Chapter 49

  The wind shifted.

  And with it came the sound.

  Roaring. No—not just one. Dozens. Hundreds. A sound like a thunderstorm made of teeth.

  Ren looked up.

  The far end of the square shimmered, and then—

  They came pouring in.

  Abominations.

  All shapes. All impossible.

  Some skittered with limbs bent backward, eyes on their chests. Others slithered, or flew, or bounded on twisted paws. Joints where there shouldn’t be joints. Heads that split sideways. Mouths that grinned.

  Ren staggered to his feet.

  His legs didn’t want to move. His breath caught halfway through his lungs. He was still holding the tattered parchment.

  And the only thought in his head was:

  Run.

  He could hide. He could find a cellar or a corpse pile to crawl under. Just wait it out. Let the nightmares pass him by. He wasn’t a warrior.

  He was just Ren.

  But as the first creature lunged at him, he dodged—not perfectly, not cleanly, but enough—and his body moved on its own.

  He drew a serpentine dagger from his belt. Dented. Cracked. Still sharp.

  He turned and faced them.

  One came barreling forward—something with the body of a wolf but no face at all, just an empty ring of teeth.

  He rolled under it, slashed its tendons as it passed, then jumped back. Another followed, low and serpentine. He grabbed a rusted pan off a vendor’s wrecked cart and bashed its jaw sideways.

  He was already bleeding.

  A claw had caught his side. One of his fingers was bent too far to be usable.

  But he didn’t fall.

  I can’t.

  Not while their bodies were still warm.

  Not while Kaela had died trying to protect someone. While Tallen had stood his ground. While Farin had bled defending this stupid, no-name town.

  They didn’t get to choose.

  But I do.

  The next one came, twice his size, with a spine like a tree trunk and antlers of rotted bone.

  Ren ducked its charge, then used a broken broom handle to wedge its leg mid-stride. It tripped. He jumped on its back and drove the blade through a patch of cracked flesh near its shoulder. It screeched.

  Another tackled him from behind—he hit the cobblestones hard. His breath vanished. He could barely see, vision tunneling. Everything hurt.

  Just stay down, something in him whispered.

  You’ve done enough. No one will blame you.

  But then he then he saw the parchment again. Crumpled nearby.

  And Farin’s body, not five paces away.

  He grit his teeth.

  “No,” he croaked. “Not yet.”

  He surged up, stabbed blindly, felt something give. The thing on top of him let out a shriek and reeled back.

  Ren rose. Staggered. Bled.

  But he stood.

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  He ran toward the fountain, weaving through broken stalls, drawing the mob after him. He grabbed a burning torch from a collapsed wagon and hurled it at an overturned cask of oil. Flame burst upward—brief, but bright—and several of the creatures recoiled.

  Another came from the left. He grabbed a handful of broken glass and flung it into its eyes. It screamed and clawed at its face, thrashing wildly.

  He was running out of tricks.

  His limbs felt like lead. His chest burned. His head pounded with each beat of his heart.

  They’re not just fighting to protect a town, he thought, panting. They were fighting to give someone else a chance.

  He slammed the flat of a pan into a creature’s snout. Kicked another’s leg from under it. Dodged a third—and was grazed again across the shoulder.

  He was going to die.

  He knew that.

  But if he was going to die, it would be standing.

  They circled him now.

  Too many to count.

  The blood in his ears roared louder than the beasts. His fingers slipped on the hilt of his knife—his last blade, its edge dulled, its handle slick with his own blood.

  One came from behind.

  Ren turned too late.

  A slash raked across his back. He fell to one knee, grit cracking under him. He swung blindly, caught something in the face. Another lunged. He ducked—barely—but the motion cost him. His arm gave out, the dagger clattering from his fingers and skittering across the cobblestones.

  “No—”

  He crawled after it. Another set of claws ripped into his side, tearing straight through cloth and skin. He gasped. His vision flickered.

  Another leapt on him.

  Then another.

  They tore into his legs, dragged him down fully, his chest slamming into the stone. Something cracked. His ribs?

  He screamed—but the sound was swallowed by teeth and muscle and shadow.

  Still, he fought.

  He twisted. Elbowed. Kicked.

  They kept coming.

  A claw drove into his shoulder and pinned him down like an insect on a board. Another creature bit into his thigh. The pain was distant now. Blurred.

  He reached inside himself.

  Threads.

  They responded—weakly.

  Blue and purple light pulsed across his skin, tracing the shapes of his training. Of every failed dish. Of every moment with Leo and the ruined pots and the quiet pride that had started to bloom.

  The Threads surged from him in a burst—impaling one, flaying another with a precise lashing arc. For a second, the pressure lightened. He pushed to his knee, panting, chest heaving.

  But there were more.

  They dove in again—dozens of them, the corpses of the first wave trampled by the next.

  He tried to call the Threads again.

  Nothing.

  Empty.

  Like trying to light a fire with wet tinder.

  “No. No, no—please.”

  He raised his arms.

  The creatures pounced.

  Blood. Screams. The crush of bodies swarming him, claws raking his legs, tearing at his back, dragging him down.

  Somewhere through the haze, a flare cut across the sky.

  Green fire, lancing upward into the clouds.

  The signal.

  Retreat. Regroup.

  His eyes followed it—just barely—but he couldn’t hold the image. The light blurred at the edges, his vision swimming. Too much blood. Too much pain.

  They dragged him down again, and this time, his body didn’t rise. Teeth found his shoulder. Claws tore open his chest. Something cracked again.

  He clenched his teeth until they bled.

  Ethan would have kept fighting.

  Tallen wouldn’t have stopped.

  Even Farin would’ve found a way to make some smug joke about dying on his feet.

  He lifted his arm one last time.

  And then—

  A claw rose high above him.

  It fell—

  And stopped.

  Not on his body. But in the air.

  The beast froze. Shivered.

  And then shattered.

  Not from steel or fire—but from light.

  A golden thread had sliced straight through its spine like a wire pulled taut.

  Then another.

  And another.

  And another.

  The swarm began to falter.

  A hundred golden lines appeared, then a thousand, webbing through the air like sunlight through cracked glass.

  They pierced the creatures.

  They burned like fire.

  Each monster they touched convulsed—and dissolved, shrieking in silence, as if some higher law had just rewritten the world and deemed them unnatural.

  Ren stared, too weak to even lift his head fully. His body trembled.

  And then—

  The Threads entered him.

  He gasped, jerking upright.

  They weren’t his. They were other. But they knew him. Welcomed him. The golden light flowed into his shattered limbs, his open wounds, his aching lungs.

  It filled him like breath, like fire, like purpose.

  Power exploded from him in a shockwave that blew the nearest creatures into ash.

  The square trembled. The sky itself flared.

  The last abomination lunged—

  And vanished mid-air, burned away by a web of light.

  Ren’s eyes widened, his body seizing up with the force of it.

  And then—

  Darkness.