Aura ran, hooves pounding against the damp earth, her breath ragged, her heart slamming against her ribs like a war drum. The trees blurred past, dark silhouettes in the moonlight. She could hear them—feel them—closing in.

  The scent of chocolate sulfur and lust hung thick in the air.

  Incubi.

  They were getting closer.

  She did not dare stop. Stopping meant death. Stopping meant everything was lost.

  Yet, as she sprinted through the forest, something else pulled at her mind—a memory, sharp as a blade, stained with blood and regret.

  The tavern was warm and filled with the scent of ale and roasted meat. It was supposed to be a peaceful night.

  Instead, it became a massacre.

  The mercenaries had returned victorious, their leader—Orrshk—boasting as they drank themselves stupid.

  “We killed an entire village of Minotaurs!”

  The tavern owner had paled. ”What?"

  Orrshk grinned, slamming his tankard on the counter. ”Yeah, had a handbill for a Minotaur attacking a village. So me and the good ol’ boys got together, hunted that beast down, followed the trail, found the whole damn village… and slaughtered them all!"

  He laughed, his men cheered, and the tavern owner felt his stomach drop.

  “You fool.” His voice trembled. ”Minotaurs don’t live in villages…"

  The drunken mercenary furrowed his brow. ”Huh?"

  Then the doors burst open.

  She had come alone, but she was filled with the fury of the dead.

  “Murderers!”

  Her voice had ripped through the tavern, her hands still wet with the blood of the friends she had buried.

  The centaur woman—young, furious, broken—had burst in, but the proof of their crime was already there.

  Carriages, rolled up to the tavern, filled with the heads of her people.

  The tavern owner knew. He knew the centaurs of this land. He had spoken to them, traded with them, respected them. And today… Today had been their holy day. A day of peace.

  And now, it was a day of slaughter.

  She had fought. Oh, how she had fought.

  She had managed to cut two of them down before they overwhelmed her.

  Chains. Hands. Laughter.

  “She has nice tits… may as well get some use out of those, even if the rest of her is ugly.”

  The words had crawled under her skin like insects, but the humiliation did not come from their leering.

  It came from her failure.

  The tavern owner had tried to run for the guard, but the mercenaries had stopped him.

  They looked around. The tavern was not crowded tonight.

  “Kill them all. No witnesses.”

  The patrons barely had time to scream.

  Aura had watched—unable to move, unable to fight—as more humans fell. More blood spilled. More death.

  Sitting at the table in the back, one of the men called the others around to look at a strange young man who only ate in his seat.

  An older teen male.

  His hair was white.

  That had given them pause. Humans with white hair were rare. Unnatural.

  “What’s your name, boy?”

  He sat at the back of the tavern, untouched by the chaos unraveling around him. A lone boy with hair as white as untouched snow.

  Before him sat a plate of rare meat, barely cooked, its juices pooling against the ceramic. Beside him, in a chair much too large for its fragile frame, was a rag doll.

  It, too, had a plate of food.

  The doll did not move. It did not eat.

  Yet someone had set the table for it all the same.

  When the mercenaries turned to him, when the blood was still fresh in the air, and the last dying gasps of the innocent had not yet faded, they hesitated.

  White-haired humans were rare. Unnatural.

  “What’s your name, boy?” one of them asked, voice slurred with drink and arrogance.

  Slowly, the young man set down his fork, his movements eerily measured. He surveyed the room—taking in the corpses strewn across the floor, the blood splattered against the wooden walls, the chains wrapped around Aura’s trembling limbs.

  Then he looked at the mercenaries.

  And his lips parted.

  “The Son of Murder.”

  The words sent a cold shockwave through Aura’s spine.

  She barely had time to process them before hell itself was unleashed.

  The corpses convulsed.

  At first, it was only a twitch—fingers curling, muscles tensing, mouths gasping as if taking in a breath they no longer had the right to claim.

  Then they rose.

  Joints cracked back into place. Limbs contorted, reanimating with grotesque precision. Eyes opened—but there was nothing inside them.

  The dead obeyed their new master.

  The slaughter began.

