***First Blood, First Loss***

The silence after the storm was almost worse than the battle.

The three of them stood on the ruined platform, the air thick with ash and the stink of burnt bone. Somewhere deep below, the catacombs groaned, as if the city's skeleton was shifting in its grave.

Jace wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, smearing blood across his jaw. Every nerve in his body felt raw, peeled open, humming with hollow power.

He wasn't the same anymore.

Couldn't be.

He wasn't sure if that terrified him or thrilled him.

Lena broke the quiet first, stepping carefully across the cracked altar.

"That stunt of yours woke up half the damn city," she muttered, glancing around. "I can feel it — things moving. Things that shouldn't."

Reya stood a little apart from them, breathing heavily. She didn't meet his eyes.

Jace understood why.

She had seen it, too — the thing inside him.

The monster he was becoming.

A low, rumbling growl echoed from the tunnel they came through.

Jace stiffened. "Company."

A figure stepped into the torchlight — a man wrapped in black leathers, his face hidden behind a cracked porcelain mask. Dark tattoos crawled up his throat like living things.

Behind him came more.

Half a dozen others, men and women, moving like wolves — hungry, precise, lethal.

Cultists.

Lena's hand dropped to her blade instantly.

"Shit," she hissed. "Wardens of the Bleeding Eye."

Reya paled.

"Wasn't the Warden enough for one night?" she whispered.

The leader raised a gloved hand, and the others fanned out, blocking every escape.

"You," the masked man said, voice distorted like broken glass. His gaze locked on Jace. "You desecrated the Hollow's altar. You don't even know the sin you've committed."

Jace smiled through cracked lips.

"I'm starting to get an idea."

The cultists moved as one, lunging forward — no threats, no negotiations.

Just violence.

The fight was different from the skeletons.

These were living, breathing killers — smart, coordinated, merciless.

Jace barely managed to dodge the first slash aimed at his throat. His body screamed in protest, but the shard's power surged inside him again, sharpening his reflexes unnaturally.

He caught the attacker's wrist mid-strike, twisting it until the bone snapped, then slammed his knee into the cultist's solar plexus hard enough to fold him in half.

Reya wasn't so lucky.

She blocked a sword with one dagger — but the second attacker slipped past her defenses, ramming a short blade deep into her side.

"Reya!" Jace shouted.

She gasped, staggered — blood gushing between her fingers.

Another cultist drove a sword at her back.

Jace moved without thinking, adrenaline and rage fueling him.

He caught the sword mid-thrust barehanded — the blade slicing deep into his palm — and wrenched it sideways, driving it into the attacker's neck.

Hot blood sprayed across his chest.

Lena was a fury of motion beside him, cutting down two more cultists, but even she was slowing, bleeding from a dozen small wounds.

They were outnumbered.

And they were losing.

Reya dropped to one knee, her face grey with pain. She tried to stand — gods, she tried — but another cultist was already on her.

"No!" Jace bellowed.

He hurled himself forward, but he was too far.

The curved dagger plunged into Reya's throat with a wet, brutal sound.

Her body jerked, eyes wide — shocked — as blood bubbled past her lips.

She collapsed into Jace's arms before he could catch her.

"Reya—!" he choked.

She tried to speak.

Tried to say his name.

Only blood came out.

Her body twitched once, twice…

Then went still.

Jace froze, staring down at her.

The world around him dimmed to a tunnel of red and black.

Something inside him shattered — something fragile he hadn't even realized was still there.

The shard in his chest howled, responding to his grief, his rage, his loss.

When he looked up, his eyes were no longer human.

They burned black and silver, twin voids of power.

The cultists hesitated.

A mistake.

Jace stood, Reya's blood dripping from his hands.

And then he unleashed.

The first cultist exploded into ash without him even touching her — the raw force of his fury tearing her apart from the inside out.

He moved through them like a storm, not fighting — erasing.

Bones cracked, flesh tore, blood misted the air.

Even Lena stumbled back, eyes wide with something dangerously close to fear.

When it was done, when the last body fell twitching at his feet, Jace staggered back to Reya's corpse.

He knelt.

Touched her cooling cheek with shaking fingers.

Her eyes stared blankly at the ruined ceiling above.

She had been reckless. Brave. Stubborn.

She hadn't deserved this.

None of them did.

Lena crouched beside him, silent.

For once, she didn't offer a joke or a sharp word.

There was nothing to say.

Jace closed Reya's eyes gently.

Then he stood, swaying.

There were no tears.

Just a low, burning fire in his gut.

He would not waste this.

Not her death.

Not any of it.

He turned his back on the corpses, blood still dripping from his cracked knuckles.

"We're finishing this," he said.

Lena rose beside him, wiping blood from her mouth.

"Yeah," she said hoarsely. "We are."

They left the catacombs behind, dragging the weight of their first real loss with them.

But the city above had already changed.

They just didn't know it yet.