The three village youths had nearly made it to the exit from the cavern into the main mining tunnel. Asano and Chiyo were on either side of the unconscious Tachi, his arms draped around their shoulders as they half-carried, half-dragged their friend up the path.

Despite being Candidates, they had not gained any physical attributes from their Exalted pathway and were struggling after only a few hundred meters.

Asano, the village chief's son, had been so focused on escaping from the cave that he didn't notice as Tachi's weight grew heavier and heavier on his shoulders. But he stumbled and crashed to the ground as Chiyo screamed beside him, letting go of their friend.

Adrenaline pumped through his veins as he thought they were under attack by another shade, but when he looked to his left he realized that his friend who he thought he was carrying was bloating grotesquely into a lump of purple and black flesh. Only his friend's face hadn't yet been absorbed into the ballooning mass.

"Asano!" Chiyo screamed again. She had stumbled forward, but the arm that had been draped around her neck stuck to her, melting into her like thick goopy wax. Her eyes locked with Asano in horror, and he instinctively looked down at himself to see that he, too, was attached to his friend.

A terrible, sickening wave of nausea filled his upper back and neck as his body was consumed by the corrupted flesh.

"Chiyo…!" He tried to reach out to his friend, only to find that his body wasn't listening to him anymore. His thoughts became jumbled and confused, he lost all awareness of his surroundings.

And then he felt it.

A hollowness. A hunger, terrible and unfathomable.

The monster pushed itself to its feet, its blackened flesh rippling with miasma. Its three heads drew together onto its shoulders and screamed.

Hunger! Starvation! Pain!

These were the only feelings they could fathom now.

And somewhere below them on the path, they sensed something unbearably, irresistibly delicious.

~

A rumbling, distorted cry shook the cavern, causing rocks and stalactites to crash around Yuzu. She extended her hands in front of her to grasp the threads above, only to recoil in pain as a scorching pain seared into her fingers.

The ritual hadn't been disrupted. pulling the youths away from the basin didn't break their connection to it! How could I be so stupid? Yuzu chastised herself even as she withdrew her spirit from the threads. The corruption in the threads were too much for her to handle, even looking at them sent alarm bells through her spirit.

The meagre torchlight that dotted the path up to the exit flickered in red and blue hues as monster's aura filled the cavern. Though its body was still out of sight, its long shadow extended impossibly along the walls and ceiling, looming ominously over Yuzu.

I need to get Char Char— Yuzu was about to reach out to her friend's thread below when her spiritual intuition triggered sharply. The Corrupted One's three black threads twisted into a thick coil, shooting out to engulf Yuzu's own.

A gust of noxious wind blew across the cavern as the Corrupted One flung itself in long strides across the cavern toward Yuzu, causing the entire underground to quake violently with every step of its approach.

Before she could react, the monster was in front of her, a massive humanoid slick with a tar-like sweat. A pungent, acrid stench overwhelmed Yuzu's senses, causing her to cough and her eyes to water. More than that, though, having the monster directly in front of her made the danger and horror of the abomination all the more tangible to her.

For the first time, Yuzu found herself physically in the presence of the dangers she foresaw on the strings.

She ignored the warnings from her spiritual intuition as she desperately used all of her strength to pry the monster's blackened string apart from her own, but even giving her all she was only able to separate it slightly. Bright red razor thin lines blossomed across Yuzu's fingers and hands as they bled from manipulating the corrupted thread directly.

All this effort only gave her a momentary reprieve as the monster paused. Its center head looking down at her with voracious eyes, as if savouring the moment before a delectable meal.

The Corrupted One seemed to be formed largely from Tachi's corpse. All traces of his humanity had already been stripped from its form. However Yuzu's eyes were drawn to the two bodies of the other youths. They were not yet fully absorbed into its flesh, their limbs hanging limp from its shoulders, skin withered as their essence was sucked into the monster. The two heads on either side of the central head alternated between screaming and gasping for air as they slowly sunk into the monster's neck.

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A sickening feeling filled Yuzu's throat as she realized that the two Exalted were still conscious, but she didn't have time to ruminate on the thought as pain exploded across her fingers.

It's no good! The strings snapped violently from Yuzu's grip as the monster tore itself free of her powers.

Yuzu just barely managed to duck a massive hand as the monster swiped at her ravenously. She took a quick step to the right, then spun to her left as it smashed downwards at her. Cracked stone and rubble stung her skin as she desperately escaped each attack by a hair.

Her powers didn't offer her any physical advantages, it was only through reading the imminent future on her own fate string that she was just barely able to react just in time to each strike.

But now she was out of luck. The future of her white thread grew more and more solid as she ran out of options. The Corrupted One's thread wrapped tightly around hers, constricting her white thread until she could barely see it anymore.

