The hobgoblin attacked again. Skuggi blocked, disengaged. Created space. Made it look like he was tiring, struggling.

  The creature bought it. Pressed forward more aggressively. Its sword came faster, harder.

  Skuggi let it think it was winning. Let it commit to a thrust aimed at his chest. Parried just enough to deflect the blade away from his heart but not enough to fully avoid it.

  The sword punched through his side. Above the hip. Through muscle and into the space between organs.

  Pain exploded white and electric. Skuggi grabbed the blade with his free hand. Held it in place. Held the hobgoblin's attention on the successful strike.

  Then focused inward. On the bones in his wrists. On the modification he'd when desperation had made him willing to try anything.

  The first time it had happened was by focused anger. The pure survival instinct of the werewolf was triggering something the alchemists had built into him without explanation. He'd been restrained, handlers approaching with tools that meant more pain, more modification. And something in his wrists had shifted. Extended. Bone had pushed through flesh in a way that should have been impossible.

  Three wrist blades made of bone in each hand, about five inches long. Growing from between the spaces of the knuckles in his hands, pushing through the skin between each knuckle on each hand.

  There was a repressed memory that came back to him. One where he'd killed three handlers before they sedated him. The blades had retracted when he lost consciousness. When he woke up, the skin had healed over. Like it never happened.

  He'd tried to trigger it again during his escape. Failed. The pain had been too much. The feeling of bone moving inside flesh, of skin tearing open to make room, his body had shut down the attempt before the blades could fully extend.

  But now, with the hobgoblin's sword through his side, with Erik and Astrid and Olga behind him, with a settlement full of people about to be overrun…

  Now he didn't have the luxury of stopping.

  He triggered the change.

  His wrist bones blades shifted. Lengthened. The sensation was wrong in ways he had no words for. Bone moving inside muscle. Grinding against tissue. Finding a path through flesh that shouldn't exist.

  The skin between his wrist and knuckles stretched. Then it tore.

  Blood ran. His blood flowed over the blades as they emerged. The pain was immediate and total. Every nerve in his forearms screamed. His vision grayed at the edges.

  But he didn't stop the process. Forced it to continue. Forced the bones to keep extending, keep pushing through until…

  Three blades in each hand. Bone-white and sharp. Emerged from the backs of his hands between his wrists and knuckles. Five inches of organic weapon grown from his own skeleton.

  The hobgoblin saw them. Its eyes widened.

  Skuggi's left hand still held the sword embedded in his side. His right hand, now tipped with a blade of bone, came up fast.

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  He drove it into the gap between the hobgoblin's breastplate and helmet. Found the throat. Pushed through.

  The hobgoblin made a choking sound. Tried to pull its sword free from Skuggi's side. Skuggi held it in place with his left hand and used his right to twist the bone blade deeper.

  Dark blood flowed over his hand. The hobgoblin's strength was fading. Its legs buckled.

  Skuggi pulled the bone blades free. The hobgoblin collapsed. The sword came out of Skuggi's side with a wet sound that made his stomach turn.

  He stood over the dying creature. His wrists were in agony. Blood dripped from where the bone blades had torn through skin. The wounds weren't healing... couldn't heal while the blades were still extended.

  The hobgoblin looked up at him. Blood bubbled at its mouth.

  "More... will come," it managed. "Others... like us. You... won't be... safe."

  "I was never safe."

  "Alchemists... still making... more. Still... experimenting." The creature's breathing became labored. "Find... them. Stop... them. Before..."

  It didn't finish. The light faded from its eyes. The body went still.

  Skuggi stood there, bone blades still extended, blood running down his arms. His side throbbed where the sword had penetrated. That wound was healing now… he could feel the tissue knitting back together, the bleeding slowing.

  But his knuckles wouldn't heal until he retracted the blades. And retracting them would hurt as much as extending them had.

  He focused inward again. Triggered the reverse of whatever process had extended them.

  The bone blades began to retract. Sliding back through torn flesh. Grinding against muscle. Retreating into the wrist bones they'd grown from.

  The pain doubled. Skuggi's jaw clenched. His breath came in sharp gasps. He refused to make noise and refused to scream, but his whole body shook with the effort of remaining standing.

  The blades retracted fully. Disappeared back into his wrists. The torn skin began to close immediately, accelerated healing doing its work.

  But the damage had been done. The physical trauma of forcing bone through flesh, then pulling it back… his body remembered. Catalogued. Added it to the list of things that hurt too much to use casually.

  He looked at his hands. The skin was already sealing. In a few minutes, there would be no trace of what he'd done. Just smooth skin, unmarked, hiding the weapons underneath.

  Behind him, someone was breathing in short, panicked gasps.

  Skuggi turned. Erik stood at the cellar entrance, supported by Astrid. Olga pressed against her mother's side. All three of them stared at Skuggi with expressions that held equal parts relief and horror.

  They'd seen everything. The bone blades are extending. The blood. The way he'd killed the hobgoblin with weapons grown from his own body.

  "What are you?" Erik whispered.

  Skuggi looked down at his hands. At the hobgoblin's corpse. At the blood covering him… his and the creature's mixed together.

  "I don't know," he said. His voice came out rough. "But we need to go. The undead are still heading for the settlement. We're out of time."

  He walked to the hobgoblin's body. Pulled the sword free from its grip. The blade was good quality. Better than anything in the settlement. He'd need it if he was going to fight through forty undead goblins.

  Astrid found her voice first. "That... those blades..."

  "Are part of what they made me," Skuggi met her eyes. "I'm not human. You should have known that by now. We can discuss what that means later. Right now, we run."

  He led them out of the ruined village. Back toward where the settlement would be fighting for survival. Where people who'd taught him what connection meant were facing an army of the dead.

  His wrists still throbbed. The phantom pain of bone moving through flesh. A reminder of what he was. What he could do.

  What it cost him every time he used the weapons the alchemists had built into his body.

  But if it kept people alive, if it stopped the undead, if it bought time…

  Then he'd pay that cost. As many times as necessary.

  One excruciating transformation at a time.

  “???????? ??? ???????... ?????? ???? ?? ???????? ?? ?????? ?? ??? ?? ?????????...”

  “Monsters are mirrors... showing only the darkness we refuse to see in ourselves...”

  How was it??