The depot was quiet when Ethan woke. Quiet in the way graveyards were quiet — not peace, but waiting.
He sat up slowly, muscles screaming, sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his chest. His body felt wrung out, like every tendon had been pulled to the edge of tearing. The Core pulsed faintly beneath his skin, no longer the ravenous storm it had been last night, but not asleep either.
It was watching. Always watching.
Selene leaned against the far wall, arms crossed, her rifle within reach but untouched. She looked like she hadn't moved since he collapsed onto the cot. Her eyes were sharp, unreadable, though he thought he caught a flicker of relief when she saw him awake.
"You lived," she said.
Ethan gave a hoarse laugh. "That's your bar, isn't it? Survive and call it progress?"
"Survival is progress," she said evenly. "But today isn't about survival."
He rubbed at his temples. "Then what the hell is it about?"
Her gaze pinned him. "Lesson three."
They left the depot before dawn, walking until the rusting bones of the city gave way to a stretch of shattered highway. Cars were strewn like carcasses, their glass shattered, steel frames twisted. The mist pooled low across the asphalt.
Selene stopped in the center of the road. "Here."
Ethan looked around. Nothing but wrecks and fog. "Here what?"
"Here you break."
He frowned. "Break what?"
"You," she said simply.
The Core stirred at her words, like a beast recognizing the scent of a hunt. Ethan's chest tightened. "What the hell are you—"
She didn't answer. Instead, she drew two blades from the sheath across her back. Twin arcs of steel gleamed red in the rising sun. She tossed one at his feet.
Ethan stared down at it. "You want me to fight you?"
"Yes."
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. "That's insane."
Selene's tone was cold, deliberate. "If you can't control yourself against me, you'll never control yourself against anyone else. The Core won't stop whispering. It won't stop hungering. Either you bend it to your will, or it will bend you."
Her words sank into him like lead. He picked up the blade, testing its weight. His palms were slick, his pulse uneven.
"You're going to push me until I snap," he said quietly.
She stepped into stance, blades poised. "That's the point."
The first strike came faster than thought. A streak of silver, air splitting. Ethan barely raised his blade in time, the clash ringing through his arms. Sparks spat in the fog.
Selene pressed, relentless, her strikes precise and merciless. She didn't fight like a trainer. She fought like someone trying to kill him. Ethan staggered under the weight of her assault, barely keeping up.
The Core howled in his blood. Take her. Tear her. Feed.
He clenched his teeth, forcing the whispers back. But his arms trembled, his lungs burned. She was faster, stronger, utterly unyielding.
"What are you waiting for?" Selene's voice cut like steel. "Use it."
Ethan snarled, blocking another strike. "If I use it, I won't stop."
Her blade nearly opened his cheek. "Then learn to stop."
Rage flared in him — not just at her, but at the Core, at the city, at the blood-soaked sky. He swung with everything he had, steel screaming against steel. For a moment, their faces were inches apart, breath mingling.
Her eyes were fire. "That's it. Feel it. Now leash it."
But the Core wasn't leashable. It surged, molten and intoxicating. Ethan felt claws itching under his skin, vision sharpening until every heartbeat in the mist throbbed in his skull.
He shoved Selene back, chest heaving. "I can't—"
"You can," she snapped. "Or you'll die."
She came again, harder, driving him to the edge. Every strike demanded he choose — submit to the Core or fall under her blade. His muscles screamed, his thoughts splintered.
And then—
Something inside him snapped.
A roar tore from his throat, not human, not beast, but something between. Crimson claws burst from his hands, his blade clattering to the asphalt. The Core flooded him, sweet and savage. Time slowed.
Selene lunged. Ethan moved without thought, catching her wrist mid-strike. He twisted, overpowered her, forcing her back. His claws grazed her throat, enough to draw a line of blood.
The Core screamed in triumph. Yes. Take her. Feed.
His chest heaved, his mouth watering at the copper scent. Selene stared at him, unflinching.
"Do it," she said. "If you're nothing but the Core, then kill me."
Her voice cut through the haze like a blade. He froze, claws trembling against her skin.
She didn't fight back. She didn't flinch. She looked at him like she could see straight through the monster into whatever shred of Ethan was still there.
"I won't stop you," she said softly. "But if you kill me, you'll never come back from it."
Ethan's vision blurred. His heart thundered. The Core raged, clawing at his mind, desperate for blood. But beneath it — faint, fragile — was his own voice.
I'm not a passenger.
His claws shook. Slowly, agonizingly, he wrenched them back. He stumbled away, choking on his own breath, the Core writhing inside him like a beast denied.
