Chapter 20
TWENTY
KASTER
We’re losing ground.
The canyon narrows farther as we retreat—Soreia backing away while I hold the creature’s attention, buying her the distance she can’t afford to give up. The ice beneath our feet becomes more treacherous. Meltwater trickles from overhead, making every surface slick and unpredictable.
The abomination doesn’t care. Its multiple limbs find purchase where we can’t. It moves across ice like it was born for this terrain.
Maybe it was. Maybe they built it specifically for this canyon, this moment, this kill.
I block a strike that would have reached Soreia. The impact numbs my entire arm. The creature’s face—faces—track past me to where she stands.
I look at Soreia. Really look at her, past the combat and the strategy. She’s pale. Exhausted. The magic she’s been using to anchor the creature’s discarded pieces has cost her—I see it in the tremor of her hands, the slight sway in her stance.
She’s burning through her reserves trying to help me win a fight that can’t be won.
And the creature knows it.
“You need to run.” The words come out harsh. Ragged. My voice doesn’t sound like my own.
Her expression hardens. “No.”
“Soreia—”
“I said no.” She straightens against the canyon wall. “I’m not leaving you here to die.”
“You staying doesn’t prevent that.” I deflect another probing strike from the creature. “It ensures you die with me.”
“Then we die fighting.”
The implication lands hard. We. Not her escaping while I hold the line. We. Like she’s already decided our fates are braided.
They can’t be. They shouldn’t be.
“That’s not—” I catch another blow, redirect it into the ice. “That’s not acceptable.”
“Your acceptance isn’t required.”
The creature adapts again.
It stops targeting me entirely. Mid-combat, without transition, it pivots and drives straight for Soreia.
No.
I intercept. Barely. My body takes the impact meant for her—a strike that would have torn through her torso, would have ended her in a single blow. Instead, it catches me across the back, opens me from shoulder to hip.
The pain is extraordinary. Transcendent. A white void that swallows conscious thought.
I stay upright anyway. Put myself between her and the next attack. And the next.
The creature hammers into me with methodical precision. Each blow calculated to damage without disabling. Keeping me functional enough to serve as a barrier while it works to get past me.
It’s not trying to kill me.
It’s trying to break through me.
My healing struggles to keep pace. I feel my body fighting—cells dividing, tissue rebuilding—but the damage accrues faster than I heal. Blood loss compounds. My reactions slow by fractions of seconds that compound into critical vulnerabilities.
The creature notices. Adjusts. Exploits.
I’m losing.
I have never lost. Not like this. Not in the way that matters now—where my failure doesn’t cost me territory or pride or centuries of careful solitude, but costs her. One specific person. That kind of stake has no precedent in all my centuries of combat.
Dragon. Predator. Apex. Built for this exact scenario—violence without limit, adaptation without ceiling, survival without compromise.
And none of it is enough.
The creature slips past my guard. Talons rake across my forearm, slicing through muscle to bone. My grip on the canyon wall fails. I stumble, and the abomination presses the advantage.
A blow to my knee. A strike to my spine. Systematic destruction of my ability to stand between it and what it wants.
Her.
I roar. Not strategy—pure rage. Dragonfire pours from my hands, my mouth, my wounds. The flames consume oxygen and ice and flesh without discrimination.
The creature burns. Rebuilds. Adapts.
I burn brighter. It doesn’t matter.
The third engagement leaves me on my knees.
Blood pools beneath me, freezing against the ice. The healing has slowed to a crawl—too much damage, too fast, too comprehensive. The wounds across my back have stopped bleeding only because I don’t have enough blood left to lose.
The creature circles. Patient now. It knows what I know.
I can’t stop it.
I’ve thrown everything at this thing—fire and fury and the violence that has ended gods’ servants for centuries—and it hasn’t been enough.
The abomination stands between me and Soreia, its patchwork body steaming in the frigid air, its multiple faces watching me with expressions that might be triumph.
“Kaster.”
Her voice, behind me. Close. She’s moved while I was fighting, positioning herself at my back. I feel her hand on my shoulder—brief contact, steadying pressure.
