Chapter 16 Kragna
KRAGNA
The bells behind us haven’t stopped ringing. Not the church bells—those are long dead. These are the kind they sound for war.
I can feel River’s heart pounding through the grip of her hand. Can smell her fear—not the sharp, panicked kind. This is old fear, soaked into her bones like smoke in cloth. But she’s running anyway, not looking back. That’s the difference between prey and survivor. She doesn’t freeze. She burns.
We sprint through the market ward, weaving past shuttered stalls and overturned carts, the stink of fish and tar thick in my nose. Something metallic rides the air too—blood and steel. The guards are hunting already. Dogs, maybe. I hear boots on cobblestone. Shouts in the distance.
“Where—” she pants, “—are we going?”
“Out,” I growl. “Fast.”
But the city’s throwing everything it has at us.
The outer districts aren’t like the heart of Kyrdonis. They're meaner, poorer, uglier. Here, buildings lean like drunks, and rooftops sag under rot and age. No lights in the windows. Just shadows. Old bones.
I haul her with me through an alley so narrow we brush walls on either side. My shoulder clips brick, cracks it. I can feel the change already prickling under my skin—my blood’s hot, rushing, hungry. It wants out.
We come out on a smith’s lane, and that’s when I see them—three scouts in red-black livery, moving like they’ve trained for this. City guard. But not the usual ones. These wear symbols I don’t like. Personal sigils. Private blades.
Laertiez’s bastards.
I shove River behind a barrel of scrap metal.
“Stay down.”
“Kragna—”
“Now.”
I step into the open, slow and loose, like a drunk looking for a fight. They raise their crossbows.
Too late.
I let it out.
The shift rolls over me like fire through oil—fast, violent, complete.
My skin darkens to obsidian. Not just black, but lightless.
My bones twist and bulk beneath muscle, punching through skin in jagged plates.
My hands grow claws, my back knots with layered ridges.
My face stretches, mouth baring fangs meant to rip plate armor. I don’t scream.
I roar.
It tears the silence apart.
They flinch. That’s all I need.
The first bolt glances off my shoulder, barely scratching the surface.
I leap, land hard enough to crack the stones.
My fist smashes into one of them—he goes down without a sound, jaw caved in.
Another tries to run. I rake claws down his back and leave his spine showing.
The last one—he’s young, too young—drops his weapon and bolts.
I let him go.
One scream in the night will carry just as far as three corpses.
“River!” I bark.
She’s already up, running toward me. Her eyes flick over the bodies but she doesn’t freeze. Just grabs my arm and pulls.
“More coming,” she says. “We’ve got to move.”
We take the rooftops.
I throw her up first—she scrambles, then offers her hand. I leap, land beside her. The tiles groan under my weight but hold. Barely.
From here, the city’s a jagged maze of smoke and moonlight. Every roof is a risk, every leap a gamble. But it’s better than street level. Up here, I’ve got room to move. Room to be what I am.
I grab her again and run.
She’s light—too light. Her frame presses against mine, and all I can feel is heat and motion and the thump of her pulse. I jump across a narrow gap. She gasps. I land, roll, keep going. Another leap, a broken chimney, a rooftop skylight that shatters under my heel. Doesn’t matter. We’re flying.
Arrows whistle past us. One grazes her hood. I snarl, pivot, fling a broken tile down at the archer—it hits him square in the head. He drops.
I don’t stop.
River’s laughing now. Wild and breathless.
“You’re insane!” she yells.
“Probably!”
“Your arms—what the fuck is that?”
“Upgrades!”
Another barricade ahead—a pair of guards braced at a rooftop bridge, blades drawn. They block the only path to the outer gate’s perimeter wall.
River starts to slow.
I don’t.
I barrel into them like a battering ram. One goes flying off the edge with a scream. The other slashes at my chest. Sparks fly. His blade shatters on the plates across my ribs.
I grab his throat and toss him through a window.
River climbs over the bridge behind me, panting, coughing on dust.
“You always this charming on dates?” she says.
“Only with girls who stab nobles,” I grin.
She snorts, wipes blood off her cheek, and follows.
The last stretch is the hardest.
A wall, twenty feet high. Iron gate locked from the inside. Guards posted. Spotlights sweeping.
Too many eyes. Too much noise.
We duck low beneath a tanner’s awning. I watch the rhythm of the lights. I count the steps of the guards.
Then I pull her close.
“I’m gonna make us a door.”
She blinks. “What?”
“Don’t stop running, whatever you do.”
“Kragna—what do you mean—”
But I’m already moving.
The shift deepens. Plates over my arms thicken, fusing into solid shields. My knuckles crack, claws lengthen. I charge the wall like a charging bull. No finesse. Just brute, monstrous force.
