Rats That Bite

  Kenny’s impact had broken the rhythm, but only for a heartbeat.

  The forge breathed once, then held its breath.

  A sharper presence cut through the haze.

  Nobu stepped forward.

  His face—empty.

  His eyes—murder.

  The air between them thinned.

  Roi felt it in her bones. That tension. That snap before lightning.

  Nobu moved first.

  A flash of motion, his dagger slicing the air like a scream.

  Kota didn’t even turn. His hand flicked out, batting the blade aside.

  The blade spun into the floor, still humming.

  Nobu stepped back, clenching his teeth. He tore the satchel from his shoulder and hurled it hard, straight into Kota’s chest.

  Kota caught it on reflex, sneering. He dropped the bag and it hit the ground beside him with a heavy clink. “Another toy?”

  Then Kenny’s voice, closer now, sharp, desperate. “KOTA!”

  His own pack came flying next. Kota snatched it midair, cocky grin rising. “You rats bribing me now?”

  “TAKE COVER!” Kenny’s roar cracked through the air.

  Roi didn’t think.

  She ran.

  Her legs moved before her mind caught up, throwing herself behind a slab of warped metal near the right side of the entrance, body curling small. Kenny dove next to her, shielding her head with his arm. Nobu hit the floor beside them, already drawing another blade.

  Kota looked down.

  Two bags at his feet.

  Both trembling, humming, glowing faint red through the seams.

  He tilted his head, confusion flickering into the start of a smirk.

  “Really? Haven’t you guys—”

  FWOOSH—KABOOOOOOOOOM—

  The Heatbox didn’t explode.

  It detonated.

  Not a single impact, but a cascading erasure.

  Sound folded in on itself. The chamber inverted, walls becoming ceiling, ceiling becoming fire.

  These weren’t lone glyphs.

  They were clusters.

  Dozens of interlocked runes stitched through the chamber’s bones. One ignition became ten. Ten became everything. Each trap fed the next in a violent, accelerating rhythm, a domino spiral of flame and force tearing outward with no pause to breathe.

  Light swallowed the world whole.

  Metal shrieked as it warped and peeled. Stone ripped free in screaming slabs.

  The air slammed into Roi like a solid mass, crushing her lungs, flattening her ears, driving thought from her skull.

  She caught fragments.

  Nobu’s mouth open in a shout she couldn’t hear.

  Kenny’s arm snapping up, silhouette etched in white.

  Then nothing but fire and dust.

  A heartbeat.

  Then the second wave hit.

  The dormant traps. The failsafes.

  The ones meant for after.

  Shock charges ruptured in brutal cadence, thudding through her bones. Burning fragments rained down in sheets, glowing shards screaming through the smoke like molten hail. The chamber howled as pressure rebounded, folded, and collapsed inward again.

  Smoke flooded everything, thick, choking, metallic. Iron and ozone coated her tongue.

  Roi’s dragged in a ragged breath, coughing hard, forcing her head up, squinting into the rolling inferno, searching the storm for anyone still standing.

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  The center of the Heatbox was, just a swirling pit of debris and light.

  And in it, Kota staggered. His clothes hung in tatters, other sleeve burned clean off.

  Shallow burns crawled across his ribs in dark, branching lines where shrapnel and heat had hit him directly.

  Blisters steamed and burst as he moved. Blood and soot ran together in streaks.

  His breathing had lost its rhythm, short pulls in through clenched teeth, each exhale sharp and rasping like his lungs were still fighting the smoke.

  Before he could recover, Nobu moved first.

  He vanished into the smoke, hurling himself to Kota.

  “Nobu—!” Roi tried to shout, but the air still burned her throat.

  Kenny’s reply was quick, tight. “We move with him! Capture if we can! If not...Run.”

  Roi nodded. Her pulse pounded so hard it felt like it shook her vision.

  Through the haze, she caught sight of movement, hearing boots skid across the ground. Then a silhouette breaking out of the dust, flying backward.

  Nobu’s body crashed through the smoke, thrown like a ragdoll, bouncing off the steel, sliding until he stopped by the entrance of The Heatbox.

  “GOD DAMN IT!!!” Kota’s voice split the roar of fire just before his fist did. He charged forward like a meteor through the blackened smoke, eyes burning wild. “YOU TRICKY BASTARDS!”

  Kota’s fist passed a heartbeat too late.

  It skimmed Kenny’s cheek, close enough to burn skin, before smashing into the metal wall behind him. The impact still caught Kenny in the shoulder and sent him stumbling sideways, boots screeching across the floor.

