets. She tilted her head, watching the ruins with wide, amused eyes. Her presence was like a breeze—effortless, lilting, impossible to hold.
"They fell for it?" she asked, voice high with mock surprise. She giggled, tapping a finger against her chin. "Really? Just like that? Ohhh, I almost feel bad for them."
Amatsu didn't answer immediately. His gaze was steady, unreadable.
Eto took that as permission to continue.
She spun on her heel, letting her arms swing lazily at her sides. "They must be so proud of themselves right now," she mused. "Patting each other on the back. 'Good job, everyone! We totally got them this time!'" She put on a deep, mock-serious voice, puffing out her chest before collapsing into laughter. "Ohhh, I wish I could see their faces when they realize!"
Amatsu watched her, his expression barely shifting. But the weight in the air softened, just a little.
Eto leaned forward, eyes shining, voice dropping to a whisper, like she was sharing a delicious secret. "Should we leave them a note? 'Nice try, but maybe next time?' Or maybe something scarier—'Boo.'"
Amatsu let the silence stretch before answering, voice smooth and cold. "Let them believe."
Eto's lips pursed, as if pretending to think. Then she grinned, a flash of mischief sparking in her gaze. "Oooh, yes. Let them waste all that time. I hope they bring snacks. Maybe a whole picnic."
She sighed dramatically, pressing her hands to her cheeks. "Ahh, they're going to be soooo disappointed. Poor things."
She turned away, twirling like a dancer, light on her feet.
"They think they have us," Amatsu said, watching her. "They think this is over."
Eto clasped her hands behind her back again, rocking on her heels. Her smile was all sweetness, all innocence.
"Then let's not ruin the surprise, shall we?"
And just like that—
they were gone.
Amatsu paused beside a collapsed pillar, dragging his finger through the dust. When he stood, the message was simple—carved in clawed strokes: "Too slow."
-
The ruins stood empty. Amatsu was already gone. But something else was coming. And it did not know how to leave empty-handed.
Hawk arrived like a tear in the world's flesh.
The walls sagged under memory, soaked in screams that had long since stopped echoing. Stone didn't forget. Not down here. It just waited for more.
The air thickened, curdled with the stench of decay and rot. Acrid fumes twisted through the shadows, a blend of blood and mildew, clinging to the ruins like a sickness. The stones sagged under the weight of time, their cracks long forgotten, splintered beams slouching like broken bones.
Hawk moved through it all, a predator in its element, his presence mocking the very collapse of this place.
He was tall—unnaturally so, his limbs long, stretched with an elegance that hovered between the statuesque and something far darker. His frame was sheathed in wiry muscle, every inch of him honed for death. His skin was a sickly pallor, waxen and thin, veins threading like blue glass beneath the surface.
Eyes like fractured ice, glowing with a pallid, mercury sheen—sharp, unblinking, and devoid of warmth. They pierced the darkness with cold precision, cruel and calculating. His hair hung in disarray, silver strands ragged, as though severed by a dull blade. But it was his wings that devoured the light.
A pair of monstrous appendages tore free from his back—jagged, skeletal structures webbed with feathers like razors. Blackened metal fused with muscle and sinew, welded into his flesh by a madness beyond pain. Each feather gleamed with a dull, lethal sheen, serrated edges whispering like grinding bone.
The Vultures trailed behind him like shadows drawn to rot. They were killers, ghouls stripped of mercy, but beside Hawk, they seemed like mere scavengers feeding at the feet of something far worse.
"Spread out." His voice cut through the air, jagged and cold, stripped to a single command. It was a voice that promised violence, not words. "Scour every inch."
One of the Vultures licked cracked lips, eyes darting. He didn't follow orders. He followed hunger. Hawk simply gave it shape.
Hawk's wings twitched, metal feathers rasping as they adjusted. Their reach spanned unnaturally wide, eager to carve through stone, eager to rip flesh. He moved with surgical precision, gliding as if he didn't touch the ground. The terrain meant nothing to him.
His mind was a ruin, a chaos of jagged thoughts that tore through his brain like metal scraping stone. There was no whispering voice, no phantom at the edge of his sanity—only him. Just him.
He hunted Amatsu because Amatsu had killed his brother.
That was the lie.
The excuse, the twisted justification he fed himself when the bloodlust felt too good, too right. It wasn't vengeance—no, that was too clean, too righteous. This was something else. It cracked and splintered beneath his skin until it spilled out in waves of violent ecstasy.
It was the hunt he loved. The chase. The smell of fear mixed with blood. The not-knowing—the dizzying knife-edge between certainty and doubt, where anything could happen, where the prey might slip away or turn and fight. The thrill of failure. The sweet uncertainty.
And the blood. The blood was everything. The taste of it, the warmth, the texture. The way it clung to his feathers, slick and viscous, staining him until he felt less man than beast. It made him whole.
Bloodsplitter, bloodsplitter—HA. HA. HA.
Wings like knives.
Knives like teeth.
Teeth like hunger.
Bloodspill, drip, drip, drip—Can't breathe without it.
Clawing for the red, the bright, the wet.
Brother? Brother's bones—ground to dust. Ash. Fodder. Just like all the others.
