Scales That I Want To Make A Shoe With

The forest was alive with whispers.

Not the kind born of wind brushing against leaves, no. These whispers were thicker, heavier—the sound of breath held by a thousand unseen eyes.

Adam stepped carefully along the ancient forest path, boots pressing into moss-stained stones. The gentle swoosh of his crimson yukata, woven with fine black embroidery in the shape of wings spreading across his back, fluttered with his movements. It was once ceremonial wear—now battle-worn, mended with threads of purpose and resolve.

At his side, Mira walked in practiced silence.

She wore a travel cloak of faded lavender, the hood resting atop her crimson hair, loosely tied back with a strip of torn silk. Beneath the cloak, her spellweaver robes shimmered faintly, interlaced with protective runes—wards scrawled by her own trembling hands the night before. Her boots were soaked from the morning dew, but she never once complained.

They were halfway through their trek to the Jublean tribe—keepers of the forgotten crystal, the very one Adam had retrieved from Jurgen's cold corpse. The artifact pulsed faintly at his hip, bound in a leather pouch and wrapped in saltweed charms that Mira insisted would "prevent arcane irritation."

He still didn’t know what that meant, but he trusted her.

“You sure they’re gonna welcome us with open arms?” Adam muttered, brushing aside a low-hanging vine with the flat of his blade.

“That depends,” Mira replied, eyes scanning the treetops. “Do they know we’re bringing back their most sacred relic… or just see two strangers wandering into their land with something they died protecting?”

Adam let out a breath through his nose. “Tch… when you put it that way, it sounds almost suicidal.”

“It is.” She smiled without looking at him.

The path wound through a cathedral of trees, their trunks wider than towers and bark carved with symbols lost to time. Small, bioluminescent mushrooms blinked from under twisted roots, casting eerie glows in deep blues and ghostly greens. Insects hummed, unseen. Somewhere distant, a river babbled lazily, spilling over ancient stones like it had all the time in the world.

They stopped at the riverbank, where a narrow stone bridge arched delicately over the water. The river beneath was dark, deep, almost too silent.

Mira knelt beside the edge, cupping water in her palms and drinking cautiously. Adam took a long look around.

That’s when he felt it.

The air changed—as if someone had exhaled just behind his neck. The birds had gone silent. Even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

Adam’s hand moved instinctively to his sword hilt.

“Don’t.” a voice said—too casual, too close.

He turned in a flash, blade half-drawn—

And there she stood.

Tall. Serpentine. Her lower body coiled with glistening blue scales that shimmered like gemstone in the forest light, winding up into a humanoid torso clad in something between silk and alchemy—organic armor that clung to her curves like a second skin. Her hair, dark purple, tumbled in waves down her shoulders. Her eyes—Velvet eyes—held him as if she'd already dissected him in her mind. She smiled.

Not sweetly.

Not cruelly.

Curiously.

“You really do look better up close,” she said, voice like syrup poured over broken glass. “I was worried you’d be… disappointing.”

Mira was on her feet instantly, hand glowing with a red-hot glyph. “Who are you?”

Velvet didn’t flinch.

She stepped forward, tilting her head with amused detachment. “I’m just a doctor. A researcher. Someone very, very interested in that beautiful body of yours.”

Adam blinked.

“Excuse me—?”

“Yours too, flame-girl,” Velvet said, winking at Mira. “But he’s my main subject. I’ve been watching for quite some time. Since the moment you slit Jurgen's throat, in fact. So efficient.”

The mention of Jurgen sent a ripple of tension through the air.

“What do you want?” Adam asked, eyes narrowed. He didn’t draw the blade yet—but his fingers were twitching.

Velvet coiled slightly, resting her chin in one palm like she was lounging on an invisible throne.

“To observe. To study. Maybe… to warn you.”

“Warn?” Mira asked, suspicious.

Velvet nodded slowly, eyes flicking toward the satchel on Adam’s belt. “You're about to return that red crystal, yes? How noble. But be careful, dear Adam… you’re stepping into a den of zealots. The Jublean tribe doesn’t just guard their relics. They become them.”

