Chapter 137"Ashes of the Broken Moon"

The battle tore the night apart.

The silver-masked figures charged, their cries a hideous, echoing cacophony that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. Their forms shimmered under the hammering rain, their blades catching the fractured light of the broken moon above.

Fred surged forward, muscles burning, heart pounding.

Every step he took sent puddles exploding under his boots, the icy water soaking into his jeans, into his bones. But he didn't care.

Not tonight.

Ahead, the leader — the one with the shifting, smoke-like face — raised a twisted staff high into the air. It crackled with black lightning, and the ground buckled around him.

Fred didn't slow.

Behind him, Leon roared, slamming into a masked figure with the force of a runaway train. The two went down in a heap, fists flying. Blood splattered the cracked cobblestones.

Tessa danced between enemies, her twin short swords slicing clean lines through the rain. Her black hair, usually tied up, hung loose around her face, wild and free. Her leather armor clung to her athletic frame, glistening under the relentless downpour.

Elena, too, moved with lethal precision, her crimson cloak streaming like a river of blood behind her. She slipped between the attackers, her black dagger flashing like a viper's fang.

Each strike was fatal. Each movement was poetry.

Zara stayed behind the broken stone wall with Elias, tending to his wounds as best she could. Her slender fingers were slick with blood — some his, some her own from sharp stone shards — but her hands were steady.

She refused to cry.

She refused to be weak.

She had promised Fred she would be strong.

Fred felt the power within him rising, a tidal wave he could barely contain.

Not yet, he told himself.

Not until the right moment.

One of the masked figures lunged at him.

Fred sidestepped effortlessly, grabbed the figure's wrist, and twisted it until bones snapped like dry twigs. Then he drove his elbow into the figure's throat, dropping him instantly.

Another came from the side — faster, smarter.

Fred ducked the blade, grabbed a fallen dagger from the ground, and hurled it without thinking.

The blade buried itself deep into the attacker's chest.

Fred didn't stop to watch him fall.

The masked leader let out a furious scream, and with a crack like a tree splitting in a storm, the black lightning arced toward Fred.

Fred threw up his arms instinctively — and the world exploded in light.

But it wasn't the leader's magic that saved him.

It was his own.

A shield of shimmering blue energy burst from Fred's palms, the force of it knocking the black lightning aside like a gust of wind scattering ashes.

The leader stumbled back, snarling in a thousand voices.

Fred stared at his own hands, chest heaving, rain running down his face like tears.

The power... it wasn't just raw strength.

It was ancient. It was alive.

He didn't have time to understand it.

The leader slammed his staff into the ground again, and from the pit below the bridge, something massive began to rise.

A beast of shadows and bone, stitched together from nightmare and hatred, crawled into the world. Its eyes burned with a hollow red glow. Its teeth — hundreds of them — gnashed the air, hungry for blood.

Fred turned to his friends.

"Get everyone back!" he shouted.

Leon, blood dripping from a gash over his eye, grabbed Zara and Elias, hauling them farther up the broken street.

Tessa slid to a stop beside Fred, breathing hard.

"You have a plan?" she barked.

Fred wiped the rain from his eyes.

"Yeah," he said grimly. "We kill that thing."

Elena appeared on Fred's other side, her crimson cloak now soaked black with rain and blood.

"And him," she said, nodding at the masked leader.

Fred smiled grimly.

"And him."

The beast roared, the sound rattling the very air. It slithered across the broken earth, faster than anything that big had any right to move.

Fred charged.

Tessa and Elena flanked him, moving like twin shadows.

Fred ducked under a claw swipe, the air hissing as the beast's talons barely missed him. He rolled forward, came up under the creature's jaw, and drove a blast of blue energy straight into its throat.

The beast screamed — a sound of pure rage and agony — and staggered back.

Tessa leapt onto its flank, slashing deep into its side, black ichor spraying into the air. Elena struck from the other side, severing one of its twisted limbs with a clean swipe.

The beast reeled.

But it wasn't dead yet.

The masked leader howled, pouring more black lightning into the creature, forcing it to grow larger, more terrible.

Fred felt his knees buckle under the sheer pressure of the magic.

But he refused to fall.

Not now.

Not when his friends were fighting beside him.

Not when Zara was watching, her heart in her eyes.

Not when Elias, broken but alive, was counting on him.

Fred forced himself to stand, digging deeper into that raging well of power inside him.

The sky cracked open above them.

A jagged tear in the clouds revealed a sliver of the broken moon, casting a pale silver light over the battlefield.

Fred roared.

Not with words, but with raw, primal power.

The blue energy exploded from him in a wave, slamming into the beast and the masked figures alike.

The masked attackers screamed as they were hurled backward, their masks shattering, their bodies crumpling.

The beast staggered, howling in rage.

Fred didn't stop.

He pushed forward, channeling everything he had into one final strike.

The blue energy coiled around him like a living thing, wrapping him in light. His soaked clothes clung to his muscular frame, his blond hair plastered to his forehead, his sharp features twisted in fury and determination.

He leapt.

Time slowed.

Fred drove his fist — wreathed in blue fire — into the heart of the beast.

There was a moment of absolute silence.

Then the beast exploded, a shockwave of black mist and shattered bone rippling out across the riverbank.

Fred hit the ground hard, rolling once before coming to his feet.

The masked leader staggered, his staff splintered, his shifting face frozen in horror.

Fred strode toward him, every step deliberate.

The leader raised a trembling hand.

"Wait," he gasped. "You don't know — you don't understand —"

Fred didn't hesitate.

He grabbed the leader by the collar, ripped the mask away, and looked into the shifting, broken face.

For a moment — a horrible, dizzying moment — Fred saw flashes of other faces. Faces he knew. Faces he didn't.

Past and future blurred together.

And then the leader crumbled to dust in his hands, scattered by the howling wind.

The battle was over.

Fred stood in the rain, chest heaving, staring at his empty hands.

Behind him, Leon was helping Zara and Elias back onto their feet. Tessa wiped her blades clean with slow, exhausted movements. Elena stood silently, her crimson cloak torn and soaked.

The city lay broken around them — but it was alive.

And so were they.

Fred turned to his friends, his family, the people who had bled for him, fought for him, believed in him when he couldn't believe in himself.

He smiled — a real, raw, exhausted smile.

"We're not done yet," he said softly. "But tonight... we won."

Above them, the broken moon wept silver tears for everything they had lost — and everything they still had left to fight for.

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