The woods were no longer a sanctuary. They were a labyrinth of clawing branches and treacherous ground, the thumping beat of the helicopter rotors a monstrous heart pounding just above the canopy.
Searchlights stabbed through the trees, turning ordinary shadows into grasping, skeletal hands. They ran, a ragged, gasping chain of fugitives, driven by a primal need for deeper darkness.
Leo and Jax half-carried, half-dragged the Professor, whose legs seemed to have turned to water. He mumbled incoherently, his mind a shattered window, the phrase "building a copy" the only clear pane in the broken glass.
Chloe led the way, her eyes wide, not with sight, but with a desperate, internal navigation, following the faint, panicked current of their own collective terror.
And Alastor... he was the rearguard, a silent, looming presence that made the very air tremble. He didn't run so much as flow, a shadow among shadows, his head constantly turning, listening for pursuit not just from the air, but from the ground.
The controlled warrior from the ambush was gone, replaced by something more feral, more ancient. The use of his power, the proximity of so much violence, had scraped his nerves raw.
Maya's lungs burned, her muscles screamed. The cold air was a knife in her chest. But the physical pain was nothing compared to the icy dread crystallizing in her gut. A copy. The words were a virus, infecting every thought.
Thorne wasn't just a collector. He was an industrialist. He wanted to mass-produce the curse Alastor carried.
After what felt like an eternity, the thumping of the helicopter began to recede, its searchlights sweeping away to another quadrant of the forest. They stumbled into a small, rocky clearing dominated by a shallow cave, little more than a gouge in the hillside. It was damp and smelled of damp earth and animal, but it was cover.
They collapsed inside, their breath pluming in the frigid air. Jax immediately curled into a ball, rocking back and forth. Leo leaned against the cave wall, his face grey with exhaustion. The Professor simply sat where they dropped him, staring at nothing, his trembling hands clasped together.
Chloe approached Alastor, who stood at the mouth of the cave, a statue of tension. "Your shoulder," she said softly, pointing to the dark, sticky patch on his armour where a stray bullet must have grazed him during the ambush. "You're hurt."
He flinched away from her outstretched hand, a low growl rumbling in his chest. The friendly, curious man from the basement was gone, submerged beneath the warrior who had just dismantled a squad of elite soldiers.
His eyes, when they met Maya's, were wild, haunted. The amber light in them flickered, like a guttering flame.
He was losing himself. The battle, the constant flight, the weight of being a living weapon in a world he didn't understand-it was breaking him. He was a dam about to burst.
Maya knew, with a certainty that felt like fate, that they were at a precipice. If he retreated now, into the beast, they would lose him forever. And they would lose their only chance of understanding what they were truly facing.
She stood up, her legs protesting. She ignored the others, her focus entirely on him.
"Alastor," she said, her voice quiet but firm, cutting through the haze of his post-battle adrenaline.
He didn't look at her. His gaze was turned inward on some private hell of memory and instinct.
She walked towards him, each step deliberate. Leo made a small, warning sound, but she ignored him. This was beyond logic, beyond caution.
She stopped directly in front of him, well within the range of those gauntleted hands that could tear metal. He was a head taller than her, a mountain of muscle and ancient power. She could feel the heat coming off him, the vibration of contained energy.
"Look at me," she commanded.
His eyes, blazing and unstable, slowly focused on her. There was no recognition, only a feral wariness.
"You are not a weapon," she said, holding his gaze, pouring every ounce of her conviction into the words. "You are Alastor. You are the last Hound-Keeper. You remember the sun."
She saw a flicker in the chaos of his eyes. A memory. A pain.
He was breathing in ragged, shallow gasps. The shadows in the cave seemed to writhe and deepen around him. He was fighting it, fighting the pull of the hellhound spirit, the easy solace of mindless rage.
He was losing.
Desperation clawed at her. Words were a flimsy shield against a storm like this. He needed to know he wasn't alone. He needed to feel it.
Thorne had probed him with metal. She would bridge the gap with something else.
Slowly, giving him every chance to pull away, she reached out her hand. Not to his wounded shoulder, but to the center of his chest plate, where his heart would be.
His whole body went rigid. A snarl tore from his lips, a promise of violence. The air crackled. Behind her, she heard Jax whimper in fear.
But she didn't flinch. She didn't retreat.
"You asked me to find you," she whispered, her voice barely audible over the pounding of her own heart. "I'm here."
Her fingertips touched the cold, strangely warm metal of his armor.
The effect was instantaneous and catastrophic.
It was not a gentle vision. It was a tsunami.
The cave, her friends, the forest-it all vanished, ripped away in a maelstrom of sensation. She was drowning in him.
The heat of a dying sun over a city of gold and crystal. The taste of ash and ozone. The deafening roar of a collapsing world. The weight of a duty that demanded everything. The faces of his brothers and sisters, the other Hound-Keepers, not as noble guardians, but as desperate, frightened people, their eyes wide with a shared, terrible knowledge.
A ritual, not of triumph, but of last resort. A willing descent into a pact with a primordial fury, not for power, but for survival. The agonizing bond, the spirit of the hellhound, not a willing partner, but a captured storm, forced into a cage of flesh and bone.
The Great Sealing-not a victory, but a mass suicide, a prison they built around themselves and their monstrous power to save what was left of the world. The crushing guilt. The endless, silent dark. The hope, so fragile, when her touch first brushed the stone...
It was too much. A lifetime. A civilization's death. An eternity of guilt. It flooded her nervous system, a firehose of history and emotion. She felt his people's sacrifice as her own, their sin as her burden.
She felt the hellhound spirit not as a beast, but as a tormented, eternal force, bound against its will. She felt his loneliness, a vast, cold ocean in which he had been drowning for five thousand years.
A scream was torn from her lips, but she couldn't hear it. She was lost in the memory of a world on fire.
And then, as suddenly as it began, it was over.
She was on her knees on the cold stone of the cave, gasping, tears streaming down her face. Her body trembled uncontrollably. Leo was at her side, his hands on her shoulders, his face a mask of panic.
"Maya! What happened? Are you okay?" Chloe, Jax, and Leo came running at her worried.
She couldn't answer. She could only look up at Alastor.
He was staring down at her, his own chest heaving. The feral light was gone from his eyes, replaced by a stunned, horrified awe. He had felt it too. He had felt her receive his entire history, his entire soul, in one devastating burst. He had not just been seen; he had been known.
The wall between them wasn't just cracked. It had been vaporized.
He slowly, hesitantly, knelt before her. The terrifying warrior was gone. In his place was just a man, burdened by a truth too heavy for one person to carry.
He reached out, his gauntleted hand hovering near her cheek, not daring to touch. His voice, when it came, was a raw, broken whisper, the first clear, intentional word of English he had ever formed.
"Guilty."
It wasn't just a statement. It was a confession. A verdict. He was guilty of his people's sin, guilty of the power he carried, guilty of the danger he now posed to her and her world.
Maya, her own soul still ringing from the impact, reached up and covered his cold, metal-clad hand with her own warm, trembling one. She shook her head, her vision blurred with tears.
"No," she choked out, the word filled with the weight of everything she had just witnessed. "No. You were their sacrifice. You are not guilty."
The cave was utterly silent. Jax had stopped rocking. The Professor was staring, a flicker of clarity in his dazed eyes. Chloe was crying silent, empathetic tears.
The truth was out. The Hound-Keepers were not noble guardians. They were the origin of the corruption. Alastor was the living tomb for his people's original sin.
And as Maya held the hand of the last of his kind, the weight of that truth settled on her shoulders, a mantle she had not asked for, but now could never put down. The burden had been shared.