I land on top of her.
The impact drives the breath from both of us. Stone scrapes my back as I roll us sideways, talons raking the ground where her head was a heartbeat ago. I feel blood—mine—soaking through my shirt, pooling between us. Feel her gasp against my throat as my weight pins her to the stone.
The third Executor turns.
I’m on my feet before it completes the motion. Wounded. Poisoned. Bleeding from a dozen places that should have killed me. And I don’t care. Don’t register the pain. Don’t acknowledge the damage.
All I see is the creature between me and her.
All I feel is the absolute certainty that it’s going to die.
I don’t use a blade.I let the dragon bleed through—teeth elongating into serrated daggers, skin hardening into obsidian plating. I tear into the Executor with the raw, animal hunger of a beast that hasn’t been fed in a thousand years.
Not fighting. Destroying. There’s a difference. Fighting implies strategy, implies goal beyond immediate devastation, implies the possibility of retreat or negotiation.
I don’t retreat. I finish things.
The Executor tries to regenerate. Power floods its wounds, tries to knit flesh that I keep tearing open. I feel Soreia’s magic reach toward it—weak, flickering, but present—and the knitting falters.
The creature screams.
I don’t stop.
When it’s over, I’m standing in a ruin of ichor and torn armor. The second Executor lies behind me, still twitching—not dead, but damaged enough that it won’t rise quickly. The first hasn’t moved since I tore out its spine.
Three Executors. Gods-made killing machines designed to end threats permanently.
I’ve destroyed them all.
The realization should bring satisfaction. Instead, it brings cold clarity: they’ll reform. Without her magic to anchor the deaths, they’ll reform and come again. The fight isn’t over. It’s never over.
I turn to check on Soreia.
She’s sitting up. Pale. Shaking worse than before. But her eyes?—
Her eyes are locked on me.
She’s not flinching. Not pulling back. Her hands are loose in her lap, not raised for magic she can barely access. She’s watching my shifted hands, the ichor coating them, the ruin I’ve made of three god-forged things, and she looks the way a person looks when a question they’ve been carrying finally gets answered.
“Can you walk?”
The words come out rough. Animal. I taste copper on my tongue—my blood or hers, I can’t tell anymore.
She nods once. Tries to stand. Her legs give, and I’m there before she hits stone.
“The guard station.” I angle us toward the structure ahead. “We need shelter.”
She doesn’t argue.
She leans into me instead.
The guard stationoffers minimal shelter—four walls, partial roof, no door. I clear the interior before letting Soreia enter.
She lowers herself to the floor against the most intact wall. Her breathing is shallow—the kind that comes when the body has nothing left to give.
“The poison.” Her words rasp. “Your wounds aren’t healing.”
“They’ll heal.” Eventually. Maybe. The divine toxin is still working through my system, fighting my regeneration to a standstill. “Don’t waste your magic on me.”