“Get up.”
“I can’t stop it.” The admission costs more than the wounds. “It’s too—”
“Get up.” Her voice carries no sympathy. No fear. “You don’t get to die here.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.” She moves around me, stepping forward until she stands between me and the creature. Her magic flares—weak, flickering, but present. “You’re giving up. I see it.”
“I’m assessing—”
“You’re calculating how long you can hold it while I escape.” Her back faces me. I can’t see her expression. “Stop.”
The creature watches us. Waits. Learning a new detail about our dynamic, storing it for later use.
“Soreia—”
“I’m not running.” She doesn’t turn around. “You’re going to get up. We’re going to fight this thing until it stops moving. And if we die, we die with our hands around its throat.”
I get up.
Every wound screams protest. What should be healing sputters and fails and restarts, fighting to rebuild what the creature destroyed. The pain is distant now—shock setting in, blood loss clouding everything in gray at the edges.
But I get up.
Because she told me to. Because she’s standing between me and death, and that’s wrong. That’s backward. That’s not how this works.
I protect her. Not the other way around.
The creature lunges. Soreia’s magic catches it mid-strike—a desperate anchor working that makes the thing stumble, its momentum disrupted by power it wasn’t designed to counter.
I hit it while it’s off-balance. Claws finding the seams between monster pieces, fire pouring into the gaps. The creature screams and reforms and screams again as I tear it apart faster than it can rebuild.
The mathematics of this fight haven’t changed—the creature learns, and I’m running out of variations to teach it.
But we’re still fighting.
And as long as we’re fighting, she’s alive.
That’s all that matters.
The abomination catches Soreia with a backhand strike.
The sound she makes when she hits the ice will stay with me forever. A short, sharp cry that cuts off too quickly. Her body crumples against the canyon wall, and she doesn’t get up.
No.
I’m moving before I think. The creature stands between us, and I go through it—not around, not past, through. My claws open its torso from hip to shoulder. My fire burns what my claws miss. I don’t care about strategy or adaptation or the fight I’m losing.
I only care about reaching her.
The creature grabs me from behind. Multiple limbs wrapping around my torso, my arms, my throat. Squeezing. Tearing. It’s finally committed to killing me—recognizing that I’ve abandoned defense, that I’ve left myself vulnerable in my desperation to reach her.
I don’t care.
I tear myself free. Leave pieces of my flesh in the creature’s grip. Cross the remaining distance to where Soreia lies crumpled against the ice.
She’s breathing. Shallow. Unsteady. But breathing.
Blood runs from a gash across her temple. Her skin is too pale. Her magic flickers weakly around her hands—instinctive response, her power trying to protect her even while she’s unconscious.
“Soreia.”
Her eyes flutter open. Unfocused. Lost.
“Can you stand?”
She tries. Fails. Her legs won’t support her weight.
The creature is recovering behind me. Its body is reconstructing. I feel the displacement of air as it rebuilds itself into a new configuration.
I have seconds. Maybe less.
I gather her into my arms. Hold her against my ruined body—my broken ribs, my shredded back, my blood mixing with hers on the frozen ground.
“I’m sorry.” The words scrape out. I don’t know what I’m apologizing for. Everything. Nothing. The failure that’s about to cost her life.
“Don’t.” Her hand finds my face. Weak contact. Fading. “Don’t apologize.”
“I can’t stop it.”
“Then don’t.” Her eyes focus on mine. Clarity fighting through the haze of injury. “Run.”
“I don’t—”
“Run.” Her fingers tighten against my jaw. “Take me and run. Find somewhere to regroup. Fight it again later.”
“There is no later.” I hear the creature behind me. Almost reformed. Almost ready. “It won’t stop. It’s built to hunt us. Wherever we go, it follows.”
“Then we keep running until we find a way to kill it.”
“Soreia—”
“I am not dying in this canyon.” Her voice carries a determination that shouldn’t exist given her injuries. “Neither are you. Now pick me up and move.”
I run.
