Chapter 7 – Wolves Among Sheep
The tent was quiet.
Too quiet.
Dim candlelight flickered along its canvas walls. A soft mat lay at the center, complete with pillows, old blankets, and an unlit lantern. From outside, the muffled crackle of fire and the hum of chanting voices rolled in like distant thunder.
Andrew sat cross-legged, eyes half-lidded. Clara crouched near the entrance, blades on her lap.
"They poisoned the meat," he said, voice low.
"I figured," Clara replied, arms crossed. "You didn't chew."
"I did." He smirked. "Just not the meat."
She raised a brow. "Shadow box?"
He nodded.
Clara exhaled slowly. "They think you're asleep."
"Ten more seconds, and they'll act."
Right on cue, the tent flap shifted.
Linda stepped in first.
She wore no smile this time. Her eyes were sharp and empty. Two men followed—cultists in dirty armor, each carrying jagged knives that pulsed faintly with sick green enchantments.
"Forgive us," Linda said flatly, "but you've been chosen."
Clara stood in one smooth motion, her eyes glowing faintly blue with gathered mana.
Andrew tilted his head. "Is that so?"
Linda's expression twisted. "Resist, and we'll make it hurt."
Clara's smile returned—cold and sharp. "Promise?"
Andrew raised his hand.
Shadows exploded.
The tent collapsed into chaos as umbral tendrils lashed out from the floor, binding one cultist by the throat and hurling him into a support beam with a crunch. Clara moved like lightning—flames igniting around her fists as she blurred forward, kicking the second cultist in the ribs with bone-breaking force.
Linda slashed with a knife, but Andrew vanished into the shadow behind her—
Shadow Step.
He reappeared just behind her, warhammer in hand. The weapon formed mid-swing, made entirely from thick, rippling darkness. Linda spun, too slow—
CRACK.
Her body slammed into the far wall, skidding through canvas and into the mud outside.
"Let's go loud," Clara said, eyes burning.
Andrew shook his head. "No. We hunt now."
She grinned.
---
A Few Minutes Later…
The camp didn't notice the massacre at first.
One by one, tents fell silent. Screams never had the chance to escape. Shadows crept like wolves through brush—stalking, choking, breaking.
Andrew moved like a phantom, each kill efficient and silent. Shadows dragged victims under tents, slitting throats and crushing skulls with spectral blades.
Clara was fire without flame—fast, silent, merciless. A flash of frost. A whisper of wind. Then nothing.
Buzzsaw watched his monitors in confusion as screens blinked out one by one.
"What…? Where are my people?" he muttered, rising.
A faint whisper answered him through the shadows:
"You fed the wolves."
Then the monitor turned black.
Buzzsaw
The first camera blinked out, and Steve thought it was a glitch.
The second one went dark, and his brow creased.
The third… fourth…
By the fifth, he was leaning over the monitors, breath hitching.
"No. No, no, no—this isn't right…"
He reached for his communicator—an old military radio wired into the power core. "Unit Three, report."
Nothing.
"Unit Two?"
Nothing again.
He checked the tent list. Five squads. All patrolling. All alive ten minutes ago.
Now?
Only static.
Steve stood quickly. His long coat brushed the floor as he paced his filthy bunker. His eyes were wide now—panicked. The ritual wasn't ready. The sacrifices weren't prepped. If the Rift God wasn't fed, the voices would scream again.
And this time… they wouldn't stop.
---
Clara
Blood sprayed across the inside of the tent as Clara slit the throat of the woman preparing a ritual bowl. The cultist never even saw her.
She spun, ducked under a wild swing, and drove her elbow into a man's jaw. Ice bloomed from her hand a second later—freezing his face solid before she shattered it with a palm strike.
Three down.
She ducked into the next tent, wind magic gathering silently around her skin. Two cultists sat praying in front of a glowing Rift crystal. She dashed forward—
The first was silenced with a spinning kick to the neck.
The second tried to scream.
He choked on frost.
Clara didn't hesitate. She didn't question if they were redeemable. Not anymore.
They were too far gone.
