Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
KASTER
Dawn breaks gray and cold over the shrine courtyard.
I haven’t slept. Haven’t needed to. The wounds she cleared closed fully during the night, leaving nothing but thin scars that will fade within the week. My body runs at full capacity now—no poison burning through my veins, no regeneration fighting divine corruption.
She did that. Put her hands on me and burned out the wrongness, nearly killing herself in the process.
Reckless. Stupid. Necessary.
I watch her stir from across the courtyard, where I’ve been tracking the perimeter for the past four hours.
She moves differently when she first wakes—slower, less guarded, her body not yet remembering to conserve energy.
Her hair falls across her face in dark tangles.
Her eyes find me immediately, like she knew exactly where I’d be.
She probably did.
“You didn’t rest.”
I don’t bother with denial. “I don’t need to.”
“You needed to yesterday.”
“Yesterday, I had divine toxin dissolving my organs.” I cross the shattered paving stones toward her, noting every detail automatically.
The shadows beneath her eyes. The slight tremor in her fingers as she pushes hair back from her face.
The way she tracks my approach without tensing. “Today, I don’t.”
She accepts this with a nod. No argument. No lecture about self-care or conservation of resources.
Pragmatic. Fucking perfect for this.
The thought surfaces before I can stop it. I shove it down, bury it beneath threat calculus and strategic evaluation.
“We need to move.” I scan the courtyard’s three visible exits.
The eastern wall is rubble now—the Executor’s entrance yesterday left a gap wide enough to drive a cart through.
The main entrance remains intact. The third exit leads through flooded underground chambers that would slow us dangerously.
“The informant’s body will attract scavengers.
Some of them might be worth worrying about. ”
“Where?”
“Ice-scarred plains. Southeast.” I’ve been calculating routes since midnight. “The terrain will make coordinated attacks difficult. Fewer ambush points. Better sight lines.”
She doesn’t ask how far or how long. Doesn’t complain about leaving before proper rest or proper food. She rises, gathers her minimal supplies, and moves toward the main exit.
I fall into step beside her.
We’re three miles from the shrine when I sense the wrongness.
My spine goes rigid. Every hunting instinct I possess screams alert, flooding my system with adrenaline that tastes like copper on the back of my tongue. The sensation is familiar now—the particular frequency of god-made creatures, that signature of divine power twisted into monstrous form.
“Kaster.”
Soreia’s voice carries warning. She feels it too, though differently. Her magic responds to things that refuse to end properly. Mine responds to things that need killing.
Same threat. Different detection methods.
“I know.” I scan the landscape ahead. Rolling hills stripped bare by old battles. Scattered rock formations that could hide anything up to moderate size. No movement visible.
But a presence lurks. Watching. Waiting.
Where?
The attack comes from behind.
Not the direction I expected. Not the angle I was tracking.
The Executor crashes through a rock formation we passed thirty seconds ago—must have been lying dormant beneath the surface, buried in rubble, waiting for us to move beyond strike range.
It rises from the debris like a creature emerging from its grave, stone and dirt cascading from armored shoulders.
Massive. Eight feet tall. Broader than the ones we faced yesterday. This one carries more armor, more bulk, more deliberate construction.
And it ignores me completely.
The Executor’s obsidian gaze fixes on Soreia with single-minded intensity. It lunges toward her like I don’t exist, like I’m not standing directly in its path, like the predator dragon between it and its target is something to be stepped around rather than stopped.
I slam into the creature mid-stride. My shoulder connects with its armored torso, driving it sideways. The impact jars through my entire body, sends pain lancing down my spine. The Executor stumbles but doesn’t fall. Its attention shifts to me for a single heartbeat—
Then back to Soreia.
The Executor moves again, attempting to circle past me. Its massive body angles toward the gap between my position and a cluster of rocks. It’s calculating the fastest route to her. Not the safest route for itself. Not the tactically optimal engagement.
