Chapter 102: The Score
I pivot. Scan. Filter every detail—moving shadows, dust disturbances, the way light bends around solid objects.
Nothing.
The battlefield is fragmenting.
The Red Tide’s structure is gone.
What’s left is pockets of resistance—small clusters of Lost Ark soldiers surrounding wounded beasts, finishing them off with the grim efficiency.
But something is wrong.
My skin won’t settle. A crawling sensation across the back of my neck that I’ve learned to trust more than my eyes.
"Oliver. My left side. Stay on it."
He moves without questioning—falling into position against my wounded shoulder, covering the angle my damaged arm can’t protect.
"Where is it?" His voice cracks. He’s scared.
Good.
Scared means alert.
I stop looking at the horizon. Stop scanning for shapes. The Stalker’s chromatophore camouflage is too good for visual detection at range—I learned that the first time it nearly killed me.
I look down.
The ground. The sand. The blood. Every surface has a story, and an invisible predator still has weight.
There.
Eight feet from Oliver. A patch of blood-soaked sand deforms. No wind. No tremor. Just the sand compressing under something heavy that isn’t there.
I bring Eventide up in a single motion—bad shoulder screaming, both hands on the hilt—and slam the blade into the space above Oliver’s exposed side.
CLANG.
The impact jolts through my arms like grabbing a live wire. Eventide catches three claws that were already descending toward Oliver’s skull. The force behind them is staggering—Rank C muscle driving Rank C bone into a Rank C blade.
My boots slide backward three inches in the sand.
The chromatophores fire. The Stalker’s camouflage collapses in a ripple of color that spreads across its massive frame like ink dropped in water. The beast materializes—ten feet of apex predator, bifurcated jaw, milky shark eyes locked on me with the cold recognition of something that remembers.
The scar on its neck. A thick, pale line where Boris’s axe bit deep during Phase One.
Same Stalker...
"Careful," I tell Oliver. "This one’s been through this before."
Oliver wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "At this rate, I’ll owe you a kidney before sunrise."
"Both kidneys." I nod.
Check my OXI.
[OXI: 781/1,600]
The drain from Eventide is savage. The new consumption rate is eating me alive—every second the blade stays active is forty-five OXI. Add the blood loss from the wound and I’m running a deficit that has one outcome.
"Can you fire Motorhead one more time?"
"One," Oliver confirms. "That’s it."
One shot. One chance. If he misses or mistimes, we’re fighting a Reef rank with an empty hammer and a sword I can’t afford to keep lit.
"Wait for my signal. Not before."
The Stalker doesn’t give us time to plan.
It launches sideways—not at me, at Oliver. The defenseless target. The one whose weapon bounces off everything above Rank D.
I intercept. Throw myself into the trajectory, Eventide raised in a guard that catches the Stalker’s claw swipe on the flat of the blade. The impact spins me. My boots lose traction. I slam into Oliver’s shoulder and we both stagger.
[OXI: 702/1,600]
The Stalker presses. A second swipe—low, aimed at my legs.
I jump it. Barely.
The claws pass beneath my boots and gouge a trench in the sand.
I counter now. A short, upward slash that catches the beast’s forearm. The spectral edge bites through the chromatophore skin and draws a line of glowing blue blood.
The Stalker recoils. Hisses. Recalibrates.
It felt that. The new Eventide actually hurts it.
[OXI: 643/1,600]
I need to end this. Now. Every second is a percentage of my life.
The Stalker circles. Its milky eyes track me with the patience of something that can afford to wait—it knows I’m bleeding resources. It felt the strength of the blade. So it’s going to make me keep it active until I can’t.
Smart. Too smart.
I need to change the equation.
"Oliver. When I drop, you swing. Don’t aim for the head. Aim for the ribs. The flank. Hit it sideways."
"Drop? What do you mean, drop?"
"You’ll know."
[OXI: 581/1,600]
I charge the Stalker. Full sprint, Eventide high, the shadow-edge screaming through the air. Every alarm in my body is firing—pain from the shoulder, OXI draining, vision starting to narrow at the edges.
The Stalker braces. Claws up. Ready to catch the blade and redirect it—the same counter-technique it used against Boris in Phase One.
I don’t swing.
Three feet from the beast, I kill Eventide’s ignition and drop. Flat. Slide under the Stalker’s guard on the blood-slicked sand, passing beneath the claws that close on empty air above me.
I clear the beast’s body and roll sideways, putting the Stalker between me and Oliver.
Oliver is already moving.
"NOW!"
"MOTORHEAD!"
The hammer splits. The jet roars. The weapon accelerates in a rising arc—not aimed at the skull, but aimed at the ribcage as I demanded.
The Stalker hears the ignition. Turns. Too late.
The hammer connects with the left flank at full propulsive force. The impact doesn’t crack the chromatophore plating—it caves it.
The beast’s massive frame lifts off the ground on the impact side, its balance destroyed, its body tilting toward me at a forty-five-degree angle.
Its neck is exposed.
I reignite Eventide. The blade screams back to life.
The memories of the ghost guardians fill my mind. One cut. Everything I have. Right arm, shoulder rotation, the weight of my entire body thrown behind the edge.
Eventide enters the Stalker’s neck from the left side—at the scar, at the exact spot Boris opened during Phase One—and exits the right.
The head separates.
The body stands for two seconds. The chromatophores fire one last time—a cascade of colors rippling across the skin like a sunset on fast-forward. Then the legs fold and the apex predator crashes into the sand.
[OXI: 274/1,600]
I deactivate Eventide. My hand is shaking so badly the hilt rattles against my palm.
Stable. Barely.
I look at Oliver. He’s leaning on the warhammer, using it as a crutch, his face grey. We look at each other the way two men look at each other when they’ve both just used everything they had and neither has anything left.
The Stalker’s head is lying in the sand between us. One milky eye stares up at the false stars.
Score settled.
My knees give.
The world tilts. The sand rushes up. I feel the impact coming—the specific, weightless sensation of a body that has run out of things to run on.
A hand catches me.
Small. Firm. Fingers wrapping around my good arm with a grip that shouldn’t be as strong as it is. I smell lavender and copper—the specific combination of Rhayne’s soap and Rhayne’s blood.
She lowers me gently. My back hits the sand. She’s kneeling beside me, her storm-cloud eyes wide, one glove off, the other pressing something against my lips.
Scales.
I chew. The OXI trickles back in. Slow. Just enough to keep the lights on.
"It’s becoming a habit," I manage, my voice a dry rasp. "You catching me at the last second."
Rhayne doesn’t smile. She just keeps her hand on my shoulder—the good one—and watches my face until the color starts coming back.
"Someone has to," she says quietly.