The market stretched ahead, torches reflecting off damp stone, voices rising in cautious tension as Ren and Embercrack traders eyed each other across crude stalls. Smoke drifted low. Fish stench coiled with hot metal. Old hunting rites from the Vel’Rasa Order echoed faintly from deeper tunnels, the scent of blood-offerings still lingering like iron incense.

  He walked straight into it. Into their territory within the fishing district. He didn’t even check if I followed. He didn’t need to. I launched after him with a burst of movement sharp enough to startle two passing travellers, my tail slicing the air as I closed the distance in rapid, hungry strides. My claws clicked every few steps, a warning, a promise, a declaration.

  He didn’t tell me where he was going. But I knew. I always knew...

  Master moved like a man walking toward a crime scene he’d already solved, pacing the same path he once carved in blood and smoke. He moved toward the scent of old violence, toward the district where he’d broken a gang leader in front of his own men, toward the memory of the massacre we’d wrought together. And I followed, the eternal shadow at his heel, breath syncing with his, heart pounding in that familiar, obsessive rhythm.

  If he wanted the fishing district, I would burn the entire Maw Mine to escort him. If he wanted the Crimson Swarm, I would tear through every Vel’Rasa zealot and Ren butcher until he had his answer. If he wanted nothing but a walk through blood-soaked streets, then I would walk behind him like ruin incarnate.

  The fishing district’s church still smelled like blood even though the stone had been scrubbed until it nearly bled itself. The Maw never forgets violence. It absorbs it. Stores it. Whispers it back through the cracks.

  Master stepped in first, boots brushing dust from the old ritual floor tiles. The Vel’Rasa church had always been a bastard thing, half shrine, half slaughterhouse. Rusted chains hung from beams where initiates once dangled in the dark to “confront fear.” Deep pits in the floor still held old scorch marks from the oil-soaked offerings flung into the abyss. Candles were lit in uneven rows, offering flickering light to a deity who valued pain more than prayer.

  The air carried the coppery tang of sacrifices long gone, soaked into the grain of the wood. The worshippers had scurried deeper into Embercrack tunnels when rumours spread that he had returned. They feared Master in a ceremonial, respectful way.

  They feared me in a holy way. One of the altar drapes still bore claw marks. Mine. Deep, parallel, vicious. A reminder of the night their priest made the mistake of laying a hand near Master’s jawline as if he had the right to touch a god’s chosen.

  The moment we stepped inside, my lungs tightened around a memory. My portrait waited on the wall. It was larger than I remembered. A painted mural spanning nearly the full height of the church’s right side, lit by oil lamps that haloed it in amber glow. They called it "The Beast". They had painted my ears up, tail coiled in an arc of violence, eyes wide with that manic, cold devotion I’d felt the moment I saw the priest reach for Master. The painter had captured the exact second the spear thrust through his throat, my grin, stretched sharp and cruel, my claws dripping, the priest’s expression frozen between shock and reverence.

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  The congregation had screamed. Then they had bowed. Vel’Rasa teaches one truth, the strong hunt, the weak are blessed in death. When I killed him, they didn’t mourn. They elevated me. A new beast in their pantheon. A living proof of Vel’Rasa’s law.

  My tail coiled itself round Master’s thigh before I even realised I’d moved. Not in fear. In pride. In possessiveness. In the deep animal certainty that this building was mine because he had walked into it. The mural stared back at me in the half-light, and something inside me shivered, a darker echo of memory. I stepped closer to him, claws clicking softly against the stone. “They worshipped me after that day,” I murmured, voice low, humming with a twisted joy. “They saw me spill his blood for daring to touch you. In their faith, that made me divine.”

  Master remained silent, gaze sweeping the church with that noir detective calm that made even holy places feel like crime scenes he’d already solved. Dust motes drifted through the shafts of lamplight crossing his face.

  The moment Master moved, the air in the church snapped tight like a snare trap closing. He crossed the floor in that cold, efficient stride of his, the kind that made everyone in the room either freeze or flinch. The faint shuffle I’d heard hiding behind a pillar became a trembling silhouette, trying to melt into the shadows.

  Master didn’t give him the chance. He lunged, hand already reaching to seize the stranger by the collar and slam him into the wall with that brutal, noir certainty that turned violence into punctuation.

  Master’s Attack Roll, NATURAL 1

  The world held its breath. And the entire scene shattered. Master’s boot slipped on the thin layer of soot and old wax lining the church floor. The man jerked sideways in panic. Master’s hand missed his collar by inches, pure chaos, no grace, the kind of failure that never belonged to him but decided to strike now, in the most insultingly inconvenient fashion possible.

  He stumbled a half-step forward. His shoulder bumped the wall instead of the man’s skull. A tiny cloud of dust puffed off the wood where he hit it. And the terrified Vel’Rasa worshipper squeaked, tripped over his own feet, and fell backwards onto the floor in a messy heap of limbs and fear.

  Silence rang. Then my entire spine arched. A laugh ripped out of me, manic, high, wicked, so sharp it echoed off the rafters like a blade scraping stone. My tail snapped with such force it thumped Master’s thigh, wrapping him tighter, claws digging into the boards as I doubled over in feral delight. “Master,” I gasped between wheezing, hysterical breaths, “you tried to throw him at the wall and you threw yourself instead…” My ears went flat then forward then flat again, laughing so hard my tail fluffed itself out like a mad creature.

  His words slipped into me like a command carved into bone. “Be a good pet and pounce.” Calm. Effortless. As if he hadn’t just slipped, as if the world hadn’t just watched him miss the man by a hair. As if I was the one who needed to make the universe remember who owned this place.

  Everything inside me snapped taut. My tail tightened around his thigh with a sharp, involuntary jerk, muscles humming, claws flexing against the stone as every instinct roared awake at once. My ears flicked forward, pupils narrowing to predatory slits, breath catching in that hot, trembling way that always hit when he used that tone. Not mocking. Not irritated. Just certain. Certain that I would obey. Certain that I would kill for him. Certain that I was his.