Brute 288

Chapter 288 

Atasha’s POV 

55 vouchers 

Rio’s fingers clamped around my forearm and wrenched me upright so violently that my shoulder screamed, but he did not give me time to find my footing before he dragged me into motion, boots tearing through grit and loose stone as the wider chamber vanished behind us and the tunnel narrowed again, forcing my body to stumble into the uneven rhythm of his sprint. 

My ribs still ached from the last impact and the puncture between them had only just sealed enough to stop bleeding. 

Yet heat continued to crawl beneath my skin as my healing kept trying to repair what his dagger and the walls had done, and every time I swallowed I tasted metal, every time I inhaled the air scraped down my throat like I was breathing through ash. 

“What insects!” Rio hissed as he hauled me around a bend. From there, the passage opened abruptly, not into safety, not into darkness, but into a break in the rock where rain light spilled in. 

For one stunned heartbeat I saw the clearing outside the cave mouth, the wet earth churned and stamped, the trees shaking with distant thunder, and two silhouettes already there as if the world had snapped into place to block him. 

Cassian stood near the opening with his sword raised, mud streaked across his cheek where that first dagger had skimmed him, his stance braced as if he had been waiting for the exact angle of Rio’s escape, while King Xylas held the other side with his blade angled low. 

Seeing them, the Shadow’s smile twisted into something that looked wrong on a human mouth. His grip on my arm tightened until my fingers went numb, then he shoved me forward not to free me but to use me, to force Cassian’s blade to hesitate, to turn my body into the line he could hide behind. 

Cassian did not retreat, and he did not swing wildly either, because his sword slid in a tight arc that cut for Rio’s elbow instead of his throat, forcing Rio to jerk back and dragging me with him, and the moment Cassian’s steel flashed past my shoulder I felt the wind of it, close enough that the edge tugged at my hair. 

Rio hissed, furious. The calm he had worn earlier cracked as he snapped his head toward the ceiling. Then he ripped a dagger free and hurled it upward with a vicious flick. 

The blade hit stone and bit deep. The ceiling answered with a shudder that rolled through the passage, dust pouring down in thick sheets as the fracture spread outward. 

This time Cassian moved before the rock could decide how to fall, he surged forward and hooked his sword into a natural seam where the ceiling already bulged, then shoved hard, not to bring it down on us, but to redirect it. 

It forced the collapse into the side corridor instead of the main line, and when the slab finally broke loose it slammed sideways with a grinding crash that shook the walls yet left a narrow, brutal path still open between Cassian and the Shadow. 

King Xylas stepped in with him, blade flashing as he clipped the second dagger out of the air when Rio tried again, steel striking steel so close that sparks jumped and died in the damp. 

The Shadow’s face contorted, his voice scraped out of Rio’s throat like a curse that had learned to speak. “You are learning,” he snarled, eyes burning as he yanked me back against his chest again. 

His forearm sliding high to trap my throat for leverage, his anger turning him careless enough that his breath came harder now, faster, like the borrowed lungs were failing to keep up with what lived inside them. 

I twisted my wrist and drove my elbow backward, felt it connect with ribs that did not belong to Rio anymore, felt him flinch. 

1/5 

0:32 am DDMM 

Chapter 288 

EL 55 vouchers 

In that brief slack I forced my palm against my own side where the pain still pulsed, pushing my healing harder until heat surged and my legs steadied enough to run without folding. 

Cassian lunged again, not for Rio’s chest but for the hand on me. 

Rio reacted with sheer spite, dragging me into the mouth of the tunnel as he threw another dagger up, aiming for the rock above Cassian’s head as if he could bury them both. 

Cassian’s sword snapped up in time, not catching the dagger, but striking the ceiling at the weak point first, splitting the stone where he wanted it split. The collapse that followed dropped in front of him, forcing Rio to veer and curse. Then Rio suddenly moved, running away from Cassian and Xylas. 

Behind us, the King’s blade hacked into the shifting rubble, opening space, refusing to be slowed, while Cassian’s footsteps kept closing. Every time the Shadow tried to break the mountain down on us, Cassian answered by breaking it first and making it fall where it could not protect him. 

Rio’s grip shifted from my forearm to my throat again as he ran, dragging me sideways whenever the tunnel narrowed and using my body to shield his flank whenever Cassian’s shadow stretched too close behind us, his boots striking stone with. violent precision as he cut through turns that I could barely register before we were already past them. 

The cave twisted downward, then leveled out, then split again. He chose paths without hesitation as if the layout had been. burned into his mind long before tonight. 

Cassian did not fall back. 

