For a moment in the pitch black, I felt terror clawing its way past whatever zen-like magic Chas had thrown over me. My heart pounded against my ribs as adrenaline coursed through me.
Golden light exploded from the beacon rods, washing over the tavern. Thin beams connected the rods in a perfect triangle, buzzing with a high-pitched squeal I felt in my teeth.
There was Felix right in front of me, rod shoved haphazardly into the splintered floorboards like he'd been planting a flag.
"I didn't drop the Radiance spell," he said, voice tight with confusion. "It dropped itself."
Chas wordlessly strolled to the tavern's actual door—which was lying flat on the floor—and picked it up like it was made of cardboard. The wood groaned as he slammed it haphazardly against the empty door frame, then pulled nails straight out of the twisted hinges with his bare hands. Each nail screamed against the metal as he yanked them free and drove them into the door, securing the makeshift barrier diagonally across the entrance.
What the actual hell kind of grip strength was that? Those were thick iron nails. I'd seen professional builders struggle to even hammer-in nails like that.
A pinprick of light detonated inside our triangle like a flashbang. The shockwave slammed Felix and me flat on our asses, sending glass shards into orbit. My ears rang, and I tasted copper.
The tiny mote of light started expanding into a glowing disc about the size of a quarter, pulsing violently.
"Uh, Chas..." Felix called, his voice climbing an octave. "There might be a problem. It's draining ambient mana too fast and opening too slowly."
"Five seconds earlier, Felix," Chas scolded, crouching to examine the disc of light. His tone carried the weight of a teacher who'd explained this lesson before. "Five seconds earlier and we'd be drinking tea in Rainhaven. Sometimes you don't need to plan every action you take." He sighed, irritation melting into something closer to paternal disappointment.
Felix's face fell like he'd been slapped. "I know. I'm sorry, Master Blackwood."
? Filed that away under 'questions for if we survive.'
Chas groaned and rolled his eyes. "Less apologizing and more portal making. Cassie and I will handle the Glids."
Felix nodded with the grim determination of someone about to lick a light socket on purpose. He slapped his hand on the silver rod and went rigid as if he’d grabbed a live wire. The golden beams intensified, crackling with renewed fury. The disc expanded—still slow, but at least it was moving.
"Ben!" Chas barked. "You're on window duty. Anything comes through, you introduce it to your stick. With extreme prejudice."
I nodded, clutching Winchester like it was my emotional support staff. Which, honestly, it kind of was.
"I'm pulling back my aura to focus on the ‘hitting-things-very-hard’ part of our evening." Chas rolled his shoulders. “Fair warning—you're about to remember what fear tastes like.”
The calming effect vanished as if someone had ripped off a warm blanket. Adrenaline flooded my system, my heart racing, every nerve screaming variations of .
"But hey," Chas added with a grin, "at least now you're properly motivated."
As if to confirm his words, the world outside the tavern glowed in neon pastels, everything bathed in an otherworldly, almost bioluminescent light that made my skin crawl. I darted to the nearest window and peered out through the cracked glass.
My stomach dropped.
Hundreds of them. A tsunami of nightmare fuel, all claws and teeth and glowing markings that looked like a twisted rave.
The creatures had obsidian-black skin that made their glowing markings pop like neon signs. Some bore what looked like jagged blue runes carved deep into their flesh, others violet, others orange. It was a sea of moving colors as grotesque goblin-like things rushed the tavern with a reckless abandon that screamed .
Now I felt it. Genuine fear—the kind that made your bladder want to empty and your legs turn to jelly.
I barely had time to process what I was seeing when they slammed into the tavern's facade like a battering ram made of claws and teeth. The entire building shuddered as they crashed around us, ruthlessly pushing through whatever gap they could find—cracks in the walls, spaces between boards, anywhere their twisted bodies could squeeze.
The building groaned under the assault as Cassie drew two curved swords, their edges glimmering with the same orange metal on Winchester.
Chas just cracked his knuckles.
The sound was louder than it had any right to be. Like snapping bones echoing through their air with the promise of
My white-knuckled grip on Winchester tightened as I stole a glance at our escape route. The portal had grown to dessert-plate size, which was great if we were evacuating pastries, less great for actual humans.
The makeshift door burst from its barricaded position with a crash that made my ears ring. Several shambling Glids tumbled over each other in the sudden momentum, a tangle of limbs and glowing markings. They scrambled to their feet with disturbing, feral grace and opened bear-trap mouths to roar at us—revealing rows of teeth that belonged in a shark's mouth.
Chas threw one punch.
One.
