The corpse made a sound when it moved.

Not a groan, not a twitch—it was far too gone for that—but the wet scrape of ruined flesh dragged over shattered tile. Every pull shifted broken bones in their sockets, split seams in its warped skin, and released a smell that was half-burnt meat, half something far older that no fire could purify.

Victor hauled it by one leg, boots crunching through the grit. Max took the other without a word. Their steps fell into a steady rhythm, the body sagging and twisting between them as they passed flickering ceiling lights and overturned crash carts. The blood splashed across the walls had already baked dry from the heat of their fight, its dark stains whispering of victory, but not of safety.

By the time they reached the old janitor's closet, the demon's flesh had begun to pull apart in new places, splitting along lines that hadn't existed when it fell. Whatever had animated it was leaving, and what remained wanted only to rot.

Victor kicked the door wide, and together they shoved the thing inside. The sound of its weight hitting the floor was dull, final. Victor slammed the door shut. Max twisted the lock until it clicked, the small sound swallowed by the humming quiet of the corridor.

Neither spoke. They just turned and walked back through the corridor's broken geometry, Max's arms aching from more than effort, ribs still flaring in pain. The pace slowed, not because their bodies demanded it, but because of the unspoken question hanging between them—what had they actually won here?

The hospital was waking, but wrong. Lights crackled with static and half-dead monitors flickered unreadable lines, but no voices rose over the silence. No running footsteps. No sharp calls for help. This was the quiet that came when the screaming had stopped for good.

Back in the ICU, Dan moved from bed to bed. He barely touched each patient—just a palm to a wrist, a forehead, a chest—and each time, a muted golden light flowed out from him. It was never more than a faint glow, like sunlight behind gauze, but under its touch, a nurse's shaking stilled, a patient's breathing deepened. Eyes fluttered open for a few moments, then closed again, the pain eased if not erased.

It wasn't resurrection. But it was mercy.

Max stopped in the doorway, watching. Dan's light wasn't fire. It didn't rage, didn't burn. It pulsed in a steady rhythm, as warm as human touch, and Max hated the part of himself that wanted to believe in it.

When Dan reached the last room, Liz's, he hesitated. She was as they had left her—still, untouched, her red halo pulsing faintly above her brow, as though it breathed in sync with her.

Dan pressed his hand to her chest.

Nothing.

He tried again, a whisper in his voice. "Come on…"

Still nothing. Her vitals ticked steadily on the monitor, her skin unmarked, but the gold refused to enter.

Dan pulled away slowly. On his way out, he murmured, "It's not her body. It's deeper. Something else…"

Max said nothing, his gaze fixed on the glass wall as if staring hard enough might reveal whatever held her under. But the truth didn't give itself up.

The quiet pressed in again, heavier now. Monitors blinked like distant lighthouses in a fog, each soft beep a reminder she was still here… but unreachable. Max's reflection stared back at him from the glass, pale and tired, the kind of face that looked like it had been standing vigil for years.

Outside, sirens began to rise in the distance, but the lights on the skyline never came closer.

"They're not coming," Victor said quietly behind him. "No one's stepping into this wing until they know those things are gone."

"We're still here," Max muttered.

"Doesn't matter," Victor replied flatly.

Later, they found a patient room a few corridors over—clean, untouched, curtains drawn against the night. Dan stayed behind with Liz, insisting he'd keep watch, that the halo above her still pulsed even if they couldn't reach her. Max didn't argue.

At the sink, he washed dried blood from his arms, from the cuts on his face, watching the water turn pink, then red, then clear again. The Soulfire inside him had dimmed, but faint motes of light still clung to his skin, not flame now, just residue.

Victor stripped off what was left of his shirt, wiping soot and blood from his torso. His ribs were a patchwork of fresh scars, brutal but already closing.

The room was quiet but heavy with things unsaid, until Victor sat on the edge of the bed, eyes dark and still—the moment before rock shears loose from a cliff face.

"You gave it to Dan," Victor said.

Max dried his hands slowly, eyes on the water spiraling down the drain. "He was dying."

"I know." Victor's tone was even—too even. "And you saved him. You gave him something… light. Warm. Good."

Max didn't turn. "You're not dying."

"No," Victor said. "But I'm not stupid either."

He stood in the half-light like a fortress braced against a storm, but Max could see the tremor in the foundations. "I saw what it took to stop that thing. And I saw how close we came to losing everything. If I stay like this—just fists, just tactics—I'm going to get one of you killed. Or myself. And next time, we might not be lucky."

