Bayu moved like a storm, a blur of dark energy and furious intent. His elemental aura, a churning vortex of black and crimson, tore through the air, carrying the scent of ozone and something acrid, like burnt bone. He aimed straight for bone. His fist, wreathed in dark energy, shot toward Citra’s head. No measured footwork guided the punch, only feral weight. Mud churned under his advance, and for the first time, Citra's heels skidded back into the ditch. She couldn't fight this alone. He meant to slaughter her on the stones. “Rimba!” The cry tore through the sheeting downpour. Rimba lunged into the spray before she could draw another breath. He slammed forearm-first against Bayu’s descending strike. The collision gouged a trough through the slick sludge, spraying gravel against nearby trainees. Rimba absorbed the shock into his heels, twisting through the momentum to drive an open elbow into the traitor's throat. Citra didn’t wait. The brief window Rimba bought her was all she needed. She worked low, using the nimble footwork drilled at her family loom. Her gaze fixed on the glowing, red-tinged detonator still clutched in Bayu's hand. Wires, fine as spider silk but visibly pulsing with elemental energy, snaked from its base, disappearing beneath his ornate tunic. Bayu, snarling, tried to disengage from Rimba to strike at Citra, but Rimba held him fast, locking their arms in a brutal grapple. “Focus on *me*, dog!” Rimba roared, twisting Bayu’s arm at an unnatural angle. Citra reached. Her fingers, nimble and accustomed to manipulating the finest threads, snatched at the taut cords. They were thicker than silk, woven with some alchemical resistance, but not impervious to a focused, determined attack. She brought her own blade, the thin, flexible steel her clan used for ceremonial knot-cutting, against the nearest wire. A precise flick of her wrist, a whisper of a rasp, and the first cord snapped. The red glow on the detonator flickered, then dimmed slightly. Bayu bellowed, a sound of pure, unbridled fury. Another cord. Then another. The rain plastered her hair to her face, stinging her eyes, but she didn’t falter. She was a woman possessed, every nerve-ending focused on this single, vital task. As the third cord severed, a tiny plume of dark smoke puffed from the detonator. The ominous red light died completely. The ground stopped trembling. Bayu stared at the dead brass canister in his hand, his mouth twisting in raw fury. With a guttural roar that ripped through the monsoon deluge, he lunged for his belt. His fingers closed around a hilt, yanking free a hooked obsidian blade. Its blade, black as a moonless night, gleamed wickedly in the dim light. A unique, jagged pommel, carved to resemble a screaming demon. Citra’s vision tunneled. The world narrowed to that single, horrifying weapon. The curved edge bore the screaming-demon pommel left beside Cakra's corpse. The roar of the rain vanished under the rush in Citra's ears. Heat flared through her ribs, hotter than any monsoon fever. Bayu lashed out, sweeping the clawed steel across her ribs. Citra did not retreat. She sidestepped the arcing blade with impossible speed, ducking beneath his guard, her own blade-hand a blur. Rimba shouted through the rain, “Cakra, get back!” But Citra was already underneath the swing. She didn’t aim for a quick, clean kill. She wanted him to know. To feel. Her ceremonial blade, usually for delicate work, became a vicious extension of her rage. She didn't stab. She hooked, she twisted, she grappled. Her movements were brutally efficient, pulling Bayu off balance, leveraging his own weight against him. Years of silat, of wrestling with brothers in the family courtyard, boiled down to this moment. She drove her head into his jaw, a brutal impact that made his teeth snap. He reeled, momentarily stunned, and she used the opening. She slammed her palm against his chest, sweeping his leg, dropping him hard into the muddy muster ground with a sickening thud. The impact splattered mud and rainwater high into the air. She straddled his chest, pinning him. The same humiliating, breathless hold she'd used on Rimba on her first day. Her knees drove into his bicep, pinning his shoulder down while the hooked blade skittered into the gravel. She had him. Completely. His chin dug into the silt, chest heaving under her shins. He couldn't move. Couldn't breathe. Just like Cakra. Citra drew back her knot-cutter, knuckles white against the grip. The short steel was notched from hemp, built to slit tangled yarn rather than flesh. She drove it down, not for his heart, not for his throat, but into his shoulder, a deep, grinding stab that tore through muscle and sinew. Bayu screamed, a raw, animal sound of agony and outrage, his blood staining the murky water around them. Just as Bayu's scream faded, replaced by his ragged gasps, a new voice, sharp and authoritative, cut through the downpour. “What in the name of the Ancestors is happening here? Rimba! Explain this chaos!” The Commander of the Rimau-Baja Vanguard, a formidable woman with an iron-gray bun and a face like carved granite, stood at the edge of the muster ground, her gaze sweeping over the scene. Her eyes, sharp as a hawk's, landed on Citra, still straddling the screaming Bayu. The elder officer took in the kneeling novice, the reddened utility edge, and the mud-caked face. It lingered on the shredded, mud-soaked fabric across Citra’s chest, the tight silk bindings beneath, now torn and showing the unmistakable curve of a woman’s breast, bleeding where Bayu’s blade had grazed her in the struggle. A murmur rippled along the lines of rankers. The Commander looked closer, brows drawn tight. “And what,” she demanded, her voice cutting like tempered steel, “is a woman doing in a Vanguard uniform, bleeding through a shredded bind?”

The Feral Weaver