He turned around slowly, some small part of him hoping the voice belonged to someone else. It didn't.
The stocky one stood at the center of the path with the starling already circling overhead, the lean one a step behind with the hawk settled on his forearm. Both grinning like they'd been waiting for exactly this.
Dread came first, old and practiced, the muscle memory of every previous run-in with people exactly like this. Under it, exhaustion. He'd walked out of the wasteland with a Kithren and a system that had rewritten everything he thought was possible, and here he was, barely two days removed from any of it, facing the same two idiots with the same grins, none of it seeming to have counted for anything. He'd survived things out there that had killed people whose bones he'd stood among, and the world hadn't noticed. It had simply kept turning and delivered him straight back to this. Then the anger came up under both, familiar and almost welcome. He'd rather be angry than afraid. Angry, at least, he felt like he could actually do something.
"Didn't you get enough last time?" he said.
"Enough?" The stocky one laughed, short and genuine. "We didn't get anything last time. Your friend saw to that."
"What makes you think I'm without her now?" Ant said. "You didn't see her coming last time either."
That landed. The lean one's eyes cut sideways toward the treeline, scanning the shadows between the trunks with real unease. The last time this happened, the girl and the wolf had come from somewhere neither of them had been watching.
The stocky one didn't share the worry.
"We've been behind you a while," he said, confidence intact. "Watched some wild Kithren run off into the scrub before we even caught up to you. Must've felt us coming."
Ant kept his face still, though the ground under that assumption tilted a little.
He had made the assumption it had been Mahkir who scared the bunny off. The glimpse of red fur, the Phantom Bunny folding, the timing too clean to be anything else. But if the boys had genuinely been closing in from behind the whole time, close enough to see it, close enough that their own approach could easily have been what the wild Kithren actually reacted to, the certainty didn't hold up quite so well. Two trained, bonded Kithren coming up from behind. A common creature with nothing to gain from a fight it would lose. It wasn't an unreasonable read. It might even be the right one.
He didn't know. He had no way to test it without handing over exactly what he was trying to keep hidden.
Either way, they didn't know what he actually had. And for once in his life, he was the one who knew something they didn't.
"What do you want," he said. Not really a question. Something to say while he worked out what came next.
"Last time got interrupted," the stocky one said, an edge of real irritation showing underneath the performance. "Word gets around when someone's Kithren gets chased off by an unkithered nobody's rescue party. Doesn't help our standing much." He cracked his knuckles, unhurried. "We're finishing what we started. Simple as that."
"Two of you," Ant said, "and a rescue party's still the version you want to tell people about." He kept his voice level, guarded, the old habit of giving strangers as little to work with as possible even while he was needling them. "Must be a hell of a story once your friends hear it back."
The stocky one's grin thinned out at the edges. "You'll be telling a different story by the time we're done."
"I doubt it. I don't talk much when I'm unconscious."
"That can be arranged."
"You keep saying that like it's a threat and not just a plan you haven't pulled off yet."
The lean one hadn't said anything since the treeline comment, watching the exchange without moving, waiting to see which way it broke. Somewhere off in the scrub a bird Ant couldn't name kept calling, steady and unconcerned, and the whole path smelled of warm dust and crushed grass, ordinary in a way that wouldn't last much longer.
Both sets of reader lenses shimmered as the scan ran. Ant wondered if it could detect anything. No chip meant no data, so it should come back blank. But who knew what his system had done to him? Could they see that he now had a Kithren and a higher level? Both boys settled into the same easy confirmation, the look of people whose assumptions had just been proven right by the only source they trusted.
Unkithered. Still. As far as they could tell.
A week ago that would've been the whole truth. Now it was a lie their own equipment was telling them, and they had no way to know it.
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He thought about explaining. About just telling them plainly that whatever the lenses said, something had changed, and they might want to reconsider the next few minutes. He didn't bother. They wouldn't have believed him, and some tired, petty part of him wasn't in the mood to make it easy.
He unfastened the coat carefully and slid it off, feeling the small adjustment of Mahkir staying folded in the dark rather than spilling out into the open. He knelt and set it at the edge of the path with more care than the moment called for, buying himself a second to steady his breathing and keep the fabric closed around whatever was curled inside it. His hands weren't quite steady doing it, and he noticed, and let it go.
He didn't call Mahkir out.
There wasn't much logic behind it once he actually looked at the decision. Mahkir hadn't fought the Phantom Bunny. He'd made that clear before retreating with as much dignity as the moment allowed. Nothing suggested this would go any differently. Whatever had made the wild Kithren run, it hadn't been an offer to fight. It had just been Mahkir existing in its awareness for a few seconds, and Ant had no idea whether it would happen again, on command or by chance. He wasn't going to test the theory with two academy boys watching.
