(KAI'S POV)
The slab hit like the fist of an angry god.
One second I was running, trying to keep formation, and the next the world exploded in dust and thunder and force that drove the air from my lungs. I was thrown backward,not gently, not carefully, but with the casual violence of a massive object hitting with tons of momentum behind it. My back hit stone, ribs compressing, and for several terrifying heartbeats I couldn't breathe, couldn't see, couldn't do anything but exist in a gray void of pain and confusion.
Then my body remembered how lungs worked.
I gasped,a painful, desperate inhalation that sent dust flooding into my mouth and nose, making me immediately cough so hard I saw stars. My eyes watered. My throat burned. Everything hurt,back, ribs, arms where I'd tried to catch myself, knees where I'd hit the ground.
But pain meant alive. Hurt meant functioning.
I rolled to my side, still coughing, one hand pressed against my ribs to stabilize them, the other scrabbling across the floor for my pistol. Where was it? I'd dropped it in the impact. Had to find it. Couldn't be defenseless here.
My fingers found metal,thank god,and I wrapped them around the familiar grip, pulling the weapon close. Both pistols. Still had both. Good.
The dust was starting to settle, but it hung in the air like a curtain, making visibility nearly zero. I could see maybe two meters ahead, everything beyond that just vague shapes and shadows that could have been anything.
"Lira?!" I called out, voice rough and raw from the dust. "Yona?! Anyone?!"
"Here," came a response, and relief flooded through me at the sound of Lira's voice. Close. She was close. "Kai?"
"Yeah. You hurt?"
"No. You?"
"Bruised. I'll live."
I pushed myself to my feet, still unsteady, still fighting the urge to cough with every breath. The dust was clearing faster now,where was it going? Ventilation? Magic? Didn't matter. I could see better, and that's what counted.
Lira emerged from the haze like a ghost materializing, knife already in her hand, face pale with dust but eyes sharp and alert. Her nose was bleeding slightly,probably hit it on something when she fell,but otherwise she looked intact. Battered but functional.
"The others?" she asked, and I heard the worry she was trying to hide.
"Separated. The slab..." I turned to look at it,a massive rectangular block of stone, easily three meters thick, stretching from floor to ceiling, wall to wall. Completely sealing us off from wherever Yona and the others had ended up. "We're cut off."
Lira's jaw tightened, but she nodded. "They can handle themselves. We trained for this."
"Yeah." I did a quick weapons check,both pistols loaded, one in each holster. Extra magazines in my belt. Knife in my boot. All there. "Where are we?"
The dust had finally cleared enough to see our surroundings properly, and I immediately wished it hadn't.
We were in a corridor,long, narrow, with walls that rose high on either side before curving into a vaulted ceiling. Stone, like everything in this damned castle, but worked stone. Carved. Decorated with reliefs that had been worn smooth by time but were still visible enough to be disturbing. Faces twisted in agony. Hands reaching out. Bodies in positions of suffering.
Torches lined the walls at regular intervals, but they hadn't been burning when we'd arrived. They ignited now,one by one, starting from behind us and working forward, each one bursting into flame with a soft whumpf of air being consumed. Blue flame. Not the warm orange-yellow of normal fire, but cold blue, the color of glaciers and deep ocean, and it threw shadows that moved wrong. Too long. Too independent. Like they had minds of their own.
The corridor stretched ahead of us, straight for maybe fifty meters before taking a sharp turn to the right. No windows. No other exits visible. No way back,the slab behind us was as permanent as the stone it was carved from.
Forward was the only option.
The air here was cold, unnaturally so, cold enough that I could see my breath misting in front of my face. And it smelled,old blood, dried and flaking, mixed with something sweeter. Rotting flowers? Decay masked with perfume? Whatever it was, it made my stomach turn.
"Trap," I muttered, checking my pistol again,force of habit, making sure the chamber was loaded even though I'd just checked thirty seconds ago. "Classic divide and conquer. Separate us, deal with us in pieces."
Lira had both knives out now,one in each hand, blades catching the blue firelight and turning it into liquid mercury. "We stay close. Stay alert. Keep moving. Find the others or find a way out."
"Save ammunition," I said, more to myself than her. "Close quarters anyway. Limited shots."
