The voice slithered through Tobias's mind like smoke, coiling around his thoughts, promising release. Let me finish it. But he shoved it down, deep into the churning void where the transformation still burned, where the golden veins pulsed with borrowed fury. This was his fight. His vengeance. And now, more than ever, it was for her. Lina. His daughter.
Garron's breath rattled wet and broken beneath his grip, the werewolf's massive frame reduced to a trembling ruin on the blood-slick platform. Tobias's black talons dug deeper into the torn shoulder, grinding against shattered bone, drawing a guttural whine from the beast who had once been unbreakable. Blood welled hot and thick between his fingers, steaming in the freezing air like a harbinger of the storm to come.
"Tell me where they took her," Tobias growled, his voice a low thunder that vibrated through the cracked stone. "Tell me, or I will make this last until you beg for the end."
Garron's single red eye glared up at him, defiant even in agony, blood frothing at the corners of his muzzle as he forced a ragged laugh. Each bubble burst like a fragile illusion shattering.
"I will never tell you, abomination," he rasped, his voice fracturing but unyielding. "Kill me. I die with honor, not groveling before a twisted experiment like you."
Tobias twisted his claws slowly, deliberately, feeling the tendons snap and tear beneath his hold. Garron's roar erupted from his throat, raw and tormented, reverberating off the cavern walls like the final toll of a crumbling empire. It was a cry of unfiltered anguish, the kind that could scar the soul, but Tobias felt only ice in his veins, a frozen certainty that this pain was merely the prelude.
Lina. The word echoed in his skull like a heartbeat, louder than the distant explosions shaking the mountain. She was not just Amira's child, not just another innocent caught in the Accord's web.
She was his.
Flesh of his flesh, blood of his blood, carrying the same cursed convergence that had warped him into this monster. And Vaelor knew. That realization burned hotter than any wound: the Accord had shifted their hunt.
It was no longer Tobias they craved for their rituals and remaking. It was her. His daughter, the perfect vessel, her young bloodline untainted yet potent, a key to unlocking whatever ancient horror Vaelor sought to awaken.
The thought ignited something primal in him, a father's rage that dwarfed the void-fire and golden storms raging through his body. He had lost everything, been broken and rebuilt in their labs, but this, this theft of his child, cracked open a fury he had never known. Grief twisted with it, sharp as Amira's final breath, her whispered truth still ringing in his ears.
Our child. He would not fail Lina. Not like he had failed her mother.
"Tobias!"
Kael's shout cut through the haze, sharp and laced with desperation. He burst into the junction, rifle slung across his back, eyes wide from the battles he had clawed through to reach here. But he halted abruptly, boots scraping on the gore-strewn stone, his face paling as he took in the scene.
Tobias glanced back, his colossal form framed against the stuttering lights. Taller now, his night-black hide rippling with gold-veined muscle like molten rivers beneath obsidian, his eyes voids of endless shadow rimmed in searing fury, no trace of white or humanity left. The air around him hummed with raw power, dark plumes curling off his skin like the breath of some primordial beast.
Kael's breath caught, color draining from his features. He stumbled back a step, hand twitching toward his rifle before freezing. His chest heaved in shallow gasps, horror and disbelief warring in his gaze.
This was not the Tobias he had fought beside, the steadfast brother who had shared scraps of laughter over meager fires and tales of shattered homes. This was a legend-made nightmare, a creature that eclipsed the old myths in its terrifying majesty.
"Tobias?" Kael's voice broke, a whisper threaded with fear. "Brother, what happened to you? Is that still you?"
His eyes darted to Garron, sprawled like a felled colossus, body mangled beyond salvage, limbs contorted in grotesque angles, fur matted with congealing blood. The Accord's enforcer, who had shredded entire units like parchment, now lay as a shattered husk, clinging to life by threads. Kael's gut twisted; disbelief surged through him. How had Tobias wrought this devastation?
Tobias regarded his claws, embedded in Garron's flesh. The man he had been, the one who had bantered with Kael through endless nights, felt like a ghost, submerged beneath this new, overwhelming might. But Lina's face anchored him, her violet eyes, his eyes, pleading for salvation.
"Yes," he rumbled, the word resonating like distant thunder. "It is me. What remains."
Kael swallowed hard, compelling his legs forward despite the primal urge to flee. His hands shook as he neared, gaze flickering between the beast and the fragments of his friend. "Listen, I know where they are taking the children. I intercepted orders on a pilfered comm line."
Garron's head jerked up, blood spraying from his jaws in a surge of final rage. "Traitor," he snarled, the word gargled through ravaged cords.
Tobias did not glance down. With a casual flick of his wrist, infused with terrifying ease, Garron's body hurtled from the ground, sailing thirty yards like discarded refuse, slamming into a heap of mangled rebar and debris with a sickening crunch of bone and flesh. The werewolf exhaled one final, shattered wheeze, then stilled forever.
Kael held steady this time, though his pallor deepened, a torrent of emotions crashing over him: terror at Tobias's evolution, sorrow for the brother slipping away, and a fierce determination to cling to their shared bond, the lifeline that had sustained them through hell.
"They are bound for Veilwood," Kael said swiftly, his voice steadying as he latched onto the mission, the one anchor amid the chaos. "Straight from Vaelor. That is all I have, but it is reliable. We can retrieve them."
