Page 5 of Ravaged By the Reaper

AMARA

Something inside the station rips open—not a tremor, not a blast, but a full-body rupture. The kind that grabs your spine and tries to pull it out through your teeth.

Metal shrieks. The walls tremble like they’re about to give birth to a black hole. My back arches in reflex. Pain howls through every raw nerve ending. But I don’t scream. I grit my teeth and slice—blade in one trembling hand, the stolen knife still slick with Malem’s blood.

The restraints snap. My wrist jerks free, then the next, and then I’m rolling off the table like a drunk at last call—except there’s no floor beneath me. Just light and pain and ringing ears and that thing lying beside me.

Its twitching slows.

I glance over. The octo-bastard that’s been feeding on my brain—its limbs shudder and curl inward, its pale underbelly blooming with cracks. A hiss escapes its translucent sack of a body, and thick, black fluid burbles out from somewhere beneath the skin.

My stomach flips. My hand slaps over my mouth before I can vomit, but the burn of bile claws up anyway.

That goo—whatever’s in it—smells like battery acid and corpse flowers. It splatters over my calves, leaving a slick warmth behind. My legs are trembling, bruised from the straps. My hair’s stuck to my face with blood, sweat, and gods know what else. But I’m free.

Barely.

I push myself up on one knee, gasping. Vision’s swimming. My head’s ringing like a cracked bell. My whole body feels like someone’s been playing my organs like a percussion instrument for hours.

Still.

I stand.

Not because it’s easy—but because it’s me. Amara fucking Destrier. I didn’t spend my life dancing for princes and dictators just to die here in a concrete coffin.

The lights flicker. Red pulses roll down the corridor. Some automated alarm squawks overhead in a language I don’t understand, filtered through grainy speakers like a voice coming through a storm. But the meaning is obvious: Evacuate. Breach. Breach.

Something’s happening. Something big.

I stagger to the locker across the room—clawing it open, fingers slippery with sweat. There’s a tray of instruments. Surgical. Brutal.

But at the edge—sweet stars above—is a plasma blade.

I grab it. It hums in my hand. Faint blue glow licking the air. It’s a cheap model, not military-grade, but good enough to cut through flesh and weak armor. Better than teeth and willpower, which is all I’ve had up till now.

I test the grip. Light, a little off-balance for my fingers, but it’ll do.

I limp to the door. It’s already half-open—jammed from the explosion. Heat licks at the corridor beyond, smoke twisting like spirits over fresh graves.

I expect guards. Drones. Grolgath storming down the hall ready to drag me back to the table and slap another bug on my face.

I get none of that.

Instead—I get horror.

The hallway’s… wrong.

The walls are splashed with red. Not just blood. Chunks. Strips of uniforms. One of those mask-faced guards I remember from earlier is slumped half into a wall recess—his helmet caved in, face a ruined smear of wet bone and meat. His weapon’s still clutched in one hand, fingers stiff with death.

Another lays curled near the far corner. His torso is open—just open, like someone ripped his armor and chestplate off in one go and left the rest for decoration. His eyes are wide. Mouth agape. No breath.

The lights keep stuttering. Between flickers, the corridor flashes like a strobe-lit crime scene. My feet splash through something thick and warm. It sticks to my calves. I don’t look down.

I keep moving.

The air is different now. Heavy.

Not just with smoke. Not just with blood.

With presence.

Something’s here.

Something that makes the creature Malem used look like a housepet.

I freeze.

Down the corridor, in the shadows between flickers, I swear I see movement. Broad shoulders. A shape draped in gore. Not running. Not frantic.

Hunting.

I take a step back. My foot slips in a puddle—I catch myself on the wall, heart hammering so loud I swear it echoes.

Whatever’s tearing through this place isn’t Coalition.

And it sure as stars isn’t here to talk.

The station shudders again. This time, closer. More precise. Targeted.

I grip the plasma blade tighter and press my back to the wall, trying to steady my breathing, trying not to puke from the cocktail of pain and terror and whatever the void that thing was doing to my memories.

I whisper to myself, a mantra through clenched teeth:

“Don’t freeze. Don’t fold. Don’t fail.”

And then, low and muffled through the distant hull, I hear a voice.

Not words. Just a sound.

A roar.

My feet drag through gore.

It’s not blood—it’s chunks. Ropes of intestine. Melted armor. Bits of what used to be Grolgath stormtroopers are splattered across the corridor like a butcher’s mistake.

The station’s inner sanctum is no longer a prison. It’s a massacre.

Every few feet, there’s a corpse. Some are still twitching—severed limbs spasming like they haven’t figured out they’re dead yet. One soldier lies slumped against the wall, his midsection missing, eyes blinking at nothing. The reek of burnt flesh claws its way into my throat and won't let go.

I gag. Spit blood and bile. Wipe my mouth on the back of a trembling wrist and keep moving.

I don’t want to see more, but the strobe emergency lights won’t stop blinking.

They carve the hallway into alternating flashes of red and shadow.

Every blink reveals something new and awful.

There’s a torso cleaved clean from hip to shoulder.

One man—if you can still call him that—is melted to the bulkhead.

His armor has fused to his ribs, his skull half-slid off his neck.

This isn’t the work of explosives. Or blasters. Or even disciplined soldiers.

This is something else.

Something feral.

I press myself flat to the wall, trying not to breathe too loud, trying not to draw attention from whatever did this. My hand tightens around the plasma blade, slick with sweat. I doubt it’ll do much, but the illusion of control is better than none.

That’s when I hear it.

A low growl.

At first I think it’s structural damage—groaning metal or ventilation pipes under pressure.

But then it rises.

From deep within the station’s bowels, a roar bubbles up. Not human. Not Grolgath. It's raw and ancient—a battle-cry dragged straight from the abyss.