She nodded agreement, already moving forward, and I fell into position behind her,not quite side by side, but close enough to cover each other. The formation we'd practiced. The formation that had kept us alive this long.
We advanced slowly, carefully, each step deliberate. Testing the floor before putting weight down. Checking corners before turning them. Watching the walls for hidden mechanisms, hidden doors, hidden anything.
The corridor twisted and turned,left, then right, then left again. No pattern I could discern. Just random, like it had been designed specifically to disorient. The blue torches continued to light ahead of us, one by one, creating a path of cold illumination that revealed stone and shadow and nothing else.
The reliefs on the walls grew more detailed as we went deeper. Not just faces now, but full scenes carved into the stone. Battles. Slaughter. Rituals that looked occult and wrong. And eyes. So many eyes, carved into every surface, all sizes, all shapes, all watching.
"Feel it?" Lira whispered, voice barely audible.
"Yeah," I said. "Being watched."
"More than watched. Hunted."
She was right. There was a quality to the air, a weight to the silence, that spoke of predators circling, waiting for the right moment to strike.
The corridor opened suddenly,no warning, just straight into a chamber that was so much larger than it should have been. High ceiling vaulted like a tomb, maybe twenty meters up, supported by massive pillars that looked like single pieces of stone carved in place rather than built. The floor was covered in mosaics,faded now, colors washed out by time, but still visible. Battles and falls, triumphs and defeats, all rendered in thousands of tiny tiles that must have taken years to place.
And statues. Gods, so many statues.
They lined the walls, set in alcoves, each one different. Warriors with swords raised high, frozen mid-charge. Angels with wings spread wide, though most of those wings had chunks missing, fallen away to lie broken on the floor below. Robed figures that might have been priests or scholars, hands raised in blessing or warning or pleading. Monsters,or things that had been turned to stone mid-transformation, caught between human and other.
The faces. The faces were the worst part.
Most had been worn smooth by time, features eroded until they were just blank ovals. But somehow that made them more unsettling, not less. Because without features, without expressions, they could have been anyone. Could have been looking anywhere. Could have been seeing anything.
And I couldn't shake the feeling that they were all looking at us.
"Middle of the room," Lira said quietly, and I followed her gaze.
Two figures stood there.
Waiting.
My stomach dropped through the floor.
I knew one of them.
Vesper.
The bastard looked almost exactly as I remembered from Lira's descriptions and the one time I'd seen his corpse. Tall, maybe six foot two, muscular build that spoke of years of combat training. Dark hair that fell in perfect waves over his forehead,too perfect, not a strand out of place despite being dead for weeks. Handsome features that had probably charmed dozens of people before he murdered them. That arrogant smirk playing across his lips, the expression of someone who knew he was better than you and enjoyed rubbing it in.
But his eyes.
Where his eyes should have been were just empty sockets,not clean, not surgical, but gouged. Ragged. Crusted with black ichor that had dried and flaked across his cheeks. And yet somehow, despite the empty sockets, I knew he could still see. Could still watch. Could still track our every movement with whatever dark power animated him.
His body moved as he noticed us,jerky but graceful, like a marionette being controlled by an expert puppeteer. Strings of shadow or magic or something I couldn't quite see pulled at his limbs, making him stand too straight, too perfect, posture that no living person could maintain.
The man beside him...
I didn't know him, but I knew who he had to be from Lira's stories.
An old man. White hair thin and wispy, barely covering a spotted scalp. Priest robes that had once been white but were now stained with dirt and blood and time, torn and tattered but still recognizable. His face was heavily wrinkled, skin hanging loose from bones, but the structure underneath was strong. Had been strong. This was someone who'd lived a full life, who'd worked hard, who'd raised a family.
His eyes were milky white with cataracts that should have left him blind, but they fixed on Lira with perfect accuracy, tracking her as she stopped dead in the center of the chamber.
Lira's great-grandfather.
The man who'd raised her after her parents died. Who'd taught her to fight, to survive, to be strong. Who'd died defending her town from Vesper's attack.
Puppets.
Both of them were puppets.
Dead flesh animated by dark magic, strings of power pulling limbs, making mouths move, giving the illusion of life where only death remained. The skin was too pale, waxy like candles, with that slight translucence that came from blood no longer flowing. They didn't breathe,chests perfectly still, no rise and fall. They didn't blink. Just stood there, watching us with dead eyes that somehow still saw.
