Page 298 of Interion

“A great man made of mistakes.”

“Still, a great man,” the other insisted, his eyes fixed on the iron blade above the fireplace, which reflected the rays on the horizon. “You had time and used it the best way you could. I can't even boast about that.”

The psychic's expression darkened as unease began to stir in the back of his mind. The words bothered him. He looked at Julius, finally processing the verb tenses.

“Had?” he questioned the use of the word in the past tense.

The seer moved through the room and stopped at the bedroom door, his hands clasped behind his back. He still gazed at the ancient sword on a stand above the fireplace. It was the only thing Serguei had brought from Drutes. Fury of the Fallen was its name. The bone handle studded with a ruby was still as beautiful as the first time he'd seen it. The Sonar turned to Serguei again, and tears of blood rolled down his face.

“Tick-tock, tick-tock,” the man murmured, a lump in his throat. Serguei would never know, but some of the tears were real. “The sound is coming to an end.”

He didn't have time to react to the words. Like a radar for minds, he sensed a presence—different yet familiar—approaching the walls. It was entering the range of his power and radiated a perverse aura of death.

“You…”

Fear choked the words. What he felt wasn't just one presence, but an army of them. The psychic leaped to his feet and stared at the window. That horde of things would reach the wall within minutes.

“You knew she would come.” His voice was a thunderclap of power mixed with outrage. “You betrayed us!”

The seer only stared at him.

“It's not a betrayal. She's coming to exterminate Angel before she wakes—this is when the body and mind are most vulnerable. I brought you here because you're the last leader of the Night Squadron, the only one who could handle this. You're the key to everything going right today.”

“You foresaw this! Why didn't you warn me?” He couldn't understand Julius's motives. He felt betrayed, just as Ravena had betrayed him.

“Because it wouldn't make a difference. There's no other path.”

He crossed the room in long strides and pulled the sword from above the fireplace. Fury of the Fallen was ancient, from the time when he fought battles and saved defenseless women. Then he turned to the Sonar, so unhinged that his hands trembled. But the man was no longer there. Serguei still felt a trace of consciousness hovering nearby.

“Coward,” he shouted, knowing he could still be heard.

He ran to the mirror on the side of the room and examined his clothes. He needed to remove everything that contained metal. He removed the rings from his fingers, the chain around his neck, the gold bracelet. In the closet, he kept the old Night Squadron uniform. He ran there and found dusty black and burgundy pants. There was also a rigid vest that would protect his chest against lighter blows. He undressed and put everything on, secured the vest, and put his tuxedo jacket back on. According to Kyller's memories of Lagherta's death, that devourer could manipulate metal somehow, and any fragment in his clothes could kill him. When he came out of the closet, the Sonar's presence caressed his shoulder.

“Forgive me, old friend. I’ll be at your side, just like before.”

Outside, Serguei heard the first assault on the wall: the hollow, reverberating sound of vibrating metal. Stone and concrete cracking under the pressure of internal metal beams—beams being manipulated from within a 50-meter-high wall to destroy it from the inside out.

It was his worst nightmare.

He wanted to argue and shout at the Sonar, but there was no time to waste, and he was tired of sharp words that only hurt instead of solving problems. He looked at the two children on the bed. Lightning split the sky, illuminating the young faces he’d come to love. Yes, he loved them. His broken heart had somehow learned to love again.

Thunder vibrated in his bones as he kissed each of their foreheads and stepped out into the stormy night.

Δ

Breno walked alongside Hiro and Aish. They were heading back along the test trail, joined by two hundred soldiers assigned to recover the bodies of students who’d died during the exam. When the barrier fell, most students had been trucked to the hospital—injured or drugged from the toxic water. But instead of going with the rescued students, Breno had been chosen for the search team, and Hiro and Aish refused to leave him alone.

“Faster! We need to finish before nightfall—the lamias are probably already on their way, following the scent of all this blood,” the Immediate shouted as soldiers passed by carrying black body bags.

In theory, they were corpses—but there wasn’t really a body per se, just limbs or scraps of clothing. This knowledge closed the throats of the three inexperienced students with fear and silenced most of their conversations. At the end of the test, when the world had simply descended into chaos, they’d known beasts were killing students—Hiro had even fought one. But now, seeing what remained of the bodies, the fact that they were dealing with creatures that ate people was too much for their young minds to process.

Breno felt lost amid all the shouted commands. The pungent smell of blood did nothing to calm his frayed nerves; wherever he walked, the stench of death and decomposition followed. Looking at Hiro and Aish, he could tell they felt the same way.

It had been dawn when they’d reached the barrier and secured the students’ survival, but during the search, the sun had raced across the sky as they combed through the forest, focused on the mission. Now dusk was falling, and the clouds had grown thick and reddish overhead, promising a storm and forcing them to switch on their flashlights.

They’d been given just one job: watch the surroundings and cover the rear while the soldiers conducted their search. Natali, his mother and the army’s official blocker, had been called away by the king for a mission inside the walls, and the squad needed a blocker in case any beast was still alive. That was why Immediate Kaori had recruited Breno, believing he could block potential threats.

What she didn’t know was that the boy could barely block his own fear.