I could hear him. 

Not his voice, not a shout, but the steady impact of his boots behind us. 

Rio hurled another dagger upward without breaking stride. 

The ceiling cracked in response, stone bursting apart in heavy chunks that crashed down between us and our pursuers, dust filling my lungs until I coughed against his arm. He did not slow to watch the destruction. He trusted it to do its work. He trusted chaos. 

But Cassian did not give him chaos. 

Steel struck first. 

I heard it above the roar of collapsing rock, the King’s blade carving into a support seam before the fracture could spread the way Rio intended, redirecting the fall so that the debris slammed into the side corridor instead of sealing the main passage. The ground shook, but the path remained open enough for them to continue. 

“You persist,” the Shadow snarled through Rio’s mouth, irritation overtaking that earlier amusement. His breathing came heavier, not from exhaustion but from fury that his tricks were being countered before they could mature into traps. “Annoying pests!” 

He dragged me through one final turn and then the tunnel ended abruptly. 

Before us was only a rounded chamber with a low ceiling and walls that curved inward, sealed on all sides except for the narrow mouth we had just come through. 

Even Rio stopped. 

For half a heartbeat, confusion flickered across his face, and that flicker was enough to make my stomach tighten. 

He had not expected this. 

2/5 

10:32 am 

Chapter 288 

He had been running toward something. 

Not away. 

His grip tightened again, and then without warning he flung me across the chamber. 

55 vouchers 

My body hit the far wall with enough force that the impact crushed the air out of my lungs and drove something deep inside my chest sideways. 

Pain tore upward through my ribs and into my throat. Blood surged up and spilled from my mouth before I could swallow it back. I collapsed to my knees and vomited onto the stone, coughing as my vision swam. 

The healing surged immediately, forcing bone back into alignment, sealing the internal rupture with heat that felt like fire crawling through my veins. My muscles trembled as they reset, each breath scraping raw through my lungs while the damage closed from the inside out. 

I forced my head up. 

King Xylas was already there. 

He entered the chamber first, blade raised, stance wide to compensate for the confined space, his shoulders squared as he advanced without hesitation. 

The Shadow moved. 

He crossed the distance faster than my eyes could track. 

One moment he stood near the entrance. The next he was in front of the King, dagger flashing downward toward Xylas’s wrist. 

The King blocked, steel colliding with steel in a violent clash that rang against the walls. The Shadow twisted immediately, striking again from the opposite angle, forcing Xylas to rotate his blade to parry. 

He did not stop at two. 

He attacked again and again, dagger cutting for joints, for tendons, for leverage points instead of obvious kills, testing the King’s defenses with frightening calculation. 

Xylas blocked the first three strikes cleanly. The fourth forced him back half a step. The fifth caught his forearm and drove his blade outward at an angle that strained his shoulder. 

The Shadow slammed his knee into the King’s midsection and shoved, using Rio’s weight and something more behind it. 

I heard the crack of tendons stretching too far. 

Xylas’s arms bent backward under the pressure as the Shadow forced his dagger toward the King’s throat, their weapons locked between them, muscles straining in a contest that had shifted from skill into brute force. 

The Shadow grinned, teeth bared, spit at the corner of his mouth again as he leaned in closer, pushing harder, driving the King’s wrists back until they trembled. 

“Break,” he hissed. 

Cassian arrived before the dagger could descend. 

He launched himself forward and drove his boot into Rio’s chest with enough force to rip the Shadow off the King entirely The impact lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing into the opposite wall, stone cracking under his back as dust burst 

3/5 

10:32 am DDMM 

Chapter 288 

outward. 

Rio’s body hit hard enough that the air left him in a harsh expulsion. 

Cassian did not wait for recovery. 

55 vouchers 

He advanced, sword already mid–swing, cutting for the Shadow’s neck as he pushed off the wall to regain balance. 

I dragged myself upright against the stone, one hand pressed to my side as the last of the damage sealed beneath my skin. 

Suddenly, my pulse pounded faster, harder, not from fear, not from exertion, but from something else entirely. 

The suffocating sensation returned. 

The pressure from earlier. 

It crawled over my lungs again, tightening from the inside like invisible fingers wrapping around my ribs. 

It was from something behind me. 

Something beyond the wall I had been thrown against. 

I turned slowly. 

The stone at my back felt different. 

The air near it felt heavier, thicker, as if the chamber itself was breathing through that section of rock. 

The sensation that had called to me before, the one that had dragged at my instincts and pressed against my chest. 

Whatever it was. 

It was right there. 

Behind this wall. 

4/5