The bridge here was shaped like a ribcage.

Not carved stone — real bone. Pale arches curved overhead, slick with condensation, each pulse of the meat-veins running through them squeezing out a slow drizzle that pattered onto the deck. The walls were too close, too alive, and every breath came with the stink of rot clinging to wet marrow.

Victor stood in the centre of the span, boots planted in a widening pool of his own blood. His claws dripped crimson too, but it wasn't all his.

The thing in front of him… wept.

It was a giant mass of muscle, hunched over like it had been caged for years, its frame twisted into something that could only walk in pain. Hooves slammed the stone with each step, horns curling above its ears like scythes waiting to be swung. A lion's mane knotted into the back of a wolf's snout, every breath steaming in the cold. But it was the face that made Victor's stomach turn.

A child's face.

Pale. Soft. Eyes too wide and too wet, brimming with tears that streaked the cheeks before dripping onto the beast's chest. The tiny mouth quivered when it spoke, the words breaking apart between sobs.

"D… daddy. Don't… hurt me…"

It blinked at him like it expected him to stop. Like it knew he wouldn't.

Victor's grip tightened on his claws until the tips bit into his palms. Belphegor hadn't just built this thing to kill him — he'd built it to hesitate him.

Behind him, Max was still slumped against the wall, unmoving except for the slow, ragged drag of breath. Victor didn't look back. He couldn't afford to.

The puppet sniffled, tilting its small head on that massive body. It took a step forward — and lunged.

Victor moved on instinct, claws flashing, raking deep across the beast's shoulder. It didn't scream. It whimpered, like a child startled in the dark, even as it swung a hoofed leg toward his ribs. The blow sent pain lancing through his side, warm blood spilling fresh into his boot.

He pushed through it, blocking the narrow path back to Max. The puppet's massive hands swiped for his throat. Victor caught them, claws digging deep into the thick wrists until he felt the tendons grind.

It stared at him the whole time, tears running unchecked, voice cracking. "Why… why, daddy?"

The words stuck under his ribs like a splinter. He shoved it back anyway, claws scoring its chest. The bone arches overhead groaned with the impact as its bulk slammed into them, wet dust raining down in greasy flakes.

The meat-veins underfoot pulsed harder, trying to throw him off balance. The puppet swayed with that pulse, almost in rhythm — like the bridge itself was helping it.

Victor ignored the pull. He fought his own tempo. His own way.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Max watching. Not just the fight — watching him. It was a look Victor hadn't seen in years. Something between awe and something heavier, older. The kind of thing you only give someone you've already lost once.

Victor's chest tightened. The puppet shifted, head tilting again like it was listening to a lullaby only it could hear. Then it whispered, soft as a knife between the ribs: "Don't leave me… again."

Victor lunged, claws first. The thing could speak in a child's voice all it wanted — it wasn't getting past him. Not to Max.

***

The world didn't hold still.

Mist warped into walls, walls into stone, stone into flesh. Every breath dragged him through another place, another time. The cold at his back was not stone but skin — clammy, pulsing faintly, like it had veins running through it. He closed his eyes, and the bridge was gone.

The chains were back.

Belphegor's voice in his ear, syrup-sweet, whispering about purpose while the meat-threads wound deeper into his wrists. The taste of copper in his mouth as another soul was burned through him, his power used to wake it just enough for the knife to matter. The smell of it — hot marrow and cooked nerves.

Blink.

Lilith's scent — honey rotting in the sun — while her crawling things slipped under his skin. In the dark, they worked their way up his legs, coiling in his gut until he could feel them writhing with every breath. Their mandibles clicked in his ears as they whispered they were part of him now. That he would never be clean again.

Blink.

Orobas's pit. The roar of the crowd, the sand under his teeth. The bodies they threw at him weren't fighters — just broken men, women, children, told to kill him or die. They always died.

Blink.

And the worst — the dream. Moloch's dream. That perfect, suffocating lie where Liz was safe, they were winning, and none of it had happened. It had taken him longer than he liked to realise it wasn't real. By the time he tore himself out, it had already hollowed him.

Maybe he never left it.

Is this real?

The thought lodged in his chest like a splinter.

A sound cut through the haze. Small. Fragile.

"D… daddy. Don't… hurt me…"

It hit him harder than a whip.

Liz.

His eyes snapped open.

The bridge was still here — shuddering under some immense strain — but now it held its shape. The mist had weight. The cold was real. The voice came from a thing that should not exist: a hulking amalgam of horn and mane, hooves scraping stone, a wolf's snout curling above a child's face too small for its shoulders. The tears running down its cheeks were warm enough to steam in the cold.

It blinked at him like it knew him. Like it wanted something.

And then he saw past it.

Victor.

Bleeding from the ribs, horn cracked, claws dark with blood that wasn't all his. Half-shifted into Chimera, Victor's bulk was the only thing between the puppet and Max. Every muscle in him was wound to breaking. Every move was made without a glance back, but Max knew — he knew — who he was fighting for.

