The Hunter's Odyssey-Chapter 60: Blood Debt

For a moment, there was only rain.

The weight of Brock’s corpse still pressed against Jagger’s legs. The gurgling in the brute’s throat faded into a wet rattle and then into nothing at all. Steam rose faintly from the blood pooling beneath them, black-red in the cold streetlight glow.

Jagger shoved the body aside and forced himself upright.

His arms trembled as he pushed. His muscles screamed. Blood coated him from collar to boots, some of it his, most of it not. Rain washed thin trails down his face, cutting clean lines through the crimson smeared across his skin. His jaw throbbed where the elbow had struck. His knuckles burned from impact. His lungs dragged in air like rusted machinery grinding back to life.

He felt alive.

Too alive.

"You said you could predict them," he whispered, voice hoarse, annoyance cutting through the lingering adrenaline.

Ophilia’s response slid into his mind, colder than the rain soaking his spine.

’No. I said they were predictable. There is a difference.’

He swallowed blood and spat to the side. It mixed instantly with the rainwater racing toward the drains.

"That difference almost got me killed."

’You survived.’

"That wasn’t the point."

’It never is.’

He ignored her.

The battlefield roared around him. The Troll King bellowed in the distance, metal clashed, men screamed, and magic detonated in violent bursts of light. And yet, for a split second, it felt as if all of it pulled away from him.

Something heavier settled over his shoulders.

Pressure.

Not the crude intimidation of Brock. Not the chaotic hunger of the Bloodclaws. This was focused. Intentional. Precise.

Jagger turned slowly toward its source.

Reika.

She stood near Shin Lu at the edge of the fighting, rain tracing lines down her bare midriff and over the dark Razorfur gauntlet that encased her arm. The battlefield reflected in her eyes, flickering with fire, lightning, and blood. Shin Lu was speaking, his spear grounded and his posture rigid. But Reika was not listening.

Her eyes were on him.

Her head tilted slightly, almost inquisitive. There was no anger there. No outrage. Just a calculation. A flicker of something that might have been interest. Or ownership.

Then her lips curved.

She lifted her left hand.

Two slender fingers extended.

Pointing directly at him.

’JAGGER! MOVE NOW!’

Ophilia’s voice tore through his skull, stripped of all composure. It was not cold this time. It was sharp. Urgent. Almost frantic.

He tried.

His body did not obey.

The air in front of him distorted.

A woman appeared low and close, as if the rain itself had folded inward and condensed into flesh. One second, the space was empty. Next, she was there.

No armor. Only dark, fitted clothing that seemed to swallow light rather than reflect it. Her movements were controlled to the point of silence. Her skin was pale. Her eyes were obsidian chips set into an expression devoid of warmth.

Her right hand rose.

Not clenched.

Open.

Her palm touched his chest.

There was no wind-up. No dramatic swing.

Just contact.

Then detonation.

The force erupted from her palm as if a cannon had fired point-blank into his sternum. Air blasted from his lungs in a violent expulsion. The world compressed into a white flash of pain. Something inside him snapped. Then something else. Ribs cracked in sharp succession beneath the pressure.

He left the ground.

He did not fall backward.

He was launched.

Rain streaked past him in blurred lines as the world spun. Asphalt, firelight, twisted metal, screaming faces all smeared into a chaotic spiral. His body turned weightless for an instant before gravity reclaimed him.

He struck a parked car mid-spin.

The windshield shattered under the impact with a deafening crunch. Glass burst outward in crystalline sprays. The metal frame buckled inward around his torso. Blood misted from his mouth, scattering into the rain like fine red vapor.

He bounced off the hood and collapsed onto the street.

Still.

Broken.

The battlefield noise dulled, as if he had been submerged underwater. Sound reached him in distant pulses. The Troll King’s roar was a low vibration. Steel clashing felt like someone knocking from far away.

Darkness crept in from the edges of his vision.

His consciousness did not fade cleanly.

It fragmented.

’Jagger. Stay conscious.’

Ophilia was no longer a whisper. She was a storm.

[Regeneration initiated.]

Her presence flooded him with savage intensity. It burned through his shattered ribs, through torn muscle and ruptured vessels. The sensation was not relief.

It was agony reborn.

It felt as if his chest had been blown open and invisible hands were forcing every splintered fragment back into place. Bone ground against bone. Flesh knits together with grotesque insistence. Pressure built inside him, compressing, reforming, reshaping.

His eye bulged, bloodshot and wide. Blood leaked from the corners. His mouth opened in a silent scream, but only hoarse croaks escaped, choked by fluid and pain.

Bootsteps approached.

Measured.

Unhurried.

"Did you really think you could kill two of our people and get away with it?"

Her voice cut through the ringing in his ears with surgical clarity.

She stood over him now, silhouette framed by the distant fires and flashing spells of the battlefield. Rain ran down her dark clothing without sound. Her gaze was flat, unreadable.

He tried to move.

His arms failed him.

Both shoulders had been torn from their sockets during the impact. When he attempted to push himself up, his body collapsed back against the asphalt, useless.

She crouched slowly in front of him.

Up close, he saw the scar.

A thin line that ran from the corner of her left eye down along her jaw, pale against her skin. Not jagged. Not ugly. Clean. Deliberate.

"You are still breathing," she observed softly, eyes flicking, noticing his shoulders realigning themselves under the skin with gruesome wet pops. "Interesting."

He forced a ragged breath through broken teeth.

"You... hit... like a truck," he managed, voice wet with blood.

Her expression did not change.

"That was my brother you killed," she said. "Brock."

She reached forward and seized his collar, fingers digging into soaked fabric. The strength in her grip was understated but absolute. She hauled him upright and slammed his back against the dented hood of the car. Metal groaned beneath the added weight.

"He was simple," she continued, tone level. "Brutal. Crude. But he was blood."

Jagger’s vision swam. Regeneration crawled through him like molten wire. His ribs shifted painfully as they locked into place. His shoulders burned.

"I didn’t... know that," he rasped.

She tilted her head.

"And what if you knew, would you have done anything differently? He wasn’t even fighting for the quest."

She leaned closer, her shadow swallowing his face. Jaggers stayed silent, his breathing coming in ragged gasps.

"Look at me."

His gaze struggled to focus on hers. Rain clung to her lashes like black diamonds. Her fingers tightened briefly at his collar before she released him. He slumped sideways against the car, breath hitching.

Rain pattered against twisted metal.

In the distance, a Bloodclaw screamed in triumph. Somewhere else, a Bastion hunter fell.

She rose to her full height, boots planting firmly on the wet asphalt. Her presence pressed down on him again, not explosive like before, but steady and suffocating.

"You killed him," she said. "Now I will kill you."

She placed her hand over his chest.

Jagger’s vision sharpened through the haze.

Ophilia’s presence coiled tight around his mind.

’You will die if she hits you again.’

Jagger’s heart hammered against his sternum.

Her palm flattened against his sternum.