While Edward was engaged in his deadly, high-speed duel with the Star-Vampire, the scattered remnants of his team were fighting their own desperate battles. The arrival of Selene and her assassins had turned the tide in the glowing, coral cathedral. What had been a hopeless last stand was now a brutally efficient extermination.

Selene moved through the remaining spider-like creatures with a liquid, lethal grace that made even Kira's acrobatic style look clumsy. Her twin daggers, Silence's Kiss, were a blur of motion, each strike precise, economical, and instantly fatal. She was not just fighting; she was dissecting the enemy, her mind a cold, tactical computer analyzing attack patterns and exploiting weaknesses. Her two assassins, trained in her image, moved in perfect sync with her, a silent, three-person whirlwind of death that carved a path through the chittering horde.

The immediate threat to Sarah and the wounded Fenris was neutralized. The surviving Unchained warriors, their morale soaring at the sudden, dramatic reinforcement, rallied and began to push the creatures back, their shield wall now an advancing, impenetrable barrier of steel and grit.

"Took you long enough," Fenris grunted, clutching the deep, bleeding gash in her side. She was leaning heavily against a coral pillar, her face pale beneath her fur, but her eyes were still blazing with defiant fire.

"I do apologize," Selene purred, wiping her dagger clean on a dead creature's carapace. She glided over to Fenris, her movements fluid and unhurried despite the ongoing battle. "Navigating a city that thinks geometry is a suggestion takes time. Besides," she added with a sly glance at Sarah, "it looks like you had everything well under control."

Sarah, still breathing heavily from the adrenaline of the fight, just shook her head, a small, grateful smile on her face. She had never been so happy to see the cynical, manipulative assassin in her life.

With the combined strength of their reunited forces, the battle was over in minutes. The last of the camouflaged creatures were cut down, their broken bodies littering the phosphorescent moss. The cathedral fell silent, the only sounds the heavy breathing of the warriors and the faint, ever-present whispers of the alien city.

Their first priority was the wounded. Sarah, her battlefield confidence growing, directed the uninjured warriors, tearing strips of cloth from their cloaks to make crude bandages. She knelt beside Fenris, her touch gentle as she inspected the deep cut in her side.

"It's deep," Sarah said, her voice laced with concern. "But the bleeding is slowing. We need to stitch it."

"It's a scratch," Fenris growled, though a wince of pain betrayed her bravado. Her gaze was fixed on Selene. "What now? Where are the others? Where's the Alpha?"

"Alpha?" Selene arched an eyebrow. "Oh, you mean Edward. I'm afraid our dramatic entrance scattered us to the seven winds. I haven't seen him. But," she continued, producing a small, intricate compass from her belt, "I can find him."

The compass was not an ordinary one. Its needle was a sliver of petrified bone, and it did not point north. It spun erratically, then slowly, deliberately, pointed towards one of the cathedral's many dark, arching exits.

"It's a soul-tracker," Selene explained, seeing their confused looks. "A nasty bit of Syndicate tech. It attunes to a person's unique spiritual resonance. It's slow and imprecise, but in a place like this, it's the only thing that works. Edward's soul… it burns brighter and colder than any I've ever seen. He's hard to miss."

With a clear objective, their small, battered group began to move. Fenris, refusing to be carried, walked with a stoic, pained limp, one hand pressed to her bandaged side. They followed Selene through the twisting, alien architecture of Y'ha-nthlei, a small island of grim determination in a sea of madness.

Their journey was a tense, nerve-wracking affair. They moved through districts where the walls seemed to breathe, and navigated across bridges made of woven, bone-like material that creaked and swayed over bottomless, black chasms. Their path was not a straight one; the soul-tracker's needle would often lead them to a dead end or a collapsed passage, forcing them to backtrack and find another route through the labyrinthine city.

It was during one of these detours that they stumbled upon another battle.

They emerged onto a high, crumbling balcony that overlooked a wide, circular plaza below. The plaza was a scene of utter carnage. A squad of about twenty hunters, their armor bearing the snarling vulture sigil of the Iron Vultures mercenary company, was being systematically slaughtered.