Selene touched the thin cut on her neck, then wiped the blood away without a word. Her eyes softened, just barely.
"That," she said quietly, "was the lesson."
Ethan dropped to his knees, the blade of his claws fading back into his hands. His whole body trembled, sweat dripping onto the cracked asphalt. He'd never felt so hollow. Or so raw.
"I almost…" His voice broke. "I almost killed you."
"But you didn't." She knelt in front of him, her hand hovering just shy of his shoulder — close enough for warmth, far enough for distance. "That's control."
His throat tightened. "It felt… good. Too good."
"I know," she said softly. For the first time, he heard something like grief in her voice. "That's what makes it dangerous."
He looked at her, chest heaving. "What happens when I can't pull back?"
Selene's expression was unreadable, but her eyes burned. "Then I'll do what has to be done."
The words cut deep, but her gaze held him there, steady, unflinching.
The fog thinned. The sun broke over the ruined skyline, painting the asphalt in crimson light. Ethan sat there, hollowed out but alive, the Core purring faintly in his blood.
Lesson three had broken him open. But in the hollow left behind, something fragile flickered — not victory, not peace, but the faintest ember of belief.
Maybe he could fight this thing. Maybe he could still be himself.
The silence stretched between them, taut as wire. The Core purred under Ethan's skin, satisfied with the taste of near-victory, whispering promises of strength if he'd only let it finish what he started.
He pressed his palms into the cracked asphalt, trembling as if every nerve had been scoured raw. "It wanted you." His voice was hoarse, scraped. "Not just blood. All of you."
Selene didn't look away. "Of course it did. The Core doesn't crave scraps—it craves conquest. That's why I had to push you this far."
He laughed bitterly, the sound breaking on his breath. "So I'm just… an experiment? See how long before I snap?"
Her jaw tightened. She didn't deny it.
That hurt more than the fight.
Ethan shoved himself upright, staggering like his bones were glass. The blade he'd dropped lay a few feet away, glinting in the sun. He ignored it. His hands still shook with phantom claws, his mouth still watered at the copper tang of her blood.
He wanted to tell her to stay back. To leave him alone before he slipped again. But when he glanced at her, she was closer than he realized. Her shadow fell over him, and he could see the faint bead of red still lingering at her throat where his claws had kissed skin.
It was too much. His hunger surged.
Ethan turned away sharply, fists curling. "Why didn't you fight back? Why would you risk—"
"Because you needed to see yourself," Selene cut in, her voice steady, almost cruel in its calm. "If I fought you like prey, you'd never learn restraint. You had to look at me and choose. That was the only way."
His throat worked, but no words came. He felt like his entire chest had been split open, hollowed out.
Selene studied him for a moment, then sheathed her blades with slow, deliberate care. She stepped closer, her boots crunching glass on the asphalt. Ethan held his breath when her hand brushed his shoulder—not firm, not demanding, just enough to anchor him.
"You pulled back," she said quietly. "That means you can do it again."
The simple certainty in her tone hit him harder than her blades had. He wanted to believe her. But the Core shifted restlessly inside him, whispering of inevitability.
He swallowed hard. "You don't understand. It's not done. It'll never be done."
Selene's lips pressed into a thin line. For a flicker, her eyes betrayed something softer—fear, maybe, or sorrow—but then the steel returned.
"No," she said. "It isn't done. Which is why tomorrow we do it again."
Ethan's head snapped toward her. "You're insane."
"Maybe," she admitted. "But insanity is the only thing that's kept me alive this long. And now it has to keep you alive too."
For the first time since the fight, Ethan saw her waver—just for a heartbeat. She looked at him not as a weapon, not as a threat, but as a man standing on the razor's edge of his own destruction.
And for that heartbeat, he saw something in her eyes he hadn't before. Not pity. Not judgment. Something dangerously close to belief.
The Core hissed in his veins, recoiling from it. It despised her faith. It wanted her broken, devoured.
Ethan forced himself to breathe, steady and deliberate. He met her gaze. "And if I fail?"
Selene's eyes hardened, though her hand lingered on his shoulder for one heartbeat longer before pulling away. "Then the world loses another soul. But not today."
The words were a verdict, but also a promise.
The sun climbed higher, burning the fog away until the ruined highway stretched in both directions—endless, empty, merciless. Ethan stared down that road, feeling the Core's hunger slither beneath his skin, feeling the tremor in his own hands.
Lesson three wasn't survival. Lesson three wasn't strength.
Lesson three was this: he was already breaking. And if he didn't master the Core soon, it wouldn't just be his soul at stake. It would be hers.