KASTER
The frozen canyon closes around us like a trap.
Walls of ice and stone rise on either side, narrowing the path until we’re walking single file through passages barely wide enough for my shoulders. The floor is treacherous—ice layered over rock, shifting and cracking with every step. No stable footing. No cover. No escape routes.
I don’t like it.
Soreia walks ahead of me, picking her way across the unstable surface with the careful precision of someone who knows her body’s limits. Her breath fogs in the frigid air. The temperature here drops well below what the ice-scarred plains offered—cold so intense that every inhale burns.
“There’s another path.” I scan the canyon walls for alternatives. Crevices. Handholds. Any route that doesn’t funnel us into a killing corridor. “We can backtrack, find higher ground.”
“The higher routes are blocked.” She doesn’t turn around. “Ice collapse from the thaw. I checked while you were scouting.”
I file that information away. She’s observant. Thorough. Traits that have kept her alive this long.
Traits that won’t matter if this canyon becomes our grave.
The attack comes without warning.
The ice wall to our left explodes outward in a shower of frozen shrapnel, and the creature tears through.
What the fuck?—
My brain struggles to process what I’m seeing. The thing that emerges isn’t a single monster. It’s pieces. Dozens of pieces stitched together into a form that defies biology. I recognize fragments of Executors in its bulk—the armored plating, the obsidian eyes. But mixed with those are parts from creatures I’ve never encountered. Limbs that bend wrong. Joints that shouldn’t exist. A face that’s three faces overlapping, mouths opening and closing in different rhythms.
A god-made abomination. Built specifically. Designed deliberately.
For us.
It moves before I can process what I’m seeing. Faster than a creature that size has any right to be. I throw myself between it and Soreia, taking the initial strike across my forearms instead of letting it reach her. The thought of the creature’s filth touching her skin didn’t trigger a hero’s instinct; it triggered a predator’s rage. No one—not even a god—touches what I’ve claimed.
The impact sends me sliding backward on the ice. My feet find no purchase. The creature’s strength is staggering—Executor-level force multiplied by the wrongness of its construction.
“Move!” I roar at Soreia. “Back the way we came!”
She doesn’t run. She braces herself against the canyon wall, her hands already rising to work her magic.
Stupid. Brave. Both.
The creature lunges again. I meet it with fire.
Dragonfire eruptsfrom my hands in concentrated bursts—the same technique that melted Executor armor, that ended things designed to kill dragons. The flames engulf the abomination’s torso, burning through its patchwork hide.
For three seconds, I think it’s enough.
Then the burned flesh begins knitting itself back together. Not regenerating—reconstructing. The charred tissue sloughs away, replaced by new growth that erupts from beneath. Different growth. Thicker. More resistant.
It’s learning.
The realization crystallizes as I watch my attack become obsolete in real-time. The fire that worked seconds ago won’t work again. The creature has adapted. Evolved. Built countermeasures from my own assault.
I switch tactics. Close-quarters. Claws extended, I drive into the abomination’s flank, tearing through the seams where different monster parts connect. Those joints are weaker—the stitching that holds the pieces together less durable than the pieces themselves.
The creature screams with multiple voices as I rip chunks from its body. Ichor sprays across the ice. I press the advantage, driving deeper, searching for the thing’s center mass.
A limb I didn’t track slams into my ribs.
I hear the crack before I feel it. Two ribs, maybe three. The force launches me backward into the canyon wall. Stone and ice give way behind me, and I hit hard enough that my vision whites out for a dangerous half-second.
