Chapter Twenty-Six
CALYPSO
The door gives under my shoulder, and I’m already moving before it’s fully open, momentum carrying me through like stopping isn’t an option anymore.
Scar stumbles in my peripheral.
Not like a man losing a fight.
Like something ancient and dangerous has had the power drained from him.
All at once, he drops to the ground.
Like something holding him upright has been cut clean through.
I don’t slow down. I can’t. My body is already sprinting, boots slamming against concrete as I close the distance, my mind scrambling to catch up to what I just saw and failing hard enough it feels like something inside me is starting to come apart.
Vampires don’t go down like that.
They don’t just lose everything in a single second.
They don’t go still without a fight, without even a flicker of resistance.
Not from a blade. Not from anything that isn’t built specifically to end them—and even then, it doesn’t look like that.
It doesn’t look like someone is reaching in and pulling the power out of them entirely.
“Scar!” His name tears out of me as I drop to my knees beside him, the impact jarring through my legs, my hands already on him before I’ve even settled, gripping his shoulders, his chest, anything that feels solid enough to anchor him back to me.
Nothing answers.
No tension.
No reflex.
No sign that he’s even aware I’m here.
My hand slides up to his face, fingers pressing hard along his jaw as I try to force some reaction out of him, like I can drag him back into this just by refusing to let him stay where he is.
“Hey, h-hey!” The words come fast, uneven, tripping over each other as I shake him once, not hard enough to hurt him, just enough to demand something back.
But there is nothing.
My focus snaps to his side, to the place where Mordain’s blade went in, and for a second, everything else drops away as the memory of it hits again—the angle, the precision, the way it slid in too clean to be anything simple.
Alchemist.
Of course, he is.
Of course, this isn’t just a wound.
“What the fuck did you do to him?” I don’t even realize I’ve said it out loud until the words are already gone, my hand pressing harder against his side as I try to feel for something that makes sense, something that tells me what the fuck I’m dealing with.
He isn’t bleeding the way he should be.
He isn’t reacting the way he should be.
He isn’t anything the way he should be.
My pulse spikes harder, panic pushing up under everything else, as it starts filling in the blanks my brain can’t.
This isn’t damage.
This is something else entirely.
Something made.
Something designed to do exactly this.
“Come on, asshole! Wake up!” I lean in closer, one hand braced against his chest, the other still locked on his jaw, forcing his face toward me like I can make him see me, like I can force him to come back just by being here. “Scar, stay with me.”
Nothing.
Not even the smallest flicker.
And that’s when it lands, cutting straight through the panic and leaving something colder behind it… I don’t know how to fix this.
Glancing up, I see the berserker strapped to the table in the center of the room is enormous, six-foot-six at least, broad as a doorframe, and completely unconscious, leather restraints biting deep into his wrists and ankles. His chest still rises and falls, shallow but steady.
Alive.
For now.
Mordain stands over him with a syringe the size of my forearm, and the liquid inside it is too dark, too thick to be anything natural—moving like it’s thinking.
He doesn’t look at me as I kneel at Scar’s side beside him on the ground.
He doesn’t need to.
“The hunter,” he drones, his voice holding a calm, settled satisfaction, like this was always the plan. “I wondered if you’d make it this far.”
“Put it down.” I stand, slowly turning toward him.
My voice stays level even as every nerve ending in my body is screaming.
The compound shakes somewhere above us, distant concussions that dislodge dust from the ceiling in fine gray curtains.
The Kings are still fighting. Scar is somewhere behind me, and the thought of him alone with that toxin pulling him into a deathly slumber is a cold hand around my throat that I absolutely cannot afford right now.
Mordain turns, and the full force of him hits me like a wall.
He’s ancient in a way that Scar isn’t, where Scar’s age has refined him, sharpened him into something precise and dangerous, Mordain’s centuries have curdled into something else entirely.
Beautiful and rotten at the same time, like a cathedral left to decay, all the grandeur still there underneath the rot.
He smiles, and it doesn’t reach his eyes by about three hundred years. “You are half of something extraordinary,” he says, tilting his head with genuine scientific curiosity that is somehow more terrifying than rage. “And yet… here you are, playing at being fully mortal.”
