Fin: Serena. Use your bow.

She glanced down at the arrow in her hand that she was about to lunge at a vampire with until Gavriel stopped her, as if she were just then remembering she had a bow.

In less than a second, her arrow was drawn.

Her eyes were still blazing, lit with something between grief and the kind of rage that rewrites a person’s entire operating system. The bowstring hummed against her fingers.

Just as a vampire lunged for her, she loosed, aimed at the leader.

The leader was ready for her, moving in a blur to dodge it.

But Serena Frostborne did not miss.

The arrow went through his chest.

Ash exploded from his body.

Fin: Triangle formation. Now.

The fight resumed. A whirlwind of claws, blades, gold magic, and the raw, animal desperation of people who are losing and refuse to acknowledge it. They fought through a fresh wave. Then another. Then another. Each one thinner, meaner, hungrier than the last, every dead vampire replaced by two more that were angrier about it.

Serena fired arrow after arrow, ash explosions turning the mountain slope into a smoking graveyard.

Fin held the front, tearing through every creature that lunged for her with a ferocity that had stopped looking tactical and started looking personal.

They continued up the mountain, working as a unit. Fin grabbed one of Serena’s arrows from her quiver and pointed it outward like a torch. The vampires recoiled from the glow, hissing, scrambling backward over each other in their rush to get away from the weapon that had been turning their kind into confetti for the last three hours.

It was the first funny thing that had happened in an hour. Fin did not laugh.

Gavriel’s sword carved through vampire skulls like a hot knife through wet clay, each swing clean, each strike final, his green-lit eyes burning brighter with every kill.

✦✦✦

2 HOURS LATER

CURRENT STATUS: Dexmon: Gone.

Exhaustion Level: Biblical.

Morale: See “Dexmon: Gone.”

A vampire feinted left. Fin lunged to counter, weight shifting, blade swinging toward the decoy, and another vampire slammed a blade through his side from behind.

The steel punched through muscle and scraped rib.

Fin choked, dropping to one knee, the weapon lodged deep. Blood bloomed across his suit in a spreading stain that looked black in the volcanic light.

“FIN!” Serena screamed, fighting to reach him.

But ten vampires swarmed between them, a wall of violet bodies and gnashing teeth that sealed the gap like a living barricade, blocking her path with the coordinated cruelty of predators who knew exactly what they were doing.

Fin staggered. Blood poured down his torso, pooling in the creases of his suit, dripping from his fingers in a steady rhythm that matched his slowing heartbeat. His vision tunneled. Another blade slashed across his ribs, a second mouth opening in his side. A third vampire slammed him against the stone wall, pinning him there with its forearm across his chest, pressing the air from his lungs.

A blade lifted to his throat.

Fin knew this was it.

He braced for the killing strike, eyes blazing gold with the primal, feral need to get to Serena. To protect what he’d sworn to protect. To finish what he’d started. Every muscle in his body strained against the vampire’s grip, refusing to go quietly, refusing to stop fighting even with the math screaming that it was over.

But before steel met flesh, he vanished.

Ripped out of the world mid-breath, mid-fight, mid-sentence of a prayer he hadn’t finished. Gone the same way Dex had gone. One heartbeat he was there, bleeding and furious and alive. The next, he was a memory and a bloodstain on a rock wall.

Two down in two hours.

Back to back.

Now it was just her and Gav.

✦✦✦

DRAKENFELL, UNDERGROUND CHAMBER

Fin crashed onto hard stone.

The impact drove the air from his lungs like a fist to the sternum, every wound reopening on contact, blood painting the floor in a wet smear beneath him.

Dexmon lay unconscious beside him, crumpled at an angle that made Fin’s chest seize, because people who landed like that were either sleeping or dying and Dex wasn’t doing a goddamn lot of sleeping.

The rune Serena had carved into the stone blazed beneath Dexmon like a brand, gold light pouring from the etched lines with a fury that matched the magic that had dragged them both here against their will. Fin’s bracelet flashed once, painfully bright, locking his body into place like invisible chains had threaded themselves through every joint.

He tried to rise.

His body gave out. Arms buckled, legs refused, muscles that had been fighting for six straight hours finally submitting their formal resignation. He collapsed, coughing, hand clawing at the ground like he could dig his way back through dimensions if he just tore up enough stone.

Instead, a brutal, broken scream tore out of him.

“No!”

The word ricocheted off the chamber walls, raw with rage and terror, the sound of a man whose body had been evacuated from a war while his heart was still in it. Because Serena was still up there. Bleeding. Cornered. With only Gavriel between her and a mountain full of things that wanted to eat her alive.

And he couldn’t get back.

Hyran, Maelor, and Aeron stood frozen in the chamber, wearing the exact expressions of men whose reality had just been rewritten without their permission.

“What…” Aeron stepped forward, brows knitting. “Fin? We saw you ten seconds ago. How…?”

To them, zero time had passed. They’d watched the four of them walk through the portal. Spoken to them. And now two of them were on the ground, soaked in blood that hadn’t existed a minute ago, one unconscious and the other feral with panic. The math refused to compute.

Hyran and Aeron moved toward Fin first, Dexmon still unconscious, still breathing, still glowing under the rune’s furious light.

A strangled groan tore from Fin’s throat as he tried to push himself upright again. His arms buckled. He collapsed, bracing himself on trembling fists, forehead nearly touching the stone, every exhale laced with a sound that was half growl and half sob.

He didn’t answer their questions. He couldn’t. His entire mind was locked on Serena, still on that mountainside, still fighting, still alone with one man standing between her and a swarm that had already taken two.