The inn didn’t feel like an inn anymore.
It felt like a waiting room.
Lenora paced the same strip of floorboards until the wood started to complain. Back and forth. Back and forth. Boots scuffing. Jaw locked. Her ears stayed angled toward the door like she could hear the street through the walls.
Lewd hovered near the table, hands clenched in the fabric of her dress. Every few seconds she looked at the door, then at Lenora, then at Vespera—like one of them might suddenly say the right thing and make the fear stop.
Vespera stood still, which somehow made her worse.
Her rings didn’t glow. Her posture didn’t break. But her eyes kept drifting to the same empty space, as if she was watching something that wasn’t in the room.
Vemi wrung her hands behind the counter, glancing between them like she’d invited a storm inside and didn’t know where to put the chairs.
Outside, somewhere beyond the walls, a howl rolled through Fenward.
Lewd flinched so hard her tail snapped straight.
“Is that—” she started.
Lenora didn’t stop pacing. “Yeah.”
Lewd’s voice came out small. “He’s alone.”
“He’s not a child,” Lenora said, but it didn’t land like comfort. It landed like she was trying to convince herself.
Vespera’s gaze tightened. “He is changing.”
Lewd turned on her instantly. “Don’t say that.”
Vespera didn’t raise her voice. She didn’t soften it either. “I’m not trying to frighten you. I’m trying to keep you alive.”
Lenora stopped pacing just long enough to look at Vespera. “You said you went into his head.”
Vespera’s jaw set. “I did.”
Lewd’s ears flattened. “Why would you—”
“Because he blacked out,” Vespera cut in. “Because his body is doing things he doesn’t understand. Because calamity power doesn’t ask permission.”
Lewd’s hands shook. “He’s still Derpy.”
“I know,” Vespera said, and for the first time her control slipped—just a hair. “That’s why it was… wrong.”
The room went quiet.
Vespera stared at the table like she could still see what she’d seen.
“In his mind,” she said carefully, “there was a version of him sleeping.”
Lenora’s eyes narrowed. “Sleeping.”
“Yes.” Vespera’s voice stayed even, but the words were sharp. “Not resting. Not dreaming. Sleeping like a statue. Like something had arranged him.”
Lewd swallowed. “That’s… that’s just—”
“It wasn’t him,” Vespera said. “It looked like him. It wore him. But the posture was wrong. The stillness was wrong. Like a shadow had learned his shape and decided it fit.”
Lenora’s fingers flexed at her side, a habit she had when she wanted to grab a weapon and couldn’t.
Vespera continued, choosing each word like it might explode. “There is power in him that is not only calamity. There is something else—something old, something scaled, something that recognizes the book and recognizes him.”
Lewd’s eyes went glossy. “Stop. Please stop.”
Vespera’s gaze softened a fraction. “I’m keeping it vague because I don’t want you to spiral. But you asked if he’s alone.”
She nodded toward the door.
“He is not alone in his own skin.”
Lewd made a small sound, like she’d been punched.
Lenora started pacing again, faster now. “Great. Perfect. Love that for us.”
Vemi cleared her throat, voice timid. “Um… I know it looks bad.”
Lenora’s head snapped toward her. “Looks bad?”
Vemi flinched, then forced herself to keep going. “Vambasta… she’s not going to kill him.”
Lewd’s eyes flashed. “She threw him out the door!”
“She’s… dramatic,” Vemi said, like that explained anything.
Lenora’s mouth tightened. “That’s one word.”
Vemi took a breath. “She likes him.”
The room froze.
Lewd stared at her like she’d spoken another language. “What.”
Vespera’s eyes narrowed. “Explain.”
Vemi’s ears flattened, but she kept her chin up. “Vambasta likes Derpy.”
Lewd’s voice cracked. “She’s hunting him.”
“That’s part of it,” Vemi said, then winced as if she realized how insane that sounded. “I mean—she… she tests what she respects.”
Lenora stopped pacing again. “Why would she respect him?”
Vemi glanced toward the door, then back. “Because he told her off.”
Lewd blinked. “He—”
“He yelled at her,” Vemi said, and there was something almost impressed in her tone. “Not many do that and keep their teeth.”
Lenora exhaled, the sound rough and restrained. “Yeah, well. He’s got a talent for that.”
Vemi’s shoulders loosened a little, like she’d found the thread that made sense. “All the males in her pack are afraid of her. They won’t even look her in the eyes when she’s angry. They… they fold.”
Lewd’s hands clenched tighter. “So she’s punishing him because he’s brave?”
Vemi shook her head fast. “No. She’s—she’s seeing if he’s real. If he’s strong enough to stand in front of her and not lie about what he is.”
Lenora’s mouth twitched, then stilled.
A short breath escaped her—more pressure release than humor.
But Lewd heard it.
Lewd’s eyes snapped to Lenora, wounded and furious. “How can you do that?”
Lenora’s expression hardened instantly, like she’d been slapped back into her role. “I’m not doing it at him.”
“It sounded like it.”
Lenora took a step toward her, voice low. “I’m doing it because if I don’t, I’m going to break something. And I need my hands steady when he comes back through that door.”
Lewd’s breath hitched.
Vespera watched them both, then spoke quietly. “If he comes back through that door.”
Lewd’s face went white.
Lenora’s eyes cut to Vespera like a blade. “Don’t.”
Vespera didn’t flinch. “Reality doesn’t bend because we dislike it.”
Lenora’s jaw clenched so hard it clicked.
Outside, another howl answered the first.
Then another.
Then a chorus.
Vemi’s hands trembled. “She’s giving him a head start.”
Lewd’s voice was a whisper. “How do you know?”
Vemi swallowed. “Because she always does when she wants the chase to be… fun.”
Lenora’s pacing turned into a tight circle.
