SOREIA
The creature’s arm punches through the ice fall, and Kaster meets it with fire.
I watch from the ground where he left me—back against frozen stone, head throbbing from the gash at my temple. The cramped passage fills with dragonfire and the stench of burning flesh. The creature shrieks—a discordant howl from its fused throats—pulls back, reforms. Pushes through again.
Kaster doesn’t give ground. Every inch of space between the breach and where I lie is territory he refuses to surrender.
My magic gutters weakly in my palms. I try to gather it—try to shape an anchor working that might help—but my power slips through my fingers like water. The exertion from earlier has depleted me beyond anything I’ve experienced. My reserves are empty. My body is running on stubbornness and not much else.
Get up.
I push myself higher against the wall. The world tilts. Steadies. Tilts again.
The creature breaks through.
Ice explodes inward asthe abomination forces its bulk through the collapsed passage. Its body has changed—narrower now, compressed to fit the gap it couldn’t breach before. Even trapped, even cornered, it adapted.
Kaster intercepts it before it can reach me. Fire and claws and the concentrated brutality I’ve witnessed a dozen times now. The passage is too narrow for the creature’s full mass, which gives him an advantage he exploits ruthlessly.
But the thing heals. Reforms. Keeps coming.
And Kaster is already damaged. I see it in the way he moves—favoring his left side, slower than he was hours ago. The wounds from the main canyon haven’t closed. Blood still seeps from the gash across his back. His body isn’t keeping pace with the damage.
Neither is mine.
I force myself to stand. Use the wall for support. My legs tremble beneath my weight, muscles that have carried me through countless miles of hunted territory now threatening to give out entirely.
“Stay back.” His voice carries over the sounds of combat. Not a request.
I stay back. Not because he told me to, but because I’m not certain I can take three steps without collapsing.
The fight compressesinto the narrow space—dragon and abomination tearing at each other in a corridor barely wide enough for either. Stone cracks under the impact of bodiesthrown against walls. Ice shatters and reforms and shatters again.
I watch with the clinical detachment of exhaustion. Counting wounds. Calculating odds. My mind runs the numbers automatically, the way it always has—survival mathematics that my bloodline carved into my consciousness before I was old enough to understand what survival would cost me.
Kaster is faster. Stronger. More vicious than anything this creature has faced.
The creature is endless. Patient. Willing to absorb any damage to achieve its goal.
Me.
The truth becomes undeniable as I watch the abomination’s overlapping faces track past Kaster toward where I stand. Every time he drives it back, its attention returns to me. Every opening it seeks, every gap it exploits—all of it angled toward my position.
This creature was built for me. The divine poison. The ability to counter dragon attacks. The relentless focus that ignores easier targets.
This creature was made to kill me. Kaster is collateral—a problem to solve before reaching the prize.
And obstacles can be removed.
The fight shifts.
Kaster catches the creature’s primary limb—the one that’s been reaching for me—and tears it free. The abomination screams. Ichor sprays across the walls, the floor, his face. He doesn’t stop. Drives deeper. Rips into the mass of stitched flesh with a fury that borders on mindless.
I need to help. Need to drag myself forward and use the dregs of magic I have left to anchor the thing’s pieces before they regenerate.
My legs won’t cooperate.
The cold has seeped too deep. The exhaustion has claimed too much. I’m a spectator in my own survival, watching the man who refuses to let me die fight a creature designed specifically to kill me.