Their opponents were a horde of the same fish-like Deep Ones that Edward had fought in the submerged district. The mercenaries were skilled warriors, their greatswords and axes swinging in powerful, desperate arcs. But they were on the defensive, hopelessly outnumbered, their shield wall collapsing under the sheer, unrelenting pressure of the Deep One assault.

Selene immediately held up a hand, signaling for her group to halt and stay hidden in the shadows of the balcony. Her face was a mask of cold, pragmatic calculation.

"We wait," she whispered, her voice sharp and final. "Let the Deep Ones thin them out. We can slip past during the chaos. The Iron Vultures are our rivals. Their deaths are a strategic advantage."

It was the smart move. It was the logical move. It was the only move a survivor would make.

But Fenris saw it differently. She stared down at the plaza, her eyes narrowed. She saw the desperation in the mercenaries' fighting. She saw their fear as their comrades were dragged down and torn apart by the gurgling, fish-faced monsters. These were men she would have happily fought in a turf war a week ago. They were enemies. Rivals. But they were still people. And they were dying like trapped animals.

"No," Fenris growled, her voice a low, rumbling earthquake of defiance.

Selene shot her a sharp, annoyed look. "Don't be a fool, Fenris. This isn't our fight. We have a mission."

"Edward would not leave them," Fenris stated, her words simple, absolute, and unshakable. It was not a debate. It was a declaration of faith.

A fierce conflict ignited in Selene's eyes. Every instinct, honed by a lifetime of betrayal and self-preservation in the cutthroat world of the Ashen Market, screamed at her to stay hidden, to let her rivals die. It was the sensible thing to do. But Fenris's words, her simple, stupid, honorable declaration, struck a chord deep within her, a part of her she thought had died long ago. She looked at the brutal slaughter below, and for the first time in a long time, she felt something other than cold, tactical detachment. She felt a flicker of… something. Annoyance. Frustration. And a grudging, infuriating respect for the stupid, honorable wolf-woman beside her.

Before Selene could argue further, Fenris made her choice.

She placed two fingers in her mouth and let out a piercing, savage whistle, a sound designed to draw every eye in the plaza. Then, with a defiant war cry that was pure, primal rage, she leaped.

She didn't take the stairs. She vaulted over the balcony's edge, a fifty-foot drop to the stone plaza below. She landed with a ground-shaking impact that cracked the flagstones, her body absorbing the shock with a grunt of pain. She rose to her full height, her adamantite gauntlets raised, and charged directly into the thickest part of the Deep One horde.

"That stupid, suicidal, honorable dog!" Selene hissed, a mixture of fury and exasperated admiration in her voice. The choice had been taken from her. She drew her daggers. "Unchained! On your foolish, idiotic leader's command! We're going in!"

The small group of outcasts charged down into the plaza, a wave of unexpected, ferocious reinforcements. Their sudden arrival threw the Deep Ones into confusion, breaking the momentum of their assault.

The surviving Iron Vulture mercenaries, who had been moments from being completely overwhelmed, stared in stunned, wide-eyed disbelief. Their rivals, their enemies, the very people they had been paid to hunt, had just leaped into a hopeless battle to save them.

The battle for the plaza was now a three-way, chaotic melee. The Unchained fought with a desperate, unified fury, not for treasure or glory, but for a principle none of them could have articulated. They were defining who they were, not just as a guild, but as a people. They were more than just outcasts. They were the ones who would not leave anyone to die alone in the dark.

Just as they began to push the Deep Ones back, a new tremor, far more violent than any before, shook the plaza. The stone ground cracked and split apart. A massive, writhing tentacle, covered in dozens of small, snapping mouths, erupted from the earth in the center of the plaza. It whipped through the air with incredible speed, grabbing warriors from both the Unchained and the Iron Vultures, and dragging them, screaming, down into the darkness from which it came. The city of Y'ha-nthlei had decided to join the fight.

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