The first skinwalker crossed the boundary and died before it understood what had happened.
It stepped through the flaring ward in a shape that had once been a deer, too many joints, ribcage split and inverted, a human mouth stretched across its throat. It raised its head to howl again.
Mike hit it mid-note.
The impact was terrifying.
Stone shattered outward as Mike blurred across the stretch grass and rubble, wings snapping open fully as his fist collided with the creature's skull. The sound was not a crack but a wet, concussive implosion. Bone vaporized. The body folded inward and detonated into fragments that ignited before they hit the ground.
Mike landed in the center of the field, claws digging furrows into stone and soil.
He started laughing.
A full-throated, unrestrained laugh that rolled across Sanctuary.
"Oh, fuck yes," he breathed.
The skinwalkers answered.
They surged forward as one mass now, hundreds pouring through the broken tree line, forms warping with every step. Wolves that stood upright. Men whose spines bent backward as antlers tore through their skulls. Women whose faces peeled open to reveal snarling mouths of teeth beneath. They moved with ritual precision, a tide of theft and hunger aimed squarely at the temple.
Mike launched himself into them.
He didn't bother with finesse or holding back.
His wings snapped once, hard enough to shatter the air, and he plowed into the front ranks like a battering ram. Fire erupted from his throat in a wide, sweeping arc that turned half a dozen bodies into screaming silhouettes before reducing them to ash.
Every strike was stronger than the last.
Mike felt it immediately, how easy they died. How little fight they could muster against him.
Where once he would have needed to brace, or try different strategies, now he simply moved and enemies failed to stop him. His blows exploded the skinwalkers. Each impact sent shockwaves through the ground, stone and earth fracturing outward in spiderweb patterns. Trees along the perimeter caught fire simply from proximity, bark curling and igniting as his essence spilled freely into the air.
"This is what it's supposed to feel like," Bahamut rumbled, ecstasy vibrating through Mike's spine.
Mike ripped a skinwalker in half lengthwise and flung the burning remains into three others, bowling them over in a screaming knot of flesh and flame.
He laughed again.
A clawed hand lunged for his face. He caught it, twisted, and tore the entire arm from the creature's torso before driving his knee through its chest and into the ground beneath.
But even as joy surged through him, raw and intoxicating, another thought kept intruding, sharp and unwelcome. Hamzas words.
"Kelsey sent me."
The memory struck at his mind.
Mike snarled as he crushed a skull beneath his heel, fire venting uncontrollably from between his teeth.
"She's angry. She's scared."
Another skinwalker leapt from the side, jaws wide. Mike didn't look. His tail lashed out on instinct, shattering its spine mid-air.
"She asked me to remind you who you still are."
His laughter faltered for half a heartbeat.
Then he burned three more to cinders just to drown the feeling.
Across the courtyard of the temple, the council finally moved.
Nicolas stepped forward alone.
The air around him darkened with pressure. The ground beneath his feet cracked as storm clouds compressed impossibly tight around his body, swirling in a violent orbit. Lightning crawled across his skin, tracing glowing veins along his arms, neck, and face. His eyes became pure white like swirling clouds.
The sky screamed.
A bolt of lightning thicker than a cathedral column tore down from the clouds and annihilated a cluster of skinwalkers mid-charge, vaporizing them so completely that the ground was left glassed and smoking.
Nicolas raised one hand.
The storm followed.
Winds howled outward in a spiraling vortex, lifting bodies off the ground, twisting them apart mid-air as lightning detonated through the mass. Thunder rolled again and again, not echoing, but overlapping, as if the sky itself had decided to join the fight.
Jennifer and Cyra stared for half a second too long.
Pete swore under his breath. "Fucking hell."
Nicolas didn't look back.
Another gesture and a horizontal wall of lightning surged forward, cutting a blazing trench through the advancing horde. Skinwalkers shrieked as electricity crawled through stolen nerves, tearing bodies apart from the inside.
"This is what the djinn were afraid of?" Leo murmured, awe and terror mixing in his voice as he watched Nicolas.
Abbadon watched it all from the temple steps, arms folded, expression delighted.
"Ah," he said pleasantly, turning his gaze upward and then eastward, beyond the walls, beyond the forest, toward lands far removed from Sanctuary. His smile widened slowly, knowingly. "A worthy adversary is growing against that foolish demon in India."
Hamza glanced at him sharply. "You can feel that from here?"
Abbadon laughed softly. "I can feel everything that matters."
The skinwalkers adapted.
They always did.
