Not metaphorical.
Not eventual.
True death.
The kind I haven’t stood this close to since the night I was dragged screaming into darkness.
I shift my weight, searching for an opening, but the battlefield is wrong. Not just because of Viktor, but because of what hangs over all of us.
Thanatos.
His power presses down, an invisible fist clenched around the entire MC. I feel it even through the madness, a cold, absolute restraint locking every one of my brothers in place. Monsters brought to a standstill by a god who doesn’t need chains to bind us. Dragonfire stalls mid-breath. Lycan muscles bunch and freeze. Necromantic energy sputters and dies in half-formed spells.
And Sloane? The Heart Bind thrums painfully as her struggle crashes into me. She’s fighting it, fightinghim.I sense her magic surging, battering against the restraint, a storm trying to tear free of a sealed sky. Fear claws through me sharper than Viktor’s blade ever could. Because if she breaks through this, if she reaches for Lilith, that’sexactlywhat they want.
I try to counterattack anyway, pouring everything I have into motion. Speed combinations that should be impossible to follow. False strikes meant to draw a reaction, tiny shifts, flinches, instinctive defenses, so I can tear into the opening they leave behind. Strike patterns stolen from wars so old their names were erased from history, and techniques honed over millennia, perfected in blood and darkness.
None of it matters.
Viktor moves like someone who’s been waiting his entire existence for this moment. He doesn’t just keep up with me,he’s ahead of me, his blade already there, already cutting off every path I consider. He forces me backward with relentless precision, shepherding me into narrower and narrower defensive angles, herding me like prey.
And all the while, beneath the clash of steel and the roar of magic I can’t reach, I feel Sloane pushing harder, her power rising in response to my danger.
Lilith stirs.
And terror grips me, not for myself, but for what will happen if Sloane loses control trying to save me.
Another cut tears across my ribs, and this one steals what passes for my breath, the pain sharp enough to make my vision stutter. Then my shoulder opens, fire ripping through muscle and bone, my arm going heavy, unresponsive for a heartbeat that shouldn’t exist. My thigh follows, the blade biting deep, and my leg nearly buckles beneath me as weakness floods in, unfamiliar and terrifying.
Each wound doesn’t just hurt, it burns, branded with that same vicious mortality, bleeding real blood that pours too freely, too fast. Strength bleeds out with it. Control frays. My body reacts the way it hasn’t since I was human—clumsy, vulnerable—and screaming in ways I forgot were possible.
This isn’t injury.
It’s degradation.
A forced remembering of what it meant to be breakable.
“You’re wondering why you can’t beat me,” Viktor growls, his breathing barely elevated despite the intensity of our exchange. “Why someone you created, someone who should be inferior in every way, is carving you apart without effort…”
He’s not wrong. Through the haze of pain and rapidly mounting blood loss, confusion mingles with the desperate need to survive. I’ve fought thousands of battles. Faced opponentswho should have killed me. Survived through skill, power, and the absolute certainty that I was the apex predator.
But now?
Now I’m mortal enough to bleed.
Weakened enough to be killed.
And facing an enemy who knows every technique I might use because I’m the one whotaughthim.
“Thanatos has been training me,” Viktor continues, circling as I struggle to maintain my defensive stance. Blood soaks through my leather vest, drips onto the asphalt, and pools around my boots. “For three years. Every night, learning to counter your fighting style. Learning your patterns. Your preferences. Yourweaknesses.”
He strikes again, and this time I’m too slow.
The blade punches through my chest, missing my heart by inches, and the pain that detonates inside me steals the world out from under my feet. Not because it’s sharper than anything I’ve ever endured, but because it’s real.Mortal.The kind of agony that carries consequence with it. The kind that whispers,this matters, this can end you, this is how you die.
My body stumbles back on instinct alone. My hand slams against the wound, fingers slick instantly, blood pumping between them in a rhythm that doesn’t belong to me but still echoes inside my skull, each beat borrowed from Sloane’s heart through the Bind.
Then a sound tears through me harder than the blade ever could. Raw, broken, furious terror ripped straight from Sloane’s chest as she feels the strike land, as she feels the blood spilling, as she understands exactly how close I came to dying. Her power answers that scream immediately.
