Chapter 31
THIRTY-ONE
KASTER
The terrain lies.
I plant my foot on solid ground and feel it shift—not physically, but conceptually. The slope that measured uphill a moment ago now angles sideways. Colors bleed toward spectrums my eyes don’t have names for. Purple that burns to look at. Green that leaves the taste of copper on my tongue.
Spillover. The god has bled power into this place for so long that reality itself has developed fractures.
The Failed God-Beast charges from behind a rock formation that wasn’t there three heartbeats ago. Massive, overpowered, incandescent with energy it can barely contain. The creature’s flesh burns as it moves—consuming itself to fuel the attack.
I’ve killed three of these variants in the past hour. This one is smaller than the others. Rushed. Incomplete.
Running out of materials.
The thought registers as I sidestep the creature’s lunge and let momentum carry it past me.
My claws rake through its flank—divine flesh parting like wet paper, ichor spraying across stone that might be stone or might be condensed time.
The God-Beast screams in frequencies and spins for another attack.
Too slow. I’m already moving.
I hit the creature’s exposed side with the full weight of a partial shift—arms elongated, scales emerging across forearms and shoulders, heat building in my throat.
The impact shatters ribs that glow with failing light.
I follow the advantage, tearing into the wound, widening it, reaching for the burning core that keeps the construct moving.
My fingers close around concentrated godhood.
I rip it free.
The God-Beast collapses in stages—limbs going slack, fire guttering, the massive body crumpling onto terrain that can’t decide what angle it wants to be. Ichor pools beneath the corpse, hissing where it contacts stone.
No regeneration. No shimmer of divine intervention reassembling the pieces. The body stays down.
Soreia’s magic brushes against my awareness—her anchoring reaching into the fallen construct and sealing the ending. I sense her power lock the death in place with the same finality she brings to every kill we’ve made since the mating.
Final. Permanent. Done.
Silence descends.
Not natural silence—the loaded absence that comes when predators have cleared a territory completely. The kind of quiet that makes prey animals freeze because they know a hunter has passed through.
Except we’re the hunters. And there’s no more prey here.
I scan the warped landscape. Colors shift at the edges of my vision, refusing to stabilize. Distance contracts and expands without pattern—a ridge that looks a mile away might be ten steps. The ground beneath my feet vibrates with divine residue, the tremors irregular, uncertain.
No threats. No movement. No god-made constructs waiting in ambush.
For the first time since this hunt began, the god has nothing left between itself and us.
“That was the last one.” Soreia moves to my side, close enough that her shoulder brushes my arm. The contact is automatic—neither of us positioning for it, both of us ending up there anyway. “I don’t sense any more.”
I know. I’ve been tracking the diminishing numbers since we entered this territory. The god threw everything at us in waves—Failed God-Beast variants, executor remnants, desperate constructs cobbled together from scraps. Each wave thinner than the last.
Now there’s nothing.
“Its barriers are gone.” I state the assessment without emotion. “Every shield it built. Every monster it deployed. Nothing stands between us and the source.”
She doesn’t respond immediately. Her attention fixes on a point in the distance where the air seems to thicken—reality bunching up like fabric caught on a nail.
“I feel it.” Her voice drops. “The god. Its attention. Like staring into concentrated heat—too much pressure in too small a space.”
“Location?”
“Ahead. Maybe a mile.” A pause. “Maybe less. Distance lies here.”
I’ve noticed. The god’s influence corrupts everything except the creatures designed to kill us.
Those have stopped coming.