Those not destroyed outright began to split, bodies unraveling into smaller, faster forms. Some burrowed into the ground, emerging behind the council in bursts of soil and bone. Others climbed the walls with unnatural speed, claws biting into stone as they scrambled toward the temple.
Mike saw them and leapt straight up, wings snapping hard, then folded inward and came down like a meteor.
The impact obliterated a twenty-yard radius.
Stone exploded upward. Bodies disintegrated. A shockwave rippled outward, knocking even the council members back a step. Mike rose from the crater laughing, chest heaving, eyes burning gold.
"Yes!" he roared. "Come on! Attack me!"
A skinwalker lunged for his throat wearing the face of a little girl.
For the briefest instant, Mike hesitated.
Then rage obliterated mercy.
He incinerated it with a single breath.
But Kelsey's face followed the flames.
"She needs to speak with you." Hamza's voice echoing in his head again.
Mike tore another creature apart, claws moving faster now, more vicious, less precise.
"Shut up," he growled, to the memory, to the doubt, to the part of him that still cared.
Mike grabbed two skinwalkers by the necks and smashed them together hard enough that their skulls fused before collapsing inward.
"I don't need this right now," he snapped.
"You need to focus on the path you've chosen. Do not fall into weakness again." Bahamut growled in response.
The battle intensified.
Skinwalkers poured in from all sides now, howls layering over one another until the air vibrated with stolen voices. The ground ran slick with blood and entrails. Fire and lightning painted the courtyard in hellish flashes.
Nicolas lifted both arms.
The storm obeyed completely.
Clouds compressed until they howled, then detonated outward in a spiraling maelstrom of wind and lightning. Nicolas rose several feet off the ground, body fully encased in crackling energy, bending reality around him.
A skinwalker leapt for him.
It never reached.
Lightning ripped it apart mid-flight.
Another tried.
Same result.
Nicolas's voice carried over the chaos, amplified by thunder. "They cannot overwhelm us if they cannot touch us!"
"And if they do?" Pete shouted, firing a blast that took a creature's head clean off.
"Then must die anyway, the temple cannot fall." Nicolas replied calmly.
Mike landed beside him in a blur of heat and ash, grinning wide.
"Fuck," Mike said appreciatively. "You've been holding out."
Nicolas didn't look at him. "Someone has to make sure you don't flatten everything."
Mike laughed, then launched himself back into the horde.
The slaughter became rhythmic.
Claw. Fire. Impact. Laugh.
Again.
Again.
Again.
But every pause, every moment between kills his mind drifted back.
"Kelsey's angry."
He crushed the head of another deformed beast.
"Kelsey's scared."
He tore out a spine before throwing it like a spear into another ski walker.
"She asked me to remind you who you still are."
His laughter started to sound… strained.
Hamza noticed.
He fought like a storm himself, blades flashing, blazing essence cutting through skinwalkers with surgical precision but his eyes stayed on Mike.
"He's losing himself," Hamza muttered grimly.
Abbadon noticed too.
But he smiled.
"This is the crucible," he murmured. "Joy versus attachment. Power versus memories."
A massive skinwalker, bear-shaped, layered in dozens of stolen hides charged the temple doors.
Mike intercepted it.
He caught it mid-charge, feet sliding back inches as stone cracked beneath him, then roared and lifted the creature bodily overhead.
Flames erupted from his jaws.
Mike brought it down so hard the ground caved inward.
The creature twitched once.
Mike stood over it, chest heaving, blood and fire dripping from his claws.
His laughter faded.
For the first time since the battle began, he looked… tired.
Not physically.
Emotionally.
Kelsey's voice echoed in his mind. Twisting into words.
I just want my husband back.
Mike clenched his fists.
Around him, skinwalkers continued to fall. The council held the line. Nicolas's storm still raged.
But the joy had dimmed.
Abbadon stepped closer, voice low enough only Mike could hear.
"You slaughter beautifully," the destroyer said. "But do not mistake joy for freedom."
Mike didn't look at him. "Don't start philosophizing now."
Abbadon chuckled. "I'm warning you. If you let guilt temper your blade, you'll hesitate when it matters."
Mike's jaw tightened.
"And if I don't?" he shot back.
"Then you risk becoming what she fears," Abbadon replied softly.
The words crashed in his mind.
Mike inhaled slowly. Kelsey is the tether that keeps me from becoming a monster. I need to go talk to her. I miss her. Fuck! I have to kill these sick twisted things first!
Then he roared and launched himself back into the fray.
The skinwalkers broke against him.
Above, beyond the veil, unseen eyes watched in growing horror.
And far to the east, another night had begun, answering Abbadon's smile.