The tremor deepened.
Cracks split the earth beneath the ruined stronghold, the shattered ground groaning as something massive pushed its way toward the surface. The rubble buckled. Walls collapsed inward. Smoke hissed from the fissures as molten heat rose from below, until it came.
Kairos.
He didn't step out.
He erupted from the depths like a beast torn from hell's spine, taller than any reaper, bulkier than a tank, but still unnervingly fast. His limbs were stretched with jagged muscle, misshapen, twisted by enhancement beyond biology. Metallic plating fused with flesh, like armor grown directly from bone. Silver veins ran visibly beneath transparent skin in places, glowing like molten wire under tension.
His face, or what passed for one, was unreadable. Devoid of anything human. A blank slate, eyes empty and faintly pulsing white, like sensors constantly recalibrating.
There was no scream. No roar.
Just presence.
And silence that followed, terrible and unnatural.
Then, it moved.
One flicker of muscle, and it crossed the ruined field in a blink.
Li barely ducked. A crushed boulder beside her wasn't so lucky, it exploded from the sheer impact of Kairos's passing.
"Shit---" Tyler muttered, stepping back instinctively, eyes wide.
"He's not just fast," Diego whispered, blades raised. "He's calculating."
"Bigger than any of the reapers," Harry muttered. "He shouldn't be moving like that, nothing that size should."
Slacovich didn't speak.
His jaw was tight, his posture locked, his eyes never leaving the monster.
Sofie took one breath, steady and sure. But her voice was grim. "This thing... it doesn't feel pain."
Kairos stopped abruptly. His head tilted, just slightly, as if identifying each of them one by one.
Then his arms twitched.
Blades extended from beneath his forearms. Not drawn. Not attached.
Grown.
Sharpened silver, fluid and violent, like steel evolved.
They braced as he lunged again, this time slicing through the air toward Sofie.
She barely deflected it.
Even her movement, fast as lightning, came with the shock of impact that rattled through her bones.
Sparks flew. Blood spilled.
"He's adapting already," Slacovich said through clenched teeth. "Every strike is more refined."
Harry glanced at his vials. "We'll need everything. Every serum, every shot, every tactic."
Kairos stalked forward again, walking now, each step cracking the ground.
Volton, watching from his perch above the wreckage, smirked.
"He has no empathy. No restraint. No limits," he said, voice filled with dark pride. "He was not built to fight for a cause. He was built to end."
And standing there, facing the monster, the shadow of everything the Vampire Project had tried to bury, the Demonfires realized something cold and terrifying.
They didn't know if they could win.
Even all six of them. Even with the Shadow Guards. Even with the serums.
They might not make it.
But they stood their ground.
No one turned back. No one ran.
Because if they failed now, even once, Kairos wouldn't just destroy this city.
He'd tear down the world.
He'd bring an apocalypse of one.
Sofie raised her blade, blood still trailing down her wrist. Her voice was firm, echoing through the battlefield:
"If we fall, we fall fighting."
Slacovich stepped beside her, followed by the others, shoulder to shoulder.
Blades drawn. Eyes locked.
Ready.
For the final battle. Against the monster named Kairos.
---
It wasn't a fight.
It was a massacre.
The moment they charged, Kairos moved.
And they realized, too late, that none of them were prepared.
Not for this.
Not for him.
He struck first, Li. A blur of motion and a sickening crunch as her body slammed into the ground hard enough to crater it. She didn't even have time to scream. Blood sprayed from her lips as she rolled, momentum snapping one of her arms cleanly out of socket.
Diego dove to catch her, but Kairos was faster.
He struck again, Diego's ribs shattered, the impact folding him like paper. His body was thrown back into the wreckage of a steel barricade, bending it with the force of the hit. His blade slipped from his grasp as he coughed violently, crimson bubbling from his mouth.
Sofie lunged in next, fast, precise, but it didn't matter. Her blade met Kairos's arm. The silver screeched as it scraped skin, but the monster didn't even flinch.
He turned his head.
And backhanded her.
Sofie flew.
Her body spun midair like a ragdoll, crashing through two ruined pillars before she finally hit the ground, breath gone, vision black around the edges. Her blade clattered uselessly out of reach.
Tyler rushed forward, screaming, "SOFIE!"
He didn't make it far.
Kairos gripped his ankle in mid-step, and slammed him headfirst into the dirt.
Once. Twice.
Three times.
Until blood soaked the sand beneath him. Until Tyler couldn't speak. Until his hand twitched, reaching for a serum that shattered beneath his palm.