I hit the gate with everything I have.
It holds. For half a second.
Then it shatters inward.
The sound is thunder. Steel rips like paper. Bricks explode. One guard screams as he’s thrown back ten feet. Another opens fire—too late. I backhand him into the stone.
River sprints past me.
“Go!” I shout.
She grabs my wrist, hauls me behind her. We run through the breach, out into the dark fields beyond.
Behind us, horns blow.
But ahead—trees.
Moonlight on leaves.
Freedom.
And for the first time in years, I don’t feel like a weapon.
I feel like something worse.
I feel like myself.
The trees rise like teeth, jagged and ancient, cutting the moonlight into slivers. I don’t slow down. River clings to me with arms tight around my neck, her breathing shallow, lips pressed into my collarbone. I can smell the blood before I feel it soaking through her cloak.
“What hit you?” I growl, the rage already buzzing in my jaw.
“Arrow,” she says, barely more than a whisper. “Back there. I didn’t want to slow you down.”
“Where?”
“My thigh.”
“Shit.”
I slide to a stop just past the treeline, easing her down onto a moss-covered rock.
The smell hits me full force now—iron and something sweeter, wronger.
Poison. I snarl low in my chest, peel her cloak away, and see the shaft sticking out just above her knee.
Black wood. Barbed tip. Glint of dark green along the metal.
Laertiez’s fucking poisoners.
River’s pale, but her eyes are sharp. “Just pull it out,” she says through clenched teeth.
“You’ll bleed out.”
“Kragna. Now.”
I brace one hand above the wound, grip the arrow with the other, and yank.
She screams, fist slamming into the ground hard enough to leave a crater. Blood wells up fast, thick and dark. But the worst part’s the stink of it—sweet and sharp and wrong.
“Fuck,” I mutter. “It’s envenomed.”
“No shit,” she gasps, sweat beading along her hairline. “Just cauterize it.”
“Not enough. It'll spread. I need to draw it out.”
“You’re not—”
“I am.”
I dip my head before she can argue more, press my lips to the wound, and suck.
It’s bitter. Wrong. The taste coats my tongue like rotting fruit mixed with copper and death. I spit blood, black and oily, onto the dirt. Do it again. Again. Her thigh twitches under my hands, and she hisses through her teeth.
“Fuck, Kragna, that’s not—”
“Quiet.”
Another mouthful. Another spit. I feel the venom scraping against my gums like shards of glass. My stomach twists. My vision blurs for a moment. My blood doesn’t like this shit.
I ignore it.
“You’re gonna poison yourself,” she breathes.
“Worth it.”
The last draw burns worse than the rest. My fangs ache. I spit it out and slump back onto my haunches, panting, sweating, tongue thick and useless in my mouth.
River’s pale but still conscious.
“You good?” I rasp.
She nods slowly. “For now.”
“Good. Because we’re not alone.”
I feel them before I hear them—shifts in the air, the press of ancient instincts buzzing under my skin. I lift my head and call.
Not with words. Not with voice.
With memory.
With bond.
First, the ground trembles.
Then a shape lumbers out from behind the trees. Massive. Hulking. Covered in moss, scars, and scales. Bruce. My favorite dino-beast. One of his tusks is chipped, his eyes half-lidded like he’s just woken from a nap he didn’t consent to.
“Yo,” he rumbles. “You bleed loud.”
“Missed you too,” I say, forcing a grin.
Next comes a hiss like gas escaping a pipe, and a ripple of fog slithers through the trees. Harriet slinks out, all scales and necks—six of them tonight, coiled and twitching. Her breath smells like rotten eggs and death. One of her heads sneezes, and the moss around her sizzles.
“Did someone poison the girl?” she asks, too sweet.
“I handled it.”
“Pity. I love a good corpse.”
Then, as always, last and loudest—
Charen crashes through the canopy, wings wide and glinting, body curled like a drunken serpent. She lands hard, then stumbles upright with a cackle.
“Someone call for the cavalry?” she croons, grinning with far too many teeth. His eyes are wild, his breath thick with the stench of fermented fruit and maybe fire.
“Keep it down,” I grunt. “We’re being hunted.”
“Even better,” she purrs.
They circle up, monstrous and beautiful, forming a wide perimeter around us. Old friends. Pack. Family.
River tries to sit up, wincing.
“I thought you said they didn’t answer calls lightly,” she says.
“They don’t,” I reply.
I kneel beside her, pull a cloth from my pack and start cleaning her wound. Her skin is fever-warm. Her eyes are glassy, but locked on mine.
“You’re insane,” she says.
“Been told.”
“You could’ve died.”
