It wasn’t the sound that froze me.
It was what happened next.
As it fell, its body convulsing violently against the churned earth, the darkness peeled away from it like smoke rising from an unseen hand. Thick, oily tendrils tore free from flesh that suddenly looked almost… ordinary. Human-shaped. Hollow. The shadow lifted, dissipating into the air with a sound like a dying breath, leaving behind nothing but a broken body that no longer fought or moved.
I stared for half a heartbeat too long.
This wasn’t corruption. It wasn’t allegiance.
It was possession.
Human and myth alike, reduced to vessels for something that did not care whether they lived once it was done with them.
Panic clawed sharp and sudden at my ribs.
I was not built for this. I did not have Atlas’s strength or Aster’s endurance or the cold certainty of a creature born for war. I was mortal in a way they were not, breakable in ways that left no room for recovery… for error. One mistake here would not mean darkness leaving my body.
It would mean nothing left at all.
A shadow fell over me, and steel flashed past my face.
The creature went down in a spray of dark blood, its body collapsing, boneless, at my feet as the last wisps of shadowtore free and vanished. I stumbled to a halt, chest heaving, and looked up to find Aster standing there, his sword already moving again as another enemy rushed him from behind.
He met it head-on, muscles bunching beneath his rippled clothes. The beginnings of his transformation rippled over his frame as horns curved and his silhouette grew broader, more imposing with every breath. The darkness recoiled from him instinctively, sliding away from his form like it recognized something it could not easily claim.
“Stay close!” he shouted over the din, voice rough and urgent. “And keep moving.”
I nodded, though my hands were shaking so badly I wasn’t sure he saw it. I stayed behind him as he cut a path forward, my world narrowing to his broad back and the brief pockets of safety he carved out with brutal efficiency. Each time something lunged too close, he was there, intercepting the blow, forcing it away from me with a ferocity that left no room for doubt.
A body crashed into me from the left, sending me sprawling. I hit the ground hard, the impact driving the breath from my lungs as pain flared through my shoulder and back. Hands clawed at my leg, fingers like iron digging into muscle, darkness writhing around the limb that held me.
I screamed and lashed out with my knife, striking again and again until the grip loosened. The body fell back, convulsed once, and the shadow tore free of it, evaporating into nothing as the host lay still.
My heart thundered so loudly I could hear it over the clash of weapons.
This was survival stripped bare, ugly, frantic, and nothing like the stories. There was no elegance to it, no heroic certainty. Just the relentless choice to get up again, to keep breathing, to move forward even when every instinct screamed to hide.
Aster grabbed my arm and hauled me upright. His eyes met mine for a split second, dark amber and fierce determination. Eyes burning with the same willpower that had carried us this far.
“We’re not dying here,” he said, not as a promise, but as a command.
I swallowed hard and nodded, tightening my grip on my knife as we pushed back into the smoke together, the war closing in around us once more.
The castle rose through the smoke like a pale mirage, its towers cutting sharp lines against a sky choked with darkness. Even wrapped in darkness, even under siege, it wasbreathtaking.The sight of it struck something deep in my chest, a sudden, painful swell of longing and resolve tangled so tightly I could not tell where one ended and the other began.
That was where he would be.
I pushed forward harder, staying close to Aster as the press of bodies thickened, as the air grew darker and heavier with whatever foul magic Demetrios had unleashed. Shadows clung to the ground here, curling around ankles, creeping up broken walls. Each step toward the castle felt earned, paid for in blood and sheer force of will.
“Atlas,”I whispered, his name torn from me without thought, without sound enough to carry through the chaos. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t hear me anyway. Still, saying it anchored me, reminded me why I was here. Why I kept moving when my legs shook, and my lungs screamed in protest.
For a fleeting, treacherous moment, my mind conjured an image of what this place could be without the war. Of standing on those pale steps leading to the grand entrance. Standing beside him with the weight of a crown settling where fear lived now. The thought was absurd, dangerous, and entirelyirresistible. Even still, hope flared recklessly in the middle of devastation.
I crushed it down just as quickly.
Survival came first. Reaching him came second.
Dreams could wait.
