The ruins were still smoking.
Scylla had teleported back to the bunker the moment she could—the moment her wounds had healed enough to move, the moment her terror had cooled into something harder. Thirty kilometers of jungle and darkness had separated her from her sister. Thirty kilometers of running, stumbling, failing.
Now she stood in what remained.
The bunker was gone. The roof had collapsed, the walls had crumbled, and fire still licked at the edges of everything. But she knew where to look. She could feel her.
The lower level. The room with the chains.
She moved through the destruction like a ghost, her feet finding paths through rubble that shouldn't have existed. The door was gone—just a twisted frame and a wall of darkness beyond.
She stepped through.
The smell hit her first.
Blood. So much blood. And something else—something sweet and rotten that made her stomach lurch. She'd smelled it before, on battlefields, in the aftermath of slaughter. The smell of bodies left too long.
The room was dark, but her eyes adjusted quickly. The chains hung empty from the ceiling, swaying slightly in some draft she couldn't feel. The spikes lay scattered on the floor, each one telling a story of pain she couldn't bear to imagine.
And in the center, on a pile of debris, lay Charybdis.
Scylla's legs gave out.
She fell to her knees, her hands reaching forward, stopping just short of touching. Because what lay before her was barely recognizable as her sister.
The body was burned—not just singed, but charred, blackened flesh peeling away from bone in places. The chest wound Wolfen had carved was a gaping horror, its edges cooked and cracked. The spikes had been removed, leaving holes that wept dark fluid onto the stone.
But it was the face that broke her.
Charybdis's eyes were open. Fixed on nothing. Her mouth was frozen in a silent scream, caught at the moment of ultimate terror. And on her cheek, catching the faint light from somewhere, was a single tear track—dried now, but unmistakable.
She had died afraid. She had died alone. She had died screaming.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
The scream tore from Scylla's throat like something alive, something with claws and teeth that wanted out. It echoed off the bloody walls, bounced back at her, multiplied until it sounded like a chorus of the damned.
She crawled forward, gathering her sister's broken body in her arms. The flesh was cold—so cold—and parts of it came away on her hands, sticking to her skin like accusation.
"No no no no no—" The words tumbled out, a desperate prayer to gods she didn't believe in. "Please no please no please—"
But there was no answer. There would never be an answer.
She rocked back and forth, holding what remained of her other half, her twin, her sister. They had been born together, created together, shaped into weapons together. Every kill, every mission, every moment of their existence had been shared. Charybdis was not just her sister—she was half her soul.
And now that half was gone.
"I'm sorry," Scylla whispered into the burned hair. "I'm sorry I ran. I'm sorry I left you. I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry—"
The words dissolved into sobs, raw and animal, the kind of crying that didn't care who heard. She held her sister tighter, as if she could somehow pour her own life into that cold body, as if love could undo what hate had done.
It couldn't.
Minutes passed. Hours. Time had no meaning in that bloody room.
When Scylla finally looked up, her eyes were different.
The tears still fell, but they fell from eyes that had become something else. The grief was still there—would always be there—but beneath it, something harder was forming. Something colder. Something that would never forgive and never forget.
She laid her sister gently on the debris. Stood. Looked down at the face that would haunt her forever.
"I'll kill you all."
Her voice was quiet now, controlled. The scream was gone, replaced by something far more dangerous.
"Wolfen. Eva. The stone man. The lightning boy. The swordsman. The Omega. Every single one of you." She reached down and closed her sister's eyes with trembling fingers. "I'll hunt you to the ends of the earth. I'll make you suffer. I'll make you beg."
She leaned down and pressed her forehead to her sister's, a final goodbye.
"I'll see you soon," she whispered. "Wait for me."
Then she turned and walked out of the bloody room, leaving Charybdis to the silence and the dark.
Behind her, the fire continued to burn, consuming everything it touched. But it would never consume what Scylla carried now—the weight of a sister's death, and the promise of vengeance.
In the jungle outside, she stopped and looked up at the stars. Somewhere out there, they were celebrating. Laughing. Living.
She would find them.
And when she did, they would learn what it meant to take everything from someone who had nothing left to lose.
The hunt had just begun.