Chapter 20 Kragna
KRAGNA
The world shudders when our fists connect—and again when they pull apart.
I haven’t felt that much force since the Drakken Wars, but this isn’t war. It’s hell mirrored in flesh and steel. Laertiez moves like a phantom with purpose. Each swing of his glass blade detaches a shard of sound from the air, makes the world stutter.
He’s faster than any human, faster than any monster I’ve ever known. His magic warps time, folding seconds in on themselves. I feel every strike thrum through me like bullets—bone snapping, ribs fracturing, obsidian armor cracking. I bleed black ichor wherever the steel finds me, but I don’t fall.
Because that’s not who I am.
My vision goes dark at the edges, trumpets of adrenaline crashing in my ears. I stagger back, tasting iron on my tongue that bleeds into sweat.
But I shift.
It starts as a rumble under my skin—deep and angry. My arms thicken, muscles knotting into bull’s bone. Fingers curl into hooves, horns grind from my skull. Horns like spiraled obsidian. Muscles thrash beneath skin that darkens to charcoal night. I inhale deep.
I’m a minotaur.
Laertiez falters, eyes wide for a sliver.
Then I roar.
The shockwave knocks guards back, dust exploding off walls. I charge him again, claws carved for tearing steel draped across flesh. My body contorts, shifts again mid-stride—as if the bones are refusing orders. I grow wings.
Wyvern wings—leather torn, bone spiking through flesh. They burst from my back, spanning wide as pitch. Air burns through them with every beat, ember-hot and alive.
I spin, claws or wingbones or both smashing into armor. Glass splinters. Flesh opens. I taste him, fear and blood and desperation.
He responds with crushing magic, sword swinging fast as moonlight, strikes that slow the air, distort reality. I stagger, wings buckling. One claw falls through cracked stone, I rear, flesh tearing.
Time bends again—my vision doubles, swords blur, bones melt.
I grow again—shoulders heaving, spine bulging, body outgrowing itself mid-fight.
The earth beneath us cracks. I feel every breath laertiez takes in the shifting space that only he can call slow down. I feel the result of bone and death and fight in my fingertips. I can hear Harriet hiss behind me, Bruce growl, Charen sweep overhead, but Laertiez and I are the storm’s eye.
He snarls, swinging both blades. I block with a wing, shards flake off. I strike with a hoofed fist. Time splinters. I hit with bone and blood. My roar echoes. I fight.
Lightning-lurching chaos. My mind fragments. I grapple with the shift ripping through me—horns burning, blood leaking, wings coated in char and ichor.
Laertiez hisses through teeth. “You can’t win!”
I snarl, “Watch me.”
He slashes. I block. I strike. He moves.
Time shivers. I die a thousand times on impact.
And still I stand.
I shift again, monster and man blurring to one shape.
The world quivers on the brink of storm.
We collapse in the eye of the storm. Laertiez staggers but doesn’t yet fall, adrenaline and dark steel somehow still fueling his movements. I’m reeling—oblivion tearing through my ribs where his blade gashed me—but River’s shot cracks through the chaos with a clarity that stops the world.
I feel the scorching pain in my chest, the wet warmth of my own blood. Every breath is a luxury ripped from the mouth of death. My vision caves in from one blade wound and one bullet’s finality. But my ears—my ears find River’s voice. That’s where I still stand.
“Guard your soul,” she whispers, ghosting through the smoke and rubble, voice trembling. She doesn’t pray, not for gods. She prays for love. For us. Then she fires. Magic thrums through the bullet—her sorrow, her rage, her hope.
Time fractures. Glass-sword meets bone-wound meets spitting bullet. I hear the high scream of metal against skull, the wet thud that means final. My lungs go slack. I’m suspended in black ache.
Laertiez collapses, shoulders buckling to stone. His armor clinks mute against the shattered ground. The battlefield – its gasps, its smoke, its clamoring horror – fades into silence as the magic in that bullet burns him from the inside out.
