Umbrafang came straight for Vincent.
No feint.
No test strike.
It had done enough reading.
Now it wanted the hand, the line around it, and everyone forced to stand too close.
Vincent planted his feet in the churned dirt of the south lane and raised the gauntlet. The camp around him had already broken into smaller pieces of battle—defenders trying to hold routes, wounded dragged inward, hunters changing positions too fast to pretend formation still existed.
This was no longer a defense line.
This was damage control with teeth.
Umbrafang hit him like a falling tree.
The gauntlet met the shoulder and muzzle first. The impact tore through his arm and spine and shoved him backward three steps. His heels dug trenches in the dirt. The beast's jaws snapped over the scaled metal again, trying to crush through the same point it had tested before.
It still couldn't.
Good.
Still, the force alone was enough to blur his vision.
Vincent drove the gauntlet harder into the wounded shoulder.
This time he didn't break contact immediately.
The gem flared dark.
Umbrafang screamed.
The taint in its flesh surged against the scales, and Vincent felt something new under the familiar cold and metallic taste.
Not just appetite.
Interference.
The gauntlet did not only want to feed.
It disrupted the way the corruption sat inside the beast's body.
Important.
He broke contact a second later before the hand could drag too deep.
Umbrafang recoiled off-balance.
Ragan hit first.
He had already snatched a fallen spear from the mud and drove it into the beast's rear flank as it twisted. The point buried deeper than before.
Serya fired from the left at the same instant, arrow slamming into the same wounded shoulder the gauntlet had just disturbed.
Good coordination.
Good timing.
The beast staggered one step.
One step was enough.
Taliah came in low from the right with a replacement blade and cut across the foreleg joint.
Not deep enough to cripple.
Deep enough to change the next landing.
Umbrafang lurched sideways and smashed through a low rack instead of cutting straight into Vincent's throat.
Wood exploded. Dried meat and rope scattered.
The camp had found something.
Not a kill pattern.
A disruption pattern.
Hit the wound. Force a stagger. Stack the pressure before it resets.
Vincent understood it at the same time Taliah did.
She shouted, "Same side! Make it pay for the shoulder!"
Good.
Clear.
Everyone close enough to matter adjusted around that line.
Serya shifted left for a better angle on the shoulder.
Ragan circled wide to the rear flank.
Taliah stayed near the foreleg.
Vincent remained where Umbrafang had to see him.
The hand as lure.
The wound as opening.
The camp as hammer.
Good idea.
Expensive one.
Umbrafang came again.
It had learned the pattern too.
This time it cut toward Vincent, then snapped its full body around mid-lunge and drove for Serya's firing lane instead.
Smart.
Very smart.
Serya dropped from the rack edge before the claws hit, hit the ground hard, rolled, and came up with knife instead of bow. The beast's shoulder clipped the rack behind her and turned it to splinters.
Ragan struck at the exposed flank.
Too shallow.
Umbrafang twisted and the back sweep of its hind leg caught him in the thigh. He went down to one knee but did not drop the spear.
Taliah moved to finish the opening and got there a heartbeat too late.
The tail whipped out from behind the beast's body and cut the space between her and Ragan like a blade through cloth. She checked her advance and took the strike on the flat of her weapon instead of her throat.
Even so, the impact spun her half around.
Too fast.
Too strong.
Vincent ran.
His body hated the pace.
The gauntlet loved it.
He reached Serya as Umbrafang turned on her recovery point and drove the scaled hand into the side of its face hard enough to make his shoulder scream.
The contact landed along the wounded eye ridge this time.
Umbrafang shrieked and tore away.
Serya stared at Vincent for one beat too long.
"Move!" he snapped.
Good. Don't waste surprise in battle.
She moved.
Instantly.
Her knife flashed low at the beast's forepaw as she passed, slicing the webbing between two claws.
A small wound.
A useful one.
It changed the footing on the next turn.
Julia's voice cut through the lane behind them.
"Vincent!"
He looked once.
That was enough.
Two wounded hunters had been dragged to the inner post. One was conscious. One wasn't. The unconscious one had blackness already climbing from a torn shoulder into the neck line.
Too fast.
The battle was feeding him cases faster than any plan could absorb.
The Shaman saw Vincent look and shouted, "Leave him!"
Good.
Correct.
Cruel.
