Chapter Twenty-Four #3
One of them starts pleading, the words slurring, like the rogue’s mouth can’t keep up with the panic driving them out. Another tries to crawl backward, hands slipping in blood and dust as it drags itself away from something that isn’t physically touching it, yet still can’t create distance.
Wreck tilts his head slightly as he reaches the first one, like he’s listening to something only he can hear, and he is deciding which of them ends first.
Then his jaw shifts. Bone pushes forward beneath skin, structure reshaping with a low, grinding tension as his mouth widens beyond what it should, teeth lengthening into something massive and uneven, built to tear rather than bite.
The rogue beneath him doesn’t even try to fight anymore. It just stares up at him, frozen and shaking. Whatever it sees reflected in its eyes, it turns it into something that doesn’t remember how to move.
Wreck’s hand closes around the back of its skull, steady, controlled, holding it in place, and then he leans down. The bite lands high on the neck, and for a single second, there is resistance, a brief, futile tension as flesh and bone try to hold, then it gives.
The sound is sharp and final, bone snapping clean as his teeth tear through, separating head from body in one violent motion that sends blood arcing out in a wide, heavy spray. The body drops immediately, collapsing where it kneels as though whatever was holding it upright has simply been removed.
Wreck straightens slowly, releasing what’s left without looking at it.
Another rogue is already on its knees in front of him… screaming and shaking, begging for something that doesn’t exist here.
Wreck steps forward.
And the fight doesn’t reach him anymore.
It ends when it gets close.
The rogue comes out of the stairwell on Ruckus’ blind side, and I know before it fully clears the shadow that this one is different.
It is bigger and faster. Its pupils are blown black, its movement carrying that unstable, stuttering edge of something running beyond what its body should be able to sustain.
Ruckus doesn’t adjust in time.
The hit lands clean and hard.
He goes down with a sound that doesn’t belong in a fight like this, and he doesn’t get back up.
“Ruckus!” I scream out, but Flux is already there.
He shifts mid-run, his body folding into something broader, built for impact, and slams himself between the rogue and Ruckus’ body with a commitment that doesn’t hesitate, doesn’t calculate, just acts.
Then suddenly, Hellfire tears across the platform from the left tunnel entrance, orange-black flame consuming everything in its path, and before the rogue can even react, a column of white-hot divine light crashes in from the right, the two forces colliding on the same target in a way that shouldn’t be possible, and reducing the rogue to nothing.
I turn to see Rhett and Bennett standing at the tunnel entrance as though they belong there, shoulder to shoulder, moving in sync without looking at each other, each covering the space the other leaves open without needing to be told.
They are NOT supposed to be here.
“Left!” Rhett shouts.
“I see it!” Bennett is already moving, wings snapping out to intercept a rogue mid-lunge.
Another rogue goes for Ruckus, and both of them hit it at the same time.
Hell’s shadow slams it down.
Heavenly light pins it in place.
For one suspended second, they fight back-to-back, no words, no friction, no argument, just instinct and alignment, covering each other like they’ve been doing it for years.
I don’t get to watch it.
A rogue hits me from the front before the moment can settle, driving in low and fast, trying to take my legs out from under me.
I shift with it, letting the impact glance instead of landing clean, my hand snapping down to catch the back of its neck as it closes.
Its momentum works against it, and I drag it past me, turning hard enough to send it crashing shoulder first into the edge of the platform.
Bone cracks on impact, not enough to end it, just enough to slow it.
It comes back anyway.
They always do.
Its hand swings wide for my throat again, faster this time, more desperate, and I step inside the line of it, closing the space before it can build power.
My grip shifts from its neck to its jaw, forcing its head back at an angle that strips leverage out of the rest of its body, and I feel the resistance in it, the strength Mordain has pumped into its system pushing back hard enough to matter.
But it’s not enough.
I drive my knee into its midsection, once, twice, folding it just enough to break its structure, and when it tries to recover, I don’t give it the chance.
My hand releases its jaw and comes back in the same motion, striking down across its collarbone with enough force to fracture it clean, the sound sharp under the noise of the fight.