The great-grandfather's puppet turned slowly,movement too smooth, too mechanical,and its mouth opened. When it spoke, the voice was almost right. Almost his. Just gentle and wise, the voice of a teacher and mentor, but layered underneath with something cold and mocking, something that twisted the familiar into horror.
"Great-granddaughter," it said, and each word was a violation, a desecration of memory. "You've come far. But not far enough. Never far enough."
Lira made a sound,small, broken, something between a gasp and a sob that she strangled before it could fully form. Her knives trembled in her hands, the steady grip I'd seen her maintain through a hundred fights suddenly uncertain.
Vesper's puppet laughed,a dry, rattling sound like bones in a bag, echoing off the stone walls and ceiling until it seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Miss me, little vengeance girl?" His voice was exactly as I'd imagined it,smooth, cultured, dripping with arrogance even in death. "Do you miss the screams of your town? I do. They were so beautiful. Like music. Like art."
"No," Lira whispered, and I heard her voice crack, heard years of carefully constructed walls beginning to crumble. "No. Not you. Not him. This isn't—this can't—"
"They're not real," I said quickly, loudly, stepping up beside her, pistol raised and aimed at Vesper's chest. "Puppets. Corpses. Azael's tricks. Dead men dancing on strings. They're not who they were, Lira. They're just *things* now."
But even as I said it, I knew it wouldn't help. Because they looked real enough. Sounded real enough. And for someone like Lira, who'd been hunting Vesper for months, who'd found him already dead and been denied her vengeance, who'd lost her great-grandfather to violence and never got to say goodbye...
This was her nightmare made flesh.
Or made flesh again.
Lira didn't respond to me. Her eyes were locked on the two figures in the center of the room, wide and wet, breath coming faster and shallower. I could see her body coiling, muscles tensing, rage and grief and horror all building toward an explosion.
"Lira," I said again, more urgently. "Listen to me. We do this together. We do this *smart*. Don't let him,don't let it get in your head."
But she wasn't listening anymore.
She moved.
Fast,so fast I barely tracked it, all that training and natural speed channeled into pure forward momentum. She charged straight at Vesper, knives raised, a scream building in her throat. It was the sound of every loss, every failure, every moment of helplessness she'd ever felt being given voice.
The strike should have worked. Should have been perfect. She was faster than him, more skilled, and she had every advantage.
Except he wasn't alive anymore.
Vesper's puppet moved,not dodging, exactly. More like the strings pulling him jerked his body aside at the exact right moment, faster than human reflexes should allow. Lira's knife cut air instead of throat, her momentum carrying her past him.
His hand snapped out,too fast, too precise,and caught her wrist mid-swing. Twisted.
I heard the crack of bone from where I stood.
Lira cried out in pain, genuine agony that cut through her battle focus, and her knife clattered to the mosaic floor, bouncing twice before coming to rest against a broken tile.
"Pathetic," Vesper's puppet said, still holding her wrist, applying pressure that made her gasp. "Is this really the girl who's been hunting me? The great avenger? You couldn't save your town then. You can't even save yourself now."
Rage took me.
I fired,two shots, center mass, exactly where I'd been trained to aim for maximum stopping power.
The gunshots were deafening in the enclosed space, echoing like thunder, temporarily drowning out everything else.
Both rounds hit. Perfect shots. Two neat holes appeared in Vesper's chest, black ichor spraying from the exit wounds, splattering across the floor behind him.
He should have dropped.
Should have died.
Again.
But the holes... closed.
I watched in horror as flesh knitted itself back together with wet, sucking sounds, tissue flowing like liquid, reforming, healing. Within seconds, there was no sign the bullets had ever hit. Just pristine dead flesh and that same arrogant smirk.
"Regeneration," I shouted at Lira, already moving, already adjusting tactics. "Same as Vesper had before, but faster. Stronger. We need to—"
Vesper threw Lira aside casually, and she hit the floor hard, rolling, coming up with only one knife now, cradling her broken wrist against her chest.
The great-grandfather's puppet stepped forward, staff raised,an old wooden thing that looked like it had been carved from a single branch, worn smooth by decades of use. "Lira," it said in that horrible mockery of a loving voice. "You failed us. Failed the town. They all died because of you. Because you weren't there. Because you left."