Skeela steps forward—bare hands slick with fresh blood—and hammers her blade through his throat. One, final whisper of steel. He gurgles. He’s dead. I don’t hear the smack. I feel the shudder of his collapse against my broken ribs, through my heart. And then the quiet falls like snow.
It’s not peace. It’s… something else.
Silence.
The knights of the night deploy wings, claws, scaled bodies, all shifting and tense. I’m still standing—or crouching—as the city’s heartbeat fades behind us. The fires sputter, reflect in battle-worn eyes.
I feel River’s hand on my bloody chest—cold against the ichor and iron. She gasps. I taste salt, sweat, and the taste of victory that almost doesn’t feel like one.
Skeela stands proud and savage, eyes glinting like war played in tight gold. She reaches out, voice low, fierce. “Together.”
Her knife still hovers over Laertiez's body—a slash of finality marking a wound that won’t heal.
We all feel the gravity. The city trembles. The dead hush their wails inside stone walls. Silence settles over Kyrdonis the way breath might settle on a grave.
My chest is open. My lungs ache. My heart roars. The world shudders.
But I’m alive.
I don’t know how I arrive at soil, only that I’m—somehow—cupped by Earth’s cold face, boots sinking into ash and broken stone.
The world spins with every heartbeat; the taste of victory is bitter, metallic, and heavy.
My blood blooms between River’s fingers, black-red and warm, painting her hands the color of twilight.
“Stay with me,” she cries, voice ragged and soaked with tears. I want to tell her I don’t plan on leaving her—not ever—but the words drown in wet lungs.
I feel her weight. She collapses on me, arms wrapped around my bleeding chest, dress torn, smeared with soot and freshly flowing ichor. She presses with desperate fingers, light as petals, hoping to staunch a storm from spilling. I don’t deserve this gentleness, but I take it anyway.
“Don’t die,” River whispers, forehead pressed against my shoulder, voice cracked. “I can’t lose you.”
I choke on blood, black and scent-rich. But I smirk—pain etched deep in every line. I cup her face with one trembling hand, fingertips cool and trembling on her cheek.
“Still think I’m not gonna eat you?” I rasp, voice rough as gravel and filled with heat.
She blinks, stunned, then laughter breaks from her—fractured but honest, leaking through sobs. It fills the battlefield air, a fragile defiance against the collapsing world.
I close my eyes, breath ragged. I taste her salty tears. I hear her heartbeat, steady in the ribs. The forest seems to exhale around us, as if holding its breath too.
And then—darkness finds me. My hand falls from her cheek. My body curls inwards. One last gasp, and I pass out.
I don’t know how long I’m in blackness.
When I come back, I’m barely here—skin like alchemy, chest tight, mind fractured. River’s voice crackles over me, urgent and broken.
“Shh—just wake. Please.”
Air is fire in my lungs. Everything around me tastes like spent gunpowder and woodsmoke turned atonement. I open one eye. River is above me, her eyes red and shining, hands trembling as they press cloth to my wound.
I want to mouth the words—I love you, I'm still here, just come home—but instead a groan escapes, wet and ragged.
“Finally,” she hisses, smiling through tears.
The monsters form a ring of quiet vigil—Harriet’s heads drooped, Bruce dozing, Veeto pacing with something like tears in his eyes, Charen flitting dead air. They’re tattered, bleeding, but damned proud.
The battlefield around us is a skeleton of history, fires guttering like old regrets. But the living around me... I let myself feel it.
Victory has a name. And it's her.
River leans closer. I smell blood, sweat, moonlight on her breath.
“You hear me promise?” she says. “No more martyrs.”
I nod, voice weak, smile crooked. “Next time... I eat the victory first.”
She laughs—soft and broken.
We stay like that—touching, tiny breaths shared between us—as the world turns around.
We’ve bought ourselves a chance. And that’s enough to fight another day.