They moved out without a sound. Peter at the front. Oudra on his right. Karg on his left — he was simply there, without being asked. Peter made no comment. Some presences don't need one.
They took position in the dense forest, invisible, breath held. The Rokar advanced below, confident — certain that Beren would return any moment to guide them in.
They never saw it coming.
The Woolak surged from three sides at once. No war cries, no chaos — a coordinated strike, clean and precise, from a tribe that knew exactly what it was doing. The Rokar instinctively pulled back toward the center of the clearing.
That's where Vorak was.
He raised one hand. His men froze immediately — total, disciplined silence. Peter did the same.
The two forces faced each other.
Vorak stepped forward alone, hands visible. Peter took three steps to meet him.
Up close, Vorak was even larger than he had appeared from a distance. His face carried the marks of decades of combat and exposure to the elements. His eyes — pale, almost yellow in the grey morning light — studied Peter with complete, methodical attention.
Around his neck hung something that gave off a faint glow. Almost imperceptible.
Blue.
— Energy signature confirmed. Prototype fragment. Distance: under 200 meters.
"We were told you were no longer the man you once were," Vorak said. "That your territory was there for the taking."
"Whoever told you that lied."
Vorak smiled. Slow. Not hostile.
"We'll see."
He raised his hand. Behind him, the Rokar warriors went still.
"Single combat. You and me. If you win, we leave. If you lose, your people abandon these lands before the next sun."
Peter set his spear on the ground.
"Agreed. But first — tell me where you got what's around your neck."
Vorak's eyes narrowed slightly, a flicker of irritation crossing his face.
"You don't need to know. But I'll tell you anyway — since you won't be alive much longer." He touched the object briefly. "I found it in a cave, at the base of the great stones, deep inside our territory. Three seasons ago. Since that day, I have not lost a single fight."
He pulled off his animal skin and tossed it to one of his warriors without looking back.
"Enough talk. Let's fight."
The moment Vorak stepped into the combat space, something changed.
The blue glow around his neck pulsed faster — steady as a heartbeat, but quicker than any resting heart. And with each pulse, Vorak's body shifted. His shoulders broadened. His forearms thickened. The veins along his neck rose under the skin in a way that wasn't natural — as if something inside him was searching for space and creating it where there was none. The mass forming around him wasn't ordinary muscle. It was denser, heavier. As if gravity itself had slightly reorganized in his favor.
The Rokar warriors watched with familiarity. They had seen this before. They knew what came next.
In one second, Peter understood what three unbroken seasons of victories truly meant. It wasn't Vorak who was invincible.
It was the fragment.
Vorak charged.
Too fast, too heavy to belong to a normal body. Peter dodged on instinct — Oonak's body reacting before Peter told it to — but still felt Vorak's shoulder graze his left arm like a stone thrown at full speed. Even the partial impact was enough to throw him off balance. He stumbled back three steps.
The Rokar warriors growled.
Peter repositioned. He couldn't win through raw strength. What was fueling Vorak wasn't flesh — it was the fragment. And the fragment responded to combat, intensifying with each exchange.
So don't fight the way Vorak fights.
He changed his approach and began to truly watch — not the muscles, not the hands.
The rhythm.
Every warrior has one. A personal cadence, involuntary, carved into the bones by years of repetition. A way of breathing before a strike. A slight rotation of the right shoulder — always the same, always a fraction of a second before the body committed to the attack. Not a physical weakness. A habit. As predictable as a war drum — and therefore just as readable.
Peter waited.
He took two more hits, fell back, let himself look uncertain. He let Vorak believe he didn't understand what was happening. He let the rhythm settle, confirm itself, repeat a third time.
Then Vorak attacked again.
The rotation of the right shoulder. The short breath. The weight shifting forward.
Peter moved before Vorak's body completed the motion. Not to dodge — to cut the rhythm. He stepped into Vorak's space instead of retreating from it, ducked under his arm at the exact moment the charge lost its momentum, and used Vorak's own mass as a lever to bring him to the ground.
The impact was heavy. The earth shuddered.
Peter held him down. One knee in his back. Until the resistance stopped entirely.
Vorak pressed his open hand flat against the ground.
As it happened, the necklace slipped from Vorak's neck and fell into the dirt.
What followed was quiet.
The mass simply withdrew — like a tide going out. The shoulders returned to their natural proportions. The forearms lost their unnatural density. The veins along his neck disappeared back under the skin.
Vorak stood up alone, slowly, without help.
He was still large. Still strong — a warrior remains a warrior. But he was human again. And everyone in the clearing could see it.
The Rokar warriors stared at their chief. Some stepped back without realizing it. Others exchanged glances — the confirmation of something they had perhaps always known but never allowed themselves to think: that it wasn't Vorak who had been invincible. That it was the object around his neck. And that without it, their chief was a man like any other.
Vorak looked at his own hands. He turned them over slowly. Closed them. Opened them again. Like someone realizing that what he believed was himself — wasn't himself at all.
"Oonak. You won. Do with us what you will."
"I have no interest in killing you," Peter replied.
He thought for a moment about whether he was making the right call. He had no personal grievance against Vorak — he hadn't lived through what this tribe had done to the Woolak. He didn't know if his decision would sit well with the others. But he didn't dwell on it long.
"The only thing I ask is that you never attack us again. Because next time, I won't hold back."
Before the words had fully settled, he stepped forward and closed his fingers around the stone.
It was like grabbing condensed lightning.
Heat tore through his hand, his arm, his chest — fast, violent, total. The stone in his palm was disappearing. The energy that had fueled Vorak for three seasons wasn't staying in the object. It was transferring. Passing through Peter like he was a channel — and before he had any time to react, the space around him began to bend.
Oh no. Not again—
He barely had time to finish the thought before he was pulled under.
The Rokar warriors stumbled back.
The Woolak warriors didn't move.
When they saw what was happening, they dropped to their knees as one and raised their voices together:
"Long live Oonak! He has received the blessing of the gods!"