Chapter 28
TWENTY-EIGHT
KASTER
The collision would have killed me before the mating.
The Failed God-Beast moves with speed that contradicts its bulk—a blur of overcharged muscle and desperate power slamming into my shifted form with force that cracks the ground beneath us.
I absorb the impact. Redirect the momentum.
Get my claws into the seams between fused segments where the structural integrity is weakest.
It burns where it contacts skin, leaving trails of blistering heat that my body works to heal even as new wounds accumulate.
The creature screams.
Not pain—frustration. It expected this blow to end me. Expected the sheer overwhelming power packed into its unstable form to crush anything that dared face it directly.
It didn’t account for what I’ve become.
I tear into the God-Beast with precision that would have been impossible a week ago.
Every strike finds a weakness. Every movement anticipates the creature’s responses before they fully form.
I’m faster than I was. Stronger. The mating didn’t add new abilities—it removed the limitations that the gods had been subtly imposing on my kills.
The creature fights with desperate intensity. Limbs the size of trees sweep toward me with speed that cracks the sound barrier. Fire erupts from wounds I inflict, attempting to cauterize the damage before I can exploit it further.
I dodge. Absorb what I can’t avoid. Keep cutting.
The God-Beast’s internal combustion accelerates with every passing second. It’s burning itself up faster than expected—pouring everything it has into ending me before its own destruction renders the effort pointless.
Too bad for the gods.
It’s not fast enough.
“Now.”
Soreia’s magic hits the creature the moment I sever its primary neural cluster.
I sense her power reaching into divine flesh—sure and absolute. Her will declaring to reality itself that this death will not be reversed.
The Failed God-Beast convulses.
Regeneration attempts to engage. Divine power gathers at the wound sites, trying to pull shattered components back into functional arrangement. For one breath, the outcome hangs uncertain—the creature’s desperate attempt at self-preservation fighting the finality her magic imposes.
Her anchor holds.
The regeneration fails.
The God-Beast makes a sound I’ve never heard from a construct before. High and keening and utterly wrong—the noise of a creature understanding, for the first time in its existence, that ending is possible. That death isn’t a temporary inconvenience to be reset by its creators.
That this time, the darkness is permanent.
The massive body goes still. Segments separate as the divine power holding them together finally releases. What crashes to the corrupted earth is no longer a threat—it’s raw material. Components without purpose.
The gods’ ultimate weapon, built specifically to destroy us, lies dead at my feet.
Silence settles across the nesting grounds.
Not peaceful silence—the loaded quiet of a battlefield after the final combatant falls. Steam rises from the God-Beast’s remains where blood pools against corrupted soil. The smell of burnt flesh mingles with the omnipresent decay.
I stand over the corpse and wait for the instinctive tension to fade.
It doesn’t.
Instead, I find myself taking stock of what I feel. The wounds I absorbed during the fight—already healing, pain fading to memory. The expenditure of energy—significant, but sustainable. The time elapsed from first contact to final death.
Less than three minutes.
The Abomination took hours. Multiple engagements across days. Every kill temporary. Every victory meaningless.
This creature—larger, arguably more powerful, certainly more divine—died in under three minutes.
Everything I thought I knew about this war is obsolete.
Soreia approaches while I’m processing.
Her footsteps are deliberate, audible. She’s learned not to startle me after combat. Stops at my side close enough that her arm brushes mine.
“That was fast.” No tremor in her voice. No horror at the carnage.
“Faster than I anticipated.” I turn my head. Study the lines of her face in the haze of destruction. “Your anchor engaged immediately. No resistance.”
“The Abomination fought back. Tried to push through my magic and regenerate despite the anchoring.” Her gaze rests on the cooling remains. “This one didn’t. It accepted the ending like it was relieved.”
“It was destroying itself. The gods didn’t design it to survive—they designed it to eliminate me before it collapsed under its own instability.”
“And instead?”
“Instead, I tore it apart while it was still trying to understand why its advantages weren’t working.” My hand finds her jaw, tilting her face toward mine. “We tore it apart. My claws. Your magic. Neither functions without the other.”
She leans into my grip. A subtle shift of weight that presses her body closer to mine.
“What does this mean for the hunt?”
“It means the gods are running out of options.” I close the distance between us.
Draw her into the space I’ve created. “Every weapon they send, we destroy. Every barrier they construct, we breach. They’ve been operating under the assumption that time was on their side—that eventually I’d tire, or you’d die, or the endless waves of endless monsters would wear us down. ”
“And now?”
