Chapter 96: The Final Stretch

For a heartbeat, the world stopped. I didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t even exist properly. I just stood there with my mouth open and my brain whispering, No, that’s not real. His arm is supposed to be attached. That’s where arms go. We had an agreement.

Then Brutus screamed.

It wasn’t the noble, heroic kind of battle cry they write songs about—it was raw, cracked, and utterly human.

His knees hit the walkway with a metallic bang, one massive hand clutching the bleeding stump as the other flailed blindly, groping for an arm that wasn’t there. Blood pumped out in rhythmic spurts, splattering across the grating and raining down into the forge below in thick crimson droplets.

I stared. I shouldn’t have, but saints help me, I did. My mind went completely blank save for one very articulate thought: Well… shit.

“Brutus!” I finally managed to croak, though my voice came out shrill and cracking, more choirboy than commander.

The High Warden towered just a few feet away, his axe dripping with Brutus’s blood like some obscene badge of honor. He tilted his head ever so slightly, watching us with the lazy amusement of a cat who’d just discovered a nest of crippled mice.

And then—of course—all hell broke loose.

A dozen of our men rushed forward, yelling curses and battle cries that would’ve sounded inspiring if they weren’t immediately cut short by the Warden’s blade. He moved like liquid death, each swing a study in efficiency, every motion smooth and deliberate, cleaving men apart like an artist carving marble.

I was frozen again until Atticus’s hand seized my collar and yanked me backward. “Move, Loona!” he barked, dragging me toward the rear platform as bodies toppled around us like dominoes.

We scrambled past the slick patch of Brutus’s blood, boots slipping, lungs burning with the heat pouring off the forge below. Freya and Dregan followed, half-hauling the injured, their faces masks of grim panic.

But I couldn’t leave him. I turned, twisting out of Atticus’s grasp like a fish on a hook, and shouted back over the chaos. “Brutus! You colossal idiot, get up!”

The roar of my voice—gods, it shouldn’t have mattered—but it did. His head jerked up, eyes bloodshot and wild, pain replaced by something else. Rage. The kind of rage that burns away reason and leaves only the raw core of survival behind.

The Warden advanced with steady, unhurried steps, his blade dragging sparks off the metal as it trailed. Brutus rose, swaying, his remaining arm fumbling for the shotgun slung across his back. He gripped it one-handed, teeth bared, and pulled the trigger.

The blast cracked the air like thunder, echoing off the rafters above. The shot slammed into the Warden’s helmet—black steel fracturing, a piece clattering away to reveal one gleaming eye, dark as obsidian and twice as cold.

“Oh, beautiful,” I muttered, half-hysterical, half-awed. “Now he’s even uglier.”

The Warden straightened, smoke curling around him, his voice a deep, resonant growl that somehow carried over the din. “You’ll pay for that, fucker.”

He swung. Brutus ducked low before backing away on shaking legs as the axe whistled overhead. His balance faltered, but sheer stubborn will kept him upright.

The rest of the crew—saints bless their suicidal courage—charged fourth with renewed vigor. Dregan bellowed something dwarvish that might’ve been a prayer or just an elaborate insult, snatched up a fallen axe, and waded in. Freya followed, blade flashing in her hand, her movements sharp and furious.

Atticus, meanwhile, dove for Brutus’s belt, shouting, “Radio! We need the damn radio!”

“Take it!” Brutus snarled, dropping the shotgun and thrusting the device at him.

The Warden carved through our men like wet paper. Every swing of that axe was a punctuation mark on a massacre—full stops in blood and bone.

“Freya, Dregan, with me!” I shouted, trying to sound brave while my heart beat double-time against my ribs.

We rushed in as one—if you could call it that. More like a trio of idiots with a death wish, but I suppose that’s always been our charm.

The walkway shuddered beneath us, a river of molten orange seething below, heat curling up in waves that made the air shimmer like a mirage. Sparks rained down from the ceiling as the Warden’s axe smashed into the railing, shearing metal like soft butter.

I ducked under a swing that could’ve cleaved me in two, the blade’s wind slicing past my face close enough to make my hair stand on end. I retaliated with a quick slash of my own dagger, one I picked from off the floor, but the blow barely scratched his armor—might as well have been like tickling a golem.

“Freya, flank him!” I yelled, dancing back as Dregan brought his axe down in a two-handed arc that met the Warden’s blade with a clang that rang through my bones. Sparks flew, lighting Dregan’s beard like a saint’s halo gone horribly wrong.

