Once we all left, we moved through the shadows, clinging to the rooftops as we made our way toward the docks. Silent. Efficient. The argument between Jordan and me lingered like static in the air, unspoken but impossible to ignore.
I watched the city blur beneath us. Maya and Cameron exchanged quick, uneasy glances. Jordan ran beside them, focused forward. I was a step behind.
I inhaled once, then pushed forward.
I caught up to her.
"Hey."
She didn't slow down. "Hey."
"I shouldn't have let things get that far back there," I said. My voice came out quieter than I meant it to. "That wasn't on you."
She glanced at me briefly. "I didn't handle it well either."
There was a pause as we jumped to the next rooftop.
"And about your cheek," she added. "I shouldn't have hit you like that."
I brushed my fingers against it, feeling the faint sting. "It's nothing. I've had worse."
She studied me for a second longer than necessary, then nodded. "Alright."
"So we're good?"
She met my eyes fully this time. Then she smiled, small but real. "Yeah. We're good."
Her long black hair streamed behind her as we continued forward.
"Glad that's settled," Maya said.
"Same," Cameron muttered. "I really didn't want tonight to end with us tearing each other apart."
A quiet chuckle moved through the group.
"It won't," I said.
Jordan nodded. "It can't."
"So," Cameron asked, "what's the plan?"
Jordan exhaled. "We adapt. Same as always."
The docks came into view soon after.
The moment we touched down, the air changed.
The silence here wasn't natural. It felt deliberate.
We moved down from the rooftops and onto the dock flooring, shadows stretching unnaturally long beneath our feet. Ahead stood the warehouse. Old. Rusted. Wrong.
"Cameron," Jordan whispered. "Front window. Scout."
He nodded and disappeared.
I circled toward the back while Maya stayed high above, watching everything.
I eased the door open just enough to slip inside.
Voices.
"Lord Drakna will be pleased," one said, low and reverent. "Today's harvest was… efficient."
"Eight souls," another replied.
"No," a third corrected. "Nine. Ten. Eleven. Twelve."
A fourth voice spoke, and the temperature seemed to drop.
"Thirteen."
I crouched behind stacked crates, barely breathing.
He stood apart from the others.
Tall. Still. Cloaked in layered black and ash-gray, the fabric barely moving despite the breeze slipping through the warehouse. His presence bent the shadows toward him, as if they were being pulled by gravity.
He lifted a hand. A faint, distorted wail escaped the air itself before vanishing.
"Closer," he murmured. "We are close."
My foot brushed a loose crate.
Click.
Clack.
Clang.
Silence.
His head turned.
Slowly.
"Something is here," he said.
Not loud. Not rushed.
Certain.
"Check," he ordered.
Three figures moved toward me.
I pressed myself deeper into the darkness. My pulse roared in my ears.
Then the ceiling exploded.
Water crashed down with crushing force as the roof collapsed inward. The warehouse shook. Shadows scattered. Some of the lesser figures were swept away instantly.
The cloaked man didn't move.
The water slammed into him and parted, forced aside by an unseen pressure.
A low sound escaped him. Almost amused.
"So," he said, lifting his head. "The dragon keepers answer at last."
We moved at once.
Maya dropped from above. Jordan and Cameron shattered through a window. I leapt down from the upper railing.
"You're surrounded," Jordan said, steady but sharp. "Release the souls and leave."
The man laughed softly.
"Surrounded?" He glanced around the ruined warehouse, then back at us. "No."
In the next instant, he moved.
He crossed the distance in a blink and struck Maya before she could fully land. The impact sent her crashing into the wall, the sound echoing through the docks.
"Maya!" I shouted.
"Contain him!" Jordan ordered.
Stone surged upward, forming a cage around him.
He walked through it.
Not forcing his way out.
Not breaking it.
The earth simply failed him.
He appeared beside Maya, lifted her with one hand, and threw her aside like she weighed nothing.
His gaze finally settled on us.
Cold. Measuring.
"Run if you wish," he said calmly. "Fear ripens the soul."
And for the first time since the mission began, my chest tightened.
This wasn't a fight.
This was a warning.
William looked around at the destruction.
Splintered concrete. Broken crates. The sound of water dripping somewhere far away. Maya lay crumpled against the wall, unmoving. Jordan was down, her breath shallow, her weapon discarded. Pain hung thick in the air, almost visible.
