He struck once. Nothing. He blinked through a brief wash of dizziness, steadied his hand against his own shaking knee, and the second match flared sulfur bright, so sudden and simple it seemed impossible in this age of hidden systems and sealed comforts. The hunters recoiled as one body, not from him but from that bare open light. Elias saw it clearly—the flinch, the hands up, the break in their line.

Then he touched the flame to the cable wrap.

For one second nothing happened. His stomach dropped.

Then blue fire raced along the residue seam, caught old fiber tape, and leaped across the lane in a sharp bright sheet. Heat punched outward. The nearest figures staggered back, shielding their faces. One cried out—not pain, not yet, but raw fear. Another dropped the hooked cable and fled into the trunks.

“It works,” Elias said, stunned by the force of their retreat.

“Run,” Mara shouted.

Because the line did not stay a line. Flame licked up the dry wraps on the power veins, found a hanging beard of dead root fiber, and climbed. A branch rack overhead flashed orange. The conduit exhaled through some hidden vent and the whole fire bent upward with a hungry roar.

Mara slammed Elias between the shoulders hard enough to drive him forward. Lina was already moving, coughing as smoke rolled under the canopy. They sprinted through the choke point before the heat folded the air shut. Behind them branches cracked, resin popped, and old irrigation tubes burst in hissing sprays that only spread steam and sparks.