She leaned in ever so slightly. “They may not let you leave with your soul intact.”

Adam’s grip tightened. He didn’t know why, but her words felt half-truthful, dipped in lies, then coated in just enough mystery to be dangerous.

Before he could speak again, Velvet spun on her tail, coiling away, vanishing slowly between the trees like mist that decided it had somewhere else to be.

“Wait—!” Mira called out, but it was too late.

The forest returned to normal. The birds chirped once again.

And the river flowed on.

Adam looked to the sky, where the clouds had started to gather.

“She knew my name.”

Mira nodded grimly. “She knew more than that.”

The sun had dipped low behind the dense veil of the towering trees, casting the forest into an amber gloom. Adam and Mira had walked in near silence since their eerie encounter with Velvet, the forest path twisting like a serpent toward an unseen destiny.

Then—they saw it.

The foliage thinned. The heavy curtain of moss and vine drew back like theater drapes, revealing a hidden basin, veiled by high cliffs and waterfalls that poured like silver threads into a crystalline lake. Suspended walkways stretched between massive trees—each as wide as a castle tower—linking huts made of woven bark, feathered totems, and colorful fabrics that fluttered in the gentle breeze. Spiraling staircases made from vines and bones coiled up the trees like living sculpture.

The Jublean Tribe.

But that wasn't the strangest part.

No men. None.

All across the village, figures moved with grace and purpose—young and old, tall and small—every single one of them a woman. Their bodies painted in swirls of white and crimson, adorned with necklaces of bone and shell, hair braided with feathers, cloth wraps wound tightly across torsos and hips. Some wore antler crowns. Others had flowers woven into their hair. The atmosphere was one of serene discipline and untamed nature.

And then... they saw him.

One girl, gathering water by the lake, froze as her eyes caught Adam stepping through the clearing.

A second later, she screeched like a panicked eagle and dropped her pot.

More heads turned. Then gasps. Then the unmistakable flutter of chaos.

From every tree, every hut, from behind every curtain of leaves, hundreds of wide-eyed Jubleanians emerged, their mouths agape, their painted faces etched in disbelief.

They didn’t blink. They didn’t speak. They just stared.

Adam stood there like a deer caught in divine judgment.

“Uh… Mira?” he said slowly, raising a single brow. “Why do I feel like I walked into a wrong hotspring episode?”

“Don’t. Even. Start.” Mira hissed through clenched teeth.

One of the girls—tall, spear in hand, and wearing what amounted to a battle bikini made of beetle shells and fur—shouted something sharp and fast:

“Kesh’ta Voran! Da’mel ahn MEN-AH!”

The rest of the villagers gasped.

Another girl dropped her fruit basket. One fainted dramatically.

Then… running. Dozens of them sprinted to the village center, shouting more lines in the same strange tongue:

“Nila’ra MEN’AH!”
“Du’zan ka’ta VORAH!”
“Lo’mash, lo’mash! Da’mel keh MEN-AHH!!”

“I’m pretty sure ‘men-ah’ means ‘man’ and not ‘magnificent god with great pecs,’” Adam muttered, scratching the back of his neck.

Mira’s eyes scanned the tree platforms and rooftops. “No men… No men at all. These people have never seen a man. Adam… this could be bad.”

“Or awkward. Really awkward.”

From the grandest hut—woven with golden reeds and crowned with a halo of ivory spikes—descended the Elder.

She was regal, tall and narrow like a tree given flesh. Her long hair was dyed cobalt blue, braided with hundreds of tiny beads. Her robes dragged behind her like silk rivers. Her eyes were blind—pure white—but somehow still focused directly on Adam.

She raised one thin hand.

The entire village fell silent.

Then she spoke—slow, deliberate, in that same unique tongue:

“Sha’alem ka deran… Tav’vah MENAH.”

The crowd shivered, whispering again like leaves in wind.

Adam looked to Mira. “Translation?”

Mira furrowed her brows. “The dialect’s unfamiliar… but it’s close to Old Kalraajin. I think she said: ‘He walks among us… the Forbidden Male.’”