The Glids didn't just die—they detonated. Turned into meat confetti, painting the walls in abstract patterns of black gore. The shockwave from his fist rattled the entire building, causing charred floorboards to lift from the ground.
"Holy fuck," I breathed.
More Glids poured through the enlarged entrance because, apparently, they hadn't received the memo about Chas being a walking extinction event. He spun like a ballet dancer who'd learned his moves in a mosh pit, each movement calculated devastation.
Cass had teleported—there’s no other word for it—across the room. Her blades carved through black flesh as if it was made of butter, sending geysers of ichor fountaining into the air. Then her foot hit a puddle of Glid guts, and she stumbled, grace faltering for half a heartbeat.
Chas caught her arm without looking, pulled her back into balance, and threw another reality-warping punch that made the tavern's foundation complain.
They moved together like they'd choreographed this. As if dancing with death was completely normal.
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The window in front of me detonated in a shower of glass and splintered wood. A Glid came through like a cannonball. I had exactly zero time to appreciate the physics involved before glass shards turned my face into a pincushion.
Warm blood trickled down my cheek. No time to care.
I swung Winchester like I was going for a home run. My staff connected with a loud pop that made me feel like I had just stuck my hand in a light socket.
The Glid's upper half simply... wasn't there anymore. Just gone, replaced by a fine mist and some philosophical questions about conservation of mass. Its lower half flew backward, taking out another Glid like I was bowling.
Black ichor drenched me head to toe. It smelled like someone had marinated a fish in a gym sock, then left it in the sun.
"I have a magic staff!" I screamed, high on adrenaline and probably some kind of Glid blood poisoning. “This is the best worst day ever!”
"That's the spirit, kid!" Chas's approval came between the sounds of his fists making Glids reconsider their life choices. Behind him, Cass's swords played a wet symphony of and .
Felix looked like he was being slowly electrocuted, which, given the feeling of Winchester doing magical, was probably accurate. Sweat had turned his shirt transparent, muscles standing out in sharp relief as he wrestled with forces that apparently didn't want to be portal-shaped.
We were holding our ground... for now.
Another Glid charged through the window, launching itself through the air with claws extended like some nightmare version of a flying squirrel.
Slide left. Plant feet. Swing for the fences.
CRACK!
Another shower of gore. Another jolt of electricity that made me wonder if my heart was supposed to skip that many beats. My vision went fuzzy around the edges, and I stumbled, going down hard among the glass shards.
"Ow," I said to the floor. "Ow ow ow ow."
I scrambled upright, ignoring the warm wetness spreading across my back where glass had made friends with my skin. My feet found familiar positions, muscle memory kicking in from years of my Aapo making me practice 'just in case you need to fight for real, lah.'
Turned out Cantonese grandmothers knew things.
I shifted into proper Taiji Gun stance, spinning Winchester in a move that would've made my grandmother proud.
A Glid charged. I flowed low, bringing the orb down on its skull with textbook precision.
A tiny spark, and a weak flash. The Glid staggered but didn't explode.
"Oh, come on!" I protested. "I'm doing everything right!"
The world tilted. My legs decided they were more suggestions than actual limbs. I was falling backward, watching the ceiling spin lazy circles above me.
The Glid leaped forward, landing with its full weight straddling my chest, and snarled down at me with sickly pastel blue eyes and a disgusting tongue that looked three sizes too big for its mouth.
Feeling started returning to my arms and legs in painful tingles, but I was pinned under the creature's weight. A spike of panic shot through me as those nightmare eyes locked onto mine.
Then its head wasn't attached anymore.
Cass stood over me, sword still humming from the speed of her strike. I swear I saw a vapor cone trailing behind the blade, like she'd broken some kind of speed barrier that swords weren't supposed to break.
The headless body collapsed, drenching me in a fresh wave of hot sewage-scented gore.
"Your timing," I gasped, spitting out something I desperately hoped wasn't Glid brain.
"Don't worry, curtain guy, I've got—"
The portal inhaled. Not pulsed like it had been doing, but actually drew everything—including chunks of the tavern—towards it like some kind of black hole.
The force launched me backward in an uncontrolled tumble. I slammed chest-first onto the floor and slid several meters across the broken boards, splinters digging into my palms and knees. Winchester skittered along beside me, and I used my numb hands to shield my face from the debris tornado swirling around us. When the pull finally faded, the tavern groaned with a deep, ominous crack that sounded like the building's spine breaking.
"Chas!" Felix's voice cracked with desperation. "I can't—it's not—we're somehow too far away! That's not even supposed to be possible!"
The portal—now about serving-plate sized—flickered like a dying lightbulb and started shrinking.