Necessary.
Taliah heard it too and didn't contradict it.
The camp still had enough discipline left not to let the hand become triage for every fresh wound while Umbrafang remained alive.
That discipline would not hold forever.
Vincent knew it.
Julia knew it.
The Shaman knew it best of all.
Umbrafang cut left again and plowed through the lane toward the inner racks.
Not retreating.
Repositioning.
Always repositioning.
The center was no longer the children's tents.
The center was wherever the camp had to bend around the beast next.
Ragan limped after it. Taliah followed from the opposite side. Serya recovered her bow from the broken rack and ran for a side angle. Vincent kept pace as well as his body allowed, breath harsher now, the false strength from the emergency extraction still carrying him farther than it should.
That worried him more than exhaustion would have.
Every step taken on borrowed sharpness had a bill waiting.
Umbrafang hit the storage lane and broke it open.
Two support posts fell. A hanging crate burst on impact. Clay jars shattered. One older hunter took the debris full across the face and dropped without sound.
Second clear body.
The battle was eating through Dayakan now.
Julia reached the fallen man before anyone could stop her, checked his throat once, then looked up with one flat, sharp shake of her head.
Gone.
Good that she checked. Better that she didn't waste the next second mourning.
Serya saw the same thing and changed her route without being told, abandoning the body to take position between Umbrafang and the inner women's lane.
That mattered.
The fight had stopped being "hold the line."
Now it was:
stop the beast from choosing the worst lane
stop the wounded from piling faster than the Shaman could hold
stop Vincent from being pinned
stop the camp from collapsing inward all at once
Everything else had become secondary.
Umbrafang hit another support beam and turned in the same motion, using the falling wood to screen itself from Serya's shot. Smart again. It had started using camp structure like terrain instead of obstacle.
Very bad.
Vincent saw the opening only because the beast's wounded shoulder lagged half a fraction behind the turn.
There.
He pointed.
"Ragan! Flank now!"
Ragan trusted the call.
Good man.
He drove in from the rear left with the stolen spear and caught the already-opened flank wound deep enough to stagger the beast hard.
Serya's arrow followed an instant later and buried in the shoulder seam.
Taliah closed from the front and hacked at the foreleg again.
Stacked pressure.
Again.
This time it worked better.
Umbrafang stumbled fully to one side and smashed through a fire pit instead of clearing it. Coals burst up. Flame licked across its underside and one forelimb.
The beast recoiled with real anger now.
Good.
Fire still mattered.
Julia saw it and shouted at the nearest older women, "Oil! Cloth!"
They moved.
No hesitation.
One handed her a half-full oil flask. Another ripped down a drying cloth. Julia wrapped the cloth around the end of a broken pole, doused it once, and shoved it into the nearest fire.
Serya glanced back, saw the makeshift torch, and understood instantly.
Good.
No more pure antagonism. Only function.
"Throw it to me!"
Julia did.
The toss was clean.
Serya caught the burning pole one-handed, pivoted, and jammed it low toward Umbrafang's wounded shoulder as the beast recovered from the coals. Not to burn it deeply. To force it off the line Ragan held with the spear.
The beast jerked away from the flame and exposed the eye line.
Vincent hit it.
The gauntlet drove into the side of the skull above the damaged eye.
Full contact.
Too much.
The gem flared.
Umbrafang screamed and twisted so violently Vincent felt the taint in its body surge against the hand like a storm trying to break through a shut gate. The cold in his arm spiked to the shoulder and neck. The stabilizing rush came behind it immediately and much too strongly.
The hand wanted to keep feeding.
No.
Vincent ripped it free.
Too late to avoid all of it.
The beast staggered backward into the lane center, one eye streaming dark blood, shoulder torn wider, flank bleeding harder. Its movement had gone from fluid to furious.
That was both good and bad.
They had made it less precise.
They had also made it angrier.
Taliah saw that first.
"Back! It's charging!"
Everyone nearest the center split.
Not enough.
Umbrafang launched straight through the gap between Vincent and the inner wounded post, choosing speed over angle for the first time all night.
Bad.
That meant instinct was pushing ahead of control.
Bad for them.
Good for killing it later, maybe.
Not good right now.
It hit the inner post.
The support timber snapped.
The shelter over Deren and Teren collapsed on one side.