“Forbidden?” Adam frowned. “That sounds way sexier than I think she intended.”

Suddenly, spears surrounded them—half dozen tribal warriors with faces painted like hawks, snarling and shouting.

“Da’mel’tah Jurgen’a! Kesha’toh MENAH!”

Adam raised his hands. “Okay, that one definitely had Jurgen in it.”

“They think you’re with him,” Mira said. Her voice darkened. “They think you’re his spy. His successor. Or worse…”

The elder stepped forward again and this time her voice boomed—echoing unnaturally in the clearing:

“Jurgen’da sel’veh… CHAOS-MAKER!”

From somewhere in the village, drums began to pound.

A ritual beat. A declaration.

Adam exhaled slowly. “Oh great. I just unlocked a new title.”

“They’re preparing a trial,” Mira whispered. “A purification one.”

Adam blinked. “...does it involve fire?”

Mira didn’t answer.

The villagers closed in, chants building into a rhythm, eyes wide with emotion. Some with awe. Some with fear. Some with barely-hidden curiosity—lingering glances at Adam's arms, his face, his legs, the way his red yukata clung to his body.

They had no frame of reference for ‘man.’ And now they had one.

And this one? Wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes.

Adam sighed as they were surrounded.

“Just once,” he muttered to Mira as spears tapped against his chest, “I’d like to be worshipped without the threat of immediate death.”

Mira rolled her eyes. “If we survive this, I’m getting you a collar. One with a bell.”

The great bonfire roared in the center of the Jublean village.

The air was thick with smoke, sweat, and the rhythmic chanting of a hundred tribal voices. Dancers circled the flames in painted fury. Spears clashed. Drums pounded like war-horns of an ancient god.

And Adam stood alone in the clearing.

His red yukata was torn at the sleeves, his katana gripped tight in one hand, the crimson fabric fluttering in the wild wind of war cries. His chest heaved, sweat tracing lines down his neck. He didn’t flinch.

But his opponent?

She stepped into the firelight like a walking goddess of war.

Ka’Lerah, the Champion of the Jublean.

She towered a head over Adam, her skin bronze and glistening with tribal oil, her hair styled in rows of dreadlocks coiled like a crown. Her muscles flexed like steel wrapped in silk, and her armor was made from the reinforced scales of a jungle beast long thought extinct. In each hand, she held a double-bladed glaive that hummed with ancestral enchantments.

She looked at Adam not with confusion… but hatred.

And she spoke with a voice like thunder rolling over mountains:

“Men’ah… Jurgen’da noh-kaet. Sha’ra'val KESSAI!”

The crowd roared in unison: “KESSAI! KESSAI! KESSAI!”

Mira stood to the side, surrounded by guards. “Adam—she challenged you to the Rite of Echoes. You have to accept. Or they’ll both kill you and erase your name from memory.”

Adam gave her a weak smile. “Wow. Tribal cancel culture is brutal.”

“Adam—this isn’t funny. She’s the strongest in the tribe. Maybe stronger than Jurgen ever was. She—"

He cut her off with a glance. “I know.” Then he turned toward Ka’Lerah, his voice calm but unwavering. “Challenge accepted.”

The duel began.

Ka’Lerah moved like a phantom beast. Her first strike nearly shattered Adam’s sword. The second sent him flying backward, sliding through the dirt and leaving a scar across the earth. He rolled, barely catching her third swing with the flat of his blade.

Every time he attacked, she countered. Every time he tried to move in, she was already there, her glaives flashing like lightning. It wasn’t just strength—it was rage. Pure, centuries-old fury that carried through every strike.

“Why—” Adam grunted, ducking under a sweeping blow, “—do the giant ladies always hate me?”

“You wear his color!” Ka’Lerah suddenly spat, in broken Orion dialect. “You—look like him! Jurgen—monster—killed my mother! My father! You carry his blade!”

Adam’s eyes widened. “I’m not Jurgen. I ended him!”

She didn’t care.

