Luke’s thoughts spiraled into doubt and fear as Allison bled out at his feet. Then, like a thin thread in the dark, an idea surfaced. He yanked open his inventory with a quick motion, pulled out the angel mask, and pressed it over Allison’s face. Her body locked as if the air itself had frozen. Skin grayed, muscles stiffened, the bleeding stopped. She became a statue, rigid, inert, but not dead.

  Suspended on the knife’s edge between life and death, she would hold there.

  I bought time, he thought. Allison wouldn’t die while the mask’s power held. But that only solved half the problem: he still needed to get her into the portal.

  Jonathan watched with eyes bright and ragged, breath ragged with hatred and exhaustion.

  “Why are you doing that?” Luke asked, rising. He had to deal with Jonathan now. Allison had more time, but the threat remained.

  Wind howled through shattered columns. Stones began to fall from the ceiling. The castle was finishing its death throes.

  “You already know why I killed Angelica,” Luke said, voice steady. “She asked me to, Jonathan. She was poisoned by Paul, sent by Bartholomew. I honored her last request. We’re on the same side.”

  The man stopped.

  “You stole her from me!” Jonathan snarled. “Even in her last moments you took her from me!”

  “You’re insane,” Luke said, eyes flicking to a throwing knife half-buried in the snow.

  Jonathan saw it. He looked at Allison’s petrified form, cold, expressionless, frozen the instant before death.

  “You always find a way to run,” Jonathan spat. “Not this time. I’ll stop you. I’ll watch your face when she dies, from the wound or when the counter hits zero.”

  “If you stay here, you die too,” Luke warned.

  “So what?” Jonathan laughed, a hoarse sound. “You’ll lose everything, your precious family, your hope, your world. I’ll watch it end.”

  Then he moved. Faster. Each step left afterimages trembling in the air; he had activated some skill.

  Luke kicked up snow and threw himself to the ground, hand closing around the knife. Steel flashed to kill. He raised his arm and parried with the short blade.

  “Kill him, Luke!” Artemis shouted, voice from the necklace.

  Luke pushed to his feet, testing strength. Jonathan struck with the other sword; Luke dodged, then, driven by instinct, desperation, and the ache that had built in him, drove the knife into the mercenary’s abdomen. Jonathan stumbled but kept coming. Luke answered with a punch that snapped the man’s head back.

  Another blade came in a horizontal arc. Luke barely avoided it and lunged toward Franky. The tiny snake still writhed where the sword had pinned it to the ground, hissing. Luke kicked the blade free. Franky flung himself at Jonathan’s face, teeth finding flesh. Bite after bite, venom ate and burned. Jonathan howled, vision going white with pain, the sound tearing out of him.

  Luke ran for Allison.

  Jonathan was not down yet.

  “You will not escape! You will die here, like Angelica!” he shouted, stumbling as he tried to pry Franky off his face.

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  Luke turned, Allison cradled in his arms. Jonathan lurched forward, bloodied but driven by pure hate. Luke threw a throwing knife at his leg. The blade sank to the bone. Jonathan roared and kept coming. His sword sliced the air and caught Luke’s arm. Pain flared hot and deep, tearing muscle, but Luke did not stop. He answered with a punch to Jonathan’s nose, a dry, bone-jarring impact.

  The mercenary staggered, then forced himself upright, muscles burning with desperate adrenaline. He launched like an animal. The blow hit Luke in the chest and hurled him backward. For a second the world was only snow, stone, and sky. He landed on his back, gasping.

  Jonathan sprinted toward Allison’s frozen body while Franky, wounded, slid back across the ground. Luke pawed through the snow until his fingers closed on cold metal: a throwing knife. He hurled it. The blade spun and struck Jonathan in the back. Jonathan screamed and twisted.

  Franky seized the moment and spat a jet of acid. The liquid splattered across Jonathan’s face.

  “MY EYES!” he howled, dropping to his knees, but rage outstripped pain. With one hand clutching Franky, the other raised the sword. Jonathan drove the blade through the little snake’s skull with a firm shove. Franky’s body pinned to the ground, the tail spasmed twice, then went limp.

  At that exact instant Luke felt a sting inside his mind. Cold. Deep. Quiet.

  [Warning: Your familiar is dying…]

  Franky did not move. Luke rose slowly, propelled not by strength but by loss. He ran and pummeled Jonathan while the man still knelt. Jonathan tried to stand, but Luke shoved him against a fallen column and unloaded blow after blow—face, stomach, ribs. The strikes had no finesse, no aim to imprison; they were meant to break.

  “Kill him, Luke!” Artemis screamed.

  Jonathan drove his sword into Luke’s abdomen. The blade passed through flesh. Hot blood ran. Still Luke kept going, as if the pain could no longer touch him. He grabbed Jonathan by the throat with both hands and squeezed. Jonathan flailed, strikes missing as his arms failed. Luke could feel himself about to snap.

  “You will die with me, Luke!” Jonathan spat. A green cloud formed in his palm, a poisonous smoke. He threw it right into Luke’s eyes. The world blurred, vision seared, burning pain behind Luke’s eyes. He fell.

  Jonathan ripped his sword free from Luke’s gut, blood spilling anew, then lifted the blade for the final strike. “This is how it has to be,” Jonathan said. “You will watch me kill her in front of you!”

  He advanced.

  [Estimated Time Until End: 01 minute and 58 seconds]

  At that moment mana returned. Weak, but enough.

  [Mana Points (MP): 5/(5100)]

  Luke’s hand moved instinctively to the quiver. He formed an arrow.

  [Mana Points (MP): 0/(5100)]

  [Arrows in Quiver: 1/20]

  Jonathan sprinted forward.

  Luke was up in the same instant, vision blurred, bleeding, lungs burning. He dodged the first slash by sound alone and drove a punch into Jonathan’s jaw with everything he had left, even with broken fingers, then put distance between them.

  “For Angélica, Luke!” Jonathan shouted.

  An arc materialized in Luke’s hands as if it had always been there. He nocked an arrow and let it fly. The shaft sailed clean through the air and buried itself in Jonathan’s chest, striking the mercenary in the heart. The force slammed him against a pillar.

  Luke didn’t stop. He ran and pummeled Jonathan’s face until it was a ruin of flesh, until one eye was nothing but a dark hole, the other dripping blood and acid. Jonathan crumpled into a staggered squat, gasping.

  Luke yanked the arrow from his chest and blood sprayed, hot and red. Without hesitation he drove the shaft into the remaining eye. Jonathan tried to scream; the sound that came out was torn and thin. The crossbow that had been in Jonathan’s hands appeared again. Luke’s boot found it, sending the weapon skittering away, then he sprinted to Allison.

  Her body still wore the mask’s petrified calm: cold, gray, suspended between life and death. Fear knotted his gut. He needed her inside the portal now.

  Jonathan stumbled across the ruined floor toward the light, blood staining the snow under his feet, the arrow still lodged in him. His voice was a dry rasp. “I will find you… on Earth, Luke,” he muttered, unfocused. “We will meet again.”

  Luke grabbed a throwing knife from the snow and poised to hurl it, but before he could, Jonathan lunged into the portal. His form dissolved into the blinding glow and was gone.

  The knife sailed through empty air and thunked into nothing. Luke stood there, chest heaving, the ruin of the throne room echoing with the wind and falling stone, Allison’s inert form cooling in his arms.

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