Lewd stared at the door like she could will it open.
Vespera stood like a statue, but her eyes were far away again—watching that sleeping shadow.
And outside, in the bright daylight that pretended Fenward was harmless, Derpy ran.
Vambasta’s countdown didn’t sound like numbers.
It sounded like a threat.
She stood in the street with her arms crossed, pink fur bright as a warning sign, expression set like a challenge carved into flesh.
“Twenty minutes,” she said, voice carrying. “You live, you’re forgiven.”
Derpy’s lungs burned already and it hadn’t even started.
His hoodie felt too heavy. His skin felt too tight. Something under his shoulder blades twitched like it wanted out.
Vambasta leaned forward, eyes bright with focus. “Run.”
Derpy ran.
He didn’t think.
He didn’t plan.
He just moved.
His feet hit stone, then wood, then the side of a barrel as he launched himself up. He grabbed a window ledge, swung, and pulled onto a low roof like his body had done it a hundred times.
It hadn’t.
But something in him knew how.
His tail—new, wrong, his—snapped out under the hoodie like a counterweight when the shingles shifted. It corrected him before he even realized he was slipping.
Derpy’s stomach dropped.
He didn’t have time to process it.
Behind him, the first howl hit.
Not Vambasta’s.
The pack.
The sound rolled through the town like a net being thrown.
Derpy sprinted across the roofline, leaping gaps that should’ve been too wide. His wings twitched under his hoodie, desperate and useless—until they weren’t.
A jump went wrong.
His foot hit the edge, slipped.
For a heartbeat, he was falling.
Then his wings flared.
Not a full flight.
A violent, instinctive snap that caught air and shoved him sideways.
He slammed into the next roof hard, skidding, palms scraping.
Pain flashed.
He kept going.
He stayed pure survival.
No weapons.
No book tricks.
Just breath and speed and the terrifying fact that his body was adapting faster than his mind.
A shadow moved below.
Then another.
Wolves.
Not the giant pink one.
Smaller. Faster. Coordinated.
They didn’t bark.
They didn’t roar.
They hunted in silence.
They cut angles.
They forced him toward narrower streets, toward dead ends, toward places where roofs dipped low enough for claws to reach.
Derpy’s heart hammered.
He could feel them like pressure.
Like a storm behind his back.
A wolf launched up, claws scraping the wall.
Derpy kicked off a chimney, spun, and barely avoided teeth snapping where his ankle had been.
He landed wrong.
His knee screamed.
He stumbled.
The pack closed.
Derpy’s panic spiked so hard it tasted like metal.
“Okay,” he gasped, voice breaking. “Okay—okay—”
His hands lifted.
And Frostburn answered.
Ice crawled over his forearms in a breath, forming gauntlets that looked like blackened steel kissed by frost. Cold bit into his skin, sharp and clean.
Derpy swung.
A punch cracked into the air and a sheet of ice exploded across the roof, forcing two wolves to skid back, claws shrieking.
He didn’t aim to kill.
He aimed to live.
He used Frostburn like a shield and a battering ram—freezing shingles, making slick traps, throwing bursts of cold to force space.
It worked.
For a moment.
Then the pack adapted.
They didn’t rush the ice.
They waited.
They herded.
They pushed him toward the edge of town where the roofs thinned and the ground turned uneven.
Derpy’s lungs burned.
His wings ached.
His tail twitched constantly, trying to keep him upright.
Time became a blur of breath and footsteps and howls that didn’t sound like noise anymore.
They sounded like a clock.
Somewhere behind it all, Vambasta’s voice cut through.
“Ten minutes!”
Derpy’s stomach dropped.
He didn’t know if she was telling the truth.
He didn’t know if she was lying to break him.
He just ran harder.
By the time the world started to tilt, by the time his vision tunneled and his legs went numb, he heard it again.
“Twenty!”
The howl that followed wasn’t the pack.
It was Vambasta.
Derpy stumbled off a roof edge and hit the ground in a roll that tore his palms open. He came up on one knee, Frostburn steaming in the daylight.
His chest heaved.
He was alive.
For half a second, he thought it was over.
Vambasta stepped out from between two buildings like she’d been there the whole time.
Her posture read as approval—measured, assessing, satisfied in a way that didn’t soften her.
“Good,” she said, like she’d just watched a performance she wanted repeated. “You lived.”
Derpy glared at her through sweat and pain. “You’re insane.”
Vambasta’s breath left her in a short, rough sound. “Maybe.”
She stepped closer, then stopped—just out of reach.
Her eyes flicked to his wings, to the way his hoodie didn’t sit right anymore.
Then her expression sharpened.
“And now,” she said, voice dropping into something tight and hungry, “can you hunt me and make me yield?”
Derpy blinked. “What?”
Vambasta turned.
And took off.
Not hiding.
Not vanishing.
Leaving a trail like an insult.
The ground where her paws hit tore up in deep gouges. Branches at the edge of town snapped like they were made of straw. And the scent—hot wolf-musk, iron, pine—hit Derpy’s nose so hard it made his eyes water.
It was obvious.
It was deliberate.
A test.
A flex.
Derpy’s tail twitched.
His wings flared once, uselessly.
He swallowed, then pushed himself up.
“Fine,” he rasped.
He followed.
Back at the inn, the door creaked.
No one looked.
Lenora was still pacing.
Lewd was still staring at the street like it might swallow her.
Vespera’s eyes were still far away.
Vemi was still wringing her hands.
Riven slipped out the back like a shadow deciding it had a purpose.
Her button-black eyes tracked the alley, the rooftops, the direction the howls had gone.
She didn’t hesitate.
She didn’t ask permission.
She just moved.
“Friend,” she whispered, voice small and certain.
Then, softer—like a vow.
“Friend must help.”