The beast lunged. Victor met it head-on, shoulder slamming into its chest, claws tearing through the mane. The thing's child-mouth sobbed, "Don't leave me… again." Victor's only answer was a roar, teeth bared, driving it back with a savage kick.

Max's breath caught.

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For five years, no one had stood for him. No one had shielded him from the next blow, the next indignity. He had been an object, a resource to be spent, a thing to be used until it broke. Even Liz — God, Liz — he'd only been able to hold in the dream, and even that had been stolen from him.

But here was Victor. Vic— his oldest friend. Bleeding for him without hesitation. Standing in the path because that was what Victor did.

Max felt it then — not Hellfire, not rage. Something smaller, stranger. Something he hadn't carried in years because it had no place in the world he'd been thrown into.

Hope.

It was small. Flickering. But it was there, warming the hollow places Belphegor and the rest had scraped clean.

He'd missed so much. Liz was older now. Dan was here. Victor was here. They'd come for him.

They'd come for him.

And for the first time in five years, he wondered if he might be allowed to come back.

The feeling was almost foreign — a heat in his chest that didn't burn, didn't consume. After so long in the cold, hope felt like fire without pain.

***

The puppet came at him low, hooves hammering the stone hard enough to shake his teeth. Victor shifted to meet it, claws flashing, jaws snapping for the throat — but it twisted at the last moment, ramming a horned shoulder into his ribs. Bone rang. Air left him in a rush.

It was learning.

The wall behind them pulsed like a heartbeat, meat-veins knotting to sling it at new angles. Spring, strike, vanish into the mist — each time faster, closer.

Victor's breathing rasped in his ears. His Chimera form was fraying — the mane patchy, scales peeling back from one shoulder, the poison sting of his tail sluggish. Every muscle burned.

It came again, and this time he was a fraction too slow. A hooked horn ripped across his side, deep enough for heat to flood down his hip. The smell hit him a heartbeat later — his own blood, copper and sharp, cutting through the stench of the bridge.

He staggered a step.

Behind him, Max sucked in a breath.

The sound was sharper than the wound.

Victor's knees almost gave, but then — "Vic—!"

Max's voice.

Not a scream. Not even a plea. Just his name, cut raw in a way Victor hadn't heard in years. It punched through the haze, hit something under the bone.

He straightened. Claws flexed. Tail lashed once, the tip singing with venom again.

He could bleed later. Not now. Not here. Not while Max was behind him.

The puppet lunged. Victor met it with everything. His claws punched into its mane, raking down to the meat beneath. He took the counterhit — a hoof smashing into his thigh — and used the momentum to throw it into the balustrade hard enough to crack stone. The child-face sobbed, "Don't hurt me…" even as it swung again.

Victor didn't hesitate. He ducked under the swing, teeth closing around its wolf-throat, and tore. Hot spray hit his tongue, metallic and wrong, but the beast howled and reeled back.

Every move now was forward. He drove it down, claws hooking tendon, tail stabbing into the meat of its shoulder until the venom frothed in the wound. Against anything human, it would have been enough to drop them screaming. This thing only staggered, foam hissing in the wound, its bulk too wrong, too stubborn to die clean.

The walls pulsed faster, trying to give the puppet an escape, but Victor smashed it into the ground again, stone splitting under the impact.

The child-face blinked up at him through the blood. "Don't… leave…"

Victor's growl rumbled deep. "I'm not leaving him."

He shoved it back, planting himself between the thing and Max like a wall of claws and teeth. His tail coiled, ready to strike again. His breath came in ragged pulls, but his stance didn't break.

I've got to be strong enough. Not for the fight. Not for pride. For Max — the man who pulled him out of worse, the one who never stopped believing he could be more than a weapon.

Not now. Not while Max was here.

***

At first, all he could do was breathe.

Not even that — just drag air into lungs that still felt owned by someone else. His chest hitched with each pull, as if the ribs themselves weren't sure they wanted to hold together.

The stone beneath him was cold, slick. It tilted under him with every tremor of Victor's fight. The sound was distant at first — claws on stone, the bass-thud of hooves — like something happening in another room.

Then the pain found him. The real pain. Not the clean bite of a blade or the sharp crack of a fist. This was the ache of years, of muscles that had learned the shape of chains.

Stay down, some old voice whispered. The same voice that had kept him on his knees in Belphegor's chamber, meat-thread cuffs gnawing at his wrists while the Flame Father spent him on another soul. The same voice that had kept him still when Lilith's crawling things slid under his skin, winding around his bones until they made a home there. The same voice that had told him in Orobas's pit: lie flat, breathe shallow, outlast them.

He pressed a palm to the stone.

No.

He sat up.

The cold air bit his face. His body swayed, as if the act alone had stolen more strength than he had to give.