Tobias fixed his gaze on Kael for an interminable moment, the golden abysses in his eyes sparking with a flicker of humanity, perhaps acknowledgment, perhaps remorse. The revelation from Amira burned brighter now; Vaelor did not want him anymore. The Accord's gaze had turned to Lina, her convergence blood a prize far more malleable, a conduit for their dark ambitions. The shift hollowed him out, transforming his personal torment into something vaster, a paternal imperative that demanded he become the monster they feared to protect what was his.
The black hide receded then, gold veins fading, bones realigning with agonizing cracks that echoed through the cavern. The beast retracted, leaving the man: taller, scarred, eyes still alight with unnatural flame, but Tobias once more.
He staggered, the shift's exhaustion striking like a forge hammer. Kael surged forward, supporting him under the arms before he collapsed, the touch charged with unspoken fears and relief.
"I have you," Kael murmured, voice thick with feeling, his hold fierce.
Tobias's breaths came ragged, but his tone was forged iron. "Veilwood will suffice."
Kael managed a weary, lopsided smile, though doubt shadowed his eyes. "Then we go. I have a contact in the city, indebted to me beyond measure. They will aid us. We face this as one, brother."
Tobias rose fully, grief and rage coalescing into an unyielding core, centered on Lina, the daughter he had never known, the vengeance that would forge a trail to her side.
"As one," he affirmed, the word a solemn pledge laden with all they had forfeited.
"As one," Kael repeated, his grasp lingering.
They turned from the carnage, from the blood and the fractured peak that had once been sanctuary. Two figures ventured into the biting night, abandoning ruin in their wake.
Wounds demanded tending, strategies required crafting, a conflict begged conclusion.
Above all, a daughter awaited rescue.
A father vowed to reclaim her.
And Vaelor would discover the peril of interposing between them.
They stepped into the howling gale, the wind lashing from the heights like a sentient fury, bearing ice fragments that lacerated bare skin and veiled the world in white oblivion. Kael drew his coat closer and retrieved the appropriate Accord comm device from his pocket as they neared the tunnel's egress. He activated it with a thumb press, seeking only traces of pursuers. Static hissed briefly before a fortified command frequency pierced the disruption with eerie precision.
A woman's voice emerged, frigid and exact, saturating the space between them.
"Control, Veilwood Sanctum reporting. Convoy Alpha secured in dock. All juvenile vessels confined to the subterranean vaults. Prime subject Lina exhibits extraordinary attunement to the binding relic. Preliminary lineage analysis verifies ninety-eight percent alignment with the conduit. Exceeding expectations."
A male voice replied, deferential and prompt. "Acknowledged, Sanctum. Lord Vaelor's status?"
"He occupies the ritual circle presently. The overlord has expedited the timeline. The progenitor's erratic metamorphosis is already channeling preliminary energy into the conduit prematurely. Should the abomination arrive promptly, his proximity will finalize the elevation and bestow the Veil instantaneous physical cohesion. Should delay occur, we advance utilizing the girl.
The transmission was severed.
Quiet descended, fractured solely by the wailing tempest.
Kael gaped at the apparatus, his hand quivering. Midnight. Scant hours remained. Veilwood lay three hundred and fifty miles northward through blizzard-choked passes and enemy territory. Impossible.
Tobias halted rigid at the tunnel's brink, gazing into the maelstrom. Rain blanketed his dark locks and ragged coat shoulders. The golden blaze in his eyes wavered, ebbing and surging like coals assailed by gusts.
Lina.
He envisioned her amid the whirling pallor: diminutive, petrified, isolated in a granite cell bathed in eldritch glow. Strangers readied to rend her asunder, to harness the corruption in his blood, now flowing through her, as the catalyst for abomination unbound.
His talons protracted unbidden, piercing his palms. Blood pattered onto the frost, vaporizing briefly before congealing into somber crystals.
Kael advanced. "Tobias." His tone rasped, nearly engulfed by the gale. "We cannot reach it in time."
Tobias remained averted, inhaling the squall as if it could fuel him.
He had evolved into an entity the Accord dreaded. Yet it sufficed not. The rite already siphoned from him, accelerating the dagger toward his daughter's neck.
A muted utterance fled him, part snarl, part fracture profound.
Kael seized his arm. "Another path must exist. A portal. An outpost."
Tobias pivoted. The vacant, inexorable assurance in his gaze halted Kael. Doubt flickered across Kael's face then, raw and unguarded: not just fear for Lina, but fear that the brother he followed into this storm might already be lost to the thing whispering inside him.
"No," Tobias uttered softly. The syllable traversed the gale like condemnation. "No alternate exists."
He peered northward, already discerning the incantations commencing.
"Then I shall forge one."
He advanced into the turmoil. The gale assailed him, yet he faltered not.
Kael followed, but his steps dragged now, the shadow of doubt deepening as he watched Tobias's silhouette vanish into the white.
Distant, borne upon the breeze, a juvenile's terror-stricken wail resounded through the gloom. Subtle. Frantic. It severed to the marrow.
Midnight approached.
The tempest ascended.
And within Veilwood's obsidian nucleus, a child unfamiliar with her sire awaited deliverance that every edict of span and chronology proclaimed infeasible.
A father possessed to safe her.
Yet deeper in the void, the voice stirred anew. It showed him a vision clear and cruel: golden veins tearing open a rift in the world, a shortcut carved through shadow and blood. Power enough to reach her in time. All it demanded was surrender, his soul yielded willingly, his will bound forever to the same ancient force Vaelor sought to wake. Become the puppet or lose the daughter.
The night engulfed them wholly.