Thal ran.
The city blurred beneath him — rooftops, spires, burning streets — each footfall cracking tile and stone as he vaulted the gaps between buildings. Valen clung to his back, his arms locked around the Nephilim's neck, his injured leg screaming with every impact. Luken hung limp in Thal's hands, one palm pressed to the wound in his stomach, the other braced against the exit wound in his spine, holding the mage together by pressure alone. The blood had soaked through Thal's tunic now, dark and warm against his skin.
The cathedral spires rose ahead, pale against the smoke-streaked sky. Thal could see the lights burning in the high windows, the distant figures of healers moving behind the glass. They were close. Minutes away.
Then he saw the flash of white.
Not ahead. Below. In a square two streets over, a fountain lay shattered and bodies were stacked in a spiral pattern that drew the eye inward. Two figures fought at its center — a woman with a bone-white axe, her silver hair catching the firelight, and a man in white leather, his hands shaping blood into blades. A minotaur circled the edge of the fight, his war axe raised, waiting for an opening.
Nyra.
Thal's stride hitched. Valen felt it.
"What? What is it?"
Thal didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the square below, on the flash of Nyra's axe, on the blood rising in sheets around the man in white. He couldn't fight and carry the mage at the same time. He couldn't leave Valen to bleed out on a rooftop.
Then he saw Elira.
She was two streets north, near the barricades that ringed the cathedral district. Blood on her armour, a glaive in both hands, her voice carrying over the chaos as she barked orders at a squad of guards. She was dragging a wounded man out of a doorway, her scarred face set with the grim focus of someone who had been fighting for hours and would keep fighting until she dropped.
Thal changed direction mid-stride, angling toward her.
Elira looked up as he descended. Her guards raised their weapons, then lowered them just as quickly when they saw what he was carrying. The wounded man she'd been dragging stared at the horned mage in Thal's arms with wide, glassy eyes before a guard pulled him away.
"I need you to get them to the Church," Thal said.
He lowered Luken to the ground. The mage's body was limp, his face grey, his breath so shallow it barely fogged the air. Thal stripped off his tunic without ceremony — the dark fabric peeling away from his chest, already heavy with blood — and knelt beside Luken. He wrapped the tunic around the mage's waist, knotting it over the wound, and pulled.
The fabric wrenched tight. Luken's body jerked. A low, involuntary sound escaped his throat, and his hands twitched against the cobblestones as if trying to push something away.
Thal held the pressure. "I know. Hold on."
Valen was still clinging to his back. Thal reached up and lifted him down, setting him on the ground beside Luken. The swordsman's leg was still bleeding, the needles still embedded in his flesh. His face was pale, but his eyes were clear.
"Stay with him," Thal said.
Elira's eye moved to Luken — to the horn curving dark and ridged from his temple. Her jaw tightened. She didn't ask.
"I'll take them."
"The healers. Tell them the horn doesn't matter."
"They'll listen." She gestured at two of her guards. "Get the mage. The tourniquet stays. Get the swordsman onto a stretcher and get his leg looked at."
Valen looked up at Thal. "Where are you going?"
"Nyra's in trouble."
"Then go."
Thal ran.
The square opened before him. The spiral of bodies was still there, the blood-channels still pulsing. Nyra was on the defensive, her axe carving through tendrils that reformed as fast as she cut them. Tar had taken a hit to the shoulder — a blade of hardened blood had punched through hide and muscle — and his answering roar still echoed off the buildings. He was favoring his left side now, his axe swinging in shorter, more brutal arcs, and the man in white was pressing the advantage, driving him back toward the shattered fountain.
The man in white stood at the center of it all, his leather streaked with red, his face calm, his chest still. He hadn't broken a sweat. He hadn't raised his voice. He was fighting two opponents — a berserker and a minotaur — and he looked like he was waiting for something more interesting to arrive.
Thal landed in the square between one heartbeat and the next.
The impact cracked the cobblestones. The blood in the channels rippled. The man's head turned. His red eyes — the same shade as Nyra's, the same shape — met Thal's. Something flickered in his expression. Not fear. Recognition.
"Thal," he said. "I was wondering when you'd arrive."
Thal straightened to his full height. Bare-chested, streaked with Luken's blood. "Step away from her."
"No."
The blood around the man rose in a spiraling curtain. Nyra backed toward Thal, her axe still raised, her breathing ragged. Tar moved to flank her, his shoulder still bleeding, his single eye fixed on the man in white with a hatred that had nothing to do with the fight and everything to do with the fact that someone had threatened his family.
"Thal," Nyra said. "He knows about Jal. He knows about the village. He called me little shadow."
"I know." Thal's eyes didn't leave the man in white. "Later."
The man watched the exchange. "She doesn't know what you carry. What lives inside you." He paused. "We both gave it permission. The difference is I know what I said yes to."
Thal went still.
