He angles his body slightly instead. Making room. Creating a space for me in his defensive perimeter as naturally as if I’ve always belonged there.
The gesture shouldn’t mean anything. Tactical adjustment. Optimal positioning. The kind of minor shift any experienced fighter makes when working alongside another combatant.
It means everything.
“They’ll breach in the next pass.” Low. Calm. The voice of someone who has killed more monsters than I can count and expects to kill more before this ends. “The frame won’t hold against a coordinated strike.”
“I have enough left for two anchors. Maybe three.”
“Save them. I’ll break what I can. You lock the deaths in place.”
The division of labor we’ve fallen into without discussing it. He destroys. I finalize.
The door shudders under another impact.
“When they come through,” Kaster says, “don’t leave my side. Not for any reason.”
I should resent the command. I’ve survived alone for weeks, fought and killed and run and bled without anyone’s help. I don’t need a dragon telling me where to stand.
But the resentment doesn’t come.
“I won’t.”
The words leave my mouth before I can stop them. A promise I didn’t mean to make, binding me to a position at his side.
His gaze holds mine. Searching. Looking for the lie.
He won’t find it.
Because I mean it. Gods help me, I mean it.
The door splinters inward.
The first hunter comes through in a shower of wood and stone, talons aimed at the space where it expects prey to cower. Kaster catches it before it completes its trajectory, redirecting momentum into the wall with a crack of breaking bone.
The second hunter follows immediately. The third. The fourth.
They pour through the ruined doorway in a tide of armor and muscle and divine-forged malice, and Kaster meets them with the killing precision I’ve come to expect. Each movement purposeful. Each strike positioned to break rather than wound.
I hold my position at his flank. Near enough to feel the displaced air from his blows. Near enough that my magic can reach whatever falls beneath his claws.
A hunter gets past him. It happens in the chaos of close-quarters combat—a momentary gap in his guard, a creature small enough to slip through while he’s engaged with two larger threats. It comes for me with lethal intent, talons aimed at my throat.
I don’t run.
My hands come up. My magic surges forward, burning through my reserves with familiar pain. The hunter’s momentum carries it into my reach, and I anchor it before it can land—not killing, but holding, making its god-spawned flesh susceptible to permanent ending.
Kaster’s claws tear through its spine before it touches me.
He doesn’t pause. Doesn’t check if I’m harmed. He spins back into the fight with a growl that vibrates through my bones, and I see it now—the fear beneath the fury.
He’s terrified.
Not of the hunters. Not of the god that sent them. He’s terrified of me dying while he watches. Terrified of failing to prevent the one outcome he refuses to accept.
I’ve never seen fear on a dragon before.
The fight continues. Bodies pile up in the ruined doorway, blocking the approach of reinforcements. I anchor two more kills, burning magic I can’t afford, and Kaster tears through the remaining hunters with a ferocity that borders on unhinged.