  The mercenaries barely had time to scream.

  Aura watched, frozen, as the very people they had just murdered turned on them.

  The innkeeper, whose body had been sprawled across the counter, reached over and dragged one of the men across it, his fingers embedded in flesh like rusted hooks.

  A woman who had been killed mere moments ago rammed a broken bottle into a man’s eye socket, twisting it until blood spurted down her lifeless arms.

  Orrshk, the leader of the mercenaries, turned to run—only for the severed arm of one of his own men to clamp around his throat, dragging him backward into the mass of clawing, rotting bodies.

  The air was thick with their screams.

  Their terror.

  Aura could feel the magic.

  This was not ordinary necromancy.

  This was Mass Unholy Resurrection.

  A spell only a level 20 necromancer could wield.

  And the young man—the quiet boy with the rag doll—had cast it as if it were nothing.

  Within minutes, the mercenaries were gone.

  Dead. Torn apart. Consumed by the very hands that had ended so many innocent lives.

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  Then, as swiftly as it began—

  The undead fell still.

  Lifeless once more.

  Aura felt her chest rise and fall with shallow, uneven breaths.

  She was free.

  Her hands trembled as she turned to the white haired teen.

  He was still seated at his table, his expression unreadable.

  Slowly, he met her gaze.

  And then, with the same eerie calm, he spoke.

  “The Second Mother and First Sister will return to this village for me in two days.”

  His voice was smooth. Not cold, not cruel—just matter-of-fact.

  “I will need a cook and preparer of meals until then. I will even need a preparer of meals after that. Someone I can trust.”

  Aura could only stare.

  “Your people are trustworthy.”

  His gaze flickered to the bodies, to the mess of blood and death that surrounded them.

  “So I will make you a deal… I will fix to the best of my ability what was taken from you. In exchange for—”

  He never finished.

  Because Aura had moved.

  She had hugged him.

  She wasn’t sure why.

  It was reckless. Dangerous, even. He had just slaughtered an entire tavern’s worth of men. He had raised the dead like it was nothing.

  And yet—

  She had felt something in him.

  Centaurs of her bloodline could sense emotions, could read a person’s heart beyond words.

  And in that moment, she felt pain.

  Not the kind that came from wounds or war.

  The kind that came from a life filled with loneliness.

  A life where trust was currency too expensive to spend.

  She did not know what this young man had been through.

  But she knew what kind of person he was.

  He was someone who rewarded loyalty.

  By burning to ash anyone who dared to betray it.

  And he had kept his promise.

  Her family had been resurrected.

  But not all of them.

  The ones whose heads had been taken—her two brothers, her sister—could not be saved.

  Centaurs did not permit the desecration of bodies through undeath.

  Their souls had passed on.

  But the rest—the rest lived.

  Lady Aura had seen much in her long life, but nothing quite as harrowing as Tenebrae’s suffering. When she first met him, he had already been battered by a world that was not his own—a human, abandoned in the Realm of Nightmares. He was not fed, barely kept alive, and had turned to necromancy just to sustain himself. He never spoke the names of those around him, only referring to them by their ranks, as though attachment itself was a danger he could not afford.

  And yet, when she arrived, he only ate the food she prepared. It didn’t matter that there were chefs in the household, far superior in skill—he refused to touch anything else. That was when she began to notice the quiet resentments. His siblings, though bound to him in name, did not accept him. They tormented him, not just with words but with silent, seething envy. To them, he was an outsider, a weakling among monsters, something less than them. But in truth, that weakness made him stronger.

  Aura had been horrified when she learned that he had once fled to the human realm, seeking refuge among those who would never understand him. But that was nothing compared to the shock she felt when she first stepped foot into the Realm of Goodnight—the kingdom he had once called home.

  She carried that memory for centuries, locking it deep in her soul like a wound she could never let heal. And now, after all these years, she finally had the power to do something about it.

  With their prince gone, the only thing that can awaken their army is.

  The Living Waters of Tortuga. Hidden away on an island ruled by incubus, its waters could restore life without the corruption of undeath. She had stolen it, vanishing through the veil before they could stop her.