The Shaman was thrown clear. Julia went down under falling cloth and wood. One wounded man screamed. The other didn't.
Vincent's heart punched hard once against his ribs.
Too many people in one place. This was exactly what they had spent the whole night trying to prevent.
Serya was already moving toward the collapse.
Taliah caught her by the shoulder and shoved her the other direction.
"Protect the children's lane!"
Serya almost fought the order.
Then she saw what Taliah had seen.
Umbrafang had broken through toward the inner center.
If it turned one lane deeper, it would reach the children and the older women.
Serya changed direction and sprinted for the narrow gap instead, bow abandoned again, knife in hand.
Hostile respect or not, Julia was on her own for the next few seconds.
Vincent reached the collapsed post first.
Julia had pushed one of the falling beams off Teren's legs and was dragging him clear by the harness while trying to get to Deren with her free hand. The older wounded hunter had taken the broken support full across the chest.
Alive.
Maybe.
Not for long if the taint in his arm kept climbing.
The Shaman was already digging through the broken shelter cloth for his resin jar.
Good. Still moving.
Umbrafang turned from the wrecked post and looked past all of them toward the children's lane.
There.
Its next choice.
Taliah saw it and went for the intercept with no weapon in her main hand now, only the shorter replacement blade and ruined bracer.
Ragan came from the opposite side, limping badly and still carrying the spear. Serya had already planted herself at the lane mouth with knife low and no illusion she could hold it alone.
Julia looked up from the wounded post and saw the same thing.
Without speaking, she shoved Teren fully clear of the wreck and grabbed the oil flask she had dropped earlier.
Then she ran.
Not to Vincent.
To Serya.
Good.
Very good.
Serya looked over her shoulder just long enough to register the flask and the firebrand still burning beside the broken support cloth.
They didn't need a conversation.
Julia threw the flask low across Umbrafang's path.
The glass shattered against a root and drenched the lane dirt and one side of the beast's foreleg. Serya snatched the burning cloth from the ground and threw it a heartbeat later.
Flame caught.
Not on the whole body.
Enough on the leg and the oil-soaked ground to make Umbrafang check its route and twist away from the clean charge.
That half-step saved the lane.
Ragan's spear buried into the exposed ribs behind the foreleg as the beast turned.
Deep.
The deepest strike yet.
Umbrafang roared and slammed sideways into him.
Ragan went down hard and this time did not rise at once.
Taliah was on the beast immediately, carving at the same foreleg joint again and again with short, brutal strikes. No style left now. Just damage on the same line until the body paid for keeping it.
Vincent got there a heartbeat later and drove the gauntlet into the ribs around the spear wound.
The hand bit.
Too eagerly.
The taint inside Umbrafang surged again, and this time Vincent understood the real danger of using it on the beast in battle:
every hard contact made the hand stronger in the moment.
Every hard contact also made him want one more.
The camp did not need him fed.
It needed him in control.
He tore the hand free before the urge could become motion.
Umbrafang broke off in a shower of blood, flame, and dirt and retreated three long bounds toward the lane center, finally putting distance between itself and the gauntlet.
The camp used the breath.
Hunters dragged Ragan clear.
Julia reached Serya and shoved a second knife into her free hand.
The Shaman got Deren breathing again under the broken post cloth.
Taliah stood in the center of it all, blood at her side and arm, chest rising hard, one hand still full of blade.
And Vincent, standing with the gauntlet raised and the beast finally giving him space, understood the truth of the last ten minutes:
he was no longer just helping the battle.
He was changing the way it moved.
That was power.
That was danger.
That was exactly what Dayakan could not afford to become dependent on.
Umbrafang crouched low again beyond the broken lane, bleeding from shoulder, flank, and ribs, one eye half ruined, foreleg scorched, movement finally a little less clean than before.
The camp had hurt it.
For real.
It still wasn't enough.
The children's lane remained standing.
Barely.
The wounded post was half-collapsed.
Ragan was alive.
Barely.
The defenders had lost two dead and too many hurt.
The beast was still inside the camp.
Taliah saw all of it at once.
Then she gave the order that told Vincent the battle had entered its worst phase.
"Pull everyone in tighter," she said. "It's going for the heart now."
And Umbrafang, breathing hard and staring straight at the gauntlet, gathered itself for the next charge.