For Artur, survival had always been an equation of movement.
Climb. Run. Dodge. Strike.
Now the equation had been solved.
Movement had been taken from him.
His leg was a ruin of flesh and bone. Pain was an ocean swallowing him whole. He tried to drag himself away from the approaching beast, pushing with his elbows—but the scrape of asphalt against his shattered leg detonated such unbearable agony that he blacked out for a second.
The second Alpha stopped a few meters from him, massive head tilting as it observed.
There was cold curiosity in its molten eyes.
No hurry.
The hunt was over.
The prey was crippled.
This was the kill.
Artur rolled onto his back, gasping, cold sweat slicking his skin. Through a haze of pain, he saw the third Alpha farther down the street—watching. Waiting its turn, if necessary.
The system was efficient.
Redundant.
The beast before him snorted, a plume of sulfurous vapor spilling from its nostrils. It raised its foreleg for the final blow—the same motion the first had used.
This time, there would be no rolling beneath it.
Nowhere left to go.
And then a new instinct took hold.
Not the instinct to fight.
Not the instinct to flee.
But the stubborn, defiant instinct of a man who refuses to die on his back.
With a scream fueled more by rage than pain, he shoved himself backward using his good leg and arms, dragging the ruined one behind him, scraping toward the facade of a nearby electronics store.
The display window had already been shattered.
The beast hesitated—momentarily surprised by the sudden movement.
Artur dragged himself inside, over a carpet of broken glass that sliced into his palms. He braced against the wall, trying to haul himself upright, gripping a metal shelf for support.
He needed to stand.
To die standing.
The beast followed.
Its massive head crushed what remained of the window frame as it forced its way in. It filled the entrance entirely. Purple light vanished, swallowed by its bulk. Only the glow of magma eyes lit the wreckage.
It advanced.
The shelving unit Artur leaned on was flattened, pitching him back to the floor. The creature cornered him against the rear wall.
It did not use its paw.
Instead, it pressed the side of its enormous skull against him—
and drove him into the drywall.
Air exploded from his lungs.
He felt his ribs—already fractured—give way. A wet, splintering collapse inside his chest.
The pain was blinding.
Darkness crowded his vision.
He was being crushed to death.
Somewhere inside the fog, his hand closed around something.
A handle.
Rough.
Familiar.
The axe.
He had dragged himself onto it without realizing.
The beast increased the pressure.
His consciousness thinned.
This was his grave.
An electronics store on a street in hell.
No.
With the last splinter of his will, he gathered one final spark of strength.
There was no room to swing.
But he could push.
He angled the tip of the blade toward the only vulnerable target within reach—
the creature's molten eye.
And he pushed.
With a strangled cry, he drove forward with the strength of a dying man—the strength of desperation, of refusal.
The sharpened edge pierced the glowing membrane.
A violent hiss erupted—like water thrown onto flame.
Steam and black smoke burst outward.
The Alpha unleashed a roar unlike any before.
Not irritation.
Not fury.
Shock.
Violation.
It recoiled violently, wrenching its head away from the wall. The sudden release sent Artur collapsing to the floor, gasping, blood bubbling at his lips.
The beast—now blind in one eye—descended into maddened rage.
It thrashed inside the confined store, annihilating everything. Television displays, counters, metal racks—reduced to splinters and debris.
The ruined eye was a smoking black crater in its skull.
Artur lay on the ground.
Broken.
Bleeding.
Watching.
And in his fevered mind, one final plan—one last insane gamble—began to take shape.
He looked toward the street.
Toward the overturned car near where he had first fallen.
A foothold.
A ramp.
The fight wasn't over.
It had only become more desperate.