The bar had not even had time to recover from the shooting, and already the air was filling with a different kind of silence.

  The kind that settles in when everyone understands the worst part is about to begin.

  Lothar lay on the floor beside the counter, propped on one elbow against sticky tile. He could only breathe in jerks. It felt like a stone had been wedged inside his chest. He saw people’s shoes, heard someone whispering, heard a chair scrape, heard the bartender trying to disappear behind the bar with shaking hands.

  Adam Graf stood opposite Wilt, turned slightly sideways. At first glance, he looked steady. Up close, his face had gone paler than it had been a minute ago, and his lips were dry. He spoke in that calm voice of his, as if air were optional.

  Coop Bevin was there too.

  Huge.

  In armor, he filled half the aisle. The heavy weapon in his hands looked less like a tool and more like an extra limb. Finsterherz had seen him like this in the colony. Back then, the giant had not seemed human at all. More like a walking door that could shoot.

  Now he moved faster than the boy expected.

  Bevin crossed the distance in two short, brutal hops. The floor seemed to flinch under him. He was on Graf so quickly the eye barely had time to adjust.

  The chain sword came down.

  Lothar heard it. Not a clean impact, but a shriek of metal, like stone being cut. The blade crashed into the renegade’s head.

  The barrier Graf threw up for a heartbeat burst instantly.

  Not a crack. Not a fracture.

  It tore like thin film.

  The air bucked, and Lothar’s chest clenched again, as if someone had jammed a hand around his throat.

  The helmet saved him.

  Without it, there would have been nothing left to fix.

  Even with it, the hit was vicious. Graf rocked, like someone had switched him off and on again. He took one step back, then another. A dent caved in the armored visor, and blood ran along the rim of the helmet.

  The wound was not deep. His skull was not split.

  Still, the strike had scrambled everything inside his head.

  It showed in his eyes.

  For a second, his gaze went cloudy, the way it does after a concussion. He blinked as if he had forgotten where he was.

  Inside Lothar, something gave a short, nasty chuckle.

  Lóng Tiānyán stirred inside the fortress that had been built around him. The chains in Finsterherz’s soul rang like taut strings. The dragon was enjoying this, not because it was winning, but because the man who had sealed it was hurting.

  Graf exhaled and understood the same thing.

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  He was running out.

  That new cage, that fortress around the Azure Dragon, had cost him too much. He was standing on habit now, on pride, on years of being stronger than everyone around him. His body was done. Blood slid down his temple and dotted the floor in dark drops.

  He scanned the room with quick, sharp movements. No panic, but urgency.

  He was not looking for a door.

  He was looking for a way out.

  The thought flickered across his face even though he never spoke it.

  Damn Norcutt. I thought I lured her into a trap, and it turns out she lured me.

  He did not keep fighting head on. He knew he would not survive a second hit like that in any meaningful way.

  He snapped sideways toward the nearest table.

  A patron sat there, someone who had spent the last minute pretending none of this was his problem. Now the man’s eyes were wide. He tried to stand, and his legs refused him.

  Adam was on him in one leap.

  Not a punch.

  A short, precise strike to the stomach. The kind that makes a person fold.

  The patron wheezed and doubled over.

  Then came the part that made people on Chukur fear words and hands more than weapons.

  The man’s body spasmed. He screamed, not the scream of pain, but the scream of something being broken from the inside. His skin rose in knots. Hard lines surfaced along his neck, as if wire were being pulled under flesh. His shoulders widened. His spine arched.

  He began to change.

  Not into a dragon.

  Into something cheaper and uglier, but no less dangerous.

  A draconid.

  Scales crawled over his face. His mouth split wider than any human jaw should. Teeth lengthened. His arms stretched, fingers splitting into claws.

  The thing lunged straight at Coop without a second thought.

  It had one instruction.

  Tear.

  Lothar blinked, and it was already happening.

  Coop did not step back.

  He raised the weapon and fired.

  One shot.

  The draconid’s head came apart so completely the air turned warm and wet for a heartbeat. The body staggered one more step on momentum, then collapsed, shoulder slamming into the table.

  Someone in the bar shrieked.

  Someone else went silent and forgot to breathe.

  Graf, holding his head, managed a crooked smile. It was more anger than humor.

  “So you giants kill Nest-spawn in batches, huh,” he threw at Bevin.

  The giant did not answer.

  He moved like a machine built for one purpose.

  Step.

  Aim.

  Pause.

  Graf understood the next moment would end him.

  He tried to raise an aura. Anything.

  There was not enough left.

  After the cage, after the sword, after forcing the draconid into being, he was empty. Only stubbornness kept him upright.

  Then the shot came.

  Not a burst.

  One heavy bolt.

  Plasma hit Graf square in the chest.

  Lothar saw it as a flash, then a hole punched through armor, smoke, burned fabric. Graf froze for a beat, as if his mind could not accept what had happened.

  Then his knees gave out.

  He went down on his side like a sack of meat.

  The helmet struck tile. Blood spilled faster. He tried to draw breath and could not. His fingers twitched, searching for something in the air.

  Deep inside Finsterherz’s skull, far beyond the fortress walls, Lóng Tiānyán roared.

  Not in joy.

  In rage.

  It wanted that prey. It wanted Graf’s body.

  Now the body was dying on the floor.

  Wilt stood off to the side with a pistol in her hand, but she had not fired. She looked down at the body without mercy and without celebration.

  The way you look at a job that has finally been closed.

  She exhaled and said, voice rough, not from sentiment but because even she needed something to hold onto after this.

  “It’s done. Thank you, Mother Terra.”

  Norman Illget stood near the wall, pale but alive. Outside, his security detail was already shouting, calling for medics, moving in tight circles. No one rushed into the bar.

  Too much blood.

  Too much that did not make sense.

  Tomos Goff stepped closer, looked down, and spat to the side.

  “Well,” he muttered. “You played your game, you bastard.”

  Finsterherz tried to push himself up, and pain lanced through his throat again. He pressed a hand to his neck, coughed, and understood something cold and clear.

  Even with Adam on the floor, it was not over.

  Because the cage in his soul belonged to someone else now.

  Not him.

  Not Wilt.

  And the Azure Dragon inside it had not been calm for even one second.

  Lothar looked up at Wilt from the floor. His eyes asked one thing.

  What now.

  Wilt caught the look and answered, short and plain.

  “Live. For now, just live.”

  Then she turned to Bevin.

  “Check him. Stay sharp. If he’s still breathing, finish it. If he’s not, we leave. In a minute this place will be crawling with all of Chukur.”