  The wall buckled inward.

  Dust burst outward in a choking ring.

  Kenny barely had time to drag his feet back under him before Kota lunged again. Too fast, but not clean.

  Kota’s hand snapped forward, fingers hooking into Kenny’s hair instead of crushing his face. The grip wrenched Kenny's head down, violent and disorienting.

  Smoke and heat washed over Roi’s vision.

  The air clawed at her throat, metallic and sharp, the world reduced to motion and noise.

  Then the sound hit.

  Kenny’s head slammed into the floor, hard enough to rattle the Heatbox and knock the breath from his lungs. Kota had him one hand tangled in Kenny’s hair, the other braced against the floor, forcing his weight down like he was pinning something that might still fight back.

  Kenny’s legs jerked once, breath gone, blood spreading across the floor like spilled oil.

  Kota leaned close, voice low enough that Roi barely heard it over the crackle of burning traps.

  “Don’t get too cocky now.”

  Roi tried to do something. Her hand was already reaching for another glyph charge, even if it meant blowing herself up trying—

  SHHNK.

  A wet, clean sound echoed off the walls.

  Kota froze.

  His head lowered to his feet.

  Roi’s eyes widened as she followed his gaze, a knife, buried through Kota's right boot.

  For the first time since the fight began, Kota eyes widen bigger than before.

  Like the idea of being really hurt hadn’t existed until this exact moment.

  Kenny was still there beneath him, face a mess of blood and grit into the floor, but smiling.

  That same cocky, stubborn, impossible grin.

  “Could say the same to you,” he rasped.

  Something in the air changed.

  It wasn’t silence. It was the breath before a scream.

  Kota’s rage detonated.

  A shudder ran through the floor as his muscles coiled. Steam hissed from his skin. His mana flared, hot enough to warp the air around him.

  But before he could move, a flash of motion cut through the smoke.

  Nobu.

  His body screaming in protest, but his eyes never leaving Kota. He came in from the his left side, a blur of torn cloth and fury.

  He pushed up through the pain, a snarl tearing from his throat, then his foot slammed into Kota’s ribs.

  THUMP!

  The impact wasn’t enough to send him flying, but it broke his rhythm.

  Kota staggered, releasing Kenny's hair and landing on the impaled foot.

  His snarl tore through the chamber, feral and unrestrained.

  Roi sprinted to Kenny’s side, sliding on the debris. "Kenny, are you—?"

  Kenny dragged himself upright first. "I'm fine."

  Blood ran freely from his nose, streaking down his lip, dripping onto the floor between his boots. He didn’t wipe it away. He stepped forward instead—planting himself at the front like a challenge, shoulders squared, spine straight, eyes locked ahead.

  To his left, Nobu breathed like something caged.

  Deep. Slow. Forced.

  His chest rose and fell with barely contained violence, knuckles white around the knife’s hilt, eyes fixed on Kota as if measuring how many cuts it would take.

  Roi stood to Kenny’s right.

  Shards of her shattered traps glowed faintly in her hands, heat biting into her palms. Her fingers shook. She curled them tighter anyway, jaw locked, feet braced against the warped floor as her knees threatened to give.

  She didn’t step back.

  Across from them, half-swallowed by the flickering red haze, Kota sank into a low crouch near the Heatbox wall. One hand brushed the floor, not for support but balance, his weight drawing inward, muscles tightening as his breathing steadied.

  No longer winded, no longer careless.

  Blood pooled under his right foot, not much, but proof of their efforts. His eyes tracked them one by one like something that had stopped rushing and started hunting.

  Roi saw it instantly.

  The rage was there—raw, ugly, hungry.

  But it didn’t spill forward.

  It pulled inward, grinding tight.

  Frustration, coiled and choking on the fact that they were still standing.

  The chamber groaned, metal warping as heat shimmered through the air.

  Ash drifted down in slow, quiet flakes, settling on scorched steel and smeared footprints.

  Kenny drew a breath. It shook in his chest, but his voice didn’t.

  “…We can do it.”

  Roi’s heartbeat fell into rhythm with his words.

  Nobu’s knife tilted, blade catching the glow behind them.

  Kenny’s hand clenched into a fist, veins standing stark beneath grime and blood. His shoulders rose as he pulled the sound up from somewhere deep and burning.

  “WE CAN DO IT!”

  It wasn’t hope. It was defiance made audible.

  The words slammed into the warped walls, bounced off broken steel, rolled across the blood-slick floor and came back louder.

  “LET’S HUNT THE HUNTER!”