Max's voice stayed low. "That's not how this works."

Victor took a step closer. "I'm not asking to be a hero. I'm asking not to be dead weight."

"Vic…" Max's voice roughened. "You think I don't get it? I've seen you drag me out of hell twice over. You've patched me up in places no medic could reach. You've pulled me out when—" He stopped himself, jaw tightening. "Don't stand there and pretend you're a burden."

Victor's eyes narrowed. "Then tell me what it is."

Max met his gaze at last. "It's a gamble. You don't know what you'll be after. Dan got something good. That's luck. I've seen the other kind. I've lived it."

Victor's jaw tightened. "And if the other kind is what it takes to keep you breathing? To keep Liz breathing? I'll take it."

Max shook his head. "Once it's in you, it stays. It digs in, feeds whatever's already there. You're sure you want to hand it that kind of leverage?"

Victor didn't blink. "I'm sure I don't want to stand over your body one day, wishing I'd done this when I had the chance."

Max stared at him. "Vic… we've both buried enough people. I don't want to risk burying the last friend I've got."

Victor's voice softened, but it didn't lose its edge. "You're not burying me, brother. Not today. Not ever. And if this is the only way I can make damn sure of that, then we both know you're going to do it."

The silence between them was heavy, full of years and battlefields neither wanted to remember.

Max exhaled, slow and tight. "You don't get to blame me for what it makes you."

Victor's eyes didn't waver. "If I can live with what I've been, I can live with what's next."

Max stepped forward, resting a hand on Victor's shoulder. The fire stirred faintly under his skin, gold-tipped, as if it had already made up its mind before he had.

"All right," Max said softly. And in that word was not just consent, but the unspoken truth—if one of them was going to burn, they'd burn together.

He didn't ask if Victor was sure. He didn't warn him what it might cost. They were past that.

If the world was going to burn, they'd carry the fire together.

***

The room carried the sterile tang of antiseptic over a deeper scent of sweat, steel, and old blood.

Victor stood in the centre, shirtless, his arms loose at his sides. The cuts scattered across his chest had sealed into rough scabs, but they still looked raw, each one a warning of how close the fight had come. The bruise spreading over his ribs tightened with every breath, but his expression didn't betray the pain.

Max lingered a few steps away, his posture drawn tight, fingers flexing restlessly as if the energy under his skin needed somewhere to go. Soulfire glimmered faintly beneath the surface, a restless shimmer that caught the light when he moved. In the doorway, Dan leaned against the frame with his arms folded, the faint gold halo behind his head pulsing softly, as if it too was listening.

Victor's eyes moved between them, then flicked toward the closed door that led to Liz's room. "If I'm going to protect you—protect her—I need more than fists," he said, his voice low but carrying the weight of a decision already made.

Max let a moment pass before answering. "It doesn't make you stronger," he said finally. "Not the way you think it will."

Victor raised one eyebrow. "Then what the hell does it do?"

"It makes you more… you," Max said. "It digs into the parts of yourself you keep buried and lights them on fire. And once it's out, there's no way to push it back in. I can't choose what comes out of you. No one can."

He hesitated then, his gaze dropping briefly to the floor. "I gave it to Dan because he was dying. You're not. You still have a choice."

Dan pushed away from the doorway, the gold light shifting with him. "And you're still healing," he said. "Whatever's in there—" he gestured toward Victor's chest "—it isn't gentle. We don't know what it'll make you into."

Victor's jaw tightened, and for a heartbeat no one spoke. "I've always known what I am," he said at last.

He turned fully to Max, meeting his eyes. In that moment, the air between them felt heavier, layered with the weight of years—the shared firefights, the close calls, the graves they'd both stood over. There was no defiance in Victor's gaze, no desperation either. Just the steady certainty of a man who had lived too long with the taste of helplessness in his mouth.

"Maybe it's time the rest of the world saw it too," he said.

Max's throat worked once before he stepped forward, lifting his hand slowly until it hovered over Victor's heart.

"I can't stop this once it starts," he said.

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Victor didn't look away. "Good."

The quiet stretched, deep enough to feel the rhythm of each other's breathing. Then Max lowered his hand.

The Soulfire did not come easily. It cracked and spat between his fingers like a live wire fighting to break free, the air between them scorching with the scent of ozone. Sparks leapt against Victor's skin, but Max forced his hand to stay where it was, teeth clenched against the instinct to pull back.

Victor didn't flinch—not when the first spear of light split through his chest, not when his pulse began to hammer like distant artillery, not even when the fire sank deep.

