The gym was supposed to be soundproof. Reinforced steel, six inches thick. Sealed doors. Shock-absorbent walls.

But the echoes still came back.

Victor slammed a clawed fist into the wall. Again. Harder. Steel groaned, buckled. He didn't stop. The next strike dented the panel. The one after that split it open. A ragged line, clean through.

Not strong enough.

He pivoted, breathing heavy. His bare feet left prints of sweat on the cold concrete. His claws retracted slightly, bones twitching under skin. Blood dripped from his knuckles – half-healed already.

Across the room, the surveillance screen flickered – replaying the footage for the hundredth time.

Max.

Naked. Shackled. Head sagging like it had forgotten the shape of a spine. His skin was grey with cold, his limbs thin, wrong, too still. From his thigh jutted a jagged iron spike – not clean, not surgical. Rusted. Hammered in crooked. The kind of thing you drove into meat when you didn't care if it lived.

He barely moved.

For half a second, Max's eyes flickered toward the camera. Not focus – just instinct. Like a dying ember, refusing to go out.

The audio was muted, but Victor heard it anyway.

That sound.

The one Max made when the chains pulled taut and his body flinched.

A sound scraped raw from the bottom of the soul – not a scream, not a cry. Just pain, pure and unfiltered, clawing its way up a ruined throat.

It echoed in Victor's skull. Over and over.

He couldn't unhear it.

Didn't want to unhear it.

Because if he ever stopped feeling sick at the sound of it— —he'd know he was too far gone to be worth saving.

Victor turned away. Grabbed the weighted training sled – ten tonnes of scrap and resistance bands – and shoved. Muscles bulged. His spine cracked as it shifted into hybrid form. His fingers clenched. Bone split through his knuckles. His spine cracked, teeth lengthened – and with a rush of heat and rage, his silver halo ignited behind him like a ring of moonlit fire. Fur lined the back of his neck. His feet stretched into talons. A lion's roar built in his chest, but he swallowed it.

Push. Again. Harder. Until it doesn't hurt anymore.

The sled screeched across the track.

It didn't help.

He collapsed against the far wall, chest heaving. His claws dragged down the metal, leaving long scars that matched the ones across his heart.

Everyone was dead.

He'd kept the count, once. It was easier than remembering names.

His squad from Syria – gone. Shot, bombed, disappeared beneath shrapnel and drone fire. Dan hadn't even known them, but Victor remembered their faces.

Milo. Harrison. Singh.

The last time he saw Singh, half his jaw was missing. Still tried to speak. Still tried to hold the line.

Then came the demons.

His ex-wife, Freya – vanished during the Stockholm breach. No body. Just red mist and a blood-soaked locket mailed back by some mercy group trying to be kind.

His professors, his mentors, the classmates who got him into anthropology – all of them burned when Lilith's spawn took the university in South Africa.

He saw one of their faces once. On a creature's spine. Still smiling. Still twitching.

And Max.

The only person who ever pulled him out of the spiral. The man who gave him a second chance, when he should've been dead. Or worse.

Max had said: "You're not a monster, Victor. You're a man who lived through hell and didn't come back alone."

Victor curled his fist. Drove it into the floor. Concrete cracked.

So why did you fight alone, Max? Why didn't you wait for me?

He dragged himself upright. Limped toward the screen. Hit replay.

Max screamed.

Victor didn't flinch this time. Just watched. Let the shame sear into him.

He deserved to hurt.

His reflection in the blackened monitor caught his eye. Half-transformed. Silver halo flaring. Pupils' vertical slits. Fangs just visible beneath clenched lips. His muscles looked sculpted from stone. Too big for his own skin.

But he didn't see power.

He saw failure.

You weren't strong enough.

You didn't get there in time.

You let them take him.

He smashed the screen. Sparks flew. Blood dripped again.

He didn't wipe it away. Just stared at the ruin. At the mirror it left behind.

Then he whispered – to no one. To the ghosts.

"I'm not strong enough."

And the gym stayed silent.

