Chapter 19
NINETEEN
KASTER
The frozen canyon closes around us like a trap.
Walls of ice and stone rise on either side, narrowing the path until we’re walking single file through passages barely wide enough for my shoulders. The floor is treacherous—ice layered over rock, shifting and cracking with every step. No stable footing. No cover. No escape routes.
I don’t like it.
Soreia walks ahead of me, picking her way across the unstable surface with the careful precision of someone who knows her body’s limits. Her breath fogs in the frigid air. The temperature here drops well below what the ice-scarred plains offered—cold so intense that every inhale burns.
“There’s another path.” I scan the canyon walls for alternatives. Crevices. Handholds. Any route that doesn’t funnel us into a killing corridor. “We can backtrack, find higher ground.”
“The higher routes are blocked.” She doesn’t turn around. “Ice collapse from the thaw. I checked while you were scouting.”
I file that information away. She’s observant. Thorough. Traits that have kept her alive this long.
Traits that won’t matter if this canyon becomes our grave.
The attack comes without warning.
The ice wall to our left explodes outward in a shower of frozen shrapnel, and the creature tears through.
What the fuck—
My brain struggles to process what I’m seeing.
The thing that emerges isn’t a single monster.
It’s pieces. Dozens of pieces stitched together into a form that defies biology.
I recognize fragments of Executors in its bulk—the armored plating, the obsidian eyes.
But mixed with those are parts from creatures I’ve never encountered.
Limbs that bend wrong. Joints that shouldn’t exist. A face that’s three faces overlapping, mouths opening and closing in different rhythms.
A god-made abomination. Built specifically. Designed deliberately.
For us.
It moves before I can process what I’m seeing.
Faster than a creature that size has any right to be.
I throw myself between it and Soreia, taking the initial strike across my forearms instead of letting it reach her.
The thought of the creature’s filth touching her skin didn’t trigger a hero’s instinct; it triggered a predator’s rage.
No one—not even a god—touches what I’ve claimed.
The impact sends me sliding backward on the ice. My feet find no purchase. The creature’s strength is staggering—Executor-level force multiplied by the wrongness of its construction.
“Move!” I roar at Soreia. “Back the way we came!”
She doesn’t run. She braces herself against the canyon wall, her hands already rising to work her magic.
Stupid. Brave. Both.
The creature lunges again. I meet it with fire.
Dragonfire erupts from my hands in concentrated bursts—the same technique that melted Executor armor, that ended things designed to kill dragons. The flames engulf the abomination’s torso, burning through its patchwork hide.
For three seconds, I think it’s enough.
Then the burned flesh begins knitting itself back together. Not regenerating—reconstructing. The charred tissue sloughs away, replaced by new growth that erupts from beneath. Different growth. Thicker. More resistant.
It’s learning.
The realization crystallizes as I watch my attack become obsolete in real-time. The fire that worked seconds ago won’t work again. The creature has adapted. Evolved. Built countermeasures from my own assault.
I switch tactics. Close-quarters. Claws extended, I drive into the abomination’s flank, tearing through the seams where different monster parts connect. Those joints are weaker—the stitching that holds the pieces together less durable than the pieces themselves.
The creature screams with multiple voices as I rip chunks from its body. Ichor sprays across the ice. I press the advantage, driving deeper, searching for the thing’s center mass.
A limb I didn’t track slams into my ribs.
I hear the crack before I feel it. Two ribs, maybe three. The force launches me backward into the canyon wall. Stone and ice give way behind me, and I hit hard enough that my vision whites out for a dangerous half-second.
Get up. Get up now.
My body obeys before my vision clears. I’m on my feet, positioning myself between Soreia and the creature, even as my broken ribs grind against each other with every breath.
The abomination pauses. Studies me. Those overlapping faces track my movement with an intelligence that has no place in a monster.
It’s not attacking.
It’s evaluating.
“Kaster.”
Soreia’s voice cuts through my calculations. I don’t turn—can’t take my attention off the creature—but I register her position. Five feet behind me. Against the wall. No retreat route.
“I can anchor it.” Her words come steady despite the circumstances. “If you can bring it down, I can make the death stick.”
“It’s too fast.”
“You’ve killed faster.”
“Not this.” I track the creature’s subtle shifts. The way it’s repositioning itself. “This isn’t attacking randomly. It’s learning my patterns. Every move I make teaches it how to counter me.”
Silence from behind me. She’s processing.
“Then we need to give it an attack it can’t counter.”
“Such as?”
Before she can answer, the creature moves.
The second engagement is worse than the first.
I anticipated speed. I didn’t anticipate precision. The abomination doesn’t strike wildly—it strikes at specific vulnerabilities. The joint between my neck and shoulder. The already-broken ribs. The tendons in my wrists that control my grip.
It knows where I’m weak. It learned that in thirty seconds of observation.
I deflect what I can. Absorb what I can’t. Fire and claws and the sheer brutality that has ended every threat I’ve faced. But my attacks do less damage now. The creature’s hide has thickened where I hit it before. The joints I targeted have reinforced themselves with new tissue.
And every wound I inflict begins closing almost immediately.
Not divine regeneration like the Executors used. This is different. Faster. More relentless. The creature isn’t resetting—it’s rebuilding better each time.
An arm catches me across the face. I taste blood. Another strike drives into my damaged ribs, and the pain is white-hot, blinding.
Move.
I move. Barely. The creature’s follow-up attack whistles past my ear instead of taking my head off.
Behind me, Soreia’s magic flares. The low hum of her anchoring reaches my awareness even through the chaos of combat. She’s trying to help—trying to use her power on the creature’s discarded pieces, making the small deaths permanent.
It won’t be enough.
I drive my claws into the abomination’s midsection, searching for a vital center. My hand finds organs that pulse with divine energy, and I rip them free.
For a moment, beneath the wet heat of those organs, my fingertips brush something else. Deeper. Denser. Not tissue or divine architecture like the rest of it—something concentrated, the way coal is different from the wood. A point where all the wrongness in this creature seems to flow from.
Then new organs grow to replace the ones I tore free, and the regenerating flesh forces my arm back before I can reach it.
There.
Something at the center.
I file the observation and keep fighting. No time to act on it now. Maybe no way to act on it at all.
The creature doesn’t slow.
Fuck.