You'll fall again, the voice said, softer now, almost pitying. Like Moloch in the dream — the perfect, poisoned dream where Liz was safe, where they'd already won, where he'd been happy without knowing it was a cage.

He planted a knee.

The bridge's tremor ran through him like a living pulse. No more kneeling. Not for Belphegor. Not for Moloch. Not for anyone.

He pushed, legs quaking under him. His spine felt like rusted wire being forced straight.

"Up," he told himself. The word scraped out of his throat, dry and cracked, but it was louder than the voice that wanted him down.

And then — he stood.

Barely. The world lurched, the mist leaned in. His knees wanted to fold. But he locked them, teeth gritted, until the wobble stilled.

He thought of Liz — older now, standing in front of him in the mindscape door he'd never thought she'd reach. He thought of Dan's steady hand on his shoulder the day they'd first met. The twins, Chloe and Alyssa, always moving forward. Ying, blade flashing even when she didn't believe she'd walk away.

They'd come for him.

He couldn't fight. Not now. But he could stand. He could say no.

The beast turned, its child-face blinking at the change in him, as if surprised the prey was upright. Victor's shoulder was blood-wet, his claws deep in the thing's mane.

Max bent, snatched up a loose chunk of stone from the bridge, and hurled it. It struck the puppet's temple with a crack, snapping its head sideways.

"Vic!" His voice tore in the cold.

Victor's head turned — just enough. Their eyes met.

Max stood there, shaking, chest heaving, but still upright. And in that one look, they both understood: whatever happened next, Max was done staying down.

***

Max was standing.

Not much else mattered in that moment — not the burn in Victor's lungs, not the deep slash leaking warmth down his side, not the way the bridge buckled under every step of the monster wearing his face's sorrow.

Max.

On his feet.

After five years of being used, broken, caged — after every nightmare they'd both lived through — the man was still here. Still breathing. Still choosing to rise.

Victor's heart slammed once, hard.

He'd watched Max fall so many times. Watched the world strip him bare, watched the light in his eyes thin to a thread, watched him vanish in smoke and lies. And every time, Victor had told himself he'd do more next time. Hit harder. Get there faster.

This was next time.

He let go of the line between man and monster. Bone shuddered in his jaw, pushing forward into a heavier, predatory snout. Horns split at the tips, curling wider, each pulse of blood making them itch to gore. Scales slid across muscle in overlapping plates, ribs flexing wider to hold the mass his chest was becoming. His mane bristled with heat, every strand alive, crackling faintly in the cold. Pain was there — tearing, rethreading him — but it was welcome. Pain meant more muscle. More claw. More teeth. Enough to break what was coming.

The beast lunged for Max.

Victor moved before thought caught up. His muscles screamed, Chimera form straining at the seams — horns splitting longer, mane bristling, his jaw pushing out into something halfway between lion and wolf. His claws carved trenches in the bridge as he tore forward.

The first impact was pure collision — shoulder to chest, a bone-splintering crunch that lifted the puppet clean off its hooves. The child-face wailed, "D-daddy—!" as they hit the stone, but Victor didn't stop.

He drove a knee into its ribs. Heard them break. Felt them break. He didn't care.

The thing's claws raked his back, but pain was just fuel now. He grabbed its mane with both hands and yanked its head down, teeth tearing through fur and flesh until blood filled his mouth. Hot. Coppery. Real.

The puppet bucked, throwing them both against a wall of meat-veins. They writhed under his grip, trying to bind him. He roared — not a sound for language, but for ownership — and his tail whipped free, barbed and heavy, smashing into the thing's spine.

The crack ran through his arms. Through the bridge. Through the mist.

It tried to pull away. He didn't let it. His claws found its belly seam and tore — upward, ripping muscle and vein in a spray of steaming black. The child's face sagged, still sobbing, but the rest of it was nothing but meat now.

He ripped, once, twice — each tear deeper, faster — until the seam split like rotten cloth. He wrenched sideways, tearing a flank free in a spray of steaming black. Then he unmade it entirely, muscle and bone splitting under the pull of his claws until the puppet sagged into nothing but pieces.

The bridge stank of blood and rot. His own breath came ragged, each exhale a low snarl. Chunks of the thing slid off him, vanishing into the mist below.

Only then did he look back.

Max was still upright. Shaking, pale — but upright. Watching him.

Victor dragged himself back toward him, each step slow but certain. His claws dripped, his breath smoked in the cold. He stopped just in front, close enough that Max could see the man still under the beast.

"No one touches you," Victor said, voice rough, almost breaking. "Not while I'm here."

Max's breath hitched. Five years ago, those words would've been a promise. Now, after everything, they were something rarer — proof.

The bridge trembled beneath them. From the mist ahead, something vast shifted — stone cracking, meat-veins tightening like muscle.

Belphegor was smiling.

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