Just like every other grave he'd ever walked away from.

…………………

The air tasted of ash and dusk.

The training field behind the fortress stretched wide – stone circle, fire torches lining the perimeter, flames crackling in steady rhythm.

Victor rolled his shoulders. Bones snapped as they shifted – spine ridged with bone-plate armour, claws lengthening into hooked steel. His chest rose and fell like a bellows. No shirt. No armour. Just skin, scarred and thickened, fur bristling across his back and collarbones.

Across from him, Kabe reared to full height. Three metres of muscle and fur and raw psychic force. The bear's golden eyes shimmered with something ancient. Something knowing.

Victor crouched. Growled low.

Let's go, brother.

Kabe responded in kind – a thunderous snort, then a charge.

They collided like titans.

Claws raked fur. Fangs snapped bone. The first hit sent Victor skidding across the gravel, a trail of torn earth in his wake. He rolled, planted both feet, and lunged back in.

There was no strategy. No technique. Just rage and response.

Kabe slammed a paw down – Victor ducked and drove a clawed hand up into the bear's ribs. Blood sprayed. Steam hissed off flesh.

They healed. Slowly, painfully, but enough to keep going.

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Victor leapt onto Kabe's back, jaws snapping near the bear's shoulder. Kabe twisted violently, slamming him down into the ground hard enough to rattle his spine. Dust shot skyward.

Victor grinned through bloodied teeth.

Again.

The growl that came from his throat was more beast than man – guttural, wordless. But Kabe understood.

They circled, breathing hard.

You hold back, Victor snarled in the old tongue – not words, exactly. Emotion shaped into sound. Because I'm not worth it?

Kabe's snort was a warning. Then he charged again.

Victor met him head-on.

This time he didn't dodge. Didn't block. He absorbed the hit – let it drive him into the dirt – then wrapped both arms around the bear's torso and roared into his chest.

A sound that tore the night open.

They collapsed in a heap – limbs tangled, breath ragged, blood soaking into the ground.

Victor rolled off, chest heaving. His ribs cracked as they reset.

Kabe stood slowly. Shook off dust. Then sat back on his haunches with a heavy whump, tongue lolling slightly.

Done?

Victor spat blood. "Not yet."

He pushed himself up again. Staggered slightly. His claws were caked red, forearms streaked with cuts that refused to fully close. The healing was slower now. Costlier.

But he liked the pain.

It gave shape to the guilt.

From the deck above, Hana's voice cut through the quiet like a thrown blade.

"You're not fighting Kabe."

Victor froze.

She stood with arms folded, incense smoke curling around her ankles. Her black robe fluttered in the wind. Her eyes, sharp and sad, locked onto his.

"You're fighting your own fear," she said. "And you're losing."

The silence that followed wasn't awkward. It was heavy.

Victor stared back at her. Eyes rimmed gold, veins still pulsing.

For a moment, he said nothing.

Then he smirked, lips split and bleeding. "Y'know… you're starting to sound like one of my Institute-appointed therapists."

Hana didn't blink. "Did they punch you too?"

He wiped a streak of blood from his chin. "Only verbally. You hit harder."

Kabe let out something halfway between a sigh and a grunt.

Victor looked down at his shaking hands. Watched the claws retract with slow reluctance. His skin knitted slowly, stubbornly, like it didn't want to forgive him either.

Hana didn't speak again. Didn't have to.

Because she was right.

He wasn't sparring. He was punishing himself. And it wasn't working.

Victor let his hands drop.

The firelight shimmered off the blood in the dirt.

And for the first time since watching that footage of Max, he didn't feel the need to hit something.

Just… breathe.

Even if it hurt.

…………………

The shrine chamber was cold. Not from neglect, but memory.

Stone roots buckled the floor where the mountain had swallowed the eastern wing decades ago. Ivy crept along the cracks in the ceiling like ghost veins. Moss bloomed in the hollows where ancestral lamps once burned. And above it all, the masks watched.

Dozens of them.

