Gati

Gati stalked prey through the forest, watching for harrowbeest trails and broken ferns beneath the canopy. Her steps were quiet by habit, weight carried low and centered, the way Anamor of the Titan clan learned young: that the wilds of Gankora rewarded patience.

She slowed, then stopped entirely. No birds. No insects. Even the wind felt hesitant, as though the air itself had learned caution. Gati tilted her head, barbels along her jaw trembling as they tasted the space ahead. The Ren here was wrong, smeared thin, dragged into crude loops that never resolved, tainted with corruption. She had never encountered them. Her elders’ accounts had been exact. Castborn.

She slipped into a crouch and let her Awareness radiate out just enough to confirm it. The answer came immediately, overwhelming in its certainty. Dozens, but all at the Spark realm. She triangulated their positions and moved toward the ridge crest. From the crest, she saw the basin below: snapped trees, breeding pits steaming, Castborn tearing at one another while more crawled free of the earth. At the center stood a figure she did not look at directly. She didn’t need to. She felt that presence, felt how its corruption warped reality around it. Something had taught the horde to gather.

The Titan instinct pressed at her ribs: go down, break it, end it now, but she forced it back. Strength without timing was a waste, another lesson the wilds taught young Titans. She pulled her Awareness in, buried her presence, and turned away from the clearing.

She was no longer on an ordinary hunt. She was perhaps the only warning her home would get.

Once clear of the Castborn patrols, she channeled the principle of conversion throughout her body. The conversion took her legs first: muscle swelled and layered, cords thickening until her femurs felt the strain. Tendons tightened, rewriting themselves for launch instead of balance. Scales crept outward from her hips and thighs, dull plates forming, locking her lower body into something built to strike ground hard and keep moving. She pushed off.

The earth exploded behind her. Bark and loam scattered as she tore downslope, each stride eating meters of forest floor. Her gait lengthened beyond normal limits, momentum stacking until the trees blurred and the wind clawed at her face.

Her shoulders burned. Her circulation deepened and she held the pace.

Feathers sprouted along her arms and back in tight, violent fans. Pale quills interwove with darker plumes, barbed and dense, built to bite the air. Bones in her forearms shifted just enough to give leverage, and she spread her arms.

Gati leapt. The feathers caught the wind hard. Drag flattened her descent into a glide that skimmed the slope, boots barely touching ground as she rode the terrain instead of fighting it. When she landed, scales rang softly under the impact, absorbing force that would have shattered a lesser body. Her silhouette darted atop the forest like a gale. Warn the tribes. Call the council. Bring the storm.

Behind her, the horde gathered.

And Gati ran.