"You shouldn't be here," the man continued. "Nephilim don't belong in mortal wars. You don't belong beside her."
Thal took a step forward. Stone cracked.
"If you interfere, I will kill you. Nephilim or not."
Thal moved.
He stopped chasing after the first three rises — read the pattern, stopped following it, and started arriving. The man rose from the blood and Thal was already there. One hand in his collar. The other driving into his ribs.
Something cracked. The man dissolved before he hit the ground.
Rose eight feet left. A column of blood came at Thal's face. He walked through it and caught the man's arm mid-sink, wrist to elbow, and held.
The blood churned — tendrils wrapping Thal's forearm, his shoulder, trying to pry him loose. His grip tightened. The tendrils shredded.
"You're holding back," the man said. Hanging from Thal's grip, one arm at an angle it shouldn't hold, his voice was flat.
Thal slammed him into the fountain. Stone cracked. The basin split. Blood sprayed from the man's mouth, red on white, and his expression didn't change.
He drew a breath that rattled. "You'd level this square. You'd kill her. You'd bring the buildings down." His red eyes held Thal's. "So you hold back. You always hold back."
Thal heard it. Felt the truth of it land somewhere he didn't want it landing.
His hands found the man's legs.
He swung him down — straight into the ground, both hands locked around the man's ankles, the full arc of his body behind it. The cobblestones cracked in a starburst pattern. Thal kept hold. Raised him. Drove him down a second time.
The man hit the blood puddle at the base of the fountain and went through it — not splashing, not scattering, simply passing into it the way a hand passes into still water. Gone. Thal's hands hit stone. He was still bent forward, both fists on the ground, knuckles against wet cobblestone, when the impact arrived at his back.
The man came up from the puddle behind him carrying the momentum of the throw — redirected, returned — his shoulder driving into the base of Thal's spine. It rocked him forward, one knee touching stone before he caught himself.
He turned.
The man stood six feet away. The arm that had hung wrong was moving — bone finding socket, slow and without ceremony. Blood ran from his mouth, his nose, a gash above his eye. He was breathing in careful increments.
Still standing. Still watching.
Thal straightened. He looked at the red eyes — the same shade as Nyra's, the same shape — and said nothing. Whatever he'd expected to feel standing over something this broken, this wasn't it.
"That's why I can do this," the man said.
The blood erupted.
Everything at once — every channel, every pool, every drop — rising in a red tide and coming down like the sky falling. Thal threw himself between it and Nyra and braced. His feet sank into stone. The blood pressed. He held.
Somewhere behind him Nyra went flat. Tar braced behind his axe.
The blood broke.
It fell in a red rain across the square. Thal straightened slowly, chest heaving, the cuts on his hands already closing.
The man stood at the far edge of the square.
"Mine and hers," he said, quieter now. "Our blood. Our village. Our debt to collect. You have no place in it."
He stepped back.
"You've been lying to yourself for years. Sooner or later, she'll see it. What you gave permission to." His red eyes held Thal's across the square. "Same as me."
He sank — slowly, deliberately — and the last thing to vanish was his eyes.
The square was silent. The rain of blood had stopped. Nyra was on her knees, her axe braced against the ground, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Tar was bleeding from a dozen wounds, but he was already pushing himself upright.
Thal stood motionless at the center of the square. The stone around his feet was cracked in a spiderweb pattern that spread twenty feet in every direction.
"Thal." Nyra's voice was raw. "What did he mean? What did you give permission to?"
"No time." He was already turning, already scanning the rooftops. "Alinda and Neo are still out there."
"Thal—"
"Get Tar to the Church." He met her eyes. "Luken is dying. Valen is wounded. Elira has them at the cathedral. Go."
"I'm coming with you."
"You can't keep up." It wasn't cruel. It was fact. "I'll move faster alone. Get Tar patched up. If the man in white comes back, you're the only one who can match him."
Nyra's jaw tightened. He could see the argument forming behind her eyes — the need to understand, the refusal to be left behind, the growing suspicion that he was running from her questions as much as he was running toward Alinda and Neo. But she was a soldier. She knew how to prioritize.
"Find them," she said. "And when you get back, we talk."
"Yes." He turned toward the rooftops. "We will."
He leaped. The stone cracked beneath him, and he was gone — over the buildings, through the smoke, into the dark. Nyra watched him vanish, her axe still in her hand, her brother's name still echoing in her skull. Tar rumbled beside her, and she reached up to rest her hand on his arm.
"Come on," she said. "Let's get you to the Church."
They walked together through the ruined streets, the minotaur limping beside her, the berserker carrying her axe and her questions in equal measure. Behind them, the fountain was rubble. Ahead, the cathedral spires rose against the smoke-streaked sky. And somewhere in the dark, Thal was hunting — not for the man in white, but for the two people who hadn't come back. The two people who might already be dead. The two people he should have gone after first.