I shoved the blade deeper into Darge's throat.

Sacha's glass edge slid through flesh like it wasn't even there, a clean, perfect line of pale brilliance sinking into the dark meat of his neck. Warm blood spilled instantly, coating my hand, sliding across my knuckles.

For one fractured second, I thought that was it, that the bastard would finally fall, that all the fear, all the dread twisting in my ribs since the moment we found him would bleed out onto the dirt.

But I was wrong.

By the time the blade reached the midway point of his neck, it was already too late.

Darge's hand snapped up.

Not fast.

Not frantic.

Slow.

Deliberate.

Certain.

His fingers clamped around the glass blade—around Sacha—with the strength of something that had no business existing in a human body.

The sword stopped.

Completely immobilized.

My breath caught. Impossible. Sacha was unbreakable; no force, no heat, no pressure could stop her edge once it was committed to a cut. I felt her flare in my grip, a faint tremor of fury humming up the hilt.

Papa… he shouldn't be able to do this…

"I know," I muttered, voice shaking.

Darge's head turned toward me, the sword still buried halfway into his neck, his hand still pinning it. His eyes, those empty, soot-black pits, didn't blink, didn't react, didn't show pain.

He smiled.

Something in me iced over.

Then he pulled.

Not away from the blade, toward it.

Flesh tore.

Muscles snapped apart.

Veins burst like severed wires.

The wound widened grotesquely as he dragged himself forward, willingly splitting open his own throat to close the distance between us.

A wet, bubbling gargle left his mouth, but it wasn't a sound of death.

It was laughter.

"Sebastian!" Nora's voice cut through the air behind me.

I barely had time to register her before Darge's other hand swung toward my skull like a hammer. I ducked, the wind of his strike grazing my cheek hard enough to sting.

I wrenched Sacha free, blood spraying in an arc, and leapt back.

He didn't chase.

He simply straightened, his severed neck hanging open, and tilted his head as if studying me like a new specimen, not an enemy. His blood poured freely… but it wasn't red anymore.

It was violet.

Thick. Luminous. Wrong.

A chill climbed my spine.

He isn't human.

…papa, please be careful… something inside him is moving…

I tightened my grip.

Darge took one single step, and the world blurred.

He was on me before the sound of his footstep even reached my ears.

Sacha screamed in my hands as I barely lifted her in time to block the strike. The impact rattled my bones, shot numbness up my wrist, and launched me backwards across the clearing. My back slammed into a tree, bark exploding around me.

I tasted blood.

"Attack!" Kent roared.

The others surged in as I stumbled to my feet.

Annalise's strings twisted into chains and lashed out first, whipping around Darge's torso, digging into his flesh with metallic groans.

He didn't flinch.

He caught the chains with both hands and yanked, dragging Annalise toward him like she weighed nothing. She braced her legs, screaming through her teeth as her boots carved trenches in the dirt.

Nora's magic snapped into the air, serrated blades of wind and ice spiraling toward his exposed throat.

Xavier charged with Liam at his flank, both striking at the same time. Xavier's spear glowed, Liam's fists crackling with raw kinetic force.

Page muttered a spell, white fire building between her palms.

Lillith moved like a wraith, her daggers a blur of silver.

It should have overwhelmed anyone.

Anyone human.

But Darge...

Darge moved like a puppet whose strings were being yanked by something that didn't care about anatomy or weight or logic.

His arms twisted backward at an inhuman angle to block Xavier's spear while his chest bent forward to avoid Annalise's chains.

His head hung sideways, still half-severed, as he ducked under Nora's wind blades. Liam's punch hit him dead in the ribs, but it was Liam who grunted and recoiled, shaking out his hand like he'd struck stone.

And Page's white fire, unholy fire, hit him square in the spine.

He didn't scream.

He didn't fall.

He turned.

Slowly.

Mechanical.

Cold.

"What…" Page whispered, voice breaking.

My heart hammered against my skull.

I lunged.

Sacha tore through the air, a streak of translucent fury. My blade sliced straight across Darge's torso, deep enough to bisect a normal man.

He didn't even stagger.

His hand shot up and caught the flat of the blade mid-arc.

Papa—!

I tried to pull back. Nothing. His grip tightened, tendons bulging grotesquely under purple-lit skin.

Then he hurled me.

My body flew across the clearing, ground slamming into my back hard enough to knock the breath out of me. Sacha stayed in my hand, but the impact rattled my teeth.

As I rolled, vision swimming, I heard the others screaming.

Nora's wind.

Xavier's spear cracked against bone.

Annalise's chains snapping free and slashing through the air.

Liam yelling in pain. Page moving desperately.

Lillith darting in for a throat strike.

Then...

A sound like bones grinding.

Darge caught Lillith by the face and slammed her into the ground with enough force to crater the earth.

"NO!" I roared.

I ran.

I didn't think.

Didn't breathe.

I was moving before my mind even caught up.

Sacha surged with me, her voice flickering like terrified light.