Lies.
Complete lies.
Lira had been searching for help, for weapons, for anything that might save them. She'd been trying. She'd been fighting.
But the puppet spoke with her great-grandfather's voice, used his face, and lies delivered that way cut deeper than any blade.
"No," Lira said, but her voice was weak, uncertain. "I was—I tried—I was looking for—"
"Excuses," the puppet interrupted, and the staff swung,slow, telegraphed, an easy strike to block.
Lira raised her remaining knife, intercepted the staff, but her block was sloppy. Off-balance. The force of the impact drove her back a step, and I saw her arms shake from the strain.
She was falling apart.
The grief, the guilt, the rage,all of it was making her sloppy, making her slow, and in a fight like this, slow meant dead.
I moved in fast, both pistols holstered now,couldn't waste ammunition on a target that regenerated. Combat knife out instead, the blade I kept in my boot, seven inches of steel that had served me well in close quarters.
Vesper's puppet had turned his attention back to Lira, stalking toward her with that jerky grace, clearly enjoying her pain. Confident. Arrogant. Distracted.
Perfect.
I came in from his blind side,what should have been his blind side,and slashed low, aiming for the back of his knee. Severing tendons, destroying mobility. Basic tactics.
The blade bit deep, cutting through dead flesh like butter, and black ichor gushed from the wound, warm and thick and smelling like rot and copper.
Vesper's puppet stumbled, leg giving out, dropping to one knee.
Yes.
But even as I pulled the blade back for another strike, I saw the wound already closing. Flesh flowing back together, reknitting, healing.
Slower than the bullet holes, though. Maybe because the cut was deeper? Maybe because there was more damage to repair?
A weakness. Small, but real.
Vesper spun,faster than something with a damaged leg should be able to,and his fist came around in a wild backhand that I barely ducked under. The movement carried him past me, momentum throwing him slightly off-balance as he compensated for the leg that was still half-healed.
Lira slashed at the great-grandfather puppet, her knife opening a deep gash across his arm, cutting through robe and flesh down to bone.
Ichor dripped, thick and dark.
The wound closed, but again,slower than it should have been. Seconds instead of instant.
"You let us all die," the puppet said, pressing his attack, staff cracking against her hasty blocks. "Your family. Your friends. Your blood. Because you weren't strong enough. Weren't there when it mattered. Weren't—"
"SHUT UP!" Lira screamed, and she lunged wildly, knife flashing in a series of strikes that had no form, no technique, just pure desperate rage.
The puppet blocked easily, staff spinning in practiced movements, and cracked her across the side,not hard enough to kill, but enough to hurt, enough to stagger her.
She was making mistakes. Too many mistakes.
"Lira!" I shouted, dodging another of Vesper's strikes. "Control! You need to control it! Don't let him—"
Vesper's puppet grabbed me from behind,I hadn't seen him move, hadn't tracked him properly,and his arm wrapped around my throat in a chokehold, bicep and forearm closing off my airway with crushing pressure.
Can't breathe.
Can't—
I thrashed, trying to break free, but his grip was iron. Literally. Dead flesh that didn't tire, didn't weaken, just squeezed with mechanical precision.
Vision blurring at the edges. Gray creeping in.
"The hero," Vesper hissed in my ear, voice poisonous and mocking. "The optimist. The one who thinks he can save everyone. But you can't even save yourself, can you? Can't save your sister. Can't save your friends. Can't—"
Lira's scream cut through the gray haze consuming my consciousness.
I heard rather than saw her charge,footsteps pounding on stone, that wordless battle cry that was pain and fury and desperation.
Vesper turned, still holding me, using my body as a shield or a distraction or maybe just because he could.
Lira didn't slow. Both knives,wait, both? She'd picked up the dropped one? When?—flashed in coordinated strikes, one high, one low, trying to overwhelm his defense.
Vesper threw me aside to deal with her.
I hit the floor hard, gasping, throat on fire, precious air flooding back into my lungs in painful gulps. My vision swam, doubled, slowly cleared.
Get up. Had to get up. Had to—
Vesper dodged Lira's high strike,barely, the blade actually scraping across his cheek and opening a line of ichor,and punched her in the side.
I heard ribs crack. A wet, organic snap that was one of the worst sounds in the world.