What do I do?
What can I do?
His body refused to move.
Every instinct screamed at him to run, but his legs would not listen. His eyes were locked on the man dressed in black. Every step the figure took bent the darkness around him, as if the shadows themselves were being rewritten. This aura was not borrowed. It was not summoned.
It was claimed.
Cameron stood frozen beside him, eyes wide, pupils trembling. His gaze flicked once toward William, silent and desperate.
We can't fight this.
William followed Cameron's line of sight to the pouch at the man's side. Souls pulsed faintly inside, struggling, whispering.
If we destroy that… we can leave.
But even the thought felt impossible.
The man spoke.
His voice was calm. Almost bored.
"So quiet," he said, fingers closing around Maya's arm. "I expected more noise from dragon keepers."
Maya groaned as his grip tightened.
William's chest burned. "Let her go."
The man tilted his head slightly, as if hearing something amusing. "Or what?"
His fingers tightened further.
Bone strained.
Maya screamed.
"Stop," William said, his voice cracking. "You've made your point."
The man laughed softly. "I am not making a point."
There was a sharp, wet crack.
Maya's scream tore through the warehouse.
"I am educating you."
William felt something inside him collapse.
Cameron shook, unable to move. Jordan did not stir.
It was over.
Please, William thought, panic clawing at his chest. Someone do something. Anyone.
No one came.
His sword began to burn.
Not glow. Burn.
Heat crawled up his arms, searing his veins, turning fear into pressure, pressure into agony. His knees buckled.
Then the world shattered.
He was no longer in the warehouse.
He knelt on scorched stone, flames crawling like living things across the floor. The air was heavy, suffocating, thick with ash and sulfur. Chains of molten iron hung from the ceiling of a vast, endless chamber.
A presence loomed behind him.
Each step made the fire recoil.
A massive shadow lowered itself before him. Crimson scales caught the firelight, endless and ancient. Eyes like molten suns burned into his soul.
The Red Dragon.
William dropped fully to his knees.
His sword trembled in his hands.
"I failed," he whispered. "They're going to die."
The dragon's voice did not echo. It pressed into him.
"You seek power."
William clenched his fists, forehead touching the burning stone. "I don't care what it costs."
Flames curled around his body, not burning, not comforting. Claiming.
"I will give you strength," the dragon said. "Enough to drown the world in fire."
William's breath shook. "Then give it to me."
"Once you accept," the dragon continued, "there is no retreat. Rage will answer your call. Mercy will not."
William stayed kneeling.
Still.
Broken.
"I accept."
Fire exploded.
His scream never left his throat.
He snapped back into reality.
Maya's arm broke with a sound that made William's vision go red.
The man smiled.
"Yes," he said softly. "That sound never gets old."
The warehouse went silent.
William's sword erupted.
Flames howled outward, warping the air, cracking stone beneath his feet. The world lost its color, drowned in crimson and black. His heartbeat vanished, replaced by a roar.
He looked up.
The man took a step back.
For the first time, his calm fractured.
"What," he said quietly, "are you?"
William's voice came out wrong. Too deep. Too cold.
"Get them out," he told Cameron.
Cameron hesitated.
"Now."
Fire burst beneath William's feet.
He vanished.
The warehouse split as his blade came down, flames carving through steel and stone. The man blocked, skidding backward, boots tearing grooves into the floor.
"Interesting," the man murmured.
William did not answer.
He struck again. And again. And again.
Fire swallowed the walls. The ceiling collapsed. The docks trembled.
Cameron grabbed Maya. Jordan. He ran.
William did not see him leave.
He was no longer fighting for souls.
He was fighting to erase.
The man was thrown through the warehouse and into the sea below. Steam exploded upward as he emerged, darkness coiling tightly around his body.
He smiled.
"For a dragon keeper," he said, shadows rising like a crown, "you look far more like a devil than a dragon."
William roared.
He rushed again.
The pouch split beneath his blade.
Souls screamed free.
The man's smile vanished.
"Oh," he said softly, raising his hand as darkness gathered. "Now you've truly angered me."
A beam of black annihilated the air.
William was sent flying.
His sword spun upward, flames flickering.
And for the first time since the fire took him, fear returned.