Hawk's madness wasn't mere anger. It was ecstasy. The violence, the chase, the insatiable hunger—it was a symphony of destruction, each moment building toward the crescendo of annihilation.
They called him Hawk, but that name was an insult to the truth. There was nothing avian about him. He was the storm itself, a beast forged from jagged metal and fury, shaped into the semblance of a man.
The air trembled with his presence. He spoke without raising his voice, yet the words cut through the ruins like a serrated blade. "They were here. Recently."
A Vulture near him snapped its head up, its sharp gaze piercing the darkness. The others shifted, muscles taut, bodies trembling with anticipation as the blood scent reached their nostrils. It was sharp, intoxicating, irresistible.
Hawk's lips twisted into a cruel, sharp smile, and he moved forward, the Vultures falling into line behind him. Their forms were mere shadows, but alive with insanity. The ruins whispered under their feet, but Hawk's focus never wavered. His gaze swept the wreckage, cold and calculating.
"They're close," he murmured, his voice like cold steel. "Playing games."
His wings snapped open with a sickening screech, claws of metal dragging against the stone, an awful rasp that seemed to tear the air itself.
The Vultures surged forward, Their eyes, sharp as broken glass, flicked from corner to corner, scanning the shadows, waiting for the smallest shift, the faintest tremor in the silence.
Hawk's fingers curled, talons elongating like the promise of death itself, his body tightening, coiling with a purpose only known to beasts.
Mistakes. They always made them, didn't they? The fools, the weak ones—so predictable, so easily shattered. It was all part of the game, the dance between him and them, the predator and the prey. A flash of their fear, a slip of their guard, and they were his to carve apart. He lived for that instant, that fracture in their mind, where everything they'd believed fell apart, unraveling like a dead thing in his hands.
The Vultures moved, as one, an extension of his own thoughts. Their bodies prowled, sharp and focused, every step in perfect sync with the madness that swirled inside him.
"Yes," he whispered to himself, his thoughts turning jagged, sharp—disjointed. "Prey makes mistakes. Always. Slip—gone. No, not gone. Not yet. Not until I make them break. They're weak. we are gods. I am the god of the hunt… the feast. Yes. They'll falter. Just a breath, a moment of hesitation, and I'll be on them. I'll tear them apart—bones, skin, everything. They'll bleed. They always bleed. They always fall."
They went deeper.
"They're close, very close" he muttered, the words barely forming before the next torrent of madness consumed them. "Closer. Not far now. I'll break them. I'll break them open, and I'll drink their fear. Oh, the blood—yes, the blood—slipping down my feathers, slick and warm, soaking into me. It's all I need. All I want."
The hunt wasn't just a task. It was the only thing keeping him alive, keeping him sane. Without it, there was nothing. Just silence. Just stillness. And he couldn't… wouldn't… go back to that.
A Vulture stumbled forward, claws twitching, eyes bloodshot with the high of proximity. He dropped to one knee beside a collapsed pillar, breath hitching.
"Sir," he rasped.
Hawk didn't turn. He was inhaling the ground. Breathing the absence.
"Lord Hawk. I found something."
Now he turned.
The Vulture stepped back without meaning to.
Etched into the ash-covered stone, claw-deep and deliberate:
"Too slow."
Three words. That was all.
Hawk crouched, shadows crawling like worms across his back. He traced the letters with a broken fingernail. They weren't sloppy. They were surgical. Intimate.
Like a whisper against the spine.
"Beautiful," he murmured.
The Vultures stayed silent. They had seen what he did to the last one who spoke during these moments.
He smiled. But not with joy.
With recognition.
He stood slowly, as if something sacred had touched him.
"They watched me," he said. "Watched us."
He turned to them, voice raw with something between delight and rage.
"And they laughed."
No one moved.
Hawk's grin cracked wider. His pupils shrank.
"Good."
He exhaled sharp through his nose. A chuckle, maybe. A snort. Hard to tell.
He extended his hand. One of the Vultures stepped forward and slit his own wrist without being asked. Hawk drank it absentmindedly—then spat.
"Not them. Not him."
He stared back at the writing.
"I'm not hunting a kid anymore," he whispered. "I'm being tested."
Then louder, spine straightening, mouth foaming with euphoria:
"He sees me."
The wind howled through the open wound of the ruin.
Hawk tilted his head back and laughed. Long. Rasping. Reverent.
And when he stopped, the sound felt wrongly absent—like something had swallowed it whole.
He stared down at the dust again.
Then he bent low, and beside "Too slow," with the bone of his finger, he carved his reply:
"Keep watching."
He smeared a line of blood beneath it like a signature.
Then rose, whispering:
"Because next time, you'll blink—"
A pause.
"—and I'll be inside you."
His mind churned relentlessly, calculating. Amatsu. Eto. Every step. Clever, yes, but not beyond his reach. Never beyond his reach.
He inhaled deeply, wings trembling with anticipation. It was the scent of fear that stirred him—an acrid bite, mixed with blood. They were close. And Hawk was a creature built for the hunt.
He would carve through stone and sinew to reach them. And when he did—
They would understand what it meant to be hunted by something that never rested.
But devoured all the same.