Page 50 of Too Dangerous To Die

Not claws. Not paws.

Feet. Bare and slow.

I shift, instinct wrapping around my spine like armor. My wings stretch wide, silent. My claws flex.

Another sound, closer now.

A breath where there should be none.

I leap from the ledge just as the first creature appears beneath me—its form a flickering silhouette, half-there, half-not. The moment I strike, my fist passes through mist, and my body lands hard on the broken tiles.

The shadows ripple.

They rise.

And then I feel them—The Unseen. In my memories, they’re called this way because… they’re unidentified and can be anything. I’m even unsure of what they are exactly.

Things forgotten by the surface of the world, born from cursed soul magic, corrupted beyond even the understanding of the Thirteen. Their faces blur in and out of reality, jaws splitting too wide, hands elongated and reaching like tendrils. Not undead. Not demons. Something worse. Remnants of a power that should have faded with the wars.

Their eyes glow faintly—and they are all fixed on one direction.

Nora.

I let out a guttural roar and hurl myself at them.

Stone tears through smoke. One of them shrieks, high and unnatural, and I slam it into the stone, but it melts beneath my claws like smoke. Another lashes out—its hand brushes my side, and fire spreads across my ribcage like acid. Soul-burn. They’re feeding.

No,searching.

They're not here to kill.

They’re here toclaim.

My rage spikes, and the ground quakes with the force of it. My wings explode outward as I throw a kinetic blast that shatters the nearest column. Stone rains down, crushing one of the beasts—but it reforms seconds later, crawling from its own dust like it’s wearing the ruin itself.

“What are you?” I snarl, but they don’t speak.

Theydon’t have to.

Because I feel it now—through the bond. Through her magic flaring again in the distance, untrained, leaking like a signal into the world. Nora. She's calling to them without realizing it.

She summoned them.

Not with intent.

Withblood.

The memory of the shrine flashes through my mind. The pact. The runes. The damn name painted across the stones in ink that smelled of ash and bone.

Medea.

She’s waking inside her.

And the Wastes have begun to respond.

This place was cursed long before she ever stepped foot into it. A burial ground of failed creations. It was once a battlefield for those who never belonged—not in life, not in death. The Ashen Wastes are a crucible, a graveyard of Protheka’s sins.

Andher magicsings to every broken thing left behind.

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