Chapter 32: Healing Hands
The chill of the lair’s stone floor seeped through Angel’s knees. Around her, the others moved with the grim efficiency of people who knew the clock was ticking—checking gear, murmuring tense strategies. But her world had narrowed to the man shivering on the ground before her.
Regir’s breathing was a wet, shallow rasp. The wound in his shoulder wasn’t just bleeding; it was weeping, a slow, toxic seep of black that stained the stone and gave off a faint, acrid smell. His skin had taken on a sickly grey pallor.
“Don’t,” he whispered, his eyes half-lidded with pain. “It’s poison. You’ll just… get infected.”
“Shut up,” Angel said, her voice softer than the words. She placed her hands on either side of the vicious puncture, avoiding direct contact with the black blood. She closed her eyes, trying to ignore the pounding in her own head, the deep ache in her side from Crow’s knee, the lingering, full-body hum of what they’d just done on the stone floor.
She reached for that well of warmth. It was deeper now, easier to find, but drawing from it was like trying to lift a car. She gritted her teeth. Just a spark. Just enough to cauterize the madness.
Golden-orange light, the color of a healing sunrise, flickered to life around her palms. It was fainter than the torrent she’d unleashed on Crow, but it was steady. She pressed her hands against the wound.
The reaction was immediate and violent. Regir’s back arched off the ground, a silent scream tearing from his throat. The black blood sizzled, bubbling and steaming as the luminous energy clashed with the Kishin-tainted poison. Thin tendrils of inky smoke rose, carrying the scent of burnt licorice and rot. Angel poured everything she had into the purification, feeling the foreign, hungry malice in his blood recoil and dissolve under the gentle, relentless pressure of her soul.
She felt the exact moment the tide turned. The black seepage slowed, then stopped, the blood at the edges of the wound lightening to a deep, healthy crimson. Regir’s body went limp, his breathing easing from a panicked rattle to a slow, even rhythm. His eyelids fluttered open, and for the first time, his gaze was clear of pain, focusing on her face with a bewildered awe.
Angel’s own strength vanished. The light around her hands guttered and died. A wave of dizzying nausea hit her, and she pitched forward.
Crow was there. He caught her before her knees could hit the stone, pulling her back against the solid wall of his chest. His arms wrapped around her, one hand splayed across her stomach, holding her upright. He smelled of sweat, blood, and her.
She let her head fall back against his shoulder, utterly spent. “He’ll live,” she whispered, the words barely audible. “But we need to move. Now.”
He didn’t answer. He just held her tighter for a three-second eternity, his face buried in her hair, breathing her in. Then he stood, bringing her up with him, supporting most of her weight. “You heard her,” he said, his voice a gravelly command that brooked no argument. “We move.”
Regir sat up slowly, probing his shoulder with shaking fingers. He looked from his healed wound to Angel, cradled against Crow, and a complex, unreadable emotion passed over his face. He simply nodded.
Maria had already transformed, the massive war hammer slung across her back. Her mouth was a tight line, her eyes avoiding the way Crow’s hand stayed possessively on Angel’s hip as he helped her walk. Amber and Leo fell into step beside Regir, the younger meister giving the man a wary but not unkind once-over.
Together, they headed out of the ruined lair, leaving the pulsing sigils and the scent of Medusa’s defeat behind, stepping into the vast, grey desolation of the Soul Wastes.
Alyce Kingston hated the Wastes. The sky was the color of a bruise, the ground a cracked, endless plain of grey dust and jagged rock formations that looked like broken bones. It was silent in a way that pressed on the ears. She couldn’t sense the swirling souls of the landscape like a Meister could; to her, it was just empty, oppressive, and wrong. The only tether she had in this void was the faint, familiar pulse ahead—Angel’s soul wavelength, a distant, warm beacon she was desperately trying to reach.
So she didn’t notice the man following her.
He moved with a preternatural silence, his perfectly symmetrical black suit unblemished by the dust. In each hand, he held a polished, elegant pistol. The one in his right was longer, with a slender barrel and intricate rosewood grips (Elis). The one in his left was slightly shorter, thicker, with checkered silver grips (Sari). Their souls were quiet, disciplined extensions of his own.