  But they followed.

  The moment she crossed realms, the incubus swarmed like starving beasts, their presence thick in the air. Lilith had been alerted, and more came, descending upon her with ravenous hunger. But Aura did not stop running.

  She ran until she reached a village—no, the ruins of one. Her hooves slowed, her breath ragged as she approached a small mound in the earth. She knelt, carefully untying the vial of living water from her belt, pressing it into the soil. With a gentle touch, she covered it, patting the earth down with reverence.

  Then she turned, and she waited.

  They surrounded her.

  The incubus did not move at first, merely watching, their hunger palpable. Their eyes gleamed with predatory intent, their bodies tensed like wolves that had cornered a wounded doe. But they did not rush in. They could smell what she was.

  A virgin.

  Centaur were a rare breed, and among certain sects, their purity was power itself. To some, it was a mark of discipline, a choice made only when one found a worthy mate. To these creatures, it was a prize—an untapped well of energy they could steal. They thought they could break her, that if they took her, they would feast on the power her suffering would bring.

  She laughed.

  “Ah, I see,” she said mockingly, stepping forward. “You think you’ll be the one to take it? That my despair will fill you with power? How amusing.”

  Some of them twitched, their hunger deepening, eyes dark with lust and greed. Others hesitated, suddenly uneasy, wondering what she was planning.

  One did not hesitate.

  Abraxium.

  Unlike the others, he did not need to wonder. He had been sent by Lilith herself, and he knew exactly what she had stolen. There was no hesitation, no amusement—only violence. He lunged.

  But Aura was already smiling.

  This was exactly what she wanted.

  There was a reason she had led them here. They thought this was just a forgotten ruin, but they did not know what she did. This was once her village, the land of her people. The homes were gone, the families scattered, but the magic remained.

  The forest remembered.

  She did not run. There was no point. She could not outrun them, nor could she fight them all in her state. Instead, she dropped to her knees, pressing her hands into the earth.

  The incubus rushed forward, sensing an opportunity.

  Aura closed her eyes.

  She let go.

  She let go of the tension in her body, let go of the panic clawing at her throat. She surrendered herself not to them, but to the land itself.

  The roots whispered beneath her touch. The wind stirred. The magic that had slept here for so long began to wake.

  She did not waste energy. She did not even think of them.

  She only breathed.

  And as she did, the land rose to defend its own.

  The ground beneath the incubus buckled, a tremor surging outward. It was subtle at first—just a soft shake, a whisper of warning. Then, the roots surged forth. Thick, gnarled tendrils erupted from the earth, snaring ankles, curling around wrists, twisting like the fingers of the forgotten dead.

  The first incubus barely had time to react before his foot was wrenched downward. He snarled, trying to pull free, but the roots coiled tighter, dragging him into the dirt.

  Another lunged forward—only to be met with a wall of brambles. Thorns as long as daggers burst into existence, lashing at him like living whips. He howled as they tore into his skin, slicing deep, drawing blood.

  The others hesitated.

  Too late.

  The trees shuddered, their branches creaking as they bent unnaturally. Leaves sharpened to edges finer than razors, spinning through the air in a violent flurry. They cut into exposed flesh, slicing and stinging, nothing fatal—yet—but enough to make them falter.

  The forest was not kind.

  It did not kill swiftly.

  It harassed. It tormented. It made them suffer.

  The roots hissed and coiled, the vines twisting tighter around the shrieking incubus. The trees moaned, ancient wounds reopening in their bark, but they held their ground. They had bought her time.

  And that was all she needed.

  The mana surged within her, raw and untamed. She felt it rush through her veins, tingling, burning—a gift long dormant, now fully awakened.

  Then the world exploded in green light.

  Aura’s breath hitched as her body began to shift, the transformation overtaking her like a long-awaited storm. The glow of her power ignited, flooding the clearing with an eerie, necrotic brilliance.

  She smiled.

  She had almost forgotten the gift he once gave her.

  Tenebrae.

