Chapter Twenty-Four #2
This time, I feel something in him give before the concrete does. His body buckles under the impact, whatever structure was holding him together starting to fail, but I don’t let it end there.
Because these things don’t stay down, not unless you make sure.
My hand releases his wrist and drives forward in the same motion, punching straight through his chest with enough force to tear through muscle and bone like it isn’t there.
There’s resistance, there is always resistance, but I wrap my fingers around his heart.
It gives fast, splitting open under the pressure as my hand closes around something that still beats too hard, too fast, too alive.
Why is his heart beating at all?
His eyes widen, his mouth gasping with pain as it ripples through him—a slow understanding of what comes next seeping through his eyes.
Then, I rip it free.
The motion is brutal, final, tearing his heart out of him in a spray of dark blood that hits the already broken concrete in heavy bursts. The rogue’s body jerks once, violently, whatever is left of the fight in him cutting out mid-motion as the connection severs completely.
I hold it in my palm for half a second, feeling its last stutter.
Then I drop it to the ground like a lifeless scrap.
The body collapses.
And I’m already turning…
Because behind him, everything keeps moving.
The station doesn’t descend into chaos. It detonates.
I pivot left as another rogue crashes into my shoulder.
I take the hit and turn with it, using its momentum instead of fighting it, dragging the body through the motion and slamming its skull into a concrete pillar hard enough to crack bone on impact.
It drops, but I don’t watch it fall. I’m already moving, already shifting toward the next threat before the first has even started to deflate, my body running on centuries of violence compressed into instinct.
There is no thought in it anymore. There is only motion, and the damage that follows it.
Cali is already moving. Three feet to my right, she moves like she saw this before it happened, driving her blade into the chest of the first rogue in her path and pivoting on the same planted foot without breaking rhythm, her elbow snapping into the jaw of another that closes from her flank.
She doesn’t reset between strikes. She flows through them, chaining one movement into the next with ruthless efficiency, her focus never splitting even as the fight tries to pull her in three different directions at once.
She doesn’t fight like someone trained.
She fights like someone built for it.
“Maul!” I call it across the platform as the second wave folds in, and I catch the shift in pressure at Roxy’s right flank, two rogues closing in with just enough coordination to be a problem.
He’s already moving before the sound reaches him.
The change rips through him fast and violent, bone and muscle rearranging under skin that tears through fabric like it doesn’t matter, like nothing about this form matters except what it can do.
Then there’s two hundred and forty pounds of werewolf slamming into the line at Roxy’s side, the impact sending rogues scattering in every direction, bodies colliding, footing lost, formation breaking under the raw force.
Thorn’s arms extend slowly, and the ground answers him like it’s been waiting for the command.
Concrete splits with a deep, grinding crack that rolls through the station floor, the sound thick and structural, like something foundational giving way under pressure it can’t hold.
Roots punch through the surface in violent bursts, tearing up through tile and steel as if none of it offers resistance at all.
They spread fast once they’re through, branching outward in snapping, whipping lines that coil around rogue ankles, legs, torsos, locking on with a grip that bites deep and doesn’t slip.
Rogues are yanked off their feet, slammed into the ground hard enough to knock a breathless sound out of them… and then the screaming starts.
Not mindless.
Not empty.
Sharp and panicked.
They thrash against the hold, bodies twisting, clawing at the roots wrapped around them, nails tearing, muscles straining as they try to rip themselves free. The enhanced strength in them shows for a second and roots flex, shifting under the force of it, but it doesn’t last.
The roots tighten in response, adjusting, correcting, pulling harder, dragging limbs wider apart as the rogues fight against them.
The resistance only makes it worse, tension building through their bodies while the hold becomes absolute, something that doesn’t get tired, doesn’t lose grip, doesn’t care how hard they fight back.
There’s a moment where it peaks.
Where everything strains against everything else.
The roots, bodies, and the force holding them in place.
The sound shifts, from screaming… to breaking.
