But the partial shift? That I can allow.
My vision sharpens, colors bleeding toward the infrared as the dragon’s senses overlay my human ones.
Now kill.
I catch an ice-spear mid-thrust with my clawed hand and shatter the sentinel’s arm. It tries to reform—I interrupt. Fragments scatter. The sentinel crumbles.
Two more converge on my left flank. I pivot, letting the first one’s blade slide past my shoulder close enough to part the fabric of my coat. My elbow drives into its torso with enough force to crater the divine ice. My follow-through—claws extended, scales spreading up my forearm—tears its head free.
It dies trying to rebuild itself.
The third catches me across the ribs with an axe-strike I don’t quite avoid. The blade bites through leather, parts skin, scrapes bone. Pain flares white-hot and then compresses into manageable background noise.
I’ve taken worse. I grab the axe-haft and use it to pull the sentinel closer. My forehead connects with its face—or what passes for one. The ice shatters. I keep hitting until there’s nothing left to reform.
Blood runs down my side. Secondary. Three sentinels remain.
They’ve adapted. No longer charging blindly. They circle now, ice weapons raised, waiting for an opening. Smart. The Arbiter didn’t send idiots.
I don’t give them the opening.
I press forward, forcing them to react rather than act. The first one parries my strike—or tries to. My power interrupts its defensive magic, and my claws tear through the ice it raised as a shield. The sentinel’s torso collapses.
The second drives a spear at my spine. I twist, taking the thrust along my shoulder instead of through my lung. More pain. More blood. The cost of keeping what’s behind me caged instead of giving myself room to maneuver.
The cost of keepingher.
FOUR
TYR
The thought surfaces unbidden. I channel the irritation it causes into violence. The spear-wielding sentinel dies with my hand through its torso, claws wrapped around the frozen core of magic that animates it. I crush that core like an eggshell.
One left.
It doesn’t run. Can’t—the Arbiter’s creations don’t know fear. Ice-blade arcing toward my throat.
I catch the blade with my bare hand. The edge bites deep, parting flesh to bone. Blood wells between my fingers. The sentinel tries to pull back, to reform its weapon, to find an outcome where it survives.
I deny it every option.
My free hand closes around its throat. I lift it off the ground—seven feet of divine ice weighing nothing against dragon-born strength—and I squeeze.
The sentinel shatters.
Silence falls over the street. My breathing’s the loudest thing remaining—harsh, steadying toward normal with each exhale. My wounds throb in time with my pulse. The blood loss is significant but not critical. I’ve functioned with worse.
The scales on my hands recede slowly, claws retracting back into normal fingernails. The shift always takes longer to reverse when my blood is up. When my dragon doesn’t want to let go. It wants to stay surfaced, stay ready, stay prepared to tear apart anything else that threatens?—
Her?
The question surfaces unbidden. I know the answer. I don’t want to examine it.
Around me, ice fragments glitter in the fading light. Six sentinels reduced to shards. Six divine soldiers that won’t rise again.
A victory. Small, but meaningful.
Behind me, I hear Zephyra’s breathing—steady. She didn’t run. Didn’t panic. Didn’t try to help in ways that would have gotten her killed. She stayed where I put her and let me work.
