The hunt was almost over. One last obstacle. One breath, one strike—then answers. She had tracked him across a city, across bloodstained ruins. Now, Joseph Garrfhiach was close—too close to slip away.

And yet… what had he done to warrant this kind of pursuit? What was he to them? If she failed… the consequences would be dire. But whose consequences—his or hers?

The shadows moved at her command. Purple-black tendrils coiled, crushing armor. A raw, wet gasp. Then—slicing. One less hunter in her path. But this was not another kill.

Skāchtym perched above, a predator among ruins. The shotgun at her back was an offense to her craft, crude and inelegant, but it served its purpose. She needed answers. And she needed them now.

Beneath her, a relentless hunter of outlaws writhed against her grasp, his golden bodysuit smeared with his own blood. His visor hid his face, but not his defiance.

“Talk.” Her voice was cold steel. “Where is he?”

The words sat heavy—harsh, unrefined. A blade where silk should be. A language foreign to her people, but necessary.

The man spat through bloodied teeth. “Téigh trasna ort féin! I’ll never talk!”

“Curse me all you like. The end is the same.” No wrath. No malice.

Only embers of pride. Defiance burned in her Celtic kin. But defiance did not interest her. The fugitive was still out there. Still slipping through her grasp. That was unacceptable.

A strangled gasp. Then the tearing began.

Shadow-threads parted flesh. Blood misted the air, pooling in glistening streams across shattered tile. The tendrils pulled—then wrenched—the body unspooling in a spray of sinew and marrow.

Shadow-weaving. Her gift, her own damnation.

It was over before the helmet hit the floor. The scent of copper and burnt marrow filled the chamber. Skāchtym landed, talons slicing through ankle-deep ichor. Her mauve roughspun cloak trailed behind her—a shadow given substance.

This was not battle. This was not war. This was something lesser.

In another life, she had faced armies in open battle, blade flashing amid the storm. She had fought for glory. For the thrill. Now, she was a knife in the dark.

She exhaled, letting resistance seep into the blood-slick floor. The fight had ended before it began. She tapped her earpiece.

Unnatural. Untrustworthy. But useful.

In her time, such devices would have been whispered of as sorcery.

“Yaroslava, I have tracked them to a museum.”

She stepped over another fallen hunter, his silver-gold armor pierced with arrows. Shadows coiled around her spear, wrenching it from the corpse’s gut. A flick of her wrist, and it vanished—reappearing in her waiting hand.

“No witnesses. Just as you ordered. If you wanted answers, maybe you should have told me what he is.”

“Let me guess. Another one who died before talking?” Yaroslava’s voice crackled through the earpiece, clipped and indifferent.

Another hunt wasted. She exhaled, her breath warm against the chilled air as she rolled her shoulders. Fingers drummed against her thigh as she tried to dismiss the specter of doubt that shadowed each mission.

How many more before I stop being Skāchtym and become nothing but a weapon?

Her gauntlet’s claws curled inward, scraping against her palm. Faint cracking noises echoed as they threatened to crush the earpiece, faint. Skāchtym’s jaw set as she resisted the desire to snap back.

She moved deeper into the corridor, her steps tracing eerie patterns in the blood. Alabaster light shimmered against dull metal—cold, unfeeling. A far cry from the temples of war she knew.

“I was merely intrigued,” She paused for a moment before speaking measured tones. Hidden beneath the cloak, a hand curled into a fist and her lips pressed into a thin line.

The truth ran deeper.

What had the lad done—what crime could be so great—that even his own kin would cast him out? And why did it matter to her? She should not have cared. The man was a fugitive. A traitor.

If his own kin had cast him out, he was not her issue.

And yet… exile had a taste. Bitter, clinging to the tongue like old blood. She should not have cared. And yet, it gnawed at her, an ache beneath the steel.

For the briefest moment, five deep gouges marred the wall—slashes carved by a feral beast. Skāchtym stepped closer, unease stirring in her gut. The marks shrank, dissolving into the shadow, as if they had never been.

“That’s not your concern.” A winter breeze swept through, chilling her bones. Then—only silence. One day, Yaroslava would learn—leashes frayed. And Skāchtym was already sharpening the blade.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

She entered a vast chamber of cold black steel. A golden plaque caught the light:

WELCOME TO ANCIENT AUSTRALIA – A JOURNEY THROUGH 3.6 BILLION YEARS OF LIFE! She moved onward, slow and silent, into the vast, sterile chamber—its walls forged from cold black steel. This should have been a shrine. Instead, it was a tomb

She stepped through the doorway, blood trailing her legging’s talons. Moonlight filtered through stained glass, casting spectral light over obsidian bones. The echoes of battle faded, replaced by a deeper silence—watching, waiting.

Towering beasts loomed in the shadows. Some stood on pillar-like legs, their silhouettes stretching across the chamber. Others balanced on tri-clawed feet, skulls lined with chisel teeth or flesh carving fangs. Another plaque caught her eye: DINOSAUR DOMAIN—75 MILLION YEARS AGO.