“Now they’re discovering that their monsters stay dead.” My mouth finds the curve of her throat. Teeth grazing skin that smells like her and sweat and the faint copper of distant blood. “Now they’re learning that consequence is no longer theoretical.”
Her breath catches. Not fear—I know what her fear sounds like. This is anticipation.
“The tables have turned.”
“Yes.” I bite down gently. Feel the shudder that runs through her at the contact. “We’re the hunters now.”
We clear three more nests before sunset.
The creatures we face range from scout-class to what appears to be a hastily constructed imitation of the God-Beast we already killed—smaller, less stable, dying even as it attempts to engage us. The gods are throwing resources at us without strategy. Panicking.
Good.
Each kill stays final. Each anchor locks death into place without struggle. We move through territory that would have been suicide a week ago, and the only resistance we encounter is already failing.
By the fourth nest, the remaining monsters stop advancing.
I notice the shift before Soreia does—the way creatures in our path hesitate instead of attacking. The defensive postures replacing aggressive ones. They can’t retreat; the compulsion driving them forward doesn’t allow genuine withdrawal. But they’re afraid.
Fear looks different on constructs designed for a single purpose. It’s not the wide-eyed terror of prey recognizing a predator. It’s hesitation. Delayed reaction time. Mistakes that wouldn’t have occurred when they believed themselves immortal.
“They know.” Soreia’s voice carries quiet satisfaction. “They can sense what’s happening to their kind.”
“Divine constructs share awareness with their creator. The god who made them is feeling every death that sticks.” I watch a scout freeze mid-charge, its body trembling with conflicting impulses. “It’s hurting them.”
“Good.”
She doesn’t elaborate. Doesn’t need to.
I kill the hesitating scout with a single strike. Watch Soreia anchor its death without pause. Another true ending. Another piece of their power extinguished forever.
The satisfaction singing through me isn’t precisely bloodlust. It’s older. Purer. The certainty of apex predation—the knowledge that nothing above me exists. Nothing can stand against us.
Not these monsters. Not their god.
Nothing.
We find shelter in the ruins of what was once a farmhouse.
The walls provide cover from observation. The roof, mostly intact, blocks any diving attacks from above. The interior smells like rot and old death, but it’s defensible. That’s all I require.
Soreia moves through the space with practiced precision—checking sight lines, identifying potential breach points, calculating escape routes. Skills she’s developed through weeks of running. Skills I didn’t teach her.
My mate learns quickly.
“This will work for the night.” She turns to face me. “The deeper nests are two miles east. We can reach them by mid-morning.”
“Assuming nothing attacks before dawn.”
“Assuming that.” Her mouth curves. “Though based on their current behavior, I doubt the remaining creatures are eager to engage us.”
She’s right. The fear response we observed in the outer nests will only intensify as we move closer to whatever the gods are protecting. Their monsters know what we represent now. Know that facing us means ending.
I close the distance between us in three strides.
Soreia doesn’t retreat. Doesn’t flinch. She meets my advance with the steady gaze that first caught my attention in the ravine—the look of a woman who has seen predators before and refuses to be intimidated.
“We’re done talking.”
I back her against the wall with controlled pressure. Her pulse accelerates under my hands. Her breath catches—not fear, anticipation. She grips my arms with strength that’s increased since the mating, her body already adapting to what the bond has made her.
“Floor.” My voice has dropped to a growl. “Now.”
She doesn’t argue.
Afterward, we lie in the darkness with her body curved against mine.
The ruins smell no better than they did before. The distant sounds of corrupted wildlife filter through cracks in the walls. Tomorrow will bring more fighting, more death, more elimination of threats that stand between us and the god responsible for this nightmare.
None of it matters as much as the weight of her against my side.
“What happens when they’re all dead?” Her voice is quiet in the dark. “The monsters. The god. All of it.”
“Then we stop running.” I tighten my arm around her. “Then we find territory that belongs to us and hold it against anything stupid enough to challenge the claim.”
“That simple?”
“That simple.” I pull her closer. Feel the way her body relaxes against mine with trust that shouldn’t exist after everything she’s survived.
She doesn’t respond with words. Instead, she turns in my arms, presses her mouth against mine, and shows me with her body what she chooses not to say aloud.
It’s enough.
I don’t sleep.
Not because of threat—the remaining monsters in this area are too afraid to approach our shelter. Not because of wounds—my regeneration has addressed every injury from the day’s fighting. Not because of discomfort—having Soreia pressed against me is the opposite of uncomfortable.
Before, a mate was weakness. A pressure point that enemies could exploit.
Now?
Now she’s the reason the gods are going to lose.