Chapter 7
Varka crouched low, shoulders tense, breath controlled. The abominations stood motionless in the mist, heads tilted at angles that made Carter's stomach turn—too far, too deliberate. Watching. Waiting.
Maybe for our move. Or maybe just wary.
A cornered animal was where it became most dangerous.
Carter counted through Varka's eyes, pulse hammering against ribs that weren't his. Seven in front. Five behind. More shadows shifting in the treeline, barely visible through the ash-thick air.
We're done. There's no way—
Space folded.
A fist closed around Carter's chest—reality contracting, air bending like heated glass. Varka's will surged outward, pressing against the fabric of the world.
Protect.
Something materialized, clinging to Varka's skin like oil on water. Invisible armor. Carter felt it settle over them both—a barrier that hummed with quiet certainty.
Wind exploded overhead.
Snezna—rising—carried on a gale. White hair like flames. Three of the dead yanked skyward, limbs flailing, weightless against the wind.
Carter barely—
A shard of glass spun toward Varka's skull, catching moonlight.
Darkness swallowed the world—
—spat them out elsewhere.
Carter's vision snapped back. Disoriented. Varka's arm completing its arc, shadow-blade cleaving through rotted flesh.
A head tumbled to the mud.
Did he just—teleport? How—
The headless body spun. Blade rising to impale where Varka had been.
Varka's voice cut through, cold. Absolute.
I grant you the peace of death.
His will pressed down.
The wound began to rot—violent, urgent, time accelerating around the injury. Flesh peeling away in layers, dissolving into smoke and glass shards that scattered like broken starlight. The creature collapsed inward, folding into nothing.
Two more lunged from the mist.
Five total. Two in front. Three behind—coordinated.
The first tore a wagon wheel free—wood screaming—hurled it. The second closed distance in three impossible strides, blade aimed for ribs.
Varka blinked.
Space folded.
He stood where the creature had been.
The nightmare faced the wheel instead.
Wood met crystal—
Shatter.
A thousand small deaths in one sound. The creature flew backward into mist.
Varka's back was to the others.
The shadow behind them rippled—
Pain.
White-hot. Immediate. A glass shard buried itself in Varka's shoulder, punching through muscle, scraping bone. The wound didn't bleed clean. Something *wrong* seeped out—dark, sluggish, reeking of rot.
Carter screamed without a voice.
Too slow. These were waiting. Watching.
Varka spun.
Caught the nearest nightmare's arm mid-swing—inches from his abdomen—drove his shadow-blade through its palm. Bone parted. The creature shrieked—wind through broken glass, through hollow trees.
He kicked it backward into the carriage remains.
One word.
Ignite.
The blade obeyed.
Explosion threw Varka back—heat and light turning night to day for one brutal second. Wood became shrapnel. Iron fragments screamed through air. Carter felt the impact ripple through Varka's ribs, bone rattling, breath stolen, copper taste flooding a mouth that wasn't his.
Through the smoke came sound that didn't belong.
Howling.
Not animal. Not human.
Between.
Carter's mind couldn't—the sound didn't fit anywhere, couldn't be *real*—
The three nightmares behind them had finished their ritual. Another shriek from the treeline—higher, triumphant.
This one's still alive.
The nightmare struck by the wheel crawled from wreckage, crystalline shell cracked and peeling. Without the armor: fragile. A reflection in shattered mirror. Jagged edges. Impossible angles.
No skin. No human features.
Just translucent flesh stretched over a frame that refused to make sense.
It screamed.
Tried to run.
Varka flicked his wrist. A thin wire materialized—barely visible, sharp as obsidian. The creature's leg caught it mid-stride.
Tripped.
Fell forward onto a blade that hadn't been there.
The blade that was always there, in the space where Varka willed it.
Varka was already moving toward the other three.
They stepped from the smoke.
Human.
Too human.
Eyes that tracked. Mouths that could've spoken. Faces with structure, intention—something studying humanity, learning to wear it.
Not perfect.
Learning.
Shit. These are evolving. Stronger.
The first raised its hand. Glass shards materialized—dozens, hundreds—spinning, catching light, scattering colors that had no names.
The second gestured—fingers moving wrong—ice coalescing from nothing. Spears of frozen light howling as they formed. The air screaming.
The third didn't prepare.
Just charged. Blade raised. Cutting off Varka's teleport point.
They're learning how we fight.
The shards and spears converged—
Wind *snapped*.
Everything in front of Varka ceased to exist.
Nightmares. Projectiles. Air itself—obliterated in a column of screaming force that carved a trench through earth, tearing up roots and stone. A scar in the world, steaming.