The fastest route to her.
They’re trying to eliminate her.
Everything locks into focus.
The gods don’t fear me. A predator dragon is dangerous but manageable—powerful but alone, lethal but ultimately containable. I can kill their monsters, but I can’t make the deaths hold. I can win battles, but I can’t end wars.
She can.
Her bloodline. Her magic. The thing that makes death stick.
With her gone, I become manageable again. Without her anchoring my kills, the gods can throw infinite monsters at me until entropy wins. They can outlast me.
They can’t outlast us.
She’s the target. She’s always been the target. Everything else—
The Executor lunges again.
I move faster.
Rage floods my system like dragonfire.
Not the cold calculation I prefer. Not the clinical control that makes my kills sharp and final. Raw fury, burning through my veins, turning every thought into violence and every instinct into destruction.
The Executor wants to reach her.
I won’t allow it.
My talons extend fully—not the partial shift I usually maintain for combat, but the full predator configuration that makes my hands into weapons designed for tearing.
I slam into the creature’s side before it can complete its charge.
My claws find gaps in its armor, drive deep into the flesh beneath.
Divine blood spurts hot against my skin. The creature roars—pain and rage and frustrated purpose combined into a sound that shakes the air.
It still tries to reach her.
Wounded, bleeding, with my claws buried in its side, the Executor continues to push toward Soreia. Its armored arms swing toward me—not to kill, but to dislodge. To clear the obstacle from its path.
I am not an obstacle.
I wrench my claws free and strike again. Throat this time. My talons puncture through armored scales, through muscle, through cartilage. The Executor’s roar becomes a gurgle.
It keeps moving.
One massive arm catches me across the torso. The blow lifts me off my feet, sends me crashing into a rock formation ten feet away. Stone shatters against my back. The impact drives breath from my lungs.
The Executor takes three steps toward Soreia.
Three steps too many.
I’m on my feet before my vision fully clears. Moving before my body fully recovers. The rage isn’t tactical anymore—it’s pure, primal, the fury of a creature watching its claimed target approached by a threat that should already be dead.
The fight becomes a blur of violence.
I tear. I rend. I destroy with a savagery that has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with the absolute rejection of what this creature represents.
The Executor regenerates. Divine power knits flesh faster than I can shred it. Every wound I inflict begins closing before I can inflict the next one.
I don’t care.
I tear the wounds open again. Deeper. Wider. I rip away chunks of armor and flesh, throw them aside like garbage, drive my claws into the spaces I’ve created and dig.
The creature’s screams fill the air. Its attempts to reach Soreia become increasingly desperate—less coordination, more blind struggle. It knows it’s dying. It knows the Predator has finally committed to ending it rather than simply wounding.
But I’m not fast enough.
Between my strikes, between the moments where my claws are buried deep in its body, the Executor continues to advance. Inch by inch. Foot by foot. Dragging itself toward Soreia with single-minded determination even as I’m killing it.
She’s backed against a rock formation. No retreat route. The creature got closer than any threat should have gotten.
Too close. Too fucking close.
The rage peaks.
I stop trying to be strategic.
My hands close around the Executor’s skull. Not its throat—I’ve torn that out already. Not its torso—that’s more wound than body at this point. The skull, with its obsidian eyes still fixed on Soreia, still tracking her, still calculating the fastest route to her death.
I pull.
Divine bone resists. Armored plates crack and groan under pressure they were never designed to withstand. The creature’s body convulses, its remaining arm scrabbling weakly at my grip.
I pull harder.
The skull separates with a wet, tearing sound that I’ll remember for centuries. Blood sprays in arterial patterns across the rocky ground. The body collapses, finally—finally—going still.
But I don’t stop.
I throw the skull aside and turn on the corpse. I destroy the thing completely, utterly, leaving nothing that could reform, nothing that could ever threaten her again.
The violence continues past all tactical necessity.
I only stop when there’s nothing left to destroy.