He moves before I can fully pull air into my lungs.
I step in, and he’s gone.
No shift I can track, no blur to follow.
The space in front of me empties, like he was never standing there at all, and the first warning I get is the impact from behind.
It slams into my ribs hard enough to knock the air out of me, my body lifting off the ground before I can even turn into it.
For a fraction of a second, there is nothing under my feet, no balance, no control, just force driving straight through me.
Steel gives under the impact with a sharp, tearing groan as my front crashes into the shelving unit along the far wall, the entire structure buckling and collapsing around me.
Glass vials explode on contact, shattering in a cascade that rains down in every direction, liquid spraying across the concrete that hiss and spit where they land.
Something burns where it touches my skin.
The sound of glass breaking, metal twisting, and chemical reactions snapping alive fills the space for a split second before gravity finishes the job, and everything comes down with me in a violent crash that sends debris skidding across the floor.
But I don’t stay down.
I hit the ground and roll through it, already moving, already forcing my body back into motion before the pain can settle, because staying still isn’t an option—it’s a decision, and it’s the wrong one.
By the time I get my feet under me again, Mordain is still exactly where I left him.
Watching.
The hit rattled my skull. The look unsettles me more. He isn’t closing the distance or taking advantage of the opening he created. Mordain stands there with the same unnerving calm he’s carried since this started, as though the outcome isn’t something he needs to worry about.
Whether I beat him, surprise him, or end up flat on my ass again is secondary to whatever calculation is running behind those cruel, uneasy eyes.
The realization settles heavily in my chest.
This isn’t a fight to him.
It’s an evaluation.
He’s waiting to see what I’m capable of.
Fine!
I step back into him hard, closing the distance before he can decide to take it from me, my blade coming up fast and low.
It catches him across the forearm when he reaches in, steel biting through fabric and into skin, and for a fraction of a second his expression shifts—not shock, but something close enough for it to matter.
That’s something.
I don’t let it go.
I drive forward, my elbow snapping up into his jaw with everything I’ve got behind it, the impact jarring through my arm as I follow through with a kick aimed at his knee, trying to take his balance, trying to break his structure.
He dips, but just barely.
Half an inch.
Then he’s upright again, recovering with a smooth, controlled precision that turns my stomach because it shouldn’t be that easy. It shouldn’t look like he chose to give me that opening just to see what I’d do with it.
There’s no build-up this time, no warning. His hand comes in fast and hard, and the back of my skull slams into the concrete with a force that wipes everything out in a burst of white.
For a second, there’s nothing.
Then the world comes back in pieces, white bleeding to gray, gray sharpening into fractured lines that struggle to settle into something solid. Pain follows it in a wave, my vision splintering at the edges as something deep in my cheekbone lights up hard enough to make my teeth clench.
I taste blood.
Mine.
Copper-bright and thick at the back of my throat.
I spit it onto the concrete as I drag myself up, hands slipping slightly on the slick surface before I force my weight under me again, pushing through the disorientation, through the pull of it that wants me to stay down, because staying down isn’t something I know how to do.
By the time I’m upright, he’s still watching me.
But something in his expression has shifted.
The mild curiosity is gone.
What’s left is colder and more focused, as if he’s finished observing and is ready to move on to the next step.
“Remarkable,” he says softly, like he’s noting a detail rather than acknowledging a threat, and the syringe comes back up in his hand, the liquid inside catching the sterile light that makes my stomach tighten. “But ultimately… insufficient.”
He turns.
Not toward me.
Toward the berserker.
The shift is so smooth, so casual, like I’ve already been dismissed as a variable that’s been measured and accounted for.
No. No! I push forward before the thought even finishes forming, everything in me snapping tight around that single point of focus, pain ignored, balance forced, momentum dragged back into line as I throw myself after him.
“Stop!” The pressure in the room spikes so violently that it feels like the ground drops out from under me and slams back into place in the same second, my balance tearing loose as the space itself starts to shake.
Like something too big has just forced its way into it, and the structure isn’t built to hold it.
Then the sound hits.
Not all at once.