Snezna landed beside the crater. Breathing hard. Eyes wild. Hands trembling.
The swordsman nightmare had survived.
Stood at the crater's edge. Faced Varka directly. Its almost-human face tilting—curiosity, recognition.
Varka teleported behind it. Shadow-blade raised—
The creature turned.
Faster than thought.
Its expression shifted into something that might've been a smile. *Was* a smile. Teeth too white in moonlight.
Your tricks are getting old.
Varka smiled back.
Wider. Colder.
Darkness *erupted* around them both—a sphere of absolute black swallowing sight and sound. Inside the void, Varka released his blade—let it fall—teleported *in front* of the creature while it swung at empty air.
No time to conjure a weapon.
He drove his hand into the nightmare's chest—through the wound—fingers into flesh like oil and ice.
Twisted.
Something tore. Internal. Wet.
The creature shrieked.
Blade falling toward his skull—
He teleported.
Left something.
His hand. Still inside. Fingers locked.
Explode.
Blood and glass erupted outward. The nightmare came apart—spray of light and rot, pieces scattering, dissolving before they hit ground.
*WHAT THE FUCK?! Who cuts off their own—*
Varka was already moving.
Shadow coalescing in his left hand, forming a new blade. The stump of his right arm sealing itself with threads of living darkness, weaving flesh and shadow. No hesitation. No acknowledgment of pain.
Just motion. Endless. Inevitable.
One of the nightmares Snezna had blasted lay crumpled against a fallen tree. Struggling to rise. Form flickering.
Another shard streaked toward Varka's head—faster, hungrier.
He twisted aside.
Too slow.
The projectile grazed his cheek. Split flesh. The wound festered instantly—blackening at edges, blood flowing thick and wrong. It reeked of rot, something older than death.
Varka caught the shard mid-spin. Hurled it back.
The nightmare dodged—
But Varka's corrupted blood clung to the fragment like oil.
Ignite.
The shard detonated midair—sound like breaking bone. The blast caught the flying creature mid-dodge. Wings shredding. Body trailing smoke and light, spiraling downward, scream dopplering into silence.
Varka was already waiting beneath it.
Stood perfectly still. Shadow-forged greatsword planted vertically in mud. Both hands gripping the hilt—one flesh, one shadow.
Didn't thrust. Didn't adjust. Didn't move.
Simply held.
Gravity did the rest.
The nightmare slammed down onto the waiting blade. Point punched through chest, erupted from back—spray of glass-shard bones. Scream turned to static, then nothing.
Varka drew the sword upward—smooth, inevitable—splitting the creature sternum to skull. Light poured from the wound. Wrong light. Colors that hurt to perceive, made Carter's borrowed eyes water.
The nightmare dissolved into glass and ash, scattering on wind that hadn't been there.
Carter could only watch.
His mind screamed to move, to help, to do something—but he had no hands, no voice, no body. Passenger in Varka's storm. Helpless as the man tore through nightmares with surgical brutality, efficiency that transcended violence and became something else.
And beneath the terror, beneath the revulsion—
God help me.
This is beautiful.
The thought made him sick. Made his soul recoil.
Made him want *more*.
Varka stood amid the carnage. Breathing steady. Controlled. Eyes scanning treeline for the next threat. Always the next threat. Always moving forward.
Blood dripped from his cheek, each drop hissing as it hit mud. His right hand gone—remade from shadow. Wounds covering shoulders and ribs, dark stains spreading.
But he stood.
Unbroken.
And the nightmares—those that remained, those still clinging to this world—hesitated.
For the first time since they'd risen, the dead looked afraid.
Carter felt Varka's satisfaction—cold, clinical, absolute.
And felt nothing of his own rising to meet it.
Just hollow disgust settling in his gut like cold stone.
This isn't—I'm not—
But the protest felt weak. Distant. Like shouting underwater.
Because for those few minutes—watching Varka move, watching him dominate—Carter hadn't been horrified.
He'd been fascinated.
Not the violence itself. Not the blood or the killing or the pain.
But the control. The certainty. The absolute confidence that every action would succeed because failure simply wasn't considered.
Carter had spent his whole life uncertain. Hesitant. Watching from the sidelines while the world moved around him.
And Varka moved through the world like he owned it.
No.
Carter's thought came sharp, desperate.
That's not me. That's not—I don't want that. I don't—
But beneath the denial, a question wormed its way in:
*Don't you?*
The thought made him sick.
Made him want to claw his way out of this body, this dream, this nightmare that refused to end.
Made him pray—to something, anything—that when he woke, he'd still recognize the face in the mirror.
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