Ragnarök, Eternal Tragedy.
Chapter 115: Shadows Don’t Trip When They Run

Chapter 115: Shadows Don’t Trip When They Run

Amari caught movement ahead—not the panicked, sharp kind he’d come to recognize in prey, but the unspoken kind that meant someone else was already watching. His pace slowed. Not to stop. To listen. The girl’s path was thinning, her steps fresher. But it wasn’t her presence that made the air change. It was the absence around her. The sound that should’ve been there.

Then—between branch and silence—Shylo materialized.

Not with flair. Not with warning. He didn’t rise from the roots, he unfolded from them. A shape the trees had worn for too long. The air seemed to breathe differently when he moved—like wind shifting to accommodate.

Amari didn’t nod. Shylo didn’t speak.

They simply stood together—one coated in blood and motion, the other in stillness and patience—and watched the girl emerge from the trees, stumbling, breathless, eyes darting for landmarks like she was trying to remember a dream that had already soured into nightmare.

Then she saw him.

A man in dull gray armor—etched, royal, lined with the mark of her house. His helm was clipped to his side, his beard short and dark, posture tight but not hostile.

"Princess," he said softly, moving to steady her.

Her breath caught. "Kael...?"

He nodded. "You’re safe now. We thought—when you disappeared..." His voice shook for half a beat. "No matter. You’re back. That’s what matters."

She tried to speak—something about the village, the others who’d tried to help her escape, the battles roaring behind the woods—but the words tangled in her throat.

Kael’s hand came gently to her shoulder. "You’re going to be fine. I swear it. We’ll get you to shelter. The fight will handle itself. Let the Guard end this."

He raised one hand, and the squad behind him stirred—three men, armored, armed, tense. He gestured to two of them. "Escort her west. Clear ridge. Protective sweep. Go quiet."

They moved to obey.

She hesitated. Looked back toward the trees. Her voice barely climbed. "There were people... people who didn’t have to fight. I dragged them in."

Kael’s face didn’t change much. But something in his eyes shifted. "And they’ll be dealt with."

Then they turned.

And that was when Amari stepped in beside Shylo.

"She recognizes him," he whispered.

"Not the others though," Shylo replied, his voice like cloth over stone. "And definitely not what’s waiting west."

"How many stay?" Amari asked.

Shylo counted softly. "One close. Two holding flank. One more trailing distance."

Amari’s grip tightened around his right dagger, not from tension—but calculation.

Shylo’s eyes never left the girl. "We do this quiet. Clean. Hit them before they know we’re separate bodies."

Amari nodded. "We’ll be ghosts."

Shylo gave the faintest twitch of a grin. "No. We’ll be consequences."

The moment the last soldier peeled away from the site, Shylo stepped into vapor.

Not literally—but it might as well have been. His body slid flat into the canopy’s shade, breaking his edges into trailing wisps of negative space. Shadow Unco. Not camouflage. Not invisibility. Absence. His form bent with the trees, drank in angles, softened to whispers. To watch him move was to question what you were looking at.

Amari followed from below—low, blistered, still bleeding. His speed wasn’t for show now. It was surgical. One step, two, three—then the heel clipped just behind a guard’s calf, and a dagger met the back of a throat. No cries. No blood against walls. Just a shift in posture and one less set of footsteps.

They moved like subtraction.

The fallback unit guarding the tented shelter never even felt the cold.

Inside: silence.

The flap curled back under Amari’s hand. Shylo darted in like negative space pulling taut.

Empty.

No girl.

Just a cot. A candle almost burned out.

That was the first ripple.

Then came the second.

The air shifted in too many directions at once.

Amari blinked—and for half a second, he swore he felt someone behind him and in front of him at the same time. Shylo drew a blade, stepped back-to-back—and that was when the tent tore open from the wrong direction.

Figures emerged—eight, ten, more. Not charging. Just... already inside the perimeter. Already placed.

And one stepped forward.

Not armored like the others.

Not yelling orders.

Just a woman, her braid looped tightly over one shoulder, eyes lit with familiarity, and a blade dipped in slow semicircles at her hip.

"I know you," she said, pointing gently—not accusing, just observing. "You’re the one they talk about. The one with the reach."

She took one step closer.

"You listen farther than most men see. You knew we were moving before you saw the motion. It almost worked."

Amari didn’t answer. His shoulders tensed. His lungs pulled air that didn’t want to sit still.

"But you made one mistake," she continued, voice soft and wrong. "You didn’t realize someone was listening back."

She smiled—long. Wide. Crooked.

And with one breath—activated her Unco.

It didn’t blaze.

It slipped.

The moment it triggered, Amari’s balance shifted. The walls of the tent seemed wider than they had been. Shylo turned—but slower, as if second-guessing where his feet were. A breeze that hadn’t been there before whispered against Amari’s neck, even though the flaps were closed.

The woman’s voice floated through it all.

"Perception Inversion," she said simply. "My Unco doesn’t burn, strike, or break. It just whispers where you aren’t looking—and makes you believe it." She stepped closer. "You’ll misread proximity. Miscount sound. Think someone’s farther than they are—or believe your ally’s breathing isn’t yours."

The soldiers shifted around them now. Half visible. Half echo. Amari blinked—and for a second, Shylo’s silhouette shimmered like it didn’t belong to him.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. "Sense against sense, boy. Let’s see if you’re really that sharp."

The shift was instantaneous.

Not just her movement—but everything around her. The tent shivered at its edges, canvas groaning like it had breath now, like it could warn them if it dared. Amari moved half a step to the left and felt himself stagger—except he hadn’t. It was the world that blinked sideways, not his feet.

Shylo gritted his jaw. His blade shimmered with shadow light—too subtle for heat, too sharp for reflection. He tried to fix on where the soldiers stood, but they moved like echoes in water. Each step they took left ripples in space, some real, some painted. And between them?

Her.

She drifted forward—not rushed. Not loud. The air bent inward as she passed. Her aura pulsed with the quiet certainty of someone who didn’t need to wound the body first.

She reached out—fingers extended.

Shylo raised his blade.