Her glaive slammed into his ribs. Something cracked. Adam gasped, falling to his knees. Blood dripped from his mouth. The bonfire's light blurred. The chants dimmed into echoes. Ka’Lerah raised her glaives high—

And brought them down—

CLANG.

Steel met steel.

Mira.

Her crimson cloak billowed behind her, her hand glowing with arcane fire, her staff pressing against the champion’s glaive to block the killing blow.

Her eyes were wild. Furious. Terrified.

“NO.” Her voice cracked. “You don’t get to take him. Not him.”

Ka’Lerah froze. Her arms trembling.

The silence that followed was deeper than the grave.

Mira stepped in front of Adam, shielding him with her body. “He’s not the man who killed your parents. He’s the one who’s saving the world from the men who did.” Her voice trembled now, softer. “He saved me. He made me believe in tomorrow again. If you kill him… then I have nothing left.”

Ka’Lerah’s arms faltered.

Her golden eyes met Mira’s.

Then… slowly… she looked down at Adam. The blood at his lip. The defiance still in his half-lidded eyes. The way he hadn’t begged. The way he endured.

And in that fractured moment of silence, a memory flickered behind her eyes—

The image of her mother and father, standing before her when the fires of Jurgen's army consumed their home. They had shielded her with their bodies, whispering the same words Mira just had.

“Live. You must live.”

Ka’Lerah’s arms lowered. The glaives fell into the earth.

She turned her face away, jaw clenched.

“Leave.” Her voice cracked. “Before I change my mind.”

The crowd watched, stunned. No chants. No celebration. Just wind. Just fire.

Mira helped Adam to his feet. He leaned into her, half-conscious, his fingers curling around hers.

“I owe you one,” he whispered hoarsely.

“You owe me ten.” She shot him a glare. But her voice was breaking too. “And a lifetime of never making me watch that again.”

He chuckled, barely. “I’ll add it to my tab…”

The night in the Jublean village descended like a dream on the edge of a fever.
Torches crackled, casting long shadows on the moss-woven walls. Strange incense made the air taste like honey and ash. Whispering leaves brushed across the tree-canopy roofs as if the jungle itself was watching.

And Adam?

Adam was kneeling awkwardly in front of a very, very unimpressed Elder.

Her name was Gral’Muna, a woman with gray braids that reached the ground, beads clinking in rhythm with every blink of her eyes. Her face looked like it had seen the rise and fall of empires. Her arms were tattooed with winding symbols, and her frown had more authority than an executioner’s blade.

“You want… what?” she asked in her deep, accented growl.

Adam cleared his throat and bowed again. His ribs still ached from Ka’Lerah’s beatdown.

“I would humbly request the honor of one night’s shelter for myself and my companion. In return, I offer knowledge of the man who betrayed your people—Jurgen—and how he met his end.”

Gral’Muna raised one eyebrow so hard it almost summoned lightning.

“You wish to bribe the Matron of Spirits with bedtime stories and boyish charm?”

“…Yes?”

Silence. Then—laughter.

The elder burst out laughing, smacking her thigh like she was watching a drunk goat try to fly.

“Hah! Bold and idiotic! You may stay. But know this, red-robed outsider: your life still hangs by her mercy.”
She nodded toward the far end of the village.

There, leaning against a tree in brooding silence, stood Ka’Lerah.

She wasn’t even looking at Adam.

Later that night, the tribe had prepared a guest tent woven with jungle flowers and moonlight-colored silk threads. Mira stood by the fire pit outside, arms crossed, glaring into the flames like they owed her money.

Adam was nowhere to be seen.

“Where is he?” she muttered.

As if on cue—

“So you followed her?” Mira hissed when Adam finally came back, leaves in his hair and awkward guilt plastered on his face.

Adam flinched. “I didn’t follow—I was just… walking in the same direction. Rapidly. Quietly. And… through the bushes.”

“…You were stalking her.”

He sighed. “It sounds worse when you say it.”

Mira’s fists clenched. “Why, Adam? Why are you trying so hard with her?”

“She hates me.”

“You’re simping for the woman who tried to impale you!”

