Chapter 54
FIFTY-FOUR
ZRYNOK
The monster doesn’t feel pain.
I carve wounds that would kill any normal creature—that would kill me, if our positions were reversed—and it doesn’t slow. Doesn’t react. Just keeps coming, keeps regenerating, keeps trying to drag me into a twisted embrace that would mean transformation or death.
I’m bleeding from a dozen new wounds. The claws have found gaps in my armor, torn furrows in my flesh that burn with something worse than simple injury. Bloom essence, I realize. The thorns are injecting me with concentrated spores every time they connect.
The infection spreads faster with every scratch.
I can feel it climbing—past my arms, across my chest, reaching for my heart with terrible purpose. The tendrils beneath my skin are visible now, pulsing with crimson light that matches the flowers blooming from the monster’s body.
If I let it reach my heart, I’ll become like this thing. Another mindless weapon. Another flower-covered horror hunting survivors through the burning night.
I can’t let that happen.
But I can’t kill this creature either. Not with normal strength. Not with a notched sword and a body that’s failing me.
The monster lunges. I sidestep—too slow, exhaustion dragging at my limbs—and its claws rake across my ribs. More essence floods my bloodstream. The infection surges, climbing faster now, the tendrils racing toward my heart like they know how close they are to victory.
I have seconds. Maybe less.
And then I understand.
The Bloom wants me to surrender.
It wants me to let go, to stop fighting, to become what it’s making me. The infection feeds on desire—on want, on need, on the desperate hunger for something to fill the emptiness inside.
But desire can be directed. Want can be aimed.
And right now, I want this monster dead more than I’ve wanted anything in a lifetime of killing.
I stop fighting the infection.
Let the Bloom tendrils climb past my heart. Let them reach my arms, my hands, my muscles. Let the transformation begin—not complete, not surrendering, but using. Channeling. Taking the power the infection offers and directing it toward the only thing I want.
The creature’s death.
My blood ignites. Every muscle in my body burns with strength that doesn’t belong to me—borrowed power, stolen from the Bloom that’s trying to consume me.
I feel what complete transformation would be like: the absence of self, the surrender to want, the flowering that would make me this monster’s kin.
For one terrible moment, I almost let it happen.
Then I think of Arwen. Of her steady gaze and her strategic mind and the way she looked at me like I was worth saving. I think of the survivors we freed, the horror we destroyed, the future we promised to build from the ashes.
I want that future.
I want it more than the Bloom wants my surrender.
And that wanting—real wanting, chosen wanting, human wanting—is stronger than anything the infection can manufacture.
I charge.
The monster meets me halfway, claws extended, flower-covered body splitting open to reveal the mass of transformed tissue at its center. The concentration of Bloom essence that serves as its heart. The weakness I’ve been searching for through this entire impossible fight.
Normal blades can’t reach it. The layers of regenerating flesh, the armor of flowering tissue, the thorned defenses that have turned back every strike—they’re too thick, too fast, too powerful for steel alone.
But I’m not using steel alone anymore.
The borrowed strength burns through my arms. The infection’s power—turned against itself, aimed at the creature that tried to make me its kin—drives my blade forward with force that shatters the monster’s defenses.
I feel thorns pierce my hands as I grip the sword. Feel essence flood my bloodstream from a dozen new wounds. Feel the transformation trying to complete itself, trying to take me over, trying to turn me into another horror like the one I’m killing.
I don’t stop.
My sword punches through the flowering armor. Through the regenerating flesh. Through everything the Bloom has built to protect its creation.
And into the heart.
The monster screams. Not with vocal cords—it has none left—but with something deeper. Something that I feel through the infection in my blood, through the Bloom we share, through the link that transformation has created between us.
It screams, and it thrashes, and it tries to pull away.
I don’t let it.
I hold the sword in place. Press deeper. Feel my blade carve through the mass of flowering tissue that keeps this thing alive. My blood mingles with its ichor—red mixing with black, human mixing with transformed, two kinds of Bloom fighting for dominance.
The monster’s struggles weaken. Its claws, still embedded in my shoulders, loosen their grip. The flowers covering its body begin to wilt—crimson petals turning brown, stems going limp, the terrible beauty of transformation fading into decay.
It dies slowly. Horribly. Fighting until the very end, even though the fight was lost the moment my blade found its heart.
When it finally goes still, I let go of the sword.
The world tilts. The ground rushes up to meet me.
Everything goes dark.