The sensation wasn't a spreading warmth. It was a detonation. A single violent bloom that filled every corner of him at once—memory, hunger, and pain colliding in a blinding instant. His body felt too small to contain it, every vein burning with something that wasn't asking to stay—it was demanding to take root.

His knees buckled; one hand slammed against the wall for support. The Soulfire twisted inside him, not offering itself as a gift, but demanding to be met, tested, survived.

This isn't like Dan, Max thought, the words slicing through his focus. This is like flint hitting gasoline.

Victor's head dipped, and the sound that came from him was no human gasp. It was a growl that rose from somewhere deep, travelling up his spine until it vibrated in the air. It wasn't rage. It wasn't agony. It was a refusal to break.

His muscles drew tight. His frame shifted under the strain, bone and sinew responding to something older than thought. The fire didn't guide him; it dared him to endure.

Victor's breathing grew short, sharp, each inhale accompanied by the faint sense that another breath—something heavier, something not entirely his—was moving with him.

Dan's voice cut through the haze. "Max—"

Max didn't answer. His eyes stayed locked on Victor's face, watching for the moment the man might be replaced by whatever was inside him.

But Victor held on.

The glow in his chest was neither gold nor red. It was silver—cold, flickering, the light of a storm caught in metal.

When he finally looked up, Max saw more than strength there. He saw purpose—the kind that wasn't born in victory, but in years of refusing to give in.

Victor hadn't taken the fire to win some battle. He'd taken it because he could no longer stand being powerless. Because if he couldn't protect the people left to him, then breathing was just a slower way of losing.

He didn't want to be a hero. He wanted to matter.

And Max knew—that was the most dangerous kind of fire to give a man.

***

Victor's breathing had gone ragged, each inhale dragging heat up from somewhere deep in his chest.

Max took a half-step back, not in retreat but in instinctive caution, his eyes drawn to the shifting silver glow just beneath Victor's sternum. It no longer pulsed in time with his heartbeat. It writhed. Something inside it was moving, coiling like muscle beneath skin.

Victor's body jerked as if yanked by unseen hooks. His spine bowed, his shoulders locking, one hand slamming into the wall with a force that rattled the mounted instruments. The other scraped down toward the floor, nails tearing curling ribbons from the tile.

Then came the first sound—wet, sharp, wrong. Bone against bone. Not one break, but many, each crack rolling over the next in a cascade that made the air feel colder.

His muscles swelled too quickly, too far, cords of flesh bunching beneath skin stretched taut. Another crack shuddered through him, this time from the cage of his chest. Some ribs were moving outward, expanding into shapes that shouldn't exist, as though a second ribcage were forming inside him. The pressure built until—

—collapse. The new growth folded back into itself with a grinding crunch that made Max's teeth clench.

"Victor—" Max stepped forward, palms open. "Vic, hold on. Don't let go."

If Victor heard him, he gave no sign.

The sound came low at first, deep in his throat, but it grew as it travelled, rolling up through his chest until it vibrated in the floor beneath them. A growl, rich with something more than anger. Not quite animal. Not quite human.

Black veins spread under his skin like cracks in glass, radiating from his neck, his forearms, his temples. His pupils tightened to slits.

Max recognised the shift too late.

The beast came forward.

Victor's arm lashed out, claws forming mid-swing, silver-edged talons cutting through the air. Max moved without thought, catching the strike on his forearm and letting it throw him back. Even with the block, the impact carried him into the far wall hard enough to crack plaster.

Victor didn't pause.

He hit the ground on all fours, claws gouging deep grooves into the tile. The blackened threads under his skin thickened, spreading like armour being woven vein by vein.

And then Max saw the tattoo.

The faded lion on Victor's shoulder—something old, something personal—was moving. The lines twisted and flowed like fresh ink in water, the lion's muzzle peeling open to bare teeth. It crawled down his arm, shedding its place in the skin. Beneath it, flesh split open in jagged seams, and from those seams rose new shapes: a mane of bristling gold-black fur, the suggestion of a jawline too broad to belong to a man.

The idea of the lion had become flesh.

Max's breath caught. "Jesus…"

A twitch rippled down Victor's spine, the shadow of a tail pushing against the skin before sinking back, waiting.

From behind the overturned gurney, Dan's voice rang sharp. "He's gone, Max! You've got to knock him out before—"

"No." Max pushed himself upright, shaking the plaster dust from his shoulders.