Harry launched a serum dart.
It hit.
Kairos didn't care.
The serum hissed in his skin and evaporated.
He turned his head slowly toward Harry.
Harry's eyes widened.
He fired again, again, and again.
But Kairos charged through the shots like they were mist. A blur of death wrapped in flesh.
He hit Harry with an open palm.
Harry flew upward, slammed against the side of the broken Sky Fortress wall. His bones cracked on impact. He dropped, limp. Blood dripped from his nose, from his ears. His vials scattered beside him, glass staining the dirt with wasted hope.
They were broken.
All of them.
Li, unmoving. Diego, coughing blood. Harry, slumped. Tyler, barely conscious. Sofie, groaning, too far to stand.
And yet---
Slacovich stood.
Arms trembling. Body torn. Half his face swollen. Blood from his temple into his eye, blurring everything red.
His blade was broken, but he still held it.
Every breath was pain.
Every second he remained upright was defiance.
Kairos turned toward him.
Eyes still blank. Unblinking. Unbothered.
Slacovich didn't flinch.
Even when his knees buckled. Even when he could feel his ribs grind inside him.
He took one step forward.
Then another.
"Get. Up," he growled under his breath.
Not to Kairos.
To himself.
He wasn't just fighting a monster.
He was standing for his people. For his Queen. For his comrades.
He wasn't trying to win.
He was trying to survive long enough to matter.
Kairos lunged.
Slacovich raised what was left of his sword.
The impact shattered it. Knocked him backward, skidding across the rubble.
But when the dust cleared, he stood again.
Wobbling. Bleeding. Barely breathing.
But standing.
And in the silence that followed---
Kairos paused.
Because something in Slacovich's eyes refused to die.
This wasn't a warrior.
It was a monument.
A man held together by nothing but will.
And as the others groaned, stirred, crawled toward breath again---
It became clear:
This was no longer a fight to win.
This was about refusing to lose.
Even when everything else had failed.
---
Slacovich took one more step forward.
And Kairos ended it.
A sudden jerk, a blur, and then the sound of bone splitting.
The creature's fist slammed into Slacovich's side, crushing ribs into lungs. Then again, a punch to the spine, and the sound that followed was sickening. A snap, sharp and final.
Slacovich didn't scream.
He just fell.
His knees buckled. His arms collapsed.
The last warrior standing…
Crumbled.
Face first into the dirt. His breath shallow, his body twitching.
He tried, God, he tried, to rise.
One hand clawed at the ground.
Muscles spasmed. A cough ripped through him, blood soaking the earth.
But he didn't make it even an inch.
Kairos towered over him, impassive. Mechanical. He stepped over the body like stepping over a stone.
The field was quiet.
Too quiet.
There were no war cries. No strategies left. No more serum darts or clever ambushes.
Just broken bodies and the slow, stuttering breaths of six warriors brought to their knees.
Sofie lay face-down, blood pooling from her shoulder, one eye swollen shut. Her hand twitched toward her blade but couldn't close around it.
Li's back was torn open. Her wings were broken, twisted, bent at wrong angles. She blinked up at the sky, pupils blown, lips parted as if to speak, but only blood spilled out.
Diego had stopped moving altogether, only the rise and fall of his chest proof that life still lingered within him. His arm lay twisted beneath him, mouth slack against the stone.
Harry's glasses were gone. His face was bruised, one leg mangled beneath his own weight, and every breath he took rattled like something inside was torn.
Tyler was closest to Sofie, his hand outstretched, just a finger-length away, but couldn't move the last inch to reach her. His face was coated in dirt and blood, his lips mouthing a name he couldn't say.
And Slacovich…
He didn't rise again.
Kairos had shattered the one man who never broke.
And now---
All six of them were down.
Sprawled across the battlefield like fallen statues, weapons scattered, blades broken, wings torn, serum vials shattered in the dirt like the hope they once carried.
They weren't dead.
Not yet.
But they were defenseless.
And Kairos knew it.
He stood there, at the center of the wreckage, chest heaving slowly, not from exhaustion, but from a warped approximation of anticipation.
Not a drop of blood on him.
No expression.
Just stillness.
And most chilling of all---
The six Shadow Guards were gone.
Vanished without a trace in the first brutal ambush.
Not a sound. Not a body.
Just gone, as if erased from existence.
Swallowed whole by the force that was Kairos.
He turned his head, scanning the six crumpled bodies beneath him.
And then, he stepped forward again.
The slaughter had only just begun.