Through the narrowing canyon. Past ice formations that tear at my wounds. Carrying her weight plus my own, my body failing, my body running on reserves I didn’t know I had.
The creature pursues. I hear it behind us—the wet sound of its multiple limbs finding purchase, the rattling breath of its overlapping faces. It’s faster than me. Even unburdened, it would overtake me.
Carrying Soreia, I have minutes at best.
“There.” She points with a trembling hand. “A side passage. The ice collapsed—”
“It’s blocked.”
“The gap at the top. You can fit through. Barely.”
I see what she means. A crevice where the ice fall didn’t quite seal the passage. Narrow. Barely wide enough for a human.
Not wide enough for the creature.
I alter course. The abomination screams behind us—frustration, rage, the sound of divine will thwarted. It accelerates, desperate to catch us before we reach the gap.
I make it with seconds to spare. Shove Soreia through the crevice first, then force my own battered body after her. The ice scrapes skin from my shoulders, my back. Fresh pain layered on existing agony.
Behind me, the creature slams into the blocked passage. Its bulk can’t fit. Its limbs reach through the gaps, grasping, tearing at ice—but the collapse holds.
For now.
The passage opens into a wider space. A side canyon, smaller than the main route but with actual cover. Boulders. Ice formations thick enough to hide behind. Terrain that doesn’t immediately read as a death trap.
I set Soreia down against a boulder. Assess her injuries with hands that won’t stop shaking.
The head wound is superficial. The blood loss is manageable. But she’s cold—too cold—and her magic has gone completely silent. The exertion of helping me fight, combined with her own injuries, has depleted her reserves entirely.
“You need to rest.”
“The creature—”
“Is still trying to get through the ice fall.” I can hear it working, tearing at the obstruction with methodical fury. “It will find a way. But not immediately.”
She nods weakly. Her eyes drift closed, then snap open with forced effort.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’ll heal.”
“You’re not healing.” Her hand finds the wound across my back—the one that runs from shoulder to hip, the one that hasn’t stopped bleeding. “This isn’t closing.”
She’s right. I feel it—my body’s inability to keep up, the damage accumulating faster than it can repair. The creature learned how to hurt me. Learned how to inflict wounds that won’t close.
I’m dying.
“It doesn’t matter.” I meet her eyes. Let her see the truth I’ve been avoiding since the creature first emerged. “What matters is keeping you alive long enough to find a way past that thing.”
“That’s not—”
“That’s exactly how this works.” I lower myself onto the ice beside her, conserving strength I don’t have for a fight I can’t win. “You survive. That’s the priority. The only priority.”
She stares at me. A shift behind her eyes—recognition, maybe. Understanding of what I’m telling her.
“You’re planning to die for me.”
“I’m planning to give you time to escape.”
“Same thing.”
“It’s not.” I look toward the blocked passage. The sounds of the creature’s efforts are getting louder. More desperate. “Dying for you implies sacrifice. Nobility. Heroism.” I shake my head. “This is simpler. I can’t watch you die. So I won’t. Whatever that costs.”
The quiet holds between us. The ice groans. The creature tears at our fragile barrier.
“That’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me.” Her voice carries exhaustion and an emotion I don’t let myself name. “And the stupidest.”
“I’m not—”
“You are.” She shifts closer. Her head rests against my shoulder—the one that isn’t destroyed, the one that can still bear weight. “Romantic and stupid. The complete package.”
I don’t argue. Don’t have the energy.
The creature screams again. Closer. Working its way through our temporary shelter.
“When it gets through,” Soreia murmurs against my shoulder, “we fight it. Both of us. Until we can’t anymore.”
“Soreia—”
“That’s how this works.” Her hand finds mine. Cold fingers interlacing with cold fingers. “You don’t get to decide I survive while you die. We make it or we don’t. That’s the only acceptable option.”
I want to argue.
Instead, I hold her hand in the frozen dark and listen to the creature tear through our defenses.
And I accept, for the first time, that I might not be enough.
That this might be the fight I finally lose.
That she has become the thing I cannot lose. And I might anyway.
The creature’s arm breaks through the ice fall.
I rise to meet it.