Yuzu cradled her bleeding, aching hands, hugging herself as she looked up at the salivating monster towering above her. She saw her death on the strings. The next time the monster rose its hand to strike Yuzu, her white thread would snap and fade on the tapestry, and her life would end.

Just as she saw on the threads, it rose its massive, bloated arm, casting a dark shadow across her.

But to her surprise, the fate she saw did not come to be.

A buzzing, bright white blade slashed across the monster's arm as Char Char flew past Yuzu, launching herself into the air to intercept the attack. Black blood gushed into the air as the amputated arm flew off to the other side of the cavern. The monster staggered back a dozen paces, bellowing in agony and surprise.

"Run, Yuzu!" Char Char landed in front of Yuzu, brandishing Hakuya's blade in front of her, "I'll take care of this!"

Yuzu's eyes widened as Char Char dashed toward the monster, deftly avoiding its attack as she sliced through its leg with a clean sweep of the blade. It lost balance, crashing to the ground.

"Are you okay?—" A hand rested gently on Yuzu's shoulder as Firuzeh arrived next to her, pausing as she noticed the injuries on Yuzu's hands. "We need to get you to safety."

Yuzu barely heard Firuzeh's words as she saw the tapestry's shape twist and flow with the arrival of her Chaos domain allies. The future became even more nebulous as the Corrupted One's black thread began twisting unpredictably around the smoky black chaos threads.

"This one doesn't look too scary!" Kai announced as his figure blurred past them. As he ran he unravelled a chain that was wrapped around his waist, its two ends were tipped with heavy locks. He whipped the chain at the Corrupted One launching it in a spinning motion. The chain spun around the Corrupted One's figure, the locks weighing down the chain and constricting the Corrupted One's remaining arm against its body, preventing it from propping itself up from the floor.

Despite its inhuman strength, it was unable to break the chains imbued with Kai's Cheater abilities. It could only crane its head to the sky and howl as Char Char's blade sliced cleanly through its neck.

The Corrupted One crumpled to the floor. Its corrupted thread snapped in the tapestry.

For the three Chaos Domain Exalted, this seemed like a clear victory, but they didn't put down their guard just yet. Corrupted Ones were unpredictable, and the corrupted miasma emitted by their forms would take a few moments to settle and dissipate. Still, their existence was ultimately supported by the life of the host that had been corrupted. With the main body dead, the danger should be over.

Yuzu's heartbeat rang clearly in her ears as time seemed to slow. The pain in her arms numbed. The golden tapestry grew sharper in her senses. Despite the monster's defeat, Yuzu realized that the tapestry, still warped by the battle between Chaos and corruption, was not ready to settle down.

She inhaled softly, the sound of her breath in her ears drowning out the outside world as the tapestry glimmered in her spiritual vision. Her consciousness expanded, her focus intensified. Even if she couldn't clearly grasp the future on the threads, her intuition told her that something was very, very wrong.

There.

There, in the weave, there was a blank spot where a thread should be. The presence of a being that could only be sensed by Yuzu through its absence. She reached out to the emptiness instinctively and felt nothing.

The jingling of bells rang through her ears. She became aware of a presence around her— no, not around, below her.

Her eyes glanced down to the shadow at her feet. Her silhouette, dancing in the torchlight, was familiar and normal to her. But as if in response to her search, Yuzu thought she saw in the flickering light two horns grow out of her shadow's hair, and there was the hint of a wide, cheshire grin in her shadow's face.

Pix was watching!

She's still around? When Yuzu had caught and released her, she had thought that the main reason Pix had come was to deliver Argus' gift. Yuzu had looked for Pix after, but not finding her, assumed that the Chaos demi-god had left.

But a visit from the Trickster was a warning. Wherever she appeared, terrible disaster was sure to follow.

That reputation was not to be taken lightly!

Yuzu heard her own heartbeat again as a feeling of dread filled her.

She felt the tug of Firuzeh's hand on her shoulder, heard the words the Saboteur was saying to her, though they felt far away, "Let's retreat a bit to a safer location, while they clean up."

Yuzu barely paid those words any mind as she saw the tapestry convulse once more in slow motion. The Corrupted One's thread had snapped, breaking off with Char Char's killing blow, but looking closer only the center core had been severed. Two thinner threads were still intertwined in its place— The threads of the two Exalted villagers that had been sucked into the main monster's body! Up to this point they were still only superficially attached to the monster, their limbs still flailing off its neck and shoulders.

The main body's death incited a violent reaction in the two surrogate bodies as they suddenly fully absorbed into the monster's form. The combination of their essences catalyzed an explosion of corrupted energy several magnitudes greater than before!

"Char Char!" Yuzu shoved Firuzeh's hand off her, running forward, "Get away from it!"

Her voice caught in her throat as her friend's body shuddered and turned stiff.

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