He stood back up.
They watched him with matching expressions of mild curiosity, the kind you'd give anything interesting but not remotely threatening. Neither of them moved.
The screech came before he'd fully straightened.
He turned into it on instinct, Soul Render already free in his hand, and the flat of the blade caught the strike at an angle that felt more like luck than skill, a starling's wing skidding off curved steel instead of opening his face. The impact jarred up through his wrist into his shoulder. He'd deflected it. A week ago his body wouldn't have known how.
For half a second, he actually felt hopeful.
"I like that sword," the stocky one said, tilting his head. "Tell you what. Hand it over now and we'll call it even."
Ant didn't believe him for a second.
He settled into a stance that felt right, though to anyone who actually knew how to fight it would have looked exactly like what it was: a man with maybe an hour of Mahkir's blunt coaching behind him, none of it tested against anything that hit back. Mahkir's voice from the chamber surfaced anyway, unhelpful and unbidden: your feet are wrong. He adjusted them out of pure reflex, weight settling lower than it wanted to, and it didn't fix nearly enough. His grip was still too tight. His elbow still sat wrong under pressure the way it hadn't in an empty cave with nothing trying to attack him. He kept the blade up anyway, eyes moving between both boys, trying to track two threats without any real training behind it.
In the coat at the edge of the path, he could feel Mahkir go tense through his bond, even with a few feet between them. Not moving. Just present, coiled, watching through whatever sense let him track a fight he wasn't in. Ant didn't call him out. He held the sword instead and made himself the only target worth aiming at.
The hawk came first, a diving arc he half-tracked and half-guessed at, and he pivoted a second too late. Talons caught his forearm instead of his throat, opening a line of fresh pain right alongside the older wound that had barely closed. A real chunk peeled off whatever HP he had left, enough to notice, not enough to slow him down yet. He staggered but kept the sword, breathing hard through his teeth against the sting of it.
Then the starling tore into two birds where a moment ago there'd been one, Splitrun, a name he remembered from years of reading about skills he'd never expected to face, closing the pincer he'd half-braced for. He turned to meet it and missed the boy coming in from the side entirely. A hand closed around his wrist and wrenched, hard, the bond-enhanced grip crushing until his fingers opened whether he willed it or not. Soul Render left his hand and hit the dirt several feet away, spinning once before it settled.
He lunged for it, off balance, already knowing it was the wrong move and doing it anyway.
The punch caught him on the side of the head before he'd finished turning, a solid connection that sent white light across his vision and his balance sideways, and he went down onto one knee, ears ringing, the taste of copper somewhere in his mouth. He didn't check the system. He didn't have to. The system said it for him anyway, plain and immediate. HP: 19/30.
It registered and nothing more, a number with nothing to say about how to make the ringing stop.
The laughter started above him.
He pushed himself back up slowly, one hand flat on the cold ground, his vision swimming back into focus by degrees. The boys were laughing, easy and unbothered, clearly enjoying this. For a moment it hit harder than the punch had.
The tears came before he could stop them. Not from the pain, though the pain was real enough. From how familiar it was: on his knees, being laughed at, after the wasteland and everything that should have meant this couldn't happen to him anymore, and here he was on the ground anyway, exactly where the world had always seemed to think he belonged.
Five years of this. He'd thought everything he'd gained out there had changed the math.
It hadn't. Or not enough to matter yet.
He wiped his face with the back of his hand, angrier at himself for the tears than at anything the boys had done, and forced his head up instead of staying bent over the dirt where it would've been easier to stay. His knees still hurt. He made himself look anyway.
The laughter had stopped.
He followed their eyes and found the reason. Standing between him and the two Kithren circling above, small and red and completely still, was Mahkir.
The amber had gone from his eyes. What was left burned dark red at the edges, a thin curl of smoke rising off his fur where it had gone stiff with heat, fixed on the starling and the hawk with a look that had run out of patience entirely. Both birds faltered mid-motion. The starling's split collapsed back into one bird, frozen. The hawk began backing away in the air, wingbeats gone careful and hesitant. Even the stocky one, who'd stood his ground through everything so far, took a half-step back without seeming to notice he'd done it.
Neither boy said anything.
Nobody was laughing anymore.
The path had gone quiet, just the treetops moving overhead and the ragged edge of Ant's own breathing. For the first time since he'd turned around and seen them standing there, his breathing eased, just slightly, uncertain but real. Maybe the start of relief.
He stayed on one knee a moment longer than he needed to, just breathing, letting the quiet hold.