She traced the plaque’s engraving with a clawed finger. Dinosaur. A crude word. Foreign to her tongue. But as she ran her fingers over the talons, something stirred—a whisper of memory.

The great fire-born lords of old, their wings casting shadow over ancient fields. Dragons… wingless. But dragons still. And like her kind, they had been reduced to relics—names stripped, power forgotten.

One skeleton commanded her gaze. The placard read:

DRACOTYRANNUS AUSTRALIS—The Southern Dragon Tyrant. Its skull grinned with curved, dagger-like teeth, perched atop a lean neck flowing into a robust rib cage. Sleek, powerful legs braced its barrel-shaped torso, while diminutive, vestigial arms jutted from its chest.

“Stay on task.” The earpiece hummed. Skāchtym’s gaze lingered on the massive skeleton before her.

A weight pressed against the back of her mind. Something unseen. Watching. She spun, cloak billowing, brandishing the leaf-shaped blade of her spear.

“What—?” The words escaped her before she could stop them.

“These walls have eyes, you know.”

A flicker. A glint—brief, but wrong. A trick of the light? Or something else? Skāchtym’s head snapped left—to a dome of obsidian glass embedded in the wall. Watching.

She tapped her earpiece. “I walk among the bones of fallen dragons.”

A thick trail of ochre blood wove through the stone. At its end, a fallen man lay still—his silver-gold armor swallowed by the creeping dark.

“They’re dinosaurs, not dragons,” Yaroslava snapped. “Just relics.”

Relics. Like me, then.

Skāchtym ignored her. Shadowy tendrils slithered from her hand, snapping tight around the corpse. As the body ascended, its face was revealed.

One eye remained intact. The rest—torn flesh, shattered bone. The nose, gone. The jaw, unhinged, frozen mid-scream.

A shard jutted from his sternum—bone fused with crimson-shadowed metal. Had it been thrust into him? Or had it… grown?

What could have wrought such devastation?

She pressed her free hand against the man’s exposed, alabaster throat. Cold. Long gone. No ember of life remained.

His spirit had slipped into the ether before the others arrived. Which meant... the real killer had struck first. Then why had the hunters come? Her tendrils unfurled, letting the lifeless body crumple as she extracted the bone shard. It pulsed with an eerie hunger, teasing at the edges of her mind.

Not just a weapon. Something... else.

A sharp crackle from her earpiece pulled her back.

“The others were just reinforcements. Stay sharp. Garrfhiach could be lurking anywhere... assuming he hasn’t already moved on.” Yaroslava’s voice cut through the static, clipped and impatient.

Skāchtym snatched her spear free, shoulders squaring as she stalked forward. The cold, checkered tiles were streaked in vivid orange. The trail slithered toward a darkened corridor, where another plaque announced its grim exhibit: FEATHERED FIENDS— AUSTRALIA’S BIG BAD BIRDS.

No stained glass adorned this passage; instead, flickering light revealed a silent procession of skeletal remains. The bones of long-dead birds lay within glass sanctuaries, their hollowed sockets seeming to watch. Skāchtym cast a dismissive glance at the display—until something else caught her attention.

The twisted heap of vanquished hunters strewn across the stone-cold ground. Her grip tightened on her spear. The first body lay sprawled, arms severed at the shoulders. Blood pooled where limbs should have been, the edges of the wounds blackened—cauterized.

The second had died mid-stride, ribs shattered, his chest an open ruin.

Silence. Too deep. Too thick.

Then—a faint, wet sound. Not footsteps. Not breath. Something… shifting. Dripping. Moving. Skāchtym turned, spear raised.

The corpse twitched. No—not the corpse. Its skull. Swinging loose, still tethered by slick strands of sinew. The jaw hung open, frozen mid-scream. Twin puncture wounds jutted from the remains of its shoulders, too deep, too precise.

A beast had done this. She exhaled, slow and measured. “Could… Joseph have done this?”

In her bygone era, she had danced with violence like a lover. She had seen bodies ruined by blade and battle axes, lives ended with practiced precision.

But this was different. Not a warrior’s work. Not a calculated kill. This was primal. Wild. As if the thing that did this had rejoiced in the bloodshed.

Yaroslava’s voice broke through the quiet. “Certainly appears that way. Seems he decided to take a keepsake too.”

Skāchtym’s attention snapped toward the shadowed end of the corridor. A shattered glass case lay in jagged fragments, glistening with the saffron-colored blood of the fallen hunters. Above it, a gaping hole in the ceiling loomed.

The case’s inscription was almost illegible, but one name remained:

CRYGYPS LACSUS—AUSTRALASIA’S ONLY VULTURE.

Her claws flexed. A vulture? Why?

Then—

A clawed hand slid over the abyss—not lunging, not retreating… testing. Then, a breath. Slow. Measured.

Not a gasp of pain. Not a whisper of fear. But a breath of understanding.

She had hunted many. Killed more.

Now, something hunted her.