Some old and splintered, mouths carved into endless grief. Others smooth and blank – waiting. The faces of her line. The dead, the missing, the yet-to-fall.

Hana knelt barefoot on the frost-bitten stone, legs folded beneath her, ceremonial robes pooled around her knees. The scent of incense coiled around her like a shroud – ash, myrrh, a whisper of burned sakura wood. Her fingers trembled as she lit the final stick.

Ferron's stick.

It burned slow, the smoke dancing like breath from a severed throat.

She didn't speak his name. Not aloud. That wasn't the custom. Names belonged to the world of the living. Ferron had no use for his anymore.

But she saw him.

Every time she blinked.

Ferron, holding the line in the old temple. His voice calm. Always calm. Even as the walls cracked. Even as the cursed masks bled from their mouths. Even when Zagan stepped through the gate – barefoot, smiling, fox tails flickering in a wind that wasn't there.

Even when her claws slipped that hells-damned mask onto Ferron's face.

Hana's hands curled into fists.

She should have died beside him. She should have burned the forest down with her rage. But she had orders – retreat. Preserve the bloodline. One heir must remain.

So she had fled.

And Zagan had painted the altar with Ferron's ashes.

Hana's breath shook, but she didn't cry. Not here. Not for the dead. She reached forward, careful and reverent, and placed two masks on the altar.

The first was old, cracked. One side still bloodstained.

Ferron's.

The second was new. Unworn. Blank.

Hers.

A promise to her ancestors – and a warning to her enemies.

She reached for her ceremonial knife. Iron, curved like a claw. The handle wrapped in silk from her mother's robe. She pressed the flat of the blade to her forehead, then to her heart. Ritual. Anchor.

"This world betrayed us," she whispered, voice low and steady. "It let demons walk and gods rot. It let monsters steal the names of protectors."

Her grip tightened around the hilt.

"But we still stand."

She looked up at the masks – at the silent, watching eyes of generations who had spilled blood for balance.

"That is our answer."

Silence.

Then wind, soft through the broken window – lifting the incense smoke like a prayer no god would hear.

She stood, eyes locked on the clean, blank mask. Her own. Waiting.

Max is not my family, she thought. But if he is the key to stopping Moloch…

Her fingers brushed the blade once more, steady now.

I will see him freed.

A pause.

Or perhaps something colder beneath.

Or see him ended.

She turned. Her shadow passed over the altar, trailing smoke and silence.

And behind her, the incense kept burning.

…………………

The wind carved down the mountain like a blade. It howled through the broken arches of the rooftop courtyard, rattling loose stones and whipping stray feathers from the training dummies into the air. The sky was pale steel – not quite dusk, not yet dawn. Just that strange in-between where everything felt suspended.

Victor sat on the edge of the battlement, one leg hanging loose over the drop, the other bent beneath him. His jacket was folded beside him. Shirtless again. Scars ran like old rivers across his chest and ribs, half-faded under the shifting textures of partial transformation. His back ridges were half-drawn, visible beneath the skin like armour that hadn't decided if it wanted to form.

He didn't look up as Hana approached.

She didn't announce herself either. Just walked to the edge, boots soft against the stone, and stood beside him. Watching the wind drag clouds across the far peaks.

For a while, there was only silence.

Then Victor exhaled. Slow. Measured.

"I have to go," he said, voice almost lost in the gust. "Even if I die. Max matters more than I do."

Hana didn't nod. Didn't argue. She simply stared out over the valley, hands clasped loosely behind her back.

"Then die well," she said.

The wind picked up again. She let it sting her cheeks.

"This Fortress," she added quietly, "is the last thread of my clan's name. The final echo. I can't abandon it. Not yet."

Victor scratched at a gouge near his collarbone. "Legacy's a heavy thing."

She glanced sideways at him. "You're carrying more of it than you admit."

He gave a crooked grin. "Only because you never let me collapse under it."

She said nothing. But her silence was not disapproval. It was listening.

Victor's gaze dropped, tracking the ridgeline below. Then, slower, more carefully: "You've been kind, Hana. In your own terrifying, sharp-edged way."