It stumbles.
That’s all it gets.
I step through it, already finishing the motion, the stake coming up in my hand without thought, without hesitation, lining up with the center of its chest like it’s always been there, and drive it in hard.
The resistance lasts a fraction of a second.
Then it gives.
The rogue jerks once, the fight in it cutting out mid-motion as the stake punches through, and I hold it there just long enough to make sure, just long enough to feel the stillness settle into it before I let go.
I lift my head, looking straight at the prospects. “I told you to stay at the clubhouse!”
Rhett doesn’t even blink. “We got bored!”
“Also…” Bennett adds, calm as anything, “… we don’t take orders well.”
I don’t break eye contact as the rogue comes at me from the left, fast enough to matter, claws already cutting through the space where my throat would have been if I hadn’t shifted half an inch.
I step inside the strike without looking, my hand snapping up to catch its wrist mid-swing, stopping it dead with a grip that grinds bone under pressure.
It tries to follow through with the other hand.
I twist hard, dragging it off balance, using its own forward momentum to pull it into me, and my other hand comes up with the stake already in line, and I drive it straight through its chest.
The impact is clean and final.
The rogue’s body jerks against me, whatever it was about to do cutting off mid-motion as the fight leaves it all at once. I don’t slow down, don’t look at it, just rip the stake free and shove the body aside, letting it hit the ground somewhere out of my peripheral.
My gaze stays locked on these insolent assholes. “I’m going to kill you both!”
They turn at the same time, grinning mischievously.
“Can we do it after this fight?” Rhett mocks.
I glare at him as Cali flashes past me, blade driving clean through another rogue, and I hear the breath she lets out, a half laugh, half something else entirely.
I’ll deal with them later.
If they survive.
The last of the rogues presses in hard as Roxy finishes the ward, the fight tightening instead of easing, pressure building in every direction as we push through the final junction. Steel, bone, impact, everything is still moving, still loud, still violent…
And then it isn’t.
It doesn’t taper.
It cuts.
One second, a rogue is mid-swing in front of me, claws carving toward my throat, and the next it just… stops.
Not stumbles.
Not hesitates.
Stops.
Its arm hangs there in the air like something has reached in and pulled the strings tight.
Around us, the same thing happens all at once.
Bodies lock mid-motion.
Strikes freeze before they land.
Movement dies in place, like someone has taken the fight and flicked a switch to ‘off.’
For a second, no one moves.
Not them.
Not us.
“What in the hell?” Rhett starts, the words barely making it out before the next shift hits.
The rogues turn.
Not one at a time.
All of them, in fucking unison.
Heads snapping in the same direction with a precision that is too clean, too controlled, every single one of them moving on the same beat like they’ve been given a command none of us heard.
They don’t attack or reposition.
They just face forward.
And stare.
Unblinking.
Silent.
The sound of the fight drains out of the space until all that’s left is the low hum of whatever Mordain has built down here and the faint, uneven shuffle of our own movement as we adjust without meaning to.
Cali shifts at my side.
I feel it more than see it.
Everyone feels it.
That same instinct hits at once…
This isn’t over.
This is worse.
I follow their line of sight.
The chamber ahead opens up, wider than anything we’ve moved through so far, carved clean out of the old infrastructure and filled with sterile blue and white light that doesn’t belong this far underground.
Equipment hums in steady, clinical rhythms, casting sharp shadows that stretch too long across the floor.
And at the far end…
He’s already there.
Mordain stands in the center of the space, hands at his sides, perfectly still, like he hasn’t just walked into the aftermath of a warzone, like he’s been standing there long enough for the room to settle around him.
Waiting.
Every rogue in the room is facing him now.
Not us.
Him.
Like we’ve stopped mattering.
Like we were never the point.
No one speaks.
No one needs to.
Because every instinct I have got is already locking onto the same conclusion, the same cold realization settling in under everything else…
We didn’t break through his defenses.
We walked exactly where he wanted us to.
Oh, fuck!