He watched the petite redhead scramble over a scree of shale, her muttered curses carrying on the still air. He’d been curious. A lone weapon, not even a Death Scythe, plunging into the Wastes toward a known Kishin threat? It was either suicide or a better tip than the Academy had.
He closed the distance in a few swift, silent strides, stepping around a rock to appear directly in her path.
Alyce yelped, skidding to a halt and almost falling on her ass. “What the—what the hell are you doing here Jack?!”
His obsidian eyes, were doing that frantic, micro-adjusting thing, scanning her face, her attire, the non-matching lengths of her boot laces. It was physically painful to look at. He forced his gaze to a neutral point just past her left ear. “You are a weapon. You are alone. You are heading toward a mass tactical mobilization. Explain.”Alyce’s fear evaporated into defensive anger. “I don’t have to explain squat to you! I’m meeting Angel.”
“The Kishin is at the refinery complex. All forces are deploying there. You are going the wrong way.”
“No,” Alyce snapped, crossing her arms. “I trust my partner, and she says he’s not there. So I’m going where she is. Now get out of my way, Mr. Symmetrical.”
A faint twitch tugged at Jack’s left eye. He took a deep, controlled breath. “You are meeting Angel, didn’t she run off with Ms. Marie and the traitor?”
“Yeah, they defeated Medusa and recused Professor Crow. Her sister Amber’s there too. We’re gonna fight the Kishin. The real one.” She tried to shoulder past him.
He didn’t budge. He considered her for another moment, his gaze flickering over the asymmetry of her freckles. “So, a group of inexperienced two star meisters, a corrupted three star, and a death weapon that’s been out of commission for years.” A dry, almost imperceptible sigh escaped him. “The statistical probability of failure is 98.7 percent.”
“Yeah, well, we believe in the 1.3 percent. Are you gonna help or just stand there critiquing?”
Jack’s lips thinned. “Following you introduces a catastrophic variable to my father’s plans.” He paused. “It is also significantly less symmetrical than returning to the designated battlefront.” Another pause. The three white stripes in his black hair felt like they were burning. “I dislike poor intel. Lead the way.”
Alyce blinked. “Seriously?”
“Do not make me repeat myself. The auditory asymmetry is grating.”
Shaking her head, Alyce turned and kept walking. Jack fell into step beside her, his pace perfectly measured. Elis and Sari remained quiet in his hands, but Alyce could feel the focused attention of their souls—like two predatory birds perched on his shoulders.
The rally point was a crumbling, ossified monolith that might have once been a tree. Angel was sitting on a low rock, sipping water from a canteen Crow held for her, color slowly returning to her face. Amber was doing hand-stand push-ups against the monolith, while Leo and Regir sat in awkward silence. Maria leaned against the stone, watching the horizon.
They all turned as Alyce scrambled into the clearing. “Angel! I made it! And I brought… uh…” She gestured behind her.
Jack Death stepped into view.
The reaction was immediate. Amber fell out of her handstand. Crow’s body went preternaturally still, his silver eyes narrowing to shards. Maria’s hand went to the haft of her hammer. Leo let out a low whistle.
“The hell is he doing here?” Amber spat, brushing dust from her hands.
“Apparently, he dislikes poor intel,” Alyce said with a shrug.
Jack’s eyes swept over the group, his discomfort palpable. “This is an irregular assembly. The wavelength compatibility is theoretically feasible, given past training exercises. The tactical benefit of additional firepower outweighs the organizational chaos your ad-hoc unit represents.” His gaze settled on Crow, and for a second, something like recognition passed between them—two old soldiers assessing the damage. “Professor. You look… improved.”
“Death,” Crow acknowledged, his voice a low rumble. His arm stayed around Angel’s shoulders.
Angel herself just looked at Jack, then at the elegant pistols in his hands. She remembered the dizzying, precise power of his wavelength from the one Academy-wide drill she’d been roped into. “The more the merrier,” she said, her voice still tired but firm. “We already know how to sync with you. Sort of.”
“Adequately,” Jack corrected, almost automatically. “Then we should proceed. The statistical window for a successful ambush is closing.”