Papa, he's changing, his aura is growing, this isn't him, something is wearing him—

I reached them just as Kent barreled into Darge from the side, knocking Lillith free. Kent roared as he drove his shoulder into Darge's ribs with all his weight, an impact that could shatter a building

But when Kent hit him, Darge barely shifted.

Not stumbled.

Not staggered.

Barely.

Shifted.

His ribs bent inward under the force, bent, not broke like metal that refused to snap.

Kent's momentum died against that grotesque, unmoving frame, and he bounced off like he had thrown himself into a stone wall. His boots skidded through dirt. He coughed, choking on the force of his own impact.

Darge turned his head… and that was the moment I realized his bones no longer obeyed the rules of a human skeleton.

His neck twisted around on itself with a slow, grinding roll, rotating far past anything allowed by tendons and vertebrae.

It turned and kept turning until his face, if that gaping, half-split ruin could still be called a face, was backward, staring directly at Kent without moving the rest of his body.

A slick, wet click echoed inside his torn throat as his jaw reattached just long enough to grin.

Kent froze, eyes widening, breath shutting down.

"Move!" I yelled, but my voice came out strangled.

I didn't wait.

I sprinted.

My legs pumped with every ounce of terror burning in my blood, Sacha humming sharp and frantic in my grip.

Papa, he's wrong, he's so wrong, don't get close...

At this point, Sacha was panicking, which made a lot of sense.

"I don't have a choice!"

I reached Kent just as Darge's arm swung backward, his elbow bending the wrong way, joints snapping in reverse as the limb extended like some inverted weapon of bone.

I tackled Kent out of the way.

Darge's backward punch obliterated the earth where we had been standing, carving a crater out of raw ground. The shockwave of it hit my back like a hammer.

We rolled, dust exploding around us. Kent gasped, clutching his ribs—but he was alive.

I got to my feet, breath shaking.

And then...For the first time, I saw what was inside Darge's open throat.

Not organs.

Not muscle.

Something writhing.

Something purple.

Something growing.

A mass of luminescent threads, pulsing like veins but moving like fingers, stretching up into his skull cavity where a brain should have been.

A parasite?

A puppet master?

A thing wearing his corpse like clothing?

My stomach twisted.

I didn't have time to question.

Nora darted to my left, wind swirling around her arms like blades. "Sebastian, move!"

She slashed the air, four crescent blades of solar wind spiraled forward, carving into Darge's torso. They cut deep, slicing skin, cutting ribs… but the wounds didn't bleed.They just opened.

And inside the wound, more of that purple pulsing light.

Darge didn't react. Not to pain. Not to injury.

He moved through it like his body was a thing he merely borrowed, which by this point I knew was.

He reached toward Nora with that same bending, backward-twisting arm—

Annalise's chains wrapped around his limb mid-swing.

They tightened instantly, digging into his flesh with grinding metallic pressure. You could hear the metal screech, you could see tendons and violet-lit sinews popping under the strain, but the arm kept extending anyway, pushing through the chains like they were a mild inconvenience.

Annalise screamed through clenched teeth as she pulled back, bracing her entire weight.

Xavier charged from behind, his spear lit with shimmering crimson energy. He drove the tip straight into Darge's spine.

The spear should've gone through him easily and exploded him into chunks of meat.

Instead, it sank two inches… and stopped.

Xavier's eyes widened. "No, that's not—"

Darge spun suddenly, his entire torso rotating without his hips moving, like someone twisting a doll. The motion ripped Annalise off her feet, the chains yanking her upward. Xavier stumbled, caught off guard.

Liam appeared out of nowhere, fist charged with a kinetic burst, and punched Darge in the face with the force of a battering ram.

The sound wasn't bone-cracking.

It was Liam's wrist cracking.

He recoiled, cursing, cradling his arm.

For one heartbeat, Darge buckled under the force...

Then his skull exploded.

A wet, catastrophic burst of violet light and bone shards. His head blew apart in a spray of purple luminescence, fragments of skull scattering like shrapnel across the clearing.

Everyone jerked back.

A sound, an unholy crack, split the air as a fissure tore open in Darge's chest cavity.

A rift.

A swirling, screaming purple rift, ripping its way out of his corpse. Reality bent inward, collapsing like fabric being sucked through a hole.

Wind howled.

Dirt ripped upward.

The ground buckled under our feet as the void expanded, pulling everything toward it with ravenous hunger.

"What is that?" Liam shouted before being yanked off his feet.

Page grabbed his arm, then she was pulled too.

The suction grew violently, dragging us all toward the violet maw engulfing Darge's body. I dug Sacha into the ground like an anchor, screaming as the force tore at my clothes, my limbs, my breath.

N-no… papa… I can't, I can't hold...

"SACHA!"

My fingers slipped.

My body lurched forward.

I was airborne, pulled toward the core of the rift. The world distorted around me, colors smearing, sound warping into a single long, endless drone.

And then...

For a fraction of a second, right above me in the spiraling chaos.

I saw her.

Belle.

Her silhouette framed in violet light, looking down at me with an expression that screamed worry. I could see her lips moving, forming the words die, but it was too late.

My heart stopped.

"Belle!"

Before I could reach for her....

Everything went dark.

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