“Stop!” Gavin forced the word through cracked lips. The sound was ragged, a protest boiled in blood and defiance. He managed to raise his head, and for that insolence, a Melded Beastkin trooper slammed a boot into his chest. Pain burst like shrapnel under his ribs, and a fresh ribbon of blood sprayed across the cave floor.
The goat-horned captain barked a drunken laugh. “Still have some backbone, do you? Fine. I’ll finish with the pretty scout first, then take my sweet time carving you up.”
Leering, he stretched a hand toward Yvette’s trembling shoulder. In that breath between reach and contact, the world seemed to hold itself taut.
Boom! The crude seal over the cavern mouth exploded as if it were no more than wet paper, shards of rune-ash spinning out on a shockwave.
A killing intent swept in—icy, primeval, furious—like an ancient predator jolting awake after a thousand-year slumber. The air grew dense, metallic, almost wet with doom.
Every laugh, every drunken jeer from the Melded Beastkin troops died mid-throat, cut off as neatly as strings from a puppet.
They whirled. A lone figure in a plain robe now filled the entrance, framed by drifting dust. He stood unmoving, almost calm, yet his eyes burned, glacial cores hiding a volcanic wrath that promised annihilation.
His gaze brushed the room, and even the seasoned Melded Beastkin killers felt as if they had been dunked in frozen water. Blood slowed. Breath locked.
“W-Who are you?” the goat-horned captain croaked, the bravado leaking from his voice like wine from a cracked jug.
Jared did not bother to answer. His stare settled on Gavin and Yvette, on Gavin’s caved-in chest, on the tears of relief and humiliation streaking Yvette’s grime-stained cheeks.
The rage inside him flared white-hot.
“All of you deserve to die…”
The soft words landed with the finality of a judge’s gavel. Then, silence snapped. Jared moved. No thunderous spectacle, no ornate technique, only a single, deliberate motion.
He lifted his right hand, fingers spread, and closed them slowly around everyone in the cave, excluding Gavin and Yvette.
The cavern seemed to inhale; air, sound, even time itself recoiled inward. A hush, one heartbeat long, swallowed the chamber.
The Melded Beastkin warriors watched, eyes wide, throats locked, unable even to scream.
Bodies, weapons, overturned wine jars, hanging soul-lamps—everything not nailed by fate itself—lurched upward as though seized by an invisible giant’s grip.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
Wet, muffled detonations rippled one atop another. Flesh burst. Armor plates shattered. Wine and blood mingled into a crimson spray that painted the stone like macabre fireworks.
Seven warriors, including the goat-horned captain, proud of his Level Four Heavenly Immortal strength, vanished in mid-sentence, reduced to drifting scarlet mist.
Chunks of bone and viscera slapped against the cave walls, slid down, and steamed in the frigid aura that remained.
A cloying stench of iron flooded the hollow, as though death itself had uncorked a bottle and let its wine spill free.
The cavern now breathed a graveyard hush. Every Melded Beastkin warrior lay crushed or smoldering where they had fallen, and only two figures, Gavin and Yvette, remained alive, trussed cruelly to a black granite pillar.
Jared lowered his hand as though he had merely brushed lint from his sleeve, the final echoes of power fading into the rock.
He strode to the pillar. One finger flicked across the sinew ropes. The strands parted with a dry snap and curled to the ground like burnt paper.
Yvette’s knees buckled. She would have collapsed, but Jared’s arm swept beneath her shoulders, gathering her against him before she could sink.
Pressed to his chest, she felt the solid steadiness of his body and the faint, familiar scent that had carried her through countless drills back at the sect.
Days of terror, humiliation, and creeping despair burst loose. She clutched his tunic with white knuckles, buried her face in his chest, and sobbed until every breath shook her slender frame.
“S-Sir… Sir… You really came… I knew it… I knew you would come…”
Her words tangled with tears, turning into broken syllables that dissolved against his robe.
Jared sighed inwardly, set a gentle palm between her shoulder blades, and let a thread of warm immortal energy glide into her meridians, steadying her mind and easing bruised flesh.
Only then did he lift his gaze to Gavin, who was forcing himself upright on trembling legs.
Blood streaked Gavin’s face, yet his eyes blazed with fury and shame. Dropping to one knee, he rasped, “Sir! I failed Yvette. I failed the sect, and made you risk yourself to save us…”
“Get up,” Jared said, voice low, implacable. “This is no time for guilt.”
He pulled Gavin to his feet, fed him a healing pill, and sent another ribbon of immortal energy coursing through shattered bones. “How did the two of you end up in their hands?”
The pill melted, heat flowing through Gavin’s limbs. Breathing easier, he answered at once.
“After we split into squads, my team slipped to the perimeter of the old Myriad Beast Sect stronghold without trouble… We seized a lone Melded Beastkin warrior, wrung out some troop layouts, and were ready to withdraw when we ran headlong into Yvette’s unit. Her trail had already been spotted. A full squad was hunting them down. I swung in to cover her. Our two groups merged, fighting while falling back…”
“We cut down plenty of pursuers, but their numbers kept swelling, then Demon Sect elites arrived. The formation shattered. Yvette and I lured most of the chase toward this ravine so the younger disciples could scatter. We were ambushed here, spent, and captured. The others… We still don’t know if they escaped…”
Gavin’s jaw flexed. “Those b*stards… After they dragged us here, they cursed and beat us, then tried to do worse to Yvette!”
His eyes burned crimson.
“Enough…” Jared’s reply fell like frost. “Their debt will be repaid a hundredfold, but first we move. The noise I kept muffled may still draw other hunters.”
Both captives nodded instantly. Jared draped one of his spare robes across Yvette’s shoulders, hiding the tatters of her uniform.
Gripping one survivor in each hand, he stepped once. The three of them vanished from the cave mouth and slipped into the forest’s broken moon-shadow, racing southwest.
Half an hour later, several intimidating auras crashed into the cavern. They stared at the ruin, sucked in sharp breaths, then loosed furious roars and shrill alarm whistles. By then, Jared, Gavin, and Yvette had escaped more than thirty kilometers into the night.
Jared followed every waypoint and incantation Clara had provided him. Wind howled past his ears as he raced for the hidden gateway of Blazefire Secret Realm.
