# Chapter 20: The First Transmutation
The steel wall shuddered under a blow that sounded like a thunderclap. A fist-sized dent bulged outward on Relly's side, the metal groaning in protest. Cassian was not trying to get around the barrier; he was trying to go through it. Relly scrambled back, his mind racing for another option, another spell, but the grimoire felt a million miles away, its pages a blur of incomprehensible symbols. He was empty. The Wound, that old familiar ache, pulsed in time with the impacts, a cold whisper of defeat. *You can't win. You were never meant to win.* Another deafening impact, and a crack appeared in the steel, a spiderweb of failure spreading before his eyes. Through the growing fissure, he saw Cassian's eye, cold and focused, and the predator's smile was back, wider than ever. The final blow came, and the barrier exploded inwards, a shower of jagged metal shrapnel. Cassian stood in the wreckage, his suit immaculate, his hand raised for the killing strike. Relly closed his eyes, bracing for the end. It never came. Instead, the night was torn apart by a sound unlike anything he had ever heard—a high-pitched, electric shriek followed by the percussive *crack* of a gauss pistol discharging. The fight had come to him.
***
In the alley, the world had frozen. The raw, untamed magical signature that had erupted from The Gilded Flask washed over the scene like a tidal wave of ozone and static electricity. It was primal, chaotic, and powerful beyond measure. The two Sanctus operatives flinched, their enhanced senses overwhelmed by the sheer force of it. Even Pres felt it, a jolt that vibrated deep in her bones, a confirmation of the terrifying potential she had sensed in Relly. Hidden in the deeper shadows, Jax and Roric, the Fenrir wolves, exchanged a wide-eyed glance. This was not a minor anomaly. This was a seismic event. The scent of ozone was sharp in their nostrils, mingling with the damp garbage and stale beer of the alley. The air itself felt thick, charged, dangerous.
The distraction was infinitesimal, a fraction of a second, but in a standoff of this nature, it was an eternity.
Pres moved.
Her motion was a blur, a flicker in the gloom that the human eye could never hope to track. She didn't raise her gauss pistol to fire a killing shot. Instead, she swung it in a short, brutal arc, the butt of the weapon aimed not at a head, but at the wrist of the lead Sanctus operative. He was fast, his reflexes honed by centuries of training, but he was still reacting to the magical shockwave. His attention was split. The steel stock of her pistol connected with the radial nerve in his forearm with a sickening *crack*. The gauss pistol clattered to the asphalt. His partner, recovering faster, brought his own weapon to bear, but Pres was already moving, using the first operative as a human shield. The alley erupted into a whirlwind of controlled violence. It wasn't a firefight; it was a close-quarters execution of tactical precision.
***
Inside the bar, the sound from the alley was a distant pop, a firecracker in the next block. It meant nothing to Relly. His entire universe was the man standing before him, the wreckage of his desperate defense, and the sudden, inexplicable reprieve. Cassian's head snapped toward the back door, his killing blow arrested mid-air. A flicker of something—annoyance, surprise—crossed his features. It was the first chink in his armor Relly had seen.
That flicker was all he needed.
The Wound screamed at him to curl up, to surrender, to accept the inevitable. But a new voice, a raw and furious thing born in the heart of that desperate transmutation, roared back. *Not like this.* His magic was gone, his energy reserves bone-dry, but the grimoire was still on the floor behind the bar. He didn't need to read it. He just needed to touch it. He scrambled backward, his hands sliding across the sticky floor, kicking aside broken glass and overturned stools. Cassian turned back to him, his momentary distraction gone, replaced by a cold, absolute focus. The hunter was done playing.
"You've caused me considerable inconvenience," Cassian said, his voice flat and dead. He took a step forward, his shoe crunching on the shattered steel of the barrier. "The Regent does not appreciate inconvenience."
Relly's fingers brushed against the grimoire's worn leather cover. The moment his skin made contact, a faint warmth seeped into him, not a flood of power, but a gentle, guiding hum. It was like a battery with a single, precious drop of charge left. His eyes darted around the bar, looking for anything, anything he could use. His gaze fell upon the rows of liquor bottles on the shelf behind him. Whiskey, gin, vodka, rum… a rainbow of liquids in glass prisons. An idea, insane and desperate, sparked in his mind.