The Warden shoved him aside with a casual twist, sending him sprawling. “Pathetic,” he sneered, voice dripping with disdain. “You really thought you could escape? My walls have eyes. My halls have ears. I built this pit of sin—and you think you’re clever enough to crawl out of it?”

“Shut up!” I spat, lunging forward.

He met my attack effortlessly, axe haft catching my wrist and twisting—gods, the strength in that single motion! I felt bones creak like old floorboards.

I seized the moment, my heart pounding a frantic rhythm—one, two, three, four, five, six—and vanished, slipping into the shadow realm in a new record of six heartbeats. The world shifted to a monochrome haze where the Warden’s form dissolved into swirling black smoke.

There you are, you bastard, I thought, reaching for the axe’s haft to yank it free and bring it with me. But the Warden’s smoke-form shifted impossibly fast, the weapon staying just out of reach as if tethered to his will.

My fingers closed on empty air before the realm spat me back to reality, gasping and stumbling on the grating.

The Warden laughed, deep and guttural. “Pretty trick, little whore. Vanish and wriggle all you like—it ain’t gonna do shit.”

I grit my teeth. “You talk too much for someone compensating for a tiny—”

He lunged before I finished, the swing nearly taking my head off. I rolled, came up hard against the railing, and met Freya’s terrified eyes across the chaos.

“Loona!” she cried, throwing a knife that buried itself between the Warden’s shoulder plates. It didn’t even slow him down.

Dregan rejoined the fray with a snarl, bringing his axe up to meet the next blow aimed for Freya’s chest. The impact knocked both of them backward, sparks showering. The walkway trembled and I swear the entire forge held its breath in that moment.

We regrouped for a heartbeat—three battered idiots facing an unstoppable wall of fury.

The Warden straightened, his voice turning mocking. “Impressive. You made it farther than most of the meat that passes through my halls. Almost respectable, if it weren’t for how ridiculous you look. What’s this plan of yours? Crawl up to the next layer and spread your legs for mercy?”

“Shut up,” I hissed, though my voice wavered.

He tilted his head, studying me like a specimen. “You’ve always been the mouthy one, haven’t you? The painted darling with the swaying hips and the eyes that promise filth. Tell me, did you think the Velvet Chambers would want you? That the nobles would fawn over their precious gutter slut once he’s scrubbed of the stink of prison?”

The words hit harder than any swing of his axe. My heart seized in my chest, a cold knot forming where anger should’ve been. Usually I could laugh it off, twist an insult into a joke—but this time, his voice was too precise, too sharp, carving into the old scars I thought I’d left behind.

“Shut up,” I said again, quieter this time, blood bubbling in my throat.

He stepped closer, armor glinting orange in the forge light. “You want to be loved, don’t you? Wanted. You think if you flirt hard enough, fight hard enough, maybe someone will forget what you really are.”

My knees wobbled. Dregan moved to intercept, but the Warden slammed his pommel into the dwarf’s jaw, sending him sprawling.

“Enough!” Freya shrieked, charging with a madwoman’s fury. The Warden merely backhanded her with a sickening crunch. She hit the railing with a crack, blood spraying from her mouth.

I staggered forward, anger finally bubbling past the humiliation. “You want me? Come take me, bastard!”

He grinned beneath his half-mask. “Gladly.”

The axe rose.

And then—a sound.

A deep, rumbling roar that rolled through the forge like the earth itself was growling in rage. The sealed tunnel behind us shuddered, cracks spiderwebbing through the stone. Dust poured from the ceiling in thick gray curtains.

The Warden’s helm snapped toward the sound, his axe pausing mid-arc, while the crew froze in a tableau of blood and defiance, all eyes on the wall that was no longer a wall but a crumbling barrier birthing something monstrous.

Then the wall exploded.

Rock and dust blasted outward, a storm of shrapnel and molten debris that lit the air with hellish light. Through it—like an angel from hell, a savior forged in wrath and ruin—stepped a figure drenched in black ichor, muscles corded, teeth bared in a feral snarl—

The Beastman.

His claws flexed, tearing gouges in the grating, his snarl a promise of violence that made the Warden’s vulgarity seem tame in comparison.

And in that perfect, dramatic instant, the tide of the fight shifted, the forge itself holding its breath for the clash to come.

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