Ligaments snap first, followed by the deeper, heavier crack of bone giving way under pressure that doesn’t release. The thrashing turns frantic and desperate, movements losing coordination as bodies stop responding as they should, while control slips and panic takes over completely.
Thorn closes his hands.
The roots respond instantly.
They constrict, twist, pull in opposing directions, and tear.
The screams cut off mid-sound as bodies give way under the force of it, ripped apart in a brutal, final motion that leaves the station echoing with the aftermath.
Blood hits the broken concrete in heavy bursts, spreading fast between the roots that still hold what’s left in place, pinning it there like the fight hasn’t quite decided it’s finished yet.
Thorn doesn’t move from where he stands.
He doesn’t need to.
The fight comes to him, and nothing that does leaves whole.
“Ruckus!” The shout comes from somewhere to my left, buried in the noise of impact and movement, but he’s already there.
A rogue swings and misses by inches, but it shouldn’t have missed.
Another turns at the mistaken moment, loses footing on level ground, and hesitates just long enough for someone else to end it.
Ruckus walks through it all like he’s not even part of the fight, hands still in his coat pockets, expression untouched, while around him reality bends just slightly off-center for everyone who isn’t us.
Coil threads through the gaps like something that was never meant to have bones, his movement fluid and cold, appearing at throats, flanks, and blind spots before the rogues even register he’s there.
His bite lands quick and precise, venom hitting the bloodstream before resistance can form, shutting them down from the inside out as their bodies fail in real time.
And Wreck doesn’t move around the fight so much as step into it, his pace unhurried, his weight settling into each step with the certainty of something that has never needed to rush anything in its existence.
There’s no tension in him, no build-up, no visible shift that warns what’s coming next, and that’s the first thing that feels off, because everything else in this room is noise, violence, and motion, and he is none of those things.
The first rogue comes at him at full speed, claws out, body already committed to the strike, and he falters.
It isn’t physical at first.
There’s no impact, no block, no visible interference.
Something hits it before Wreck ever does.
I see it in the way its body locks mid-stride, momentum breaking as though something inside it has seized control away from whatever Mordain built into it.
Its foot comes down too heavy, too slow, and for a split second, it just stands there, caught between movement and stillness like it doesn’t know which one it’s supposed to choose.
Then the fear hits.
Not the kind that makes something run.
The kind that roots it in place.
The rogue’s shoulders tighten, its spine locking as whatever Wreck is pushing into the space between them presses deeper, bypassing instinct and training, digging into something older than either of those things.
Its head jerks once, like it’s trying to shake something off, and then its knees buckle from the simple inability to remain standing under whatever it’s being made to feel.
It drops.
Hard.
Hands hitting the cracked concrete, claws scraping uselessly as it tries to push itself back up and can’t. Its breathing turns ragged, the sound sharp and broken as it starts to understand, on some level, that it’s not fighting something it can reach.
Around it, the others begin to feel it too.
The pressure spreads outward from Wreck in a slow, suffocating wave, threading through the space and settling into every rogue it touches. One stumbles mid-strike, another jerks back from an attack it hasn’t even taken yet, and then the pattern repeats.
Knees hitting the ground.
Bodies locking up.
Control slipping.
The screaming starts next.
Not rage.
Not aggression.
But fear.
Raw and unfiltered, dragged out of them in sounds that don’t match the things they have been up until now.
One of them claws at its own throat like it’s trying to rip something out, another shakes its head violently, eyes wide, teeth bared in something that isn’t a snarl anymore but a panicked reaction to something it can’t escape.
Wreck keeps walking.
He doesn’t speed up.
He doesn’t need to.
Because whatever he’s showing them is already doing the work for him.
I don’t see it the way they do, but I feel the edges of it.
A cold that doesn’t belong to temperature, something vast and empty pressing just outside of perception, the sense of being watched by something that doesn’t see you as a threat, or even an opponent, just… something that will eventually be gone.
The rogues see more.
Their reactions tell me that much.
They are not just afraid.
They are breaking.