He huffed something that might've been a laugh. "Your friendship… your wisdom… they helped when I had nothing else. You taught me I didn't have to be just a weapon."

He turned, met her eyes. "You gave me that."

Hana blinked, once. Then let a breath out through her nose.

"And you," she said, "gave me a friend. That doesn't happen often, not with what my clan does."

He chuckled again, softer this time, and reached into the satchel at his hip. Pulled something out.

A claw – jagged, darkened with age, the root still bearing the curve of sinew.

"My first transformation," he said. "Snapped this off punching through a car door. Five years ago. Didn't know how to stop screaming."

He held it out, palm up.

Hana raised a brow. "You're giving me a severed talon?"

"Sentimental value," he said with a shrug. "Also, it's sharp. Might make a good hairpin."

That earned him the faintest smirk.

She took it. No flourish. No bow. Just a quiet nod, and then she slipped it through the loop beside her knife belt, where it hung beside a prayer charm. It looked like it belonged.

Then, wordlessly, she reached into her sleeve and produced a necklace. A black cord threaded through a large, curved tooth – serrated and worn with age, etched with a faint spiritual sigil along the base.

Victor stared. His voice was softer now. "That's Kabe's."

"He shed it during the last eclipse," Hana said. "I blessed it. Protection from spirits that whisper too loud."

He accepted it with both hands.

"Thank you," he said. And meant it.

He slipped it over his neck, where it rested between scars.

Then he stood. Not close. Not looming. Just steady. A boulder, not a wall.

"For you," he said again. "All of this. Thank you. I hope I see you again."

Hana didn't smile. But she bowed her head – just slightly.

"So do I."

And when the wind rose again, curling between them, it carried no grief. Just respect. And something quieter beneath it. Something earned. Something unspoken.

They turned away from each other without another word.

One descending the stairs into war.

The other returning to the mountain that still remembered blood.

…………………

The metal door groaned as it slid open, hinges stiff with cold. Victor stepped through, boots heavy on the grated floor. The corridor's lights buzzed overhead, half the bulbs flickering with nervous energy, as if the Fortress itself was bracing for what came next.

Blood clung to his forearms, half-dried and flaking in patches. Some his. Most not. The stench of sweat and iron still lingered in his nose, mingling with the antiseptic tang of reinforced steel and machine oil. His knuckles ached. His ribs throbbed. He didn't mind. Pain meant the edge was still sharp.

Dan looked up from across the room, pausing mid-strap. No words. Just a small nod – the kind only shared between men who've bled on the same floor too many times to count.

Alyssa grunted from where she was adjusting her gauntlets. "You stink like bear."

Victor didn't respond. Just smirked faintly and kept walking. Chloe stood near the back, shadowed and silent, eyes unreadable. She didn't speak, but she watched. Always did.

Liz hadn't arrived yet. The heat hadn't changed. Not yet.

Victor moved to his station. His gear sat there like a waiting oath. The battle harness gleamed in places – bone-plated, scar-notched, the leather half-scored from too many near-deaths. Fitted for hybrid combat. Made for the thing he'd become. The thing he was finally done apologising for.

He pulled the straps tight across his chest, fastening the rib plates with a practised rhythm. His claws clicked once against the edge of a metal clip, and he paused – then reached into his side pouch.

The amulet was simple. Just a bear's tooth, smoothed and blessed, strung on black cord. Hana had pressed it into his hand with no ceremony. Just her gaze, steady and serious. A few words. A simple farewell, and this.

He placed it into the pouch with care.

No more not strong enough. That voice dies in Prague.

He buckled the last strap. Let the weight settle into his spine.

And breathed.

His silver halo flickered into being above his crown. Not bright. Not divine. But present. A flare of intent – a promise, even if only to himself.

Then Victor turned, stepped into formation beside the others, and waited. Not for orders. Not for hope.

Just for Liz.

Because when the fire arrived – they'd all move. Together.

And he was going to get Max back.

Or die trying.

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