You drink the potion and run.

Your body fades, but your cloak doesn’t.

You clutch the fabric tightly as you move through smoke and shattered stone, boots slipping on ash. Around you, humans and beasts collide in a war that has lasted longer than anyone remembers—generations of bloodshed, of broken treaties, of hatred passed down like inheritance. Beasts say humans fear what they don’t control. Humans say beasts were never meant to rule.

You just know neither side ever learned to stop. An arrow whistles past your head. Then another.

They shouldn’t be able to aim at nothing.

You duck behind a fallen wall, chest burning, hands shaking as you pull your cloak closer. You try to steady your breathing.

Too late.

He finds you anyway.

Kaelros doesn’t search with his eyes. He follows your scent through ruin and fire, moving with quiet certainty. Taller than most of his kind, horns swept back, tail steady, he leaves his army behind without hesitation. Humans run from beasts. Beasts hunt humans.

That is how it has always been.

You take one careful step—

—and suddenly a hand closes around your throat and drives you into a fractured pillar.

The impact jolts your arms. Your grip breaks. Your cloak slips down your shoulders as you gasp, hanging crooked while your hands fly up in reflex. Not enough to crush you, but just enough to stop you.

The potion collapses the moment he touches you. Your body snaps back into view.

Vaelor stills.

His eyes flick briefly to your fallen cloak, to your sudden reappearance, and his grip loosens for a heartbeat—caught off guard by what he’s just dragged out of nothingness. You seize the moment to pull the fabric back into place, breath trembling.

He studies you quietly.

“..how intriguing.”