Incubus Living In A World Of Superpower Users - Chapter 434

Capítulo 434: Mirror Thread? 2

He felt its charge the way a body feels thunder just before it hears it. He dropped the mirror thread from his wrist onto the mud in front of the patch, a quick smear that let the ground flash him back.

For two heartbeats a second, Ethan stood where he had just been, his weight on false ground, an easy target.

The chimera took it. The horned head drove forward. The front feet planted where the mirror insisted his ankles lived.

The mud said thank you and took the weight. It didn’t swallow like a mouth. It took like a person who knows how to carry.

Slow, inexorable, half an inch and then another. The chimera thrashed with the kind of power that gets you deeper into what you struggle with.

It tried to pull in the wrong direction. It sank to the knees, to the belly. The wings rose hard, buzzing, slicing fog.

They lifted some, not enough. It tried to go up without changing what it did with its feet. The more punished is stubbornness.

He didn’t celebrate. He didn’t get too close too soon. He checked the line of plates along the back for seams he could trust.

He watched the head for a twist that would fling a horn at his ribs. He let it fight the mud until the fight turned to calculation.

That shift came like a sigh through the swamp. The wings stopped flailing. They started beating with a rhythm that matched the insect hum again.

Clever thing. It was about to take weight off the wrong places. He moved then because he wouldn’t get a second try.

He stepped to the flank where the wing root met the armored back and set his boot on a ridge that didn’t mind work.

He sank the knife where plate joined plate, not at an angle you’d teach in a neat class, at an angle that would make a good teacher mark you for ugly correctness.

The blade found a pocket of softer tissue designed to exist so maintenance could be done on a creature that is not a creature.

The chimera convulsed. The wing kicked. He took the hit on his shoulder and used the hit’s force to drive the knife a finger deeper instead of letting it bounce him off.

He pulled out, shifted half a foot, and struck the second wing root similarly. The wings lost power. The body let go of its desire to go up and remembered the truth under it.

“Down,” he said, not to it, to himself. He stepped back and let his weight be small again. He waited.

The mud did what mud does when asked gently. It took. The chimera tried one more twist with a horn to drive fear into the air.

He stayed where the ground loved him. The horn cut through the fog and found only that. The body settled.

He moved in and made the last cut clean, along the line where throat meets life. No flourish. No speeches.

He stayed in his crouch a long breath after it stilled. He listened to the swamp become swamp again.

The fog forgot his name. The insects went back to their petty arguments. The mud lay without pride.

He wiped his blade on a root that didn’t mind. He checked his water. He drank. The system said nothing.

He stood and looked back at the lures. The case had sunk a fraction as if embarrassed. The charm disc had a line of ant tracks across it now, which a moment before had refused to touch it.

The vial on the string caught a shaft of pale light and decided it wanted to look pretty again. He didn’t reward it.

He scanned beyond the fight. The swamp stretched, yes, but not in a straight line. It held pockets of higher ground that would let him make time if he trusted the pattern.

It offered easy islands close to traps. It wanted him to prove whether he could still keep count when sweat ran into his eyes and the day leaned heavily across his back.

He took another breath and let it out. He told his hand to unclench, and it did. He rolled his bad shoulder once.

The ache pressed its existence into his skin and then stepped away to a corner where it did not draw attention.

He tied a strip of cloth tighter under the joint so it would not wander. He looked at his boots because Everly would have scolded him if he didn’t.

They looked back at him with mud up to the laces and said they were fine.

He moved on.

A stretch of swamp gave him a break more generous than he expected. The mud changed to packed earth under a ceiling of vines that filtered the light into a simple green.

He walked under it and felt the temperature drop by a finger’s width. A fallen trunk gave him a place to sit if he wanted to. He didn’t.

He put one hand on it and felt the grain under his palm. The tree had been here long enough to watch several exams.

It didn’t care about his score. It cared about whether he recorded his weight like a person who understood weight.

He heard voices again in the distance. Not the drill this time. Real voices running the old calls, but with breath behind them. He didn’t push for them yet.

He kept to the principle that company is something you earn by how you move, not something you chase because fear wants a friend. When the ground hissed lightly under his feet, he stopped.

A thin skin hid a hole ahead, not deep but wet. He moved a foot to the side and found a strip that would hold.

He marked the spot in his head as a spot to warn someone else about later if the day put a person here who needed it.

He came to a small clearing. In the center stood a stone pedestal with a flat top and four fresh grooves carved into it.

They waited for shards like the one he had taken from the serpent’s belly, the one now warm against his side.

The pedestal had been set in a place where fog couldn’t hide it and where the mosquito hum cut thin. It was a check-in point, not a trap.

He placed his shard in one groove and let the stone drink its edges. The pedestal glowed a steady pulse, once or twice, then lay itself quiet.

Ahead, the fog thinned again. The swamp’s edge merged into the suggestion of streets, then into low broken walls, then into another place entirely, as if the exam were a city of rooms and doors had been left open for him to pass if he read the signs.

He adjusted his strap, checked the coil of thread inside his wrist, and waited for the system to make a joke.

It didn’t.

He noticed the quiet and realized it was on purpose. The panel behind his thoughts stayed open and awake but held back from words.

It wanted his attention in the room, not on banter. That was good, and he respected that. He walked without talking to it. Quiet travels. He liked proving he could keep it.

A pale shape slid across his path just ahead. It was not a threat, not a lure. It was a simple, programmed animal doing its route, testing whether it would chase what was easy.

He let it go. He checked the horizon line, where it started to look like a broken city again. A bell sounded far off, and then it was swallowed by fog.

Not an alarm. A class marker. Other pairs were moving. Good. He would cross one sooner or later if he kept his feet where the ground forgave him and his eyes where the path told truths.

He reached a stretch where brackish water grazed a low wall. Under the stone’s lip, he saw more shards nested in roots like eggs laid by a metal-bellied bird.

He took one and left two. He would not weigh himself down because greed satisfies a hand and punishes a back.

He made a small X in the mud with the heel of his boot to mark for his future self where the nest lay.

He didn’t care if anyone else saw. If a stranger found it and needed it more, the world would be fine.

The fog ahead brightened a hair. A breeze he had not felt all morning found its way under the vines and made them sway just enough to show the edges of the next doorway.

He thought of Elira’s map, of ridges, marsh, broken towers. He thought of the teacher’s ledger, the two lines she had written, and made a small promise to her in his head without making it into a vow.

He would keep count even when tired. He would let jokes wait when a pair needed breath to return.

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Creation is hard, cheer me up!

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