“Then we stop running.” I tighten my arm around her. “Then we find territory that belongs to us and hold it against anything stupid enough to challenge the claim.”
“That simple?”
“That simple.” I pull her closer. Feel the way her body relaxes against mine with trust that shouldn’t exist after everything she’s survived.
She doesn’t respond with words. Instead, she turns in my arms, presses her mouth against mine, and shows me with her body what she chooses not to say aloud.
It’s enough.
I don’t sleep.
Not because of threat—the remaining monsters in this area are too afraid to approach our shelter. Not because of wounds—my regeneration has addressed every injury from the day’s fighting. Not because of discomfort—having Soreia pressed against me is the opposite of uncomfortable.
Before, a mate was weakness. A pressure point that enemies could exploit.
Now?
Now she’s the reason the gods are going to lose.
TWENTY-NINE
SOREIA
The creature dies mid-lunge, its body crashing into blighted earth before it can complete its attack.
I anchor the ending without thinking. My magic flows outward, silent and absolute, and the divine spark that animated the construct simply ceases. No shimmer of regeneration. No desperate attempt to reform. The death takes hold like roots sinking into stone.
Kaster doesn’t pause to verify the kill. He’s already moving toward the next target, blood streaking his forearms, heat radiating off his skin in visible waves. Three more constructs emerge from a collapsed barn fifty meters ahead, and he accelerates to meet them.
I follow at my own pace. No need to rush. No need to conserve power for the frantic retreat that used to define my existence.
We’re not fleeing anymore.
We’re eliminating.
The corruptedterrain spreads around us like a wound that forgot how to heal.
The monsters built this place to intimidate. To display their dominance over mortal flesh.
Now it’s becoming their graveyard.
I count seventeen kills since dawn. Eighteen, as Kaster finishes the trio from the barn with concentrated force. He breaks the first with raw force, tears the second apart before it can bring its talons to bear, catches the third trying to flee and ends it with a precision that borders on surgical.
The whole engagement takes less than a minute.
I step forward, magic rippling outward to claim the bodies. Three separate anchors, three endings locked into place. My power responds like an extension of my own heartbeat—steady, rhythmic, inevitable.
No cost. No burning in my veins. No sensation of years peeling away from my lifespan.
This is what Anchor magic was meant to be. This is what I was meant to be.
The thought carries weight I haven’t fully processed yet.
“East,”Kaster says, his voice carrying across the distance between us. He indicates a cluster of ruined structures with a blood-streaked hand. “More activity. Larger forms.”
I move to his side, close enough that his body warmth bleeds through the air between us. The closeness is automatic now—not because the bond compels me toward him, but because hispresence has carved a space in my existence that nothing else fits.
“Failed God-Beast variants?” The constructs we eliminated yesterday still haunt the edges of my awareness. Massive, unstable, burning themselves apart in their desperation to end us.
