Then he dropped and landed like punctuation, in front of Nocturne’s main entrance, in the middle of a fleeing crowd.
Xen walked against the flow. Upstream. Unshaken. Bodies parted without knowing why—without even seeing him, really. He was matte as shadow. Featureless as fear. When someonedidglance his way, their pupils shrank. One woman screamed without understanding. Another dropped her vape and didn’t stop to pick it up.
He stepped through the doors as someone got kicked through them.
And the club’s interior was utter chaos. Tables overturned. Chairs scattered like ribs. Strobing emergency lights painted the walls in crimson pulses. The noctylis vines were awake now, twitching high above with agitated tendrils, trying to interpret the scene.
At its center?
Lung, bare-chested and snarling. Claws flexed. Tail like a whip.
Thorne, wings high, chest heaving, tail braced, stone-gray and glowing at the joints.
The air between themhummedwith murder.
Ellum stood back, a war hammer resting on his shoulder like hewas tryingto look casual but failing. Cassia was behind him, arms crossed, a single snake poking out from under her wrap like a scout. Aceon lounged against a table, legs tensed, ready tospring if anyone came through a back door—and he noticed Xen first.
“What the fuck?”
Everyone turned.
Ellum’s hand tightened on his hammer. Cassia’s snakes lifted in surprised unison beneath her hair wrap. Aceon straightened, eyes narrowing, the muscles in his calves coiling.
Lung spared him a glance, bared his teeth, but didn’t move.
Even Thorne paused—wings still high, chest still heaving—but there was a flicker behind his eyes now.
Not recognition.
Fear.
Because none of them had ever seen him.
The matte-black armor.
The faceless helm.
The thing that wore the shape of a man but definitely was not one.
“What the fuck?” Aceon said again, lower this time.
“I wish to fight,” Xen said.
The voice was low.
Not artificial—but not human.
Stripped of tone, butnotof meaning.
And then he tilted his head toward Thorne.
“The clanker,” he said, with calm precision, “wishes to fight.”
Thorne straightened. Scoffed. Tried to recover his authority like it hadn’t already shattered on contact.
“Look, I don’t know what this is, some new toy Royce made to?—”
He didn’t finish the sentence.
