I shove Soreia behind me before conscious thought engages.
The thing that emerges from the deeper taint is the largest construct I’ve ever faced outside a full dragon confrontation. Forty feet at the shoulder. Body assembled from components that don’t quite fit together—segments of different monstersfused into a single form by divine will rather than natural design. The seams between sections glow with power that’s consuming the creature from within.
It’s burning.
Not external flame. Internal combustion. The construct’s flesh radiates heat that scorches the corrupted vegetation in a widening circle around it. Every breath releases steam that smells like burnt offerings. Every step leaves smoking footprints in the saturated soil.
The gods built a suicide weapon. Too much power crammed into a form that can’t contain it. The creature will destroy itself simply by existing—but it’s meant to destroy us first.
“Stay behind me.” I don’t wait for acknowledgment. “Anchor when I call.”
“Understood.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
KASTER
The collision would have killed me before the mating.
The Failed God-Beast moves with speed that contradicts its bulk—a blur of overcharged muscle and desperate power slamming into my shifted form with force that cracks the ground beneath us. I absorb the impact. Redirect the momentum. Get my claws into the seams between fused segments where the structural integrity is weakest.
It burns where it contacts skin, leaving trails of blistering heat that my body works to heal even as new wounds accumulate.
The creature screams.
Not pain—frustration. It expected this blow to end me. Expected the sheer overwhelming power packed into its unstable form to crush anything that dared face it directly.
It didn’t account for what I’ve become.
I tear into the God-Beast with precision that would have been impossible a week ago. Every strike finds a weakness. Every movement anticipates the creature’s responses before they fully form. I’m faster than I was. Stronger. The mating didn’t add new abilities—it removed the limitations that the gods had been subtly imposing on my kills.
The creature fights with desperate intensity. Limbs the size of trees sweep toward me with speed that cracks the sound barrier. Fire erupts from wounds I inflict, attempting to cauterize the damage before I can exploit it further.
I dodge. Absorb what I can’t avoid. Keep cutting.
The God-Beast’s internal combustion accelerates with every passing second. It’s burning itself up faster than expected—pouring everything it has into ending me before its own destruction renders the effort pointless.
Too bad for the gods.
It’s not fast enough.
“Now.”
Soreia’s magic hits the creature the moment I sever its primary neural cluster.
I sense her power reaching into divine flesh—sure and absolute. Her will declaring to reality itself that this death will not be reversed.
The Failed God-Beast convulses.
Regeneration attempts to engage. Divine power gathers at the wound sites, trying to pull shattered components back into functional arrangement. For one breath, the outcome hangs uncertain—the creature’s desperate attempt at self-preservation fighting the finality her magic imposes.
Her anchor holds.
The regeneration fails.
The God-Beast makes a sound I’ve never heard from a construct before. High and keening and utterly wrong—the noise of a creature understanding, for the first time in itsexistence, that ending is possible. That death isn’t a temporary inconvenience to be reset by its creators.
That this time, the darkness is permanent.
