The wyvern's cry split the cavern air, a sound that didn't just echo—it scraped along the walls.
Ren's right side was still a ruined mess of blistered flesh and charred muscle.
The wyvern circled overhead, wings cutting the false sky in forceful sweeps. Its six eyes tracked him from different angles, calculating paths of attack like six separate predators. From below, Nocstella's voice came low and rich.
"Tell me, Hollow...How do you intend to fend off such a perfect creation?"
Ren's gaze didn't move from the circling beast above. Words were wasted breath.
The wyvern folded its wings suddenly and dove.
He braced for the attack.
'The same approach…That won't work…'
He had already seen its pattern once.
Ren waited until the last possible instant, and sidestepped just as the beast cratered beneath. The rush of air from its descent slammed into him like a wall. But he stayed close—just close enough to see the glow of one of its foremost eyes. The dagger flashed once in his left hand before he stabbed into the pupil. It cried out and jerked its head in pain.
But Ren wrenched the blade free before it could fling him away.
The tail came next—he didn't have time to avoid it, as it spun at an obnoxious speed. The bone edge slammed into him, catching most of the force in his left forearm, bone snapping clean from the impact. He was thrown backward, skidding across the ground until he landed against a wall.
Breathless, Ren staggered, his body screaming at him from two directions—his right side still a blistered ruin, and his left arm now hanging useless. Two dead limbs.
The stone dagger clattered to the floor beside him. He bent down without thinking, caught the hilt between his teeth, and locked his jaw tight around the fabric-wrapped grip.
The wyvern reared back, chest swelling as its jaw split down, and the corrosive torrent blasted.
Ren circled out wide along the wall, keeping low as the wave of red-brown vapor chased him across the floor. He kept going until the stream faltered. The moment the stream sputtered out, he bit down harder on the dagger and dashed in.
The wyvern's head was still low from the exhalation, decay curling up from between its teeth. Ren used the angle, closing the gap before it could bring its claws around to attack.
The moment he cleared its forelimb, Ren spat the dagger into his right hand—still decayed, but enough to attack—and drove the blade into the seam beneath its jaw.
The strike was shallow. His arm couldn't push the way it should have.
But the angle was right, and the wyvern shrieked, jerking its head back.
Ren tore the blade free and pivoted toward its tail.
The creature tried to turn with him, but the movement opened up its blind side.
Ren took advantage of it—slashing twice in quick succession, each cut dragging a shallow line of blood across its ribcage. Blood had spattered out across his face. The wyvern recoiled from the twin cuts, wings snapping open in a sudden beat. The beast rose into the air again, tail lashing out in frustration, blood leaking out from its wounds.
And then—
The cry of a wounded infant, loud and deafening, as it circled above.
Nocstella's gaze never left Ren, watching his every move this whole time.
"Listen to her. Look at the pain you've caused...The blood you've shed…"
The wyvern wailed again overhead.
"She calls for me, and I will answer…But you—" Her voice lingered on the word. "You want to silence her...Don't you? You think killing the child will wound the mother."
Ren's chest rose and fell heavily; his gaze sliding from the wyvern to her.
His body turned in her direction, the dagger still loose in his half-working grip.
Steps brought him toward Nocstella, but she didn't budge.
She watched him, his gaze now seeming to hold no life in it.
"How crude...such an unstable, animalistic thought process you endure. You've begun to underestimate me, Hollow. It seems you've forgotten who I am...What power I possess…"
He closed the distance to Nocstella in four long strides. Her posture was impossibly calm—gaze lowered to the ground, one pale hand hovering over her chest.
"Ren..."
The word was wrong in her mouth—not because of how it was said, but because it wasn't hers. It was his mother's, an exact replication. The cadence. The warmth. The way the 'n' fell away at the end, almost swallowed—the same as it had been when he was a sickened child.
It stopped him, not with force, but with memory.
And in that heartbeat, the weight of everything pressed in at once.
His mind was already unstable from it all. Every sound and shape blurred at the edges, the world folding in on itself. He couldn't tell if he was still standing in the sanctum or back in that dim bedroom where the monsters waited for his mother to leave at night.
It all stacked together—past and present—until it felt like there was no separation at all.
For Ren, it was no longer stone and ash surrounding him.
It was that dim bedroom, only lit up by the wax candle on his nightstand.
He could no longer tell if the struggle to breathe was the debris of the sanctum or his failing body underneath the covers.
Nocstella closed the last step between them.
Her hand came up and slipped into his hair. Her fingers threaded through with a gentle drag, brushing it back from his forehead the same way his mother had when fevers kept him shivering. It was wrong. So wrong. But it felt so real. That the fragile boy couldn't reject it.
Ren saw her—not Nocstella, that crimson-eyed monster—but that loving woman.
The quiet hum under her breath.
The soft hand in his hair.
Ren stood there, breath coming softly as if he were sleeping.
Nocstella's fingers slipped free from his scalp.
She stepped past him without a glance, and one word left her lips, low and absolute.
"Devour."
The wyvern wept, as if accepting its mother's terms.
Ren's jaw slackened. The dagger slipped from his loosened grip, clattering against stone.
The wyvern folded its wings and dropped, talons spread wide to tear him apart.
All that remained was the whistle of wind before impact—and the question of whether that spark of defiance still flickered within Ren's heart. Or he would give into the touch of his loving mother.