Victor loomed in the half-light, taller now, broader, every line of him radiating force. Yet Max could still see it—buried beneath the blackened armour and the shifting bone, Victor's face was there, tight with strain, his mouth caught between a snarl and something closer to a scream.

Max clenched his fists. Soulfire hummed low in his veins, steady and ready.

"You came back for me," he murmured, voice too low for Dan to hear.

Victor's roar shook the walls.

"I'll come back for you."

Max drove forward, Soulfire sparking from his shoulders, the space between them collapsing into a blur of light and shadow—

And then the hospital vanished, torn away in an instant, and Victor was standing alone in the desert.

***

One heartbeat he was in the hospital. The next heartbeat tore the world away. The smell of antiseptic and plaster dust was ripped from his lungs and replaced by scorched wind and metal. The walls dissolved, colours bleeding out into a sky too bright to look at, until only the desert remained—endless, merciless, and wrong.

Victor stood alone in the desert.

It was not the desert as anyone else would know it. The air shimmered with a red haze, fine sand curling in restless spirals across a road long since broken. The wreckage of a convoy lay scattered in the dust—burned-out trucks reduced to hollow skeletons, twisted canvas hanging in ribbons, rifles left half-buried in drifts. A boot rested on its side, the leather cracked and peeling, its owner erased from the world. The scent here was an old one: smoke, oil, and the copper tang of blood long dried but never forgotten.

He knew this place.

Syria.

The day the sky turned to fire. The day they didn't come home.

Heat pressed against his skin until it seemed to burrow into his bones, but each breath came out as a cloud, visible in the shimmering light. The sun loomed impossibly large above him, bloated and seething, its glare so heavy it felt like a hand, intent on driving him to his knees.

Movement stirred in the haze.

It came from the left at first—only a flicker of shadow—but then it stepped into view. Massive. Muscles moving like tides beneath black-gold fur. Limbs thick as pillars. Paws so heavy they should have left craters in the sand, but they made no mark at all.

Its head was that of a lion, but wrong in ways that unsettled the gut. The mouth was too wide, the jaw stretched into a permanent, predatory grin. Its eyes were molten and unblinking, the kind of gaze that looked through skin, through muscle, down to the raw shape of a man's will.

"You remember," it said, the words curling like smoke from burning wood. "The place where they screamed. The place where you lived."

Victor didn't answer. His jaw locked so tightly it hurt.

The creature began to circle him, slow and deliberate, its weight bending the air, its movements a study in patient hunger.

"You didn't save them," it went on. "But you survived. That's what you are, isn't it? A survivor. A weapon too stubborn to die."

Victor's voice was low when it came. "Shut up."

"I was there," the lion hissed, the grin never faltering. "In your fists. In your lungs. In the scream you swallowed while you dug their graves. You carried me here, soldier. You've carried me all along. Let me finish it."

The wind rose around them, lifting dust in twisting columns. Overhead, the swollen sun seemed to lean closer, heat sharpening until the air itself wavered.

"You were born for war," the lion whispered, its voice dropping into something almost intimate. "Let me fight for you."

The world tilted. His vision blurred.

Victor screamed, the sound tearing out of him like shrapnel, and he drove forward, slamming his fist into the beast's jaw.

The impact barely rocked it.

Its paw lashed out in reply, hitting him square in the ribs. Claws tore deep, raking across his side as the ground rose up to meet him. Pain exploded through him, stealing the air from his lungs, but he forced himself to rise.

The lion loomed over him, still smiling. "You can't kill what you are, Victor."

He spat blood into the sand. "You're not me."

The grin flickered for the first time.

"No," the beast admitted. "But you've carried me this far."

Victor stood, swaying under the weight of heat and pain, but upright all the same. Blood ran down his torso in dark ribbons, pooling in the dust.

"I wasn't made for killing," he said, voice raw but steady. "I'm not a weapon."

The lion tilted its head, watching.

"I'm the one who buried them," Victor went on. "The one who kept walking. Who came home. Who held the line when no one else was left standing."

The lion's snarl rumbled through the air.

Victor roared back, louder, the sound tearing at the sky.

He threw himself into the beast, the collision cracking through the air like a thunderclap. They hit the sand in a storm of claws and fists, rolling through fire and shadow.

Above them, the swollen sun shattered into a thousand burning shards.

And in that collapse, light burst outward—not gold, not fire, but something deeper, something hard-earned and unyielding.

The beast screamed. Victor screamed with it, and for an instant, the sound was one voice—man and monster, indivisible.

The chains snapped.