“She hates me intensely! That kind of passion doesn’t just disappear!” he argued, like this was the most logical thing in the world.

“Adam. Adam. Adam,” Mira muttered, dragging her hand down her face like she was trying to erase her own existence. “We’re in the middle of a jungle. You nearly died. And you’re out here trying to win over a woman who literally broke two of your ribs.”

Adam blinked. “Three ribs. And my heart.”

Mira’s expression soured into something between betrayed lover and full-blown tax evasion charges.
“You’re seriously doing this right now,” she whispered, shaking her head. “After everything? After what I said during the duel—”

Her voice cracked.

“I thought I made it clear what you mean to me,” she said, lower this time. “Or did I imagine it? Did I hallucinate the part where I stood between you and death?”

Adam looked at her. Genuinely now.

“Mira… I know.” He stepped closer. “I just… I don’t want to keep failing people. I want to prove I’m not like Jurgen. Not to everyone. Just… to her. Just once.”

Mira looked away.

“And what about me, Adam? Do I need to hate you before I matter too?”

Silence. The wind blew. A vine creaked.

He didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t want to—but because he didn’t know how.

Elsewhere in the village, Ka’Lerah sat atop her stone balcony, legs crossed, eyes closed. But her hands trembled slightly.

She remembered Adam’s face when she struck him. The lack of fear. The quiet defiance. The way he still offered his hand even after she tried to end him.

“Why don’t you hate me…?” she whispered to the dark.

The skies were a bruised shade of violet, split open by jagged bolts of lightning as thunder rolled over the drenched terrain. Trees bent like supplicants beneath the storm, and the rivers roared with unhinged fury—nature itself seemed to protest the arrival of Hafiz, but he wasn’t about to listen.

“I swear to all the cursed constellations above,” Hafiz muttered, leaping over a fallen log with a gymnast's grace, his cloak flapping like a bat with a vendetta, “If the universe throws one more vine in my path, I’m rewriting the damn script myself.”

Splat.

A vine did indeed greet his boot like an eager admirer.

Whoosh!

Down Hafiz tumbled, pirouetting midair like a confused ballerina tossed from a trebuchet. He crashed through branches, swung off a slippery moss-covered tree trunk, and finally—gracefully, epically—landed face-first in a puddle.

“Majestic,” he mumbled into the mud. “Very dignified. Just the image of terror and legend the world needs.”

Still, he pressed on. Because of course he did. The Tome of Wisdom had led him here—well, more like refused to give him answers and instead showed increasingly frustrating variations of his death. So what else was a man to do but wrestle with storms and sarcasm?

With the rain hammering down, he sprinted through waterfalls, slid across rivers like a possessed figure skater, and at one point, used a makeshift umbrella fashioned from a giant leaf and sheer ego. He even tried reasoning with a frog.

“I need directions, Sir Amphibius,” he said solemnly.

The frog blinked.

“I’ll take that as a maybe.”

Finally—after what felt like an entire filler episode of just Hafiz vs. Nature—he reached the base of the cliff village.

It was ethereal. Stone stairways spiraled around the sheer cliff wall like serpent coils, lanterns glowing in soft hues, leading up to the secluded Jublean village nestled high in the mist. He could already see the faint silhouette of structures—tent tops swaying gently, sacred fire pits flickering against the storm, and above it all—

Ka’Lerah.

The champion of the Jublean tribe, her figure outlined by the light of her tent. She stood beneath the overhang, her hair cascading down her shoulders, arms crossed, her gaze fixed on the figure emerging from the dark.

Hafiz opened his mouth to speak, dramatic entrance fully loaded, cool monologue ready to drop.

And then—sliiiip.

He’d stepped on one of nature’s cruelest jokes: a banana leaf.

Fwoooosh!

Down he went again, the muddy trail now a cursed water slide from hell. The world spun around him as he tumbled all the way back to the forest floor, vanishing into the undergrowth with a fading—

“Why is this always happening to meeeeeeeeeee—!”

Ka’Lerah stared for a beat longer. She blinked.

Then she shrugged and retreated into her tent without a word.