Cassian was almost on him. Relly didn't have time for a complex diagram or a focused incantation. He had only instinct. He grabbed the nearest bottle, a cheap bottle of bourbon, and slammed it down on the bar top. The glass shattered, but he didn't care about the liquid. He focused on the concept. *Fire. Burn. Explode.* He poured that last drop of energy, that final spark of will, into the broken bottle and the spilled liquor.
For a moment, nothing happened. Cassian's lips curled into a smirk of triumph. Then, the spilled bourbon ignited. It wasn't a gentle flame; it was a *whoosh* of alchemical fire, a brilliant orange and blue conflagration that roared to life with impossible intensity. The heat hit Relly like a physical blow, singeing his eyebrows and blistering the skin on his arms. The fire didn't just burn; it consumed, the alchemical principles turning the alcohol into a near-explosive flash. The entire back bar went up in a sheet of flame, the glass bottles shattering one after another in a chain reaction of heat and pressure.
Cassian, caught in the epicenter, was thrown backward. His suit, woven with protective enchantments, shielded him from the worst of it, but the sheer force and unnatural heat sent him stumbling. He raised an arm to shield his face, his composure finally shattered, replaced by a snarl of pure rage.
Relly didn't wait to see the result. He rolled away from the inferno, coughing in the thick, acrid smoke that was rapidly filling the bar. The fire alarm began to scream, a piercing wail that joined the chaos. He had bought himself another few seconds. He had to make them count. He crawled toward the front of the bar, his lungs burning, his eyes watering. The front door. It was his only way out.
He stumbled to his feet, fumbling with the deadbolt. The metal was hot to the touch. Behind him, he could hear Cassian moving through the fire, the sound of his footsteps unnaturally steady. "You cannot run from this, little alchemist," the hunter's voice called out, calm again, but with an undercurrent of promised violence. "Every step you take is a step I have already mapped."
Relly finally threw the bolt open and stumbled out into the cool night air of the street. He gulped down the clean air, his chest heaving. The familiar glow of the streetlights, the distant traffic, the sound of the city—it was all a surreal backdrop to the nightmare he had just escaped. He took a single step away from the bar, a single step toward freedom.
And stopped.
Standing on the opposite sidewalk, bathed in the flickering orange light of the burgeoning bar fire, was a woman. She was tall and elegant, dressed in a tailored pantsuit that seemed untouched by the grime of the city. Her dark hair was pulled back in a severe, severe style, and her face was a mask of cold, academic curiosity. She wasn't holding a weapon. She was just watching him. Watching the bar burn. Watching him.
The Silhouette.
He didn't know how he knew, but every fiber of his being screamed it. This was the other hunter, the one from his nightmares, the ghost of his lineage. Her presence was a void, a sucking emptiness that made the air around her feel cold and dead. She raised a single, perfectly manicured hand and gave him a small, almost imperceptible wave. It was a gesture of greeting, and of ownership.
Panic, pure and undiluted, seized him. He was trapped between a fire and a phantom. Behind him, the bar was an inferno, and Cassian was emerging from the smoke, his face smudged with soot, his eyes burning with a cold light. In front of him stood the true monster, the one who had hunted his bloodline for centuries.
He was out of time. He was out of options. He was out of magic.
The Wound in his soul, the source of all his fear and weakness, seemed to widen, threatening to swallow him whole. *See?* it whispered. *This is how it ends. Always.*
But as he stood there, caught between the two apex predators of his world, a different feeling began to stir beneath the terror. It was small, fragile, but it was there. It was anger. Not the desperate, panicked rage of a cornered animal, but a cold, hard fury. This was his life. His bar. His city. They had no right.
He looked from Cassian, the agent of tyranny, to the woman on the sidewalk, the symbol of his ancient curse. They represented everything that had hunted him, broken him, and sought to erase him. He was Relly Moe, a bartender, a survivor, the last of his line. And he would not die on his knees.
He straightened up, ignoring the pain, the exhaustion, the screaming of every instinct telling him to run. He stood his ground on the pavement, a lone figure against the coming storm. He had nothing left but his will, and for the first time, he realized that might just be enough.