Manshu slammed into the concrete with a wet cry.
He curled inward immediately, coughing blood onto the floor while his ruined wings dragged uselessly behind him.
Calix stalked toward him, every step deliberate, before he brought his boot down directly onto Manshu’s shattered leg.
Manshu’s scream tore through the room, warped into something feral and unrecognizable. His eyes bulged violently, bloodshot and swollen, while he clawed uselessly at Calix’s boot.
“Where did you get the gun?”
“I-it’s j-just a r-regular?—”
“Wrong answer.” The movement happened too fast for me to track.
Before I blinked, Calix’s hand was empty. A moment later, he ripped Manshu’s left wing clean off. Blood sprayed across the concrete as Manshu shrieked so loudly my ears rang.
Calix held the torn wing out toward Rack without even looking.Snap. Fire bloomed between his fingers, and orange flames devoured the delicate wings while the smell of burning magic filled the enclosed area.
“N-no!” Manshu lunged toward it on instinct. “My wing! My wing!”
His voice cracked apart into sobs as the fire consumed it until nothing remained but black ash drifting to the floor.
He collapsed beside it, almost wailing.
Bloody hands desperately scooped through the pile like he could somehow put it back together if he held enough of it close.
“I won’t ask again,” Calix said flatly. Both he and Rack stood over Manshu like executioners, completely untouched by the horror unfolding beneath them.
A part of me wanted to tell them to stop, that this was enough, that no one deserved this, but that voice was distant now. Muted and human. Because deeper inside me, something dark smiled at Manshu’s suffering.
The monster beneath my skin wanted more. Wanted him broken beyond repair. Wanted to hear every scream.
“I-I…” Manshu sobbed. “T-they’ll kill me. I c-can’t?—”
His second wing disappeared in a spray of blood. The scream that followed shredded through the space.
Calix let the ruined wing hit the floor before Rack burned that one too.
“You know fairies can’t regrow their wings if both are gone,” he said, emotionless and factual.
Manshu convulsed violently.
Every elegant feature twisted apart beneath unbearable agony. His jaw trembled uncontrollably while tears and blood soaked his face. The ruined muscles in his back, now exposed due to the missing wings, spasmed grotesquely.
His hands helplessly clawed across the concrete as animalistic sobs dragged from his throat in broken, uneven bursts. Something sacred had just been ripped out and burned alive.
“Where.” Calix stepped closer. “Did. You. Get. That. Gun?”
Rack slowly crouched beside him. His expression never changed as he quietly said, “He won’t ask again.”
Manshu’s face was already healing. Slowly. The crushed skin stitched itself back together inch by inch beneath the blood coating him.
And watching it… God, my mouth watered. A drop of blood slid down the side of his face, and my eyes tracked it automatically. Before I could stop myself, I was licking my lips.
“T-the airport,” Manshu finally choked out. “H-hangar seventeen. T-that’s all I know. I swear. That’s all I know. That’s all I know.”
The words became frantic, repetitive, almost like if he said them enough, they’d spare him.
Calix moved before the sentence fully finished. His arm punched straight through Manshu’s chest. Wet ripping echoed through the room, then Calix stood upright holding a still-beating heart in his bloody hand.
