They’re wearing the skull masks.Hollow-eyed death masks.
And in the middle—Raphael. The only black mask.
Bow strung. Arrow aimed. Atme.
And for a split second, my stomach turns to ice. Oh, god.
This is what he planned. This is why he let me run.
To hunt. To kill.
To destroy.
His eyes lock with mine—glinting under the mask—and in them I feel his black hell, cold and sharp, slicing through my chest like a blade, seeking my heart to devour.
I freeze, every instinct in my body screaming to move, but paralyzed in his gaze. For the second time, I stare into the abyss of the high god of hell.
“Stop,”he snarls, the sound carrying clean through the wind.
But I don’t. I can’t.
Turning and bolting, I claw and claw at the slope, mud and sharp rock shredding my palms with only one word hammering my head, my heart, my soul.
Run. Run. Run.
Something hisses past me, and a sudden, hot line burns across my upper arm. The arrow grazed me. His arrow.
“God—!”I screech through gritted teeth, gripping the torn flesh streaming blood. It’s like someone took a searing knife and dragged it across my skin.
“STOP.”
Another order. Another warning. Another chance?
How far will he go? He sees me turning my back and flipping him off. He’ll give up.Because I’m as worthless as this fucking hat, right?Ruined, rain-soaked, nothing but stubbornness and bad choices.
So, why can’t I take it off? Why can’t I give it up?
I scramble higher, muscles shaking, breath ragged, skin soaked and raw.
Another sharp hiss—and this time it hits.
White-hot agony explodes in my leg! My mouth opens in a silent scream.
A clean, brutal punch of pain, the arrow tearing through the outer muscle of my calf.Nota nick.Nota graze.
It pierces clean through me.
It feels like a red-hot rod shoved through flesh, heat bursting and then ice rushing in after it. The impact takes my leg out from under me.
“Ahhhhhhh!”I cry out, hoarse and torn, collapsing onto my hands and knees as the pain radiates like wildfire.
It burns. Itthrobs. It pulses like a living thing. Like lightning is crackling inside my leg.
Every heartbeat sends new shock waves through the muscle, like someone jamming a live wire into raw, exposed nerve endings.
I can feel the slickness of blood mixing with rain, sliding down my skin.
This pain isn’t hollow.
