Julius’s voice—hoarse, commanding—cut through the chaos like an axe strike.
"Zirel, move! The fissure!"
He didn’t wait for an answer. In a single, brutal motion, he hoisted Maggie up and slung her over his shoulder like a sack of grain, ignoring her muffled groan. Gentleness was a luxury they could no longer afford. Survival ca first. Zirel understood instantly—he drew his twin daggers and swept his gaze across the battlefield. Their eyes t for a second, a silent nod sealing the plan.
While Dylan—like a swarm of mad fireflies—and Elisa, pillar of sheer willpower, held Alka’s attention and her unleashed power, the two soldiers acted.
"Cover us!" barked Julius as he charged toward a gaping crack in the ground, torn open by the last psychic cataclysm. It was a risky shortcut, likely unstable—but it was their only way out.
Zirel beca a whirlwind of blades. He didn’t aim to kill, only to deny. A handful of shurikens pinned the cloaks of two guards who tried to approach. A precise kick sent rubble flying, raising a screen of dust. A poisoned dart—deflected with the flat of his dagger. He was everywhere at once, a swift parasite disrupting the battlefield so the giant could escape.
Julius slid down the steep slope of the fissure, his boots scraping loose soil. Maggie gritted her teeth to keep from crying out. Above, Zirel spun, dodged a burst of psychic fla that nearly struck Elisa, and leapt backward into the crevasse, vanishing into darkness.
Across the shattered clearing, Dylan saw everything through a narrowing tunnel. The pain in his stigma was a white fire, but he channeled it—turned it into fuel for his reflexes. He caught a glimpse of Julius disappearing below, and a fierce wave of relief surged through him. They’re gone.
"Elisa!" he shouted, deflecting a shard of black energy that nearly pierced him. "They’re safe!"
Elisa, her face twisted with strain, answered with a short nod. Her focus was absolute. Now that Maggie was out of reach, she could devote herself fully to keeping them alive. She reinforced her psychic barrier, reshaping it into a half-tangible do resisting Alka’s assault.
Realizing her hostage had escaped, Alka let out a guttural roar of rage. Her fury condensed into one direction—toward the two who still stood against her.
"I’ll make sure your deaths are slow," she thundered, as the energy around her condensed into a violet sphere of destruction.
Dylan and Elisa exchanged one last look. The rescue mission was a success.
Their own hell was only beginning.
———
Elisa’s world shrank to a storm of violet and a stabbing pain drilling through her temples. Every nerve, every fiber in her body strained to hold the psychic do—a bubble of pure will sizzling under Alka’s hamring blows. She could feel the Awakened’s fury like mallets pounding against her skull.
Don’t break. Breathe. Hold.
In her periphery, flashes of white—Dylan. He moved with a savage grace, a fluidity that had nothing to do with the rough soldier he once was. He’d beco a living blade, a storm within the storm. A detached part of her, cold and analytical, noted the deadly precision of his movent—the way he exploited each gap in Alka’s focus. Julius taught him well.
The thought was fleeting, suppressed. Admiration was a luxury. Distraction ant death.
"You’re holding on for him, aren’t you?" Alka’s voice wasn’t thunder now, but a serpentine whisper slipping through Elisa’s ntal defenses. "You think it’s strength? It’s only the rage of the beast I awakened in him."
Elisa clenched her jaw, ignoring the venom. She tightened the do, deflecting a corrosive wave that reeked of ozone and bitterness.
Then the attacks changed. While Dylan’s flashing strikes forced Alka’s physical defenses, she turned her assault inward—toward mory.
A vision crashed into Elisa’s mind—violent, fragrant: the sll of toasted bread and sandalwood, the warmth of her family ho, her mother’s gentle humming. A simple happiness she hadn’t allowed herself to feel in years. Nostalgia hit her gut like a fist, knocking the air from her lungs.
The do flickered.
"You fight for ghosts, Elisa," whispered the lying voice in her head. "Everything you fight for is already ash."
No. It’s a lure. She shook her head violently, banishing the mory like a buzzing fly. She anchored herself to the present—to the taste of mud, the cold of sleepless nights, the weight of duty. And beside her, a stubborn presence. Dylan.
She reopened her eyes, eting his for an instant. He was covered in soot and blood, eyes fever-bright, yet every move was precise, calculated. He wasn’t just a beast. He was a warrior.
That certainty beca her anchor.
