Page 121 of Property of Scar

The hellfire dies first. Not cleanly. It fights. Black-orange flames lash and snap before finally folding inward, collapsing into a mess of unstable sparks.

Bennett’s light lingers a moment longer. White fire crawls across the room in fading pulses before it, too, begins to withdraw—reluctant and stubborn—like it resents being forced back into a cage after tasting freedom.

The sound drops with it, not disappearing all at once, but peeling away piece by piece, each layer of it fading until all that remains is a low, residual vibration that hums through the floor and into bone one last time before it finally dies out completely.

What follows isn’t quiet.

It is absence.

The lab is wrecked. Equipment lies twisted and broken where the wave’s force tore through it, glass ground into fine powder across the floor, blackened paths carved clean through everything that stood in its way.

There’s nothing left moving.

Nothing left to fight.

In the center of it, Rhett stands in hellhound form, exactly where the destruction ended, his body still carrying the tension of it, shoulders set, breath rough and uneven like whatever he just held onto hasn’t fully let him go yet.

Behind him, Bennett slowly lowers his hand, the last trace of light gone without ceremony, leaving nothing behind but the memory of it.

For a long second, neither of them moves.

Rhett turns first, the motion controlled but not entirely steady, like he’s working through the weight of his own body again, as if it doesn’t quite feel the same as it did before.

Bennett is already watching him.

Their eyes meet, and whatever passes between them doesn’t need words to land. There’s no humor in it, no deflection, none of the usual friction that fills the space when they’re standing this close to each other.

Just recognition.

Of what they did.

Of what it took.

Of the fact that neither of them is entirely sure where the line was, and whether they just stepped past it.

Then silence.

Even through the pain, the blood, and the immediate problem of an ancient vampire with a syringe, something about Rhett and Bennett finding their way to each other makes my stomach flutter.

Because Roxy arrives through the wall.

Not the door, the fucking wall.

Her magic hits the blood wards holding the lab together like a crowbar through a spiderweb. I can feel it even from here, a pressure change that pops my ears, and the red lines traced into the concrete seams across the floor and ceiling flare once and gutter out.

Mordain staggers half a step, and in that half step, his hold on the syringe loosens, and his attention fractures.

The explosion from the power grid comes a heartbeat later. Something in the laboratory’s infrastructure gives way with a sound like the earth clearing its throat, the lights strobe and die, replaced by the red emergency wash of backup systems that turn everything dark red.

Equipment ruptures across three workstations at once. Glass blows out in sharp bursts, sparks snapping through the air as circuits fry, the metallic stench of burning wiring hitting hard and fast.

The floor shudders under my boots, a deep, violent jolt that rattles through the structure, throwing balance just enough to matter as the walls vibrate with it, steel frames groaning under the strain.

And Mordain, with the instinct of something ancient and desperate, turns back toward the berserker. Toward his life’s work. Toward the one thing he refuses to let go of, even now, with everything breaking apart around him.

‘This is what I have been waiting for.’

The gap in his defenses opens for a fraction of a second, barely there, the width of a single distracted moment, but it’s enough.