“Been told that, too.”
“You’re not even human.”
“Nope.”
There’s a beat of silence, broken only by Bruce crunching something with too many bones.
“Thank you,” she says softly.
I look up. Her lips are chapped. There’s dirt smeared across her jaw. Her gown’s torn. Her hair’s a mess.
She’s never looked more like herself.
I wrap the wound, not tight enough to cut off blood, but snug enough to stop it leaking. Then I pull my cloak off and drape it over her shoulders.
“You’ll live,” I murmur.
“Because you almost didn’t.”
I shrug, but inside, my blood’s still howling. Not from pain. From power. The fight. The shift. The call.
This… this is what I was made for.
And it terrifies me.
Because I liked it.
River’s fingers graze mine.
“We’re not safe,” she says.
“Nope.”
“But we’re together.”
“Yeah.”
She closes her eyes, and I let myself breathe.
She fades in and out like a candle in a wind tunnel.
One minute her eyes are slitting open, cloudy with pain and fever, lips cracked and whispering my name like it’s the only anchor she’s got. The next, she’s gone again—head lolling against my chest, breath shallow, too damn light to hear unless I lean in close.
I sit on the forest floor with her curled in my lap, arms wrapped around her like a shield.
The others have taken watch—Charen somewhere in the treetops, snoring between mouthfuls of moonlight.
Bruce’s massive form slumped near the ridge, his tail twitching every time something rustles.
Harriet’s coils stretch through the ferns, six heads dozing like cats with one eye open.
Me?
I can’t sleep.
Won’t.
Her blood’s still warm, but it’s thinner than it should be. Poison has a rhythm. A cruel one. It eats in waves—pain, nausea, cold sweat, then nothing. Then pain again. Then worse.
I’ve fought monsters, gods, things with too many legs and teeth.
None of them scare me like this.
I stroke her hair back from her face with fingers that feel too big, too clumsy for something this soft. It’s damp with fever sweat. Strands stick to her temples. Her skin burns under my touch, and every instinct in me screams to fix it, to fight it, to tear something apart and make it right.
But there’s nothing to kill.
Just time.
Just waiting.
So I do what my mother used to do, back when I was small enough to fit in a crook of her arm. Back before the world taught me that softness was weakness and quiet was dangerous.
I hum.
It’s low, off-key, rough from disuse. But the tune’s old. Older than me. A lullaby from the caves. Troll mothers sang it in guttural tones, slow and deep, like the earth whispering to itself in the dark.
River stirs.
Her fingers twitch in mine. Her breath catches.
Then… a sigh.
I don’t stop.
I hum another verse, mouth close to her temple, thumb tracing lazy circles over her knuckles. Her hand’s so small in mine. It always has been, but now… it feels fragile.
I hate that.
I’d take the arrow if I could. I’d rip out my own thigh and shove it into hers if it’d keep her breathing easy.
I’ve never felt like this.
Not for anyone.
Not even my own blood.
The fire’s low, embers crackling in lazy pulses. I feed it a few sticks, careful not to wake her. The glow paints her skin in shades of bronze and copper. Even sick, even wrecked, she’s still the most defiant thing I’ve ever seen.
Still herself.
Still fighting.
“You’re not allowed to die,” I murmur, barely audible. “You hear me?”
Her head shifts slightly, like she’s listening from somewhere far off.
“If you do,” I say, “I’ll burn that city to the fucking ground.”
My voice cracks.
Not loud. Not enough for the trees to notice. But enough for me to taste it.
The edge.
The fear.
I press my forehead to hers, jaw clenched.
“You’re not allowed to leave me,” I whisper.
A few feet away, Harriet exhales a puff of gas that wilts a sapling.
“She’s strong,” she says. “Too stubborn to die.”
“Shut up, snake,” I growl without looking.
She chuckles. Three of her heads do, anyway.
Charen snorts from the trees. “He’s all moony and tragic now,” he sings. “How romantic.”
I bare my teeth at the canopy. “I’ll gut you.”
“Promises, promises.”
River moans softly, tugging my attention back. Her lashes flutter. Her mouth parts.
“Kragna…” she breathes.
“Here.”
I brush her cheek.
She doesn’t wake.
But she leans into my touch.
And gods help me, that does something to my chest I don’t have words for.
I keep singing.
Another verse. Then another. Then I just sit, rocking her slightly like she’s a child and not the woman who stole my heart with a knife in one hand and a glare in the other.
I don’t count the hours.
But I feel every damn second.
When the sky starts to pale at the edges, and the trees turn from black silhouettes to silver shadows, I realize I haven’t blinked in a while. My body’s stiff, muscles locked from holding her so long, but I don’t care.