Max would swear later the light came before the roar. Not Soulfire, not healing. Something else. Something new.

When Victor's eyes opened, they still burned amber, the pupils slit like a predator's.

But they were focused.

And they were his.

***

Victor dropped to one knee, the impact sending a dull tremor through the cracked floor. One hand braced against the wall, his breath rasping out in long, uneven pulls through gritted teeth. The obsidian armour that had coated him fractured with a brittle snap and began to slough away in jagged flakes, disintegrating into nothing before they even touched the ground. His mane, once bristling like a crown of wildfire, receded in slow strands until only the tangled weight of his own hair remained. The twitching tail slid back beneath the spine, vanishing as though it had never been there. The horns melted into vapour, dissolving into the air like smoke surrendering to wind.

But the eyes stayed.

Predator's eyes—amber and gold, irises narrowed to slits—watching, alert, too sharp to belong entirely to a man.

Max was already moving. He dropped into a crouch beside him, his own body aching from the fight, ribs screaming every time he drew a breath. His knuckles were split, slick with blood, but his grin came without asking. "You alive in there?"

Victor's head tipped just enough for Max to catch the glint of teeth in a weary smirk. He coughed—a deep, hacking sound—and spat dark blood onto the concrete. Then, to Max's utter disbelief, he let out a low, ragged laugh.

"You two always make it this dramatic when somebody gets new powers?"

Max barked out a short laugh of his own, relief slipping in like the first deep breath after nearly drowning. "Only on special occasions."

Dan moved in from the doorway, keeping his stance careful but not distant. The golden halo behind him flickered faintly, catching on the damp in the air. His eyes scanned Victor—shoulders, hands, the strange silver glow beneath his skin. "You're stable… I think. Whatever that was, it's not thrashing around anymore."

Victor didn't answer right away. He planted both palms on the ground and pushed himself upright, moving like a man climbing out from under wreckage. His joints protested, muscles tense, but every inch of him carried deliberate control.

When he stood at full height, Max realised something was different. Not monstrous. Subtle. As though someone had redrawn the edges of him while keeping the core intact. His shoulders set wider, his spine held straighter. Every shift of muscle carried purpose.

Thin veins of silver traced beneath the skin, not bright enough to shine outright, but catching the light like molten mercury flowing deep under the surface. Above his brow, a clean silver halo formed—no jagged edges like Max's, no gentle pulse like Dan's. It was cut like a blade.

Victor exhaled slowly, as though testing the weight of the air in his lungs.

Max stepped closer, searching his friend's face. "You're still you."

Victor's eyes narrowed, a faint tilt of the head. "Not all of me."

He flexed one hand. The claws were still there—shorter now, tempered—but his fingers moved like they belonged to him.

Dan's gaze stayed on the silver halo. "So what are you now?"

Victor looked at his hand for a long moment, almost as if he were asking it the question. "I…" His voice caught and roughened. "I don't know."

His gaze flicked briefly to the floor, as though searching for the right words among the cracks. When he spoke again, it was quieter—like a confession meant for himself as much as for them.

His eyes lifted to them both. Then they dipped to the blood still drying on his forearms, to the gouges in the wall, to the scars across his chest that hadn't been there an hour ago. "Maybe I'm just… the part of me that wouldn't die. The fighter. The survivor."

Saying it out loud seemed to anchor him, like the words themselves were a truth he'd carried for years without speaking. His shoulders eased, not in relaxation, but in a readiness that felt like acceptance.

Max didn't break the stare. Years of shared fire and ash, loss and stubborn defiance, sat heavy between them.

Victor's mouth twitched into the smallest of smiles. "Guess you gave me exactly what I needed."

Max's own smile came, tired but warm. "Didn't mean to turn you into a lion."

Victor gave a shrug that was half-wince, half-pride. "Could've been worse."

Dan's lips curled in a sly smirk. "Yeah. Could've been a pigeon."

Victor's head turned slowly. "Say that again and I'll take your pretty eyebrows clean off."

The tension cracked at last. Max's laugh came first, then Dan's, and even Victor's low, sharp chuckle joined them.

They stood there in the half-light, rain drifting in through a broken pane, sirens far away and fading. Whatever had happened to Victor in those few minutes, it hadn't consumed him.

It had reforged him.

And somewhere deep beneath the silver veins, behind the heart that had refused to stop, something shifted and settled—not rage, not hunger.

Just the steady will to fight again.

—and beneath it all, the faint pulse of silver in his veins, like the heartbeat of something that had been waiting for years to be let out.

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