They moved. The group cut through the Wastes like a blade, a strange, mismatched convoy. Crow and Angel at the lead, her steps growing surer, his presence a constant shield. Amber and Leo flanking Regir, who moved with a quiet, focused determination. Maria and Alyce behind, the former tense, the latter vibrating with nervous energy. Jack Death brought up the rear, a silent, symmetrical sentinel.
They had covered perhaps two miles when the world decided to fall apart.
It started as a low thrum, a vibration in the teeth. Then the ground beneath their feet lurched. A deep, subterranean groan rolled across the plain, followed by the sound of continents grinding together. Cracks spider-webbed through the hard-baked earth, spewing geysers of soul-mist.
“Earthquake?” Leo yelled, grabbing Amber’s arm to steady them both.
But it was wrong. The tremors came in rhythmic, accelerating pulses. Thud. THUD. THUD-THUD-THUD.
It wasn’t the ground shaking.
It was something running.
They all looked up, toward the source of the deafening seismic footfalls.
From over the horizon, a silhouette rose against the bruised sky. It was a building—a giant, Gothic-skyscraper of a building, crowned with a familiar, jagged crest. The Death Academy. And it was sprinting across the landscape on two colossal, stone-and-iron legs that pistoned down with world-shattering force. Windows blazed with light, and tiny figures could be seen lining the battlements. With each stride, whole acres of the Waste were flattened into dust.
The group stood frozen, utterly dwarfed by the spectacle.
Jack Death let out a long, slow breath. “That,” he said, his tone dryer than the dust now coating his perfect suit, “is my father. Always finding a loophole. He cannot leave Death City. So he found a way to bring a piece of it with him.” He adjusted his grip on Elis and Sari, a minute alignment of his wrists. “It also seems the Academy may have already discovered the refinery was a trap.”
The Academy was changing course, its gigantic head swiveling on stone shoulders, its colossal legs churning to match their vector. It was coming toward them.
“Do we… wave?” Alyce asked, dumbfounded.
“We run with it!” Crow barked, already pulling Angel forward. “Use it for cover! Move!”
They ran. It was a surreal, terrifying sprint. The shadow of the sprinting Academy fell over them like a moving mountain range. The concussion of each footfall threatened to knock them off their feet. They ran alongside a gargantuan ankle, past a flying buttress the size of a train, the roar of its passage deafening.
The landscape began to change. The grey wastes gave way to twisted, petrified vegetation, then to patches of sickly, yellow grass. The air, previously still, began to carry a smell. It was a thick, cloying stench that layered rot, old blood, burned sugar, and the metallic tang of sheer panic. It was the smell of death not as an event, but as a place. A atmosphere.
The Academy began to slow, its strides becoming massive, cautious placements. The group slowed with it, their breath coming in ragged gasps, their eyes watering from the foul air.
They had reached a broad, grassy depression, a bowl in the landscape. The grass wasn’t yellow; it was black, soaked with something that glistened under the dim light. The stench was overwhelming here, a physical presence that coated the tongue and lungs.
And there, in the center of the bowl, a little ways off, was the source.
It wasn’t a person. It wasn’t a monster, in any traditional sense. It was a distortion. A standing wave of visible, wrong reality. The air boiled and writhed around it, bleeding colors that didn’t have names—shades that hurt the eyes to perceive. Within that vortex, a shape occasionally coalesced: a glimpse of a grinning muzzle, the flutter of a ragged wing, the glint of countless eyes. It pulsed, and with each pulse, the very concept of sanity in the surrounding area frayed a little more. The grass itself seemed to be trying to crawl away.
The aura of madness radiated off the Kishin Asura like heat from a furnace.
No one spoke. The sprinting Academy settled into a crouch behind them, a silent fortress now, its many windows like watchful eyes. Crow’s hand found Angel’s, their fingers lacing together, his grip painfully tight.
Amber slowly, quietly, reached back. Leo’s form shimmered, and the weight of her battle-axe settled into her waiting palms.
In the screaming silence of that foul meadow, the only sound was the relentless, whispering chuckle of madness seeping into their souls.