Lira gasped, stumbled, went down to one knee, both knives dropping from numb fingers as she clutched her side.
No.
No.
I forced myself up, legs shaky, vision still not quite right, but moving because I had to. Because if I didn't, she'd die. We'd both die.
The great-grandfather puppet raised his staff for a killing blow, bringing it down toward Lira's head with enough force to crush her skull.
I tackled it,full-body collision, driving my shoulder into its midsection, both of us going down in a tangle of limbs and robes and ancient wood.
We rolled across the mosaic floor, wrestling for position, and I got my knife up, drove it into the puppet's side, twisted, pulled it out trailing ichor, stabbed again, again, again, each strike punctuated by a grunt of effort and rage.
The wounds healed, but slowly. Slow enough that they accumulated. Slow enough that ichor loss might actually matter.
Lira was up again,one knife recovered, the other lost somewhere, cradling her ribs but back on her feet because she was nothing if not stubborn. She staggered toward Vesper, who waited with that arrogant smirk, arms spread wide in mock invitation.
"Come on, little girl. Take your vengeance. If you can."
She lunged,but this time it was different. This time she feinted high, then went low at the last second, knife driving up under his ribs, angling for where a heart would be in a living man.
The blade sank deep, all the way to the hilt.
Vesper's puppet made a sound,not quite pain, not quite surprise, something between them,and staggered back a step.
The wound didn't close immediately. The blade was still in him, still disrupting whatever dark magic animated the corpse.
Lira held on, using the knife as leverage, driving him backward toward one of the pillars.
I threw the great-grandfather puppet off me,it was lighter than it looked, dead flesh not weighing as much as living,and scrambled to my feet, knife ready.
Together.
We had to finish this together.
I came at Vesper from the side while he was focused on Lira, and drove my knife into his back, aiming for the spine. The blade grated against vertebrae, stuck, and I twisted with all my strength.
He howled,an inhuman sound, layers of voices screaming in unison,and reached back for me, but Lira twisted her blade in his chest, making him seize.
The great-grandfather puppet was up, staff swinging at my head.
I ducked, pulled my knife free from Vesper's spine with a wet sucking sound, and spun to face the new threat.
The staff caught me on the shoulder,not a full hit, but enough to send pain shooting down my arm, enough to make my fingers go numb.
Lira kicked out, catching Vesper behind the knee with her heel, and his leg buckled, sending him down.
She pulled her knife free and slashed across his throat in one smooth motion, opening the jugular,not that it would kill him, but it bought us seconds as black ichor fountained out, as his regeneration struggled to keep up with major trauma.
I blocked the staff strike aimed at my head, pain screaming from my injured shoulder, and slashed at the great-grandfather puppet's leg, cutting deep, trying to cripple it.
"You failed them!" the puppet shouted, still using that horrible loving voice even as I cut it apart. "You failed *me*! You're a failure, Lira! Everything you touch *dies*!"
Something broke in Lira's eyes.
Not shattered,hardened.
Crystallized.
The grief was still there, the guilt, the pain. But under it all was steel. Pure, unbreakable steel forged in loss and suffering and the absolute refusal to quit.
"I know," she said quietly, and there was something in her voice that made even the puppets pause. "I know I failed. I know people died. I know I'll carry that forever. But you know what?"
She moved,not wildly this time, not desperately, but with the precision and skill we'd trained for weeks to perfect.
Both knives,she'd retrieved the second somehow while I wasn't looking,flashed in a coordinated assault on Vesper's puppet. High-low, left-right, feint-strike-feint-strike, a combination we'd practiced until it was muscle memory.
"I'm still here," she said, and one knife took out his left eye,the remaining one, gouging deep into the socket. "I'm still fighting." The other knife drove into his throat, severing whatever passed for a windpipe in a corpse. "And I'm going to END you."
Vesper's puppet staggered, both hands going to his throat, regeneration struggling to keep up with the damage.
I pressed the advantage on the great-grandfather puppet, driving it back with a series of quick slashes that opened wounds faster than they could close. Leg, arm, side, face,each cut strategic, each one adding to the accumulated damage.
The puppet's movements were getting slower. Jerkier. The strings of dark magic struggling to animate flesh that was too damaged, too drained of whatever power kept it moving.
"Lira!" I shouted. "Eyes! Go for the eyes!"