---
Andrew
A large man in heavy armor stood guard outside the armory tent, axe on his back, humming.
He never noticed the shadow rising from his own.
Andrew stepped out of the darkness behind him, pressing a clawed umbra hand to the back of his skull.
The shadow surged.
Crack.
The man dropped like a sack of meat.
Andrew dragged his body back into the shadows and entered the tent. Inside were racks of weapons, crates of supplies, and five more cultists loading blades.
One saw him.
Too late.
Andrew's warhammer slammed into his chest, pulping ribs and spine. Before the others could shout, he vanished again—Shadow Step—and reappeared behind the second.
The slaughter took seven seconds.
Then only silence.
---
Buzzsaw
Steve was screaming now—into radios, into his fists, into the air.
"They were poisoned! They were asleep! THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO BE ASLEEP!"
He overturned a table, bile rising in his throat. "Linda?! Respond!"
No answer.
He pulled out the emergency trigger rune—a pulsing red sigil meant to ignite the camp, destroy everything if the ritual failed.
His hand shook.
He was about to press it.
Then a whisper drifted from the corner of the room.
"You want to burn your god's temple?"
Steve froze.
The shadows at the edge of the bunker shifted—
Two eyes blinked open.
---
Clara
She burst into the healer's tent next. Five cultists were gathered around an injured woman strapped to a table.
One looked up—then crumpled, a shard of ice buried in her temple.
The others panicked.
Clara blurred forward, cloak whipping behind her. Fire danced around her fingers as she weaved through them, striking vital points. Arms snapped. Legs shattered. Screams were swallowed by the howling wind she summoned to crush their ribs inward.
Only the woman on the table remained.
Clara knelt beside her, quickly cutting the straps. The woman was too weak to speak, but her wide, tearful eyes said enough.
Clara gave her a nod and whispered, "Stay down. We'll end this."Buzzsaw
Steve screamed and hurled the rune at the shadowed corner.
Andrew stepped through the smoke as if it were fog. Unbothered. Unburned.
Steve backed up until his spine hit the wall, raising both hands. Mana surged in his skull—an unstable, pulsing green glow as he activated his final technique.
"Obey me."
His voice hit like a sledgehammer, laced with cursed magic, ancient glyphs stitched into each syllable. The room shuddered. A weaker mind would've shattered.
Andrew blinked slowly.
Then tilted his head.
"Cute."
He stepped forward.
Buzzsaw's control shattered like glass against stone.
Andrew's hand shot out, grabbing Steve by the wrist and twisting until it snapped like dry wood. Steve shrieked.
Then the warhammer formed in Andrew's other hand—but he didn't swing it. Not yet.
He wanted him to feel it first.
Andrew dragged him down, bone by bone.
First a kneecap crushed beneath his heel. Then a shoulder socket dislocated. Ribs cracked as Andrew pressed the warhammer into his chest—not even swinging, just pressing.
Steve coughed blood. "You… you're not human…"
Andrew leaned in close, eyes black as void. "Neither are you."
Then he swung once.
Steve's body crumpled with a wet crunch.
---
Across the Camp
Clara kicked open the door to the prisoner cages. The smell hit her first—rot, fear, blood.
Andrew appeared beside her a second later, dragging Steve's mangled body like garbage.
They began breaking locks.
Then a sound.
A click.
One of the cultists—bloodied, half-dead, but still breathing—stood behind a row of prisoners, holding a blade to a child's throat.
"Drop your weapons or I slit them all!"
Clara's eyes flared.
Andrew didn't blink.
He took a single step forward.
The cultist pressed the blade tighter. "I swear! I'll—"
A hand exploded through his chest.
From behind him.
He gasped, blood pouring from his lips.
One of the prisoners—a teenage girl, no older than sixteen—had taken a broken bone shard from the floor and driven it straight through his spine.
He collapsed forward, dead before he hit the ground.
No one spoke for a long moment.
Then Clara moved, helping untie the others. Andrew reached for the last lock and crushed it with a single twist.
The cages were open.
The nightmare was over.
For now.
---
End of Chapter 7