“So that portal dumped us on the same damn mountain?” Gavriel asked, squinting up at the volcanic ridge they’d already been staring at for the last hour from the other side.

The sun burned white in a washed-out sky, bleaching everything colorless, cooking them slow like four idiots in a stone oven.

“Yes.” Serena wiped her forehead with the back of her wrist. “I know we had to go through it, but I still don’t understand why.”

“Cool. Love a good ’fuck you’ from the universe,” Gavriel muttered.

Time blurred into effort. Hours bled together, measured only by aching muscles and scraped hands, raw skin rasping against jagged stone that seemed personally offended by their existence. Every handhold was a negotiation with gravity, every step a middle finger pointed straight at their knees.

The air thinned with every step. Breaths grew shallower, lungs scavenging for scraps like beggars at a king’s table. Their training suits shielded them from the worst of the heat, but sweat still clung stubbornly to their skin, pooling in places that were going to chafe like absolute hell later.

The volcano owned the horizon now.

Its throat glowed faintly red, pulsing like a wound that refused to scab over. Every few minutes, the mountain shuddered beneath their feet, deep, resonant tremors that rattled bone and turned their stomachs into percussion instruments.

The three men exchanged a glance over Serena’s head. It was supposed to be subtle. It was absolutely the opposite of subtle, because all three of them looked like they’d been dragged behind a horse for six miles and were too proud to say it out loud.

“Don’t worry.” Serena kept climbing without looking back. “I’ll protect you three if it erupts.”

All three men gave her an identical flat look. She ignored every goddamn one of them and kept moving, boots scraping stone, pace unbothered.

Fin and Dex had been taking turns positioning themselves behind Serena for the last hour.

Dex’s hand would settle instinctively at the small of her back whenever the path narrowed to a foot’s width, whenever the drop beside them yawned too wide, too eager. Fin would drift closer on the switchbacks, his body angled to block the exposed edge like a wall she hadn’t asked for.

She wondered if they even knew they were doing it, this silent rotation of overprotective that functioned like clockwork. Neither of them acknowledged it. Both of them would deny it under oath.

At hour three, the air changed.

Gavriel felt it first. He turned around to see Serena’s eyes flicker pink. Just a flash, there and gone, green swallowing it back like a secret she hadn’t meant to tell.

The air shifted colder.

Dark clouds formed overhead, thickening too fast, too deliberate, stacking themselves into something that looked less like weather and more like intent.

Just enough to be wrong.

The sensation of something unseen leaning in close, breathing against the back of their necks without a mouth.

“Something’s not right,” Gavriel said immediately, every trace of humor gone from his voice like it had been ripped clean out.

Everyone stopped.

Dexmon put Serena in the center of the three of them without a word, without hesitation, the way muscle memory works when you’ve trained for years to protect the thing that matters most. Fin scanned the environment in slow, controlled sweeps, never once questioning Gav’s instinct.

The mountain went silent.

The volcano stopped rumbling.

The wind died.

Every insect, every shifting pebble, every whisper of breeze: gone. The whole fucking mountain held its breath.

SHRRRAAAAK.

A silhouette dropped onto a ledge above them. Humanoid, but slightly wrong, like a sketch of a person drawn by something that had only heard humans described secondhand. It sniffed the air, head cocking at an angle that spines should refuse to allow.

Then another.

Then four more.

Then dozens.

They crawled out of crevices and cracks like the mountain was vomiting them up, all pale violet-skinned, stretched too thin over frames that moved with the wrong number of joints. Eyes black as voids. Fangs dripping with silver-tinged hunger.

Dexmon cursed under his breath. “Vampires. Again.”

But these were different. Even less human than the ones in the jungle, and those had already set a pretty low fucking bar. They hunched over, spines curved like question marks, limbs too long, fingers ending in something between claws and bone hooks. Mountain feeders. Starved. The kind of hungry that eats first and identifies its meal second.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t negotiate. One shrieked, the sound splitting the air like glass cracking from the inside, and launched itself down the slope.

Serena didn’t hesitate.

She whipped an arrow from her quiver, drew, and released in one fluid motion.

FWWWHUMP.

The arrow buried itself in the vampire’s chest.

The creature exploded into ash before its body hit the ground, scattering across the mountainside like the world’s most disgusting confetti.

Fin looked at the arrow’s trajectory, then at Serena. “Those will never cease to impress me.”

She grinned at him.

Dexmon drew his blade, focusing.

“Are you constipated again?” Gavriel asked after a moment.

“No,” Dexmon snapped as his blade lit gold. “But watch this.”

Dozens more swarmed upward, clawing and scrambling with the kind of speed that made physics feel more like a suggestion than a law. They moved like spiders, like water pouring uphill, like nightmares that had figured out how legs work.

Dex stepped forward, wielding the blade of the First Dragon King, and slashed clean through a vampire midair. The thing turned to ash before the two halves of it had time to separate.

Gavriel blinked at him. “Where the fuck has that been?”

“Waiting for the right moment. And for me to activate it.”

“The RIGHT MOMENT? We’ve been fighting shit for HOURS, Dex.”

“And now you’re witnessing greatness. You’re welcome.”

Gavriel looked at Fin. Fin looked at Gav.

“I want one,” Fin said after a second, already dropping into a fighting stance as the next wave charged.

The smug look on Dexmon’s face could be seen from two mountains away.

MOUNTAIN VAMPIRE ENCOUNTER SCORECARD:

Serena’s Magic Arrows: Working.

Dex’s Secret Legendary Blade: Apparently a goddamn option this whole time.

Gav’s Blood Pressure: Medically concerning.

Fin’s Wishlist: That blade. That exact blade. He doesn’t care where it came from. He doesn’t care what it costs. He wants one and he wants it yesterday and the wanting is non-negotiable.