She understood immediately. The eyes were the weakness,Vesper's had already been destroyed once, and now with one more gone, he was barely tracking us. Blinded corpses couldn't fight effectively.
She went for the great-grandfather puppet while I kept Vesper occupied, and I saw her hesitate,just for a split second, just a moment of grief and love and loss passing across her face,before she drove her knife into her great-grandfather's left eye.
"I'm sorry," she whispered as the blade sank deep, as milky fluid mixed with black ichor. "I'm so sorry. But you're not him. Not anymore."
The puppet screamed,both puppets screamed, a sound that echoed off the walls and ceiling, that seemed to come from the stones themselves.
And then they attacked with desperate fury, regeneration accelerating, movements becoming faster, wilder, more dangerous as whatever controlled them realized we might actually win.
The fight became a blur.
Dodging, striking, blocking, bleeding. My shoulder was on fire, my ribs ached from where Vesper had grabbed me, my throat burned from the chokehold. Every breath hurt. Every movement was agony.
But I kept moving.
Lira was worse,broken wrist, cracked ribs, blood streaming from her nose and a cut above her eye I hadn't noticed her receiving. She was pale, breathing in short gasps that spoke of internal damage, favoring her left side.
But she kept moving too.
Because that's what we did. We survived. We fought. We *refused to die*.
I got behind Vesper again, grabbed his head with both hands,ignoring the pain in my shoulder, ignoring everything except the need to end this,and twisted with all my strength.
His neck snapped. Vertebrae grinding, separating, head lolling at an unnatural angle.
He should have dropped.
He didn't.
But his movements became even more jerky, even more puppet-like, as if the strings were struggling to work through a broken connection.
Lira took her great-grandfather puppet's remaining eye, then slashed across his throat,deep enough to nearly decapitate him, blade scraping bone.
It stumbled, fell to one knee, staff dropping from nerveless fingers.
Together, moving in sync without needing to speak, we pressed our final assault.
I drove my knife into the base of Vesper's skull, angling up into whatever remained of his brain, and twisted. Lira did the same to her great-grandfather, both blades striking simultaneously.
The puppets convulsed, bodies seizing, and then—
The strings snapped.
I didn't see it happen, exactly, but I felt it. Felt the moment when the dark magic animating them simply... stopped. Like someone had cut the power, flipped a switch, decided the game was over.
They fell.
Both of them. At the same moment. Crumpling like dolls with their strings cut, which is exactly what they were.
Dead.
Finally, properly, completely dead.
Lira stood over her great-grandfather's body, breathing hard, tears streaming down her face, mixing with blood and sweat and dirt.
"I'm sorry," she said again, voice breaking completely this time. "I'm so sorry. I tried. I really tried."
I wanted to go to her, to comfort her, but my legs gave out and I ended up sitting hard on the floor, back against one of the pillars, every part of my body screaming in protest.
We'd won.
Barely.
We'd survived.
For now.
But gods, the cost. The toll. The exhaustion.
Lira finally tore her gaze away from the bodies and looked at me, and we just stared at each other for a long moment, both of us broken and bloody and alive.
"The others," she said finally, wiping her face with the back of her hand, smearing blood and tears together. "We need to find the others."
"Yeah," I agreed, forcing myself to stand even though every muscle protested. "Let's move."
I walked over to her, and she collapsed against me,not romantically, not weakly, but just... needing support. Human contact. The reassurance that someone else was real and alive and there.
I wrapped my good arm around her, supporting her weight as she did the same for me, and together we limped toward the wall.
Which was rumbling.
Opening.
Revealing a passage forward, deeper into the castle, toward whatever fresh hell Azael had prepared for us next.
But we were alive.
We'd faced our nightmares,or Lira's nightmares, puppeted and animated and thrown at us like weapons,and we'd won.
Together.
And that had to count for something.
"Let's go find our family," Lira said quietly, straightening up, pulling away from me, finding her strength again. Both knives back in her hands despite the broken wrist, despite the pain, despite everything.
Because that's who she was.
Unbreakable.
"Yeah," I said, checking my pistols, reloading even though my hands shook. "Let's go."
We walked forward into the darkness.
Together.
Limping.
Bleeding.
But alive.
And in this place, in Azael's castle of horrors and games, being alive was the greatest victory we could ask for.