I pushed myself up, wiping blood and various Glid fluids from my eyes, just in time to see Chas freeze mid-punch. Real concern flickered across his face—the kind that made me feel like we were fucked if that portal closed.
My heart leaped into my throat as two Glids slammed into him from behind, their elongated claws sinking deep into his flesh.
Then, golden light erupted from Chas like a supernova.
His dark skin exploded into molten gold runes that traced patterns across every inch of exposed flesh, and everything seemed to... stop. Not slow down—actually stop. I couldn't look away, couldn't blink, couldn't even breathe. It was like being wrapped in the warmest blanket imaginable while floating in honey.
The Glids touching him didn't die. They just... weren't. One moment they existed; the next, they were gray mist, dispersing like vampires in morning light.
Chas turned toward the failing portal with the casual confidence of someone who'd just remembered he was a god.
When his eyes met mine, my brain tried to fold itself into origami.
Liquid light poured down his cheeks like golden tears. His face had become living artwork—kintsugi made flesh, golden cracks spreading across his features in patterns that hurt to perceive but were too beautiful to look away from.
He grinned, and in that moment I saw it. Something that Light implicitly. Something that had been having drinks with Light since before humans figured out fire. It looked at me and whispered,
Before I could process what I was seeing, Chas reached out and grabbed the edges of the failing portal with his bare hands. Multicolored sparks flew like welding debris as everything rumbled. Wisps of golden smoke rose from his arms as he threw back his head and roared with pure defiance—a sound that shook dust from the rafters.
A shockwave of raw force exploded outward from the portal as he physically tore it open with a sound like reality itself ripping apart. I felt it in my bones, in my teeth, in the marrow of my spine.
Time snapped back like a rubber band to the face. I sat in what was generously still called a tavern, staring at Chas, wreathed in power that made him look like a miniature sun. He stood before a silver disc of light tall enough to walk through, arms spread wide like he was holding the universe together through pure stubborn will.
Which, honestly, he might have been.
"Move!
Halfway to Chas, I remembered Winchester and spun on my heel, only to see that the surrounding tavern was mostly gone, like someone had detonated a bomb. Splintered beams jutted from the floor at impossible angles, and a fresh wave of Glids was barreling toward us down a cobblestone path that led deeper into the city, their glowing markings creating a nauseating light show in the darkness.
The command was still echoing in my skull like a fire alarm, so I scooped Winchester up as fast as my still-tingling hands would allow and sprinted on legs that felt like they belonged to someone else.
Felix scrambled to his feet and broke into a dead run, his face pale with exhaustion. Cassie grabbed my arm, her grip strong enough to leave bruises, and helped keep me upright as we covered the distance to Chas.
I reached him just as Felix and Cassie threw themselves towards the portal without hesitation.
“See you on the other side!” Cassie called with a fierce grin, giving me a quick salute before diving through the silver disc like it was a horizontal swimming pool.
I took a step forward, then turned back to look at Chas—and suddenly I wasn't seeing a person anymore. He was a force made flesh, a living constellation. His body had become a tapestry of blazing runes that pulsed in rhythm with something vast and eternal. Golden light didn't just drip from him—it poured like molten metal, pooling on the floorboards and hissing where it touched.
When I met his gaze, I wasn't just looking into his eyes anymore. I was staring into something far larger, something that filled the space between stars. And it was staring back at me, recognizing something in me. Recognizing things in me.
Images slammed into my mind like freight trains.
Abstract concepts screamed themselves at me through Chas's presence, bypassing thought and burning themselves directly into my soul:
The mountain erodes, the tide recedes, but I still stand.
I am the roar in the dark. The first step into the unknown. The 'yes' when the world screams 'no.'
Chas wasn't just using magic…he Courage. Not the idea of it, but the living, breathing essence. An unshakable, universe-bending force that grabbed reality by the throat and made it bend. I knew it both intellectually and in my bones, in the part of me that remembered reading fantasy novels as a kid and watching superheroes rise against impossible odds. Even in the tiny, terrifying moment of asking someone out for the first time—that flutter of fear conquered by determination.
I recognized the rune blazing in Chas's eyes like an old friend I'd forgotten I had.
Something in my mind clicked with an almost audible snap. Of course it was Courage. Light and Courage went together like—well, like grabbing a flashlight to investigate strange noises, or flipping on every light in the house after watching a horror movie.
Chas seemed to notice and grinned, fierce and wild, his golden cracks spreading like lightning across his features.
And then, with no warning whatsoever—he kicked me square in the chest and sent me tumbling through the portal.
It hurt like hell.