Soreia collapses.
The second Executoremerges from the guard station ahead.
It’s smaller than the first—faster, more compact. Built for different terrain. Built to finish what its predecessor started.
Soreia is on her knees. Blood drips from her nose.
Can’t fight. Can’t run. Can’t anchor another kill.
I place myself between her and the approaching threat.
My body screams protest. The wounds from the first Executor haven’t healed—the poison still burning through my system, turning every movement into agony. I’ve fought through worse pain. I’ve survived injuries that should have killed me.
This is different.
This is fighting to protect a life I’ve decided matters more than my own.
I’m not honest with myself.
The Executor closes distance with patient confidence. It’s seen what happened to its partner. It knows I’m weakened. Poisoned. Dying.
It doesn’t know what I become when she’s threatened.
TWELVE
KASTER
The fight is brutal.
I abandon technique. Abandon strategy. Abandon everything except the single imperative burning through every nerve: keep it away from her.
The Executor’s talons tear through my shoulder. I take the wound and keep pressing. Its teeth find my forearm. I let them sink in and use the anchor point to drive my other hand through its eye socket.
Blood. Screaming. God-made flesh trying to regenerate around my talons while I tear and tear and tear.
Soreia’s voice cuts through the red haze.
“Kaster—above!”
I look up.
A third Executor descends from the ridgeline—smaller still, built for speed, angling not toward me but toward her. The others were distraction. This one is the killing blow.
Time slows.
I’m three feet from the second Executor. Five feet from Soreia. The third is fifteen feet up and dropping fast, trajectory locked, talons extended for the strike that will end her.
I can’t reach her in time.
I can’t stop it.
I can’t?—
My body moves anyway.
I throw myself toward her position with everything I have left. The second Executor’s teeth tear through my side as I pass—I feel ribs crack, feel flesh part, feel poison flood fresh wounds—and I don’t care. None of it matters. The only thing that matters is reaching her before the third one does.
The Executor lands.
