Chapter 17 — The Last Day, Part 1
The seventh day tasted like iron.
Everyone felt it—the edge in the air, the throb in the stone—as if the Rift itself was counting down. Engines from the transport ship rumbled somewhere beyond the cliffs. One more hunt, one more chance to change your life.
Laura didn't want a chance. She wanted certainty.
Her squad limped through a canyon of cracked basalt. Three bandaged, one cradling a broken arm, all wearing the dull sheen of people who had slept beside their fear too many nights in a row. She pushed them anyway.
The Bloodfang Chimera dropped from a ledge in a storm of gravel—a lion's body corded with muscle, a goat's horned head jutting from its shoulder, a serpent tail long as a cart, scales midnight-green. Heat gusted off it; embers smoldered in its mane.
"Positions!" Laura snapped. White fur rippled up her forearms; silver flared in her eyes as she triggered her Direwolf trait. "Shields up! Watch the tail!"
The serpent struck first, spearing a boy off his feet. He screamed; the venom hadn't reached blood, but terror had. The lion swiped, splintered a shield, then tore a breastplate like paper. Laura's flames washed the Chimera's chest. It flinched, shook fire from its mane, and leapt. A noble vanished under a paw. The paw lifted; nothing rose.
Above them, on the transport ship's control deck, silence tightened.
Director Bill's hands whitened on the rail. "Who put a Chimera on Day Seven?"
Colonel Veyr didn't look up from his cigar. "The Rift did."
Dr. Kael watched heat signatures spike. "They'll break in a minute."
Commander Dorn grunted. "They're breaking now."
On the canyon floor, the line broke.
The tail hammered Laura, skidding her across scree. She rolled, coughed, threw fire again to buy a breath. The Chimera barely glanced at her; the lion's head tracked the bleeding boy who'd lost his shield. It lowered its jaw.
A black shape hit it from the side like a hurled boulder.
Claws tore trenches through ribs. A low snarl vibrated the canyon. For a heartbeat there was only motion—tearing, striking, a smear of shadow.
The wolf that stood there was not white. It was night.
Black fur clung to a man-shaped frame, muscles corded beneath a skin of shadow. Silver burned where eyes should be. Smoke curled off his shoulders in slow coils the wind couldn't touch. He moved quietly; when he stopped, the air shuddered as if velocity had found a wall.
On the ship, Bill leaned forward. "That isn't a noble wolf."
Kael's voice sharpened. "Sacred signature. Old."
The Chimera answered with fire. A cone of flame boiled the air. The black wolf took it on the chest, shoulders hunching, claws digging into basalt. Smoke rolled away in sheets—then faded. He was still there, unburned. A thin, inhuman curl of lip showed fangs.
He blurred.
The lion's swipe met empty space. The wolf was already inside its guard, raking the goat head's throat, snapping the serpent tail as it struck. Blood fountained; the tail fell limp, spasming. The Chimera howled and pounced, heavy enough to crush a cart. The wolf met it midair. They hit like two storms colliding, stone cracking under their weight.
"Who is that?" a noble whispered, voice tiny.
Laura knew—something in the set of the shoulders, the way he angled between her and the injured before choosing his strike. For one frozen second, the wolf's silver eyes cut to hers. Please, she thought—and hated it.
He moved.
The Chimera's claw slammed where she'd been; gravel exploded. Laura slid, sent flame into the goat head's eyes. The wolf used that blindness. He went low, iron hands on the lion's foreleg, and jerked. The joint popped. The Chimera staggered. He climbed.
Fur bled back to skin along his wrists; hands with curved claws pounded a rhythm into the beast's sternum. The goat's horn scraped his shoulder and skittered. He bared teeth and drove both hands into the lion's maul, forcing it back. For a heartbeat, everything held.
Then he tore the throat out.
The sound wasn't animal. It was canvas ripping, a kettle exploding, a scream that would stain sleep. The Chimera thrashed once, twice, and collapsed, shaking dust from the canyon walls.
Silence fell—the kind that comes when a new predator appears and old rules go brittle.
Smoke curled from the wolf's shoulders, thinned, and withdrew. Black fur flowed like a tide. Bones shifted under skin. The shape resolved into—
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