  Long before he had become the Lich Prince, before the crown twisted itself into his soul, he had been just a boy. A boy starving not just for food, but for acceptance, for warmth. He had been left to rot because he was different—because he wasn’t truly one of them. He should have died. Would have died.

  But he didn’t.

  Instead, he had embraced dark, twisted power, clawing his way back from the abyss, bending death itself to his will. And in those early days, when he was still learning, still grasping at what it meant to wield such monstrous energy, he gave a piece of himself away.

  To her.

  A portion of his necrotic essence—before it had fully consumed him.

  Lady Aura had always carried it with her, never using it, never even tapping into its depths. And yet, it had never left her.

  Now, as her body grew, shifted, changed, she knew that this—this was what it had all been leading to.

  It started in her chest—an unbearable pressure crushing inward, like her ribs were breaking apart to make way for something greater. A violent cracking sound rippled through the clearing as her frame expanded, her once-powerful centaur form swelling with raw energy.

  Her torso lengthened slightly, broadening, muscles tightening beneath her skin, reforming with inhuman perfection. Her bust grew fuller, heavier, pressing against the tightening plates of her forming armor, adjusting to the new frame she now wielded.

  Veins pulsed with eerie green light along her arms and shoulders, energy coursing beneath her flesh, weaving through her bones, her muscles, her very essence. Her arms lengthened subtly, her hands flexing as power rippled through her fingertips.

  Her centaur body reshaped itself, shifting from its naturally elegant curves into something hardened, battle-forged. Her once-slender waistline thickened slightly, her flanks swelling with denser muscle, her thighs growing into powerful pillars of might.

  Her hooves sharpened, elongating into obsidian-like blades, each step she took slicing into the ground like sharpened steel. The dark vines of magic crawled up her legs, twisting, molding—no longer just flesh but something stronger, something immortal.

  Her tail snapped outward, the silky strands twisting into something deadly. The transformation solidified its true weapon—a serrated, barbed chain, its edges glowing with the same necrotic energy flowing through her veins. It slithered like a living thing, the segmented links clinking ominously.

  She felt the surge of raw Goodnight Energy flood through her muscles, her form expanding as the transformation reached its peak.

  A flash of light, and her armor descended upon her.

  It started at her shoulders—a deep, obsidian-black plating that extended into jagged spikes, curling outward like skeletal claws. The dark plates wrapped around her upper arms, molding seamlessly to the curves of her now-larger frame.

  Her chestplate formed next, encasing her bust in layered blackened steel lined with glowing, eldritch etchings. The metal was smooth yet brutal, designed not just for protection but for intimidation. The runes pulsed, reacting to the bloodlust now coursing through her.

  Her lower half became a fortress of metal and might.

  Armor plates spread down her centaur body, covering her sides in dark, overlapping plates that shifted with her movements. The runes carved into them flickered with an eerie glow, alive with twisted power.

  Her front legs braced, the green light surging one last time as her final piece manifested.

  Her eyes darkened, glowing a sickly, unnatural green.

  The forest pulsed with her. She was nature’s vengeance.

  The incubus felt the shift. They saw the change.

  Fear slithered through their ranks.

  Good.

  She exhaled, rolling her shoulders, feeling the sheer power coursing through her, stretching her limbs.

  Mother Nature’s Blessing Activated

  (Abilities & Stats x2 in Forested Areas)

  Transformation Buff Activated

  (Abilities & Stats x2 for 1 Hour. Can forcefully extend using unrecovered mana.)

  Goodnight Passive Activated

  (Full Moon Bonus: 1.5x Boost to All Stats & Abilities)

  The incubus stared.

  Some of them shifted backward, uncertainty now creeping into their once-cocky expressions.

  But then came reinforcements.

  They summoned monsters. Lesser demons, their skeletal bodies twitching as they crawled from the abyss. Humans, bound in dark contracts, charging forward on armored horses, blades gleaming.

  Aura barely acknowledged them.

  She stepped forward.

  Her hooves scraped against the dirt, drawing a sharp, deliberate line in the earth.

  Then, she grinned, baring her fangs.

  “Who wants to be the first to die—so someone else gets a chance to sleep with me?”