The city recedes as whisper and ruin. Ahead lies the raw world: loyalists forming shape like beasts gathering under the moon, ready to pounce on a fragile peace.
When we pause beside a hollow under starbow, I can’t hold it back. I step away from our riders, heart stalking in my bones. River follows.
Inside the cave mouth, torchlight carves us bright and small against stone cold as justice. The smell of damp and moss and flickering flame is sanctuary.
I turn to her, voice cracked like tinder. “I wanted one more moment—just flesh and quiet—before everything else rips open.”
She stands still, eyes burning like moonlit snow.
We close the distance like two survivors who’ve forgotten how to feel safe. I press tongue to her trembling lips, teeth grazing.
This isn’t tenderness—it’s hunger, invitation, confession. The cave floor is cold, pressing against bruised knees.
She’s fierce—blonde neck, dark eyes. I tug her closer and she leans in deeper, and we collapse against stone and shadow.
We shed our fears in breath and sweat. She is fire to my darkness. I am predator to her flame. Slow becomes urgent, urgent becomes raw.
She moans in my mouth. I shift, knees memorized by forest paths and war’s promises, bones flexing with moon-silver blood. The beast inside me coils.
I bury my face in her neck, voice ragged. “If I die… burn me beneath our bridge.”
She twists free, slaps me—hard-handed love that makes stars bloom behind my eyes. “Kragna,” she breathes, voice smoky and fierce. “You’re not dying. You’re going to be the sexiest war god this continent has ever seen.”
I laugh—croaky and real. We fall into grass cold with dew. Our breaths dark against torchlight and scented moss.
Her fingers weave through scars on my chest. She traces the old wounds, the new hopes; our ribs pressed together, beating.
I whisper against her hair: “Come home with me.”
She pulls my face close so our skin is bone-warm. “I already am.”
The moon glances through cave’s high mouth. Outside, war coils, the siege breathing like storm thunder.
But here—right here—we anchor peace in breath and body.
We stay there, happy but unspeaking, while the world tilts toward fury.
The full mooncrests the treetops like a silver eye, wide and watching. I feel it before I see it—this thrumming pressure inside my bones, old as war drums. It starts low in the spine, rippling outward. My joints ache like they’ve been carved from stone. My teeth itch. My skin tightens, stretching against something too big for its shell.
“Don’t follow me,” I growl at River. My voice is already shifting, lower than it should be, vibrating through the moss beneath my feet.
She doesn’t move. Just watches me from the rise above the ridge, eyes wide, lips pressed into a hard line. I want to look away. Can’t. Her gaze hooks into my ribs like a barbed spear.
Veeto knows better. He grabs Toad Knight by the scruff and drags him backward. Charen is already scuttling up into the trees, her webbing hissing as it stretches taut.
It’s coming.
Hasn’t happened in a century. Last time I lost three days and woke up buried beneath the bones of a mercenary platoon with a cracked horn and no memory.
Tonight, it doesn’t wait. The moon hits my skin like a hammer strike and I fall to one knee, snarling. My vision doubles, then triples, fractures into hot shards.
I scream. It’s not a scream, not really—more like the forest itself tearing open. My fingers warp first, knuckles bulging, claws curling. My skin splits, gray iron shattering to reveal deeper rock beneath. My spine stretches. Rips. Rebuilds.
My horns twist upward like living spires. My body heaves. My chest balloons outward with the sound of cracking granite.
And then I’m not Kragna anymore.
I’m more.
