The Grave Mind pulsed.
The mountain of flesh breathed — slow, wet, rhythmic. Where Vexxa and Kur-Bai'el had stood moments ago, there was only a smooth, healed surface. The Hive had swallowed them. No screams. No struggle. Just... gone.
Katzuki sat on a broken pillar, his leg bent at a wrong angle. His arms were normal — for now. He stared at the Hive, then at his leg, then at the others.
"So," he said. "That happened."
Stella stood with her arms crossed, her eyes fixed on the spot where Kur-Bai'el had vanished. "We're going in after them."
"Are we?" Katzuki asked.
She turned. "What?"
"I'm just asking. Are we really going in after them? Because that thing just ate two of the most powerful people we had. And it didn't even chew."
Captain Spirit leaned against a tree, his lightning dimmed. "He has a point."
Stella glared at him. "You too?"
"I'm not saying we don't help them. I'm saying we should think about how." He looked at the Hive. "Rushing in got them eaten. Maybe we need a plan."
Katzuki raised his hand. "I have a plan."
Atlas, who had been silent, finally spoke. "What?"
"We leave."
Silence.
Katzuki shrugged. "What? We pack up, go home, pretend this never happened. The Grave Mind wakes up, eats the world, but we're on a beach somewhere. Maybe Mars. I hear Mars is nice."
Stella: "You said Mars doesn't have air."
"I'll bring air. Point is — we don't have to die here."
Atlas stared at him. "Your best friend just got swallowed."
"Kur-Bai'el is not my best friend. He's my... complicated acquaintance." Katzuki winced as his leg twitched — bone shifting, muscle knitting. "Also, he knew the risks. We all did."
Captain Spirit nodded slowly. "He's not wrong."
Atlas: "Stop agreeing with him!"
"I'm just saying — before all this, I was fighting muggers. Now I'm fighting a god that eats dimensions. There's a gap there."
Katzuki pointed at Spirit. "See? He gets it."
Stella paced. "We can't just leave them."
"Why not?" Katzuki asked. "They'd leave us."
"Would they?"
He paused. His leg twitched again — healing slower than it should. He was hungry. Too hungry.
"...No. Probably not. Kur-Bai'el would come back for me. Stupidly. Nobly. He'd get himself killed again."
He looked at the Hive.
"That's what makes him an idiot. And that's why I'm still sitting here instead of running."
His leg snapped back into place.
Not a clean heal — a forced one. Bone grinding against bone, muscle tearing and re-knitting. Katzuki groaned, sweat dripping down his face.
"Give me a minute," he said. "I need to eat something."
Atlas: "There's nothing here to eat."
Katzuki looked at the dead demons scattered across the battlefield. At the fallen masked warriors.
"Don't look at me like that."
Stella: "We're not looking at you like anything."
"You're judging me. I can feel it."
Captain Spirit: "We're not judging you."
Katzuki stood — limping, wobbling. "I have to. My leg won't heal without biomass. I'm starving."
He walked to a demon corpse. Knelt. His hand melted into the flesh — tendrils of red and black sinking into the dead tissue, absorbing, consuming.
The others watched in silence.
When he stood, his leg was straight. His eyes were brighter. His arms — still normal — flexed with renewed strength.
"Okay," he said. "Now I'm ready."
Atlas: "That was disgusting."
"You're welcome."
They stood at the edge of the Hive, staring at the pulsing wall of flesh where Vexxa and Kur-Bai'el had disappeared.
"So," Katzuki said. "What's the plan?"
Stella: "We go in. We find them. We kill the Grave Mind."
"That's not a plan. That's a wish list."
Captain Spirit: "He's right. We need something smarter."
Katzuki raised his hand. "I have another idea."
Atlas: "If you say 'leave' again—"
"I wasn't going to say leave." He paused. "I was going to say wait."
"Wait for what?"
Katzuki pointed at the Hive. "For it to digest them. If Kur-Bai'el and Vexxa are still alive in there, they'll fight their way out. They're too stubborn to die."
Stella: "And if they don't?"
"Then we go in. But we go in prepared. Not charging blind like idiots."
Captain Spirit nodded. "That's... actually reasonable."
Katzuki grinned. "I have my moments."
Atlas stared at the Hive. At the pulsing flesh. At the place where his brother had vanished.
"How long do we wait?"
Katzuki looked at the sky — at the sickly sun, at the churning clouds.
"A few hours. Maybe a day. If they're not out by then..."
He cracked his knuckles.
"Then we become the monsters."
Stella sat on a rock, her arms wrapped around her knees. The bravado was gone. She looked small — smaller than Atlas had ever seen her.
"He's your brother," she said quietly.
Atlas sat beside her. "Yeah."
"You just found out. And now he's gone."
He was silent for a long moment.
"I've lost everyone. My mother. My father. My old life." He looked at the Hive. "I'm not losing him too."
She put her hand on his.
"Then we go in. Together."
"Together."
Katzuki sat apart from the others, his back against a tree. His arms had shifted — not into blades, but into something else. Claws. Long, curved, made of hardened biomass. He scraped them against each other, sharpening.
Captain Spirit sat beside him.
"You're not as selfish as you pretend to be."
Katzuki didn't look up. "I'm exactly as selfish as I pretend to be."
"No. You're not."
Katzuki's claws stopped moving.
"Kur-Bai'el saved my life," he said quietly. "A long time ago. In a place worse than this. He didn't have to. I was nobody. A monster. But he looked at me — really looked — and said, 'So am I.'"
He looked at the Hive.
"He's the only person who ever saw me and didn't run."
His claws shifted back into hands.
"So yeah. I'm selfish. But I'm loyal."
---
The hours passed.
The sun crawled across the bruised sky. The Hive pulsed. The Grave Mind dreamed.
And then — the wall of flesh cracked.
Atlas stood. Stella stood. Katzuki's arms shifted into blades. Captain Spirit's hands crackled with lightning.
From the crack, a hand emerged.
Then another.
Then Vexxa pulled herself out — covered in void-blood, her fists still smoking, her eyes wild.
Behind her, Kur-Bai'el crawled free — his blade dragging, his mask cracked, but alive.
Vexxa collapsed to her knees. Looked at the group.
"That thing," she said, "has a lot of stomachs."
Katzuki grinned.
"Told you. Too stubborn to die."
---
TO BE CONTINUE