Brute 261

Chapter 261 

ATASHA’S POV 

The beasts did not slow. 

They kept coming in waves that refused to thin out, crawling out of the torn ground and charging through the mud as if the storm itself was feeding them. Every time one fell, another replaced it, and every time I thought we had a breath of space. the darkness filled again with movement and teeth and claws. 

I fought until my arms burned, until rain soaked through my sleeves and made my grip slick, until the air tasted like iron and poison and wet earth. My short sword felt heavier with every strike, not because it was dulling, but because my body was carrying too much at once. I kept turning, kept slashing, kept stepping into openings before the beasts could take them, and still it felt like we were standing in the mouth of something that would never stop chewing. 

Grace was on my right, cutting down anything that tried to flank us. She moved like a wolf trained for war, and yet I could see strain building in her shoulders each time the ground spat out another cluster. She was strong, but she was still flesh and blood, still bound to lungs that had to breathe and muscles that had to recover. 

Cassian stayed on my left like an anchor that refused to be moved. He carved through the beasts as if they were obstacles instead of enemies, as if the rain and poison and shaking earth were nothing but weather. His blade flashed each time lightning cracked the sky, and in those brief bursts of light, his face looked less like a man and more like something built for slaughter. 

I should have been thinking. 

I should have been searching for patterns, looking for the hand behind the chaos, asking why the ground had opened and why the poison was in the wind and why Demon Fangs chose this night to strike Nightfall’s borders. I should have been planning, commanding, calculating. 

Instead, something inside me kept rising. 

It pushed up through my chest like heat, curling into my throat, tightening behind my eyes, and it did not feel like fear. It felt like hunger. It felt like the part of me that had learned to survive by becoming worse than whatever tried to kill me. 

Bloodlust. 

The word tasted ugly in my mind, but it fit. Every time my blade sank into flesh, my body wanted more. Every time a beast screamed, my pulse surged as if it liked the sound. It was not my usual focus. It was not strategy. It was something primal that wanted to drown everything else out until only killing remained. 

I forced myself to breathe through it. 

I forced myself to keep my head, to keep my hands steady, to keep the edge of my mind from slipping into that place where mercy did not exist. If I lost myself now, I would not know the difference between enemy and ally when the rain turned thicker and the night turned worse. 

A roar split the air. 

This one was not like the beasts we had been fighting. This sound was deeper, heavier, and it rolled through the courtyard with weight that made even the smaller creatures flinch. The hairs on my neck lifted, and my heart kicked hard enough that my vision sharpened for a heartbeat. 

Grace faltered. 

It happened in the space of a blink, a moment where the ground had finally stopped shaking and our feet found stable 

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Chapter 261 

$5 Jouchers 

purchase again, and that small change was enough for the beasts to press harder. One lunged low, another came from behind it, and Grace twisted to block the first only for the second to rake across her side. 

She grunted, stumbled, and then her knee hit the mud. 

“Grace!” I shouted, already moving. 

She tried to push up, tried to raise her blade again, but the hit had been deep enough to steal her breath. Her face tightened as if she refused to show pain, but her body betrayed her anyway when her hand shook around her weapon. 

I reached her and dropped beside her, my palm pressing against the torn flesh at her side. Hot blood seeped through my fingers before I could even focus, and the smell made the bloodlust spike again, eager and ugly. 

I crushed it down. 

I pushed my power into her wound instead, forcing it to close, forcing flesh to knit even as rain washed red into the mud. 

Grace’s eyes widened as her body seized from the sensation. She sucked in a breath, sharp and unsteady, then another, and I felt her muscles try to regain control as the pain dulled. 

Then the growl came again. 

Closer. 

Familiar in a way that made my stomach twist. 

Cassian’s head snapped toward the darkness beyond the courtyard, his posture changing instantly, and the shift alone told me he recognized it too. 

“Retreat,” he barked. 

It was not a suggestion. It was an order thrown like a blade into the chaos. 

Grace blinked at him, still half on the ground, still trying to understand how something could scare the man who had just beheaded a witch without hesitation. 

Cassian did not wait for understanding. “Retreat now,” he repeated, louder this time. “Move.” 

Nightfall’s soldiers listened without question. They began to pull back in rough formation, dragging the wounded, keeping weapons raised, backing away from the courtyard and toward the forest line where the trees could at least give cover from the open ground. 

The beasts did not stop coming. 

They followed, snarling and charging through the mud, their bodies blending into the rain–darkened night until lightning flashed and revealed them again, too many, too close. 

I got Grace up, keeping my arm under hers as she forced herself to move. She was breathing hard, jaw clenched, refusing to lean too much, but I felt the tremor in her frame anyway. 

We retreated with Cassian slightly ahead, cutting down anything that got too close, and me behind him, turning when needed, striking when claws came out of the rain. 

The storm made it hard to see beyond a few steps. The rain was thick enough that it blurred the world into shifting shapes and moving shadows, and only lightning gave brief clarity, each flash turning the battlefield into a frozen image of blood and teeth and bodies. 

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Chapter 261 

Lightning struck again. 

And in that burst of white light, I saw the source of the growl. 

My breath stalled. 

It was a massive beast. 

It stood beyond the line of smaller beasts like a predator among insects, its frame towering high enough that the rain slid off its back in sheets. It did not move like a wolf, and it did not move like anything born of the south. Its limbs were thicker, its shoulders wider, and its mouth opened just enough for me to see teeth built for tearing through armor and bone. 

Its eyes caught the lightning and reflected it. 

Not like an animal. 

Like something that was meant to be seen in nightmares. 

My chest tightened as recognition struck, not full certainty, but enough to make my mind scramble through old memories and northern stories. I had seen something like this before, far away, in the north, in places where the cold did not forgive weakness. 

Grace stumbled beside me, then froze mid–step as she saw it too. 

Her mouth parted, and for a heartbeat she looked like she had forgotten how to breathe. 

“That is…” she started, voice breaking. Her gaze stayed locked on the creature as if saying the name out loud would make it real in a way she did not want. 

Lightning flashed again, closer, brighter, and the creature’s shape sharpened. 

Grace swallowed hard. “That is a Vargrahn,” she said, and the word came out strained, almost disbelieving. “They are rare monsters from the northernmost edge of the North. We tell stories about them to scare young wolves into staying inside the borders when storms come. I have never seen one with my own eyes. Not once.” 

My grip tightened around my sword. 

My mind tried to form the question anyway, even as the answer felt wrong. 

Why was something from the north here? 

Why was it in Nightfall’s territory, leading a horde that crawled out of the earth like rot given legs? 

I did not have time to dig deeper because the Vargrahn lowered its head, its body shifting like it was preparing to charge, and the smaller beasts parted instinctively, making space for it the way wolves made space for an Alpha. 

Cassian’s voice cut through the storm again. “Retreat,” he shouted, and this time there was no room left for negotiation. “Keep everyone safe. Move into the trees and do not break formation.” 

The Vargrahn surged forward. 

The ground did not shake anymore, but the impact of its charge made the mud explode under its weight, and the horde 

followed like a flood behind it. 

Then Cassian shouted again, voice tearing through the rain. “Move!” 

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Chapter 261 

And the forest swallowed us as the monster closed the distance.