Nocstella's words echoed out.
"Iris…tear the heavens if you must."
The air to Ren's side shifted—an almost imperceptible vacuum that pulled at him.
Before he could turn his gaze to the side, bony talons clenched into his side. The pressure took the breath right from his lungs, ribs screaming as he was ripped from the ground.
The wyvern let out a guttural cry as it ascended with him in its grip.
The world inverted—walls became ceiling, ceiling became walls—as the wyvern ascended.
"You...can't let go."
Ren's arm jerked down, dagger gripped so tight it cut into his own palm.
Then—
He struck the dagger down with pure hatred.
The edge of the blade pierced into scaled flesh just above the talon, tearing a line that spewed warm blood. The wyvern shrieked, but its grip only tightened, its claws only digging deeper into his organs.
Ren didn't stop.
Over and over, he stabbed down, his arm nearly torn from its socket as the monster recoiled in the air. After the repeated strikes, the claw twitched and loosened.
That was all he needed.
Ren shoved his free arm through the gap, hooking his elbow into a joint of jagged scale to pull himself from its grasp. His boots scraped against the wyvern's leg as he hauled himself upward to its spine. The wyvern bucked under him, every downstroke of its wings forcing Ren to stumble. It flailed violently through the air, wings scraping against the sanctum walls.
Wind tore past Ren.
He was whipped left and right, his skin nearly peeled away just by the sheer velocity alone.
But he held on regardless.
He pulled himself higher—hand over hand, stabbing his blade into its flesh for support. Every wound to the beast was a hook for Ren to keep pushing forward.
"Just a little higher…"
Then, the base of its skull came into view.
The horns jutted out at twisted angles, still connected by tattered ropes of birth-membrane that snapped and whipped in the wind. Ren braced himself against the rise of the skull. He raised the dagger in a reverse grip and slammed it down into the seam between its horns.
Its reaction was immediate, trying to shake Ren off by spinning mid-air. Blood spattered across the sky, and from the immense speed it spun, it had almost snapped its own wing off.
The beast dropped nearly twenty feet before catching itself, the whiplash nearly flinging Ren into open air. After it steadied enough, Ren struck down the same spot of its skull.
Again and again, the strikes dug into the wound like a chisel.
The wyvern was through with Ren, whipping its head violently to shake him off.
Ren's torso swung through the air, the dagger sunken into the beast's flesh, the only thing keeping him from being torn off—
—and then his world went weightless.
The wyvern pitched its head forward and snapped its neck up.
Ren's stomach reeled as the world became nothing but open air.
The false sky.
The fractured stone walls.
The jagged ruins below—all of it spun in fractured glimpses through the blur of motion.
Then a shadow emerged beneath him.
The wyvern swooped low, tucking its wings as it dove directly under him. Its six eyes, one of them a bloodied mess, tracked his descending body like a predator tracking its prey.
Ren narrowed his gaze below, the wyvern's jaw unhinging to attack.
"I've seen this before..."
The same rhythm.
The same attack.
The same wound, always funneling him toward one predictable end.
"It's the same...Vessels under the same mind..."
It was her mind.
The truth sank in. They were predators. They were beasts. But with no will of their own.
And because Nocstella was the only one in control…her rhythm, her style, her predictability bled into every movement made. The large wolf hadn't breathed corrosion, but the setup was the exact same—make him airborne, force him into a bad landing, wait for the descent.
The wyvern's throat bulged and exhaled, a wave of brown-red vapor bursting upward.
The cloud hit him. There was no way out of it.
"It burns..."
The heat was immediate—an all-consuming wave that was corroding his body.
"It burns so much..."
Even as his body was melting away, his grip on his dagger tightened.
"But...it won't kill me."
He felt himself accelerating from the fall, the vapor streaking past him in brown-red bursts that melted away at his skin. The wyvern's head rose into his fall, anticipating the kill.
With both hands, Ren brought the dagger up in a reverse grip, his arms quivering under the strain. Gradually, his whole body was being erased, bone showing way in many places.
Driven by pain itself, Ren brought the dagger down with everything left in him.
Crunch
The stone punctured deep into the wound between its crooked horns, blood erupting in a spray that mixed with the still-clinging vapor. A wave of pain ran through the wyvern's entire body—the wings snapped wide, the neck arched violently, the cry tore from its throat.
Ren held on, forcing the blade deeper, twisting it back and forth until he felt something give inside its skull. The wyvern convulsed, wings faltering. The remaining five eyes went wide.
And a final cry for help escaped from its throat, before it began to fall.
"Did I...do it?" Ren questioned while his eyes slowly shut. "I'm falling and...I can't think."
The wind blew against him, his body still corroding away from the vapor.
Then—
Impact
A crater exploded outward from the point of contact. Dust and blood erupted into the air. In its center was a malformed wyvern, its skull punctured open, wings broken, and eyes lifeless.
A few paces away stood Nocstella, thrown back by the sudden impact.
Her crimson eyes snapped upward to the corpse of her baby.
"My..." Her voice trembled as she dropped to her knees, a broken whisper trembling on the edge of disbelief and rage. "My...Iris. No—"
From behind the corpse, at the crater's edge, Ren began to climb up the corpse. His body was severely melted, but he still moved up its spine with heavy steps.
And his body was quick to regenerate, melting flesh knitting back together.
Ren stood atop the wyvern, towering above the ruin of her creation, a living defiance to the Mother of the Wretched Vale herself. His piercing gaze dropped to her, who knelt in the blood of her child, crimson eyes wide with a storm of emotions.