I shove Soreia sideways before conscious thought forms.
The creature lands where she was standing. The impact cracks the path beneath it, sending fissures racing toward the edge. Sheer drop. Fog. Oblivion.
Different.
The assessment comes in fragments as I circle the thing. This isn’t a Hunter. The build is wrong—slower, heavier, designed for endurance rather than speed. Its armor plating is thicker than anything I’ve faced, overlapping scales that leave no gaps for talons to find purchase.
It turns toward me with deliberate patience. Eyes like polished obsidian track my movement, mapping patterns the way I map weakness.
Learning. Like the Hunters learned. But smarter. More patient.
The creature charges.
I meet it head-on because there’s nowhere else to go. The path is too narrow for maneuvering. The drops on either side eliminate flanking options. Forward or backward—those are the only vectors.
The creature’s size works against it here. Its bulk fills the path almost completely, limiting its own movement options. But that bulk carries momentum I can’t match, weight that could crush bone with casual pressure.
My talons strike its shoulder plating. The impact jars through my arms, vibrating into my spine. The armor holds. No penetration. No blood.
The Executor’s counterstrike catches my ribs.
Pain explodes across my side—white-hot, immediate, wrong in ways that go beyond physical damage. The wound burns with a chemical intensity that makes my healing stutter and fail.
Poison.
The realization arrives with cold clarity. Divine poison. Designed to counter dragon regeneration.
I’ve heard of it. Never faced it. The gods don’t waste resources like this on ordinary threats.
The fight becomesa war of attrition.
I tear at the creature’s joints—the only weak points in its armor. Each strike costs time I don’t have. Each wound I inflict heals before I can exploit it, divine power knitting flesh and bone with relentless speed.
My wounds don’t heal.
The poison spreads through my bloodstream like fire. Every movement sends agony lancing through my nervous system. My left arm stops responding properly—talons still extending, muscle still firing, but the link between intention and execution grows sluggish. Delayed.
The Executor presses its advantage. Slow, methodical, patient. It knows it’s winning. It knows I’m dying by inches.
Soreia’s magic flares behind me.
I don’t turn to look. Can’t afford the distraction. But I feel her power reaching toward the creature—that familiar hum of endings that marks her bloodline. She’s trying to anchor it. Trying to make my damage permanent.
The effort costs her. I hear her breathing change—shallow, pained, the sound of a body pushed past its limits.
“Stay back.” The words come out rough. Blood in my throat. “Don’t waste your power.”
She doesn’t listen.
Her magic wraps around the Executor like a shroud, slowing its recovery by fractions. Not stopping it—she’s too weak for that. But buying me time. Precious seconds where my strikes matter.
I use them.
My talons find the gap between armor plates at the creature’s neck. I tear. The Executor staggers. Its regeneration struggles against Soreia’s anchor, flesh trying to knit while her power holds it open.
I tear again. Deeper. Until my hand closes around the spine and pulls.
The creature falls.