Sensing her resistance, Alka shifted tactics again. This ti, not soft mories, but fear. A vision struck Elisa: Dylan’s eyes, turned to pits of obsidian; his stigmas crawling across his skin like black leprosy; his lips curling into a smile that wasn’t his own.
"That’s what he’ll beco!" Alka’s psychic voice scread. "And you’ll be there to watch! You’ll hold the hand of the monster you helped create!"
The terror was cold, visceral, paralyzing. It was her deepest fear—the one that woke her screaming in the night. Losing him.
But this ti, fear didn’t crush her. It ignited her.
"NO!" The cry tore from her throat and her mind at once.
She stopped defending. She attacked.
She drew not from mory, but from the imdiate now. She hurled at Alka the tremor under their feet, the tallic taste of charged air, the image of her guards fallen under Zirel’s daggers—and above all, Dylan’s image: not as a monster, but as lightning incarnate, untad, alive.
The strike wasn’t brute force—it was truth.
Alka’s violet sphere flickered. A crack in her composure.
Dylan saw the opening.
His dagger, bright as lightning, pierced through the weakened shield and plunged into Alka’s shoulder—where he’d struck before.
The roar of pain that followed was real. It shattered her focus. The psychic link snapped in a soundless scream.
Elisa collapsed to one knee, gasping, her skull buzzing. She had endured—not by denying weakness, but by burning through it. She looked up at Dylan, already repositioning, ready to strike again. No admiration. Only mutual recognition between two soldiers who had done their part.
The fight was far from over. But for the first ti, they had wounded Alka in her own domain. And Elisa now knew how to resist her: not through past or future—but through the raw, imperfect blade of the present.
Alka’s roar turned into a ragged, unhinged laugh. Blood dripped from her pierced shoulder, yet her obsidian eyes burned brighter, fiercer.
"Good... Very good..." she rasped. "You want to play with fire? Then let’s burn together."
The air around her crackled—not with psychic force, but sothing older, wilder. Dylan’s stigmas seared his skin, the pain so sharp he almost dropped his blade. The fissure—the one their allies had escaped through—began to glow with a sickening light.
Still kneeling, Elisa raised her hand—not to strike, but to reach for Dylan. The battle was lost; she felt it. They had bought ti, drawn blood, but Alka wasn’t defeated. She was feeding from sothing else—sothing bottomless.
"Dylan!" she cried, her voice raw, shredded by effort. It wasn’t an order but a plea. "We have to go! Now!"
He froze, muscles tense for one last attack, eyes locked on Alka with a hatred so pure it was almost tangible.
"No," he growled, the word short and hard as stone. "This is it. I can end it."
There was obsession in his gaze—sothing that chilled Elisa more than Alka’s power ever could. The beast’s thirst—to die for vengeance, or to kill for it.
"You see that light?" she insisted, pointing at the glowing fissure. "She’s lost control, Dylan! She’s releasing sothing. We can’t fight that. Not today."
As if to confirm it, Alka lifted her arms skyward. The ground itself groaned. Veins of violet light snaked across the earth, licking at her boots like serpents of lightning.
"You hear that, Dylan?" she scread, her laughter turning hysterical. "Your little girlfriend is scared! And she should be!"
The insult, the scorn, made Dylan’s muscles twitch. Elisa saw the war raging inside him—the soldier who knew when to retreat, and the wounded animal that wanted to bite, no matter the cost.
She staggered closer, ignoring the stabbing pain in her skull. She didn’t grab him. Didn’t try to restrain him. She simply stepped into his line of sight, breaking his aim.
"This isn’t running," she said, her voice low, steady, ant only for him. "It’s a retreat. She’s hurt. We’re spent. Co back stronger. Win when it matters."
Her green eyes—tired, burning—locked onto his. "Your revenge will be empty if you die getting it."
The ground quaked harder. A wall nearby collapsed in a cloud of dust. The fissure’s light beca blinding, and from it erged a spectral crawler—a creature of pure energy and hatred, dragging itself into the world.
Reality itself was telling them to leave.
Dylan looked at Elisa. Then the creature. Then Alka—triumphant, deranged, standing at the center of the chaos she had unleashed.
Sothing in his face cracked. The wild tension drained from his shoulders, replaced by a different weight—sothing deeper. Weariness.
He exhaled, low and hoarse, as the battlefield trembled around them.
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