Chapter <b>108 </b>


    ATASHA’S POV


    Have you ever felt a pain that teaches you the shape of death?


    B


    <b>55 </b>


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    I asked myself that as the pressure wed through my ribs. I tried to breathe around it and found it impossible.


    For a moment I wondered if anyone had ever felt this and survived.


    The answer arrived as heat and shock. It began deep inside my chest and raced outward like something burning through me from the core.


    It was not a single ache but a series of blows, each one sharper than thest. My lungs seized as if someone had wrapped iron bands around them. My head felt hollowed, and the world narrowed <i>to </i>a tunnel of white pain. Muscles clenched until they trembled. I tasted copper, then nothing but a dry mouth and the metallic sting of blood somewhere at the back of my throat.


    Heat red across my skin so fast I thought I would blister, then cold followed. My vision trembled, then blurred. Shapes stretched and folded. The tent, the faces, the spears, all of it bent away until the only real point left was the burn, and the box, and the sound of my own ragged breath.


    I tried to move. My hands wanted to drop the box, to shove it away and crush it into the dirt, but my arms felt like lead. My limbs did not obey. I pressed my teeth together until the pain shifted to my jaw instead. An animal sound rose somewhere in the tent, a scream that might have been a person or might have been the world itself tearing, but even that was muffled under the roar in my skull.


    Colors slipped away. The torchlight thinned to ash. The faces near me broke up into blurs and mouths that moved without sound.


    When the ck began to im me, a fresh noise sliced through.


    “Witch!” someone yelled.


    The word echoed, multiplied, a dozen throats joining in. The sound was close and then far. I heard Reina’s voice and other voices answering, some with fear, some with hate. The single syble kept repeating until it hammered into thest clear ce in my head.


    Witch.


    I asked it back to myself, Witch? The mind that was left searched for meaning like groping for amp in fog.


    What is a witch? I tried to pull at the memory of the lessons, of stories told in cold kitchens, of crackling fires and old women’s <b>faces</b>, but everything had narrowed to the single, impossible feel of the box and the burning in my veins.


    How could I be a witch? I had never wanted to be anything but someone who kept her mouth shut and her hands to herself. I had used what I had when people needed it and hid it when they did not.


    Witch. The word felt foreign and sudden and very precise. It fitted something I could not name. My thoughts


    slipped, trying to make sense of usation and fear and the way the stone screamed at me.


    A


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    The darkness pushed harder. Thest thing I registered before the world swallowed the edges of me was the feel of my own fingers closing tighter around the stone, as if it were the only thing left to hold on to.


    CASSIAN VALEMONT’S POV (Third Person)


    The stink, the screams, the weight of bodies piling under his boots, this was where he thrived.


    Cassian split a beast from jaw to spine, the de crunching through bone, and used its falling body as a step to vault higher onto the parapet. Another lunged over the rubble, but he met it in the air and drove his sword down its throat until the skull cracked apart. Hot blood sprayed across his face, and he weed it. This was where he belonged.


    An officer shouted for the line to hold, but Cassian barely registered the words. All he heard was the tear of flesh, the snap of bone, and the wet rattle of dying throats.


    He kept moving, faster than the men beside him. Blood slicked the stones, making the wall a death trap for the beasts, but he relished the slide beneath his heels. It fed him, sharpened him. He wanted them to keeping, wanted the wall buried in carcasses until no stone was left visible. The more they poured in, the more he wanted to carve them down.


    Cassian hunted, and every beast that came at him was nothing more than prey to be ughtered.


    The fight had been a rhythm when the pressure hit. It crashed into him suddenly, heavy enough to steal his breath. It felt like a fistpressing his chest. Cassian staggered a step, teeth clenched against the shock. The weight was not random, it pulled toward the west.


    He turned and the world narrowed. Suddenly, the beast under his skin, the thing he kept caged and fed in private, lifted its head and pushed at the inside of his flesh.


    Everything around him lost shape. The sh of steel, the screams, even the beasts wing over the wall became meaningless shadows. All that remained sharp was the pulse of blood and the gnawing need in his hands to rip something apart. It no longer mattered whether it was beast or man. The hunger didn’t discriminate.


    Then one thought cut through like a de. Atasha. Her name mmed into him with such force that his bnce returned for a breath. He needed to reach her.


    The killer in him resisted, furious at the thought of leaving the ughter, but Cassian forced the drive into a single direction. He tore a dagger free and buried it in his thigh. The jolt of pain exploded up his spine, snapping his vision clear long enough for him to pull the de free and stab the other leg. The shock was sharp enough to make the beast inside him recoil. That hesitation was the break he needed.


    He shoved past a spearman, vaulted over the merlon, and dropped into the courtyard. His body was already moving west.


    Each step fed the thing inside him, and it fought harder, wing at his bones, begging to be unleashed. His nails bit into his palms. His teeth throbbed with pressure. The man in him shrank, leaving only a narrow thread of willpower, strung tight by rage and hatred.


    The pull worsened with every stride. It wasn’t just weight anymore. It was a hook driven deep into his ribs,


    <b>55 </b>


    55 vouchers


    yanking him forward, urging him to drop to all fours and tear apart anything that stood in his way.


    Cassian forced his legs to keep their pace just as the west edge of camp broke into view.


    He was almost there.


    Then he saw her.


    Bodiesy scattered across the ground like discarded armor.


    Atasha stood at the center of the wreckage, clutching a stone tightly in both hands. The canvas of a tent behind her sagged where a pole had snapped. The air around her did not look right. It shimmered in a way that felt colder against his skin. How could a beast like him feel the cold?


    Cassian did not check who on those bodies still breathed. He ran until his boots hit the dirt and did not slow. He shouted her name.


    In response, she lifted her head and for a second she looked like someone who might answer. Then, ck blood poured from her eyes. It was thick and slow, carving lines down her cheeks and dripping from her jaw onto the ground. The sight hit Cassian harder than any blow had all night.


    He closed thest distance at a run.


    Then her eyes found his. They were empty and ssy at first, and something in his gut went cold. There was no fear in her look. There was no recognition at first. But he didn’t hesitate as he reached for her wrists and said one direct thing: let it go.


    She turned her head as the stone pulsed between them. Almost immediately, the animal inside him snapped its jaws.


    Then her pale lips moved. “It’s you,” she said.


    Then she smiled a smile that did not belong on her face.


    C


    FR