It chills me to the bone.

And then... laughter.

Not the kind you hear in bar fights or among cruel guards. This is glee. Blood-slicked and sharp. Someone is enjoying this.

I inch forward, each step deafening in my own ears. The hallway splits ahead, opening into one of the inner processing hubs. I peek around the edge—heart thudding, mouth dry.

And I see him.

Not see. Behold.

He’s not a man. He’s a monolith. Towering.

Bone-spurred. His back is to me at first, a silhouette etched in smoke and backlit by burning bulkheads.

He’s dripping—not with water, not with sweat.

With blood. Spattered across his shoulders, streaked across his back, clotting around the jagged white protrusions of bone that thrust from his skin like weapons grown instead of forged.

He moves like no creature I’ve ever seen. Not rigid like a soldier. Not reckless like a berserker.

He flows.

He spins Bloodfont—a hooked scythe on a chain—in a wide arc, and the weapon sings. Its curve slices clean through a fleeing Coalition soldier. The man doesn’t fall. He simply… splits.

Haktron doesn’t even watch him drop.

His laughter bounces off the walls, echoing around me. Deep. Savage. Like he’s cracking apart from joy.

Then he lunges—fast as gravity. Grabs another by the throat, lifts him into the air. The soldier fires blindly, plasma bolts ricocheting off bone armor and obsidian skin. Useless.

Snap.

His hand closes, and the Grolgath’s head lolls, neck broken like dry twigs.

Another guard charges. Foolish.

Haktron’s scythe catches the man in the gut, yanks, and hurls him into the wall with a wet crack. Blood spatters in a sunburst behind him.

I’m frozen.

Heart in my throat. Breath locked behind clenched teeth.

I know this isn’t real. It can’t be.

He moved unlike any mortal, his laughter echoed with a savage joy, and he fought with the ferocity of a resurrected deity. Yet, I saw him clearly.

And something deep inside me—a place no Companion training ever touched—recognizes him.

I should be afraid. Terrified. I should run.

But I can’t move.

My knees are trembling, not from fear—but something else. Something like awe. Like some ancient part of me understands that whatever I’m looking at… was never meant to be seen.

He hasn’t seen me yet.

I hope he doesn’t.

I hope he does.

What is this feeling?

Is he a hallucination? A side effect of the creature? A last cruel trick of a mind unraveling?

Is this my rescuer?

Or a new nightmare just beginning?

His eyes find mine.

It’s not a glance.

It’s a collision.

Everything around me—screaming alarms, flickering lights, the acrid bite of plasma residue in the air—falls away like ash in a firestorm. I forget I’m bleeding. Forget the weight of the blade in my hand. Forget I’ve been tortured, violated, broken down.

He sees me.

And for a second, he stops.

His shoulders stiffen. His mouth curls into something I don’t understand. There’s recognition in his eyes, but I’ve never seen this beast before in my life. Not with my eyes.

But inside me? Deep down? Something knows.

I don’t hesitate.

I run.

Blood squelches beneath my boots as I throw myself down the corridor, angling hard left. There’s a Grolgath stumbling out of an auxiliary doorway—gun raised, eyes wild. I don’t stop to think. I don’t offer warning.

I snatch the power blade from a corpse at my feet, whirl with the momentum of my sprint—and carve a jagged line across the soldier’s midsection.

He chokes. Drops. His weapon clatters against the metal.

I don’t watch him fall. My eyes are on the Reaper.

He’s moving now—toward me. Not at me. Not against me.

With me.

Coalition reinforcements pour into the corridor from the south wing. Five. No—seven. They’re barking commands I can’t hear over the rush of blood in my ears. One lifts a high-grade scatterbeam. The hallway lights up with arcs of yellow fire.

I dive into a slide, roll to my knees, and slash. My blade sears through the ankle of the nearest attacker—he shrieks as he topples.

Then he’s there.

The Reaper crashes into the front line like a demon unleashed. His chain whip lashes through two at once, slicing them open like fruit. He lifts the weighted end and smashes it into a third soldier’s head—helmet and skull folding inward with a sickening crunch.

We fall into rhythm.

I duck beneath a flailing arm, pivot on one heel, and thrust upward—my blade finds ribs. He spins to my right, deflecting a blast meant for my head with his forearm. Smoke hisses where the shot landed, but he doesn’t flinch.

It’s like we’ve done this before.

We haven’t.

I don’t know this man.

But my body does.

Every movement we make is mirrored, measured. Like we’re halves of the same whole—striking, blocking, twisting in tandem. My pulse thrums to a new beat, synced with his footfalls.

His laughter comes again, but softer now. Not mockery. Not madness.

Joy.

A savage kind of joy that lights his red eyes like stars going supernova.

I catch him watching me between strikes. Watching the way I move. The way I kill.

He likes it.

I should be disturbed.

I’m not.

Two more soldiers rush in from the west. I leap sideways, blade catching one across the thigh—his scream turns to a gurgle as the Reaper’s hook impales his chest from behind.

Blood spatters across my cheek. I don’t wipe it off.

I just keep going.

The corridor becomes a war dance.

His scythe slashes, pulls, tangles. My blade flicks, stabs, sears. I use the walls, the floor, even the low ceilings—every inch of this station becomes a weapon in my hands.

I don’t ask who he is.

I don’t need to.

He’s not a hallucination. Not a dream. He’s real.

And whatever he is—monster, savior, madman—I know, with bone-deep certainty, that we are meant to be moving together like this.

Drawn by gravity older than stars.

Every time our eyes meet, the heat between us tightens.

Not lust. Not yet.

Something more primal.

Recognition.

And I don’t have time to wonder what that means because the fight isn’t over yet. Not even close.