Mia collapsed forward with a gasp that tore the air like wet silk ripping under the strain of truth, her palms slapping the stone hard enough to send a jolt through the cavern.
Her eyes locked onto Victor as he stood with one hand pressed to the side of his skull, fingers coming away crimson and glistening.
The gash Atticus had opened with that flask wept steadily, a dark river tracing the sharp line of his jaw, dripping onto his collar with soft, obscene plinks that sounded almost like applause in the sudden hush.
Victor tilted his head before smirking slightly—that same smug curl of his lips that once made me want to bite them off and spit them back at him with a wink.
"Is that all?" He asked, voice smooth as oiled leather laced with mockery.
Atticus froze in front of him, chest heaving with the effort of violence, the top half of the broken flask still clutched in his white-knuckled fingers. He was trembling, not from fear, but from the aftershock of justice delivered too late.
It was then that I saw it, a single spark—tiny, innocent, a firefly born of flame and mischief. It flickered from the pit behind Victor, dancing through the air like a drunken pixie on its last legs before landing with a kiss on the back of his neck.
For one heartbeat, nothing, just the hush of held breath and the crackle of fire. And then, gods above, Victor's face contorted—not in pain, but pure agony, raw and animalistic, the kind that strips a man down to bone and leaves the soul naked and begging.
It was like watching a demon realize hell's got a return policy, and gods, if I could laugh right now I'd be choking on it.
Victor's skin began to blister almost instantly, bubbling like fat in a skillet over hot coals. And yet, to my utter surprise, no flame touched him. It was almost as if he were being consumed by some kind of—
"Invisible fire," Atticus said, the words clipped, precise, almost reverent. He crouched a little, his expression unreadable, eyes reflecting the blue shimmer that danced across Victor's blistering skin.
"Methanol," he said simply, in that dry academic drawl of his, as if he were reading a recipe from an apothecary's manual. "Wood alcohol. Highly flammable, burns with an almost invisible flame. No color, no smoke, no smell once lit. A lovely little solvent if you don't mind your skin boiling at forty degrees Celsius."
Victor swatted at his shoulders, his chest, his face, dropping to his knees with a thud that rattled my teeth and sent dust spiraling up like dirt from a grave.
"You bottom bitch bookworm!" Victor screamed as he tried to rise to his feet. "I'll peel your fucking skin off then fuck your corpse with your spine you piece of shit, I'll—"
Atticus was already moving, calm, precise, and lethal as a scholar who'd read one too many treatises on vengeance. He scooped up a small boulder from the ground, rough and moss-slick with the weight of judgment before—
Thud! The bolder came smashing across Victor's temple with a crack that was sickening—bone on stone, wet and final, the sound of a skull giving way under the pressure of righteousness.
Victor's neck twisted at an angle that made my stomach lurch even through the poison's grip, drool and blood spilling from his mouth in thick ropes that pooled beneath him like an offering to some dark god of petty revenge.
But the bastard wasn't done, not yet. Surging up with a roar that wasn't human, he began clawing for Atticus's throat, fingers curled like talons.
They collided like two storms in human skin—sweat, fury, and desperation exploding into motion.
Atticus was surprisingly fast for a man of his stature, all lean precision and ruthless efficiency. He moved like a scholar who'd finally found an equation worth bleeding for—sharp elbows, narrow strikes, no wasted motion. His fist caught Victor across the jaw with a sound like cracking ice, and for a fleeting second I thought he had the upper hand.
But Victor absorbed the blow with little more than a grunt. His body barely rocked before he countered—a brutal, unrestrained swing that sent Atticus staggering back into the wall hard enough to make dust rain from the ceiling. The burn scars across Victor's face split as he snarled.
Atticus lunged again, ducking a wild backhand, before slamming his palm into Victor's throat. It worked—barely. Victor coughed, spat blood, then caught Atticus by the collar and slammed him into the floor with a growl that shook the air.
It only took a few seconds for Atticus to stand, setting himself into position despite the bruises, before launching his fist at Victor once more.
For a heartbeat, they were a single tangled silhouette—two men locked in a dance that looked more like murder than combat, fists pounding flesh, blood spattering like punctuation marks in a language only violence could speak.
They locked arms in a brutal clinch, Victor's burned fingers digging into Atticus's forearms like iron claws, Atticus's own grip steady as a vise. The two of them stood nose-to-nose, sweat and blood mingling in the scant inches between them.
"You think that stupid ass trick you pulled makes you clever, huh, you pencil-dicked ink-stain? I'll rip your fucking throat out and use it as a cock-sleeve, you hear me?! I'm—"
Atticus didn't even blink. "Fascinating," he murmured, voice cool as a crypt, "your vocabulary shrinks in direct proportion to the square footage of un-charred skin you have left. Do go on; the data here is priceless."
That did it. In one fluid motion, Victor drove his knee into Atticus's gut with a sound like a hammer striking wet clay, forcing the breath—and maybe a few prayers—out of him in one sharp exhale.
The impact sent him sprawling, glasses skittering across stone like discarded stars. Victor straddled him then, fists raining down in sprays of blood that caught the firelight like rubies flung from a mad king's crown.
"Mia, now!" Atticus shouted, voice raw and ragged, blood bubbling at his lips like foam from a poisoned chalice.
Mia moved—naked, glorious, furious, a Valkyrie forged in betrayal and fire. She snatched a shard of the broken flask, jagged and glinting like a dagger born of betrayal itself, before charging with a scream that wasn't words but pure, unfiltered wrath.
Victor spun too late, the glass sinking deep between his shoulder blades with a wet, meaty shluck that echoed through the cavern like a period at the end of a death sentence.
He screamed—a sound that wasn't human, disbelief and agony braided into one raw, tearing note that clawed at the walls and made the fire pull back in earnest.
Hope flared in my chest then, as wild as the invisible flames still eating him alive, a spark in the dark that tasted like salvation and smelled like copper.
Just then, Victor collapsed to his back, legs kicking feebly like a beetle overturned before trying to shuffle away like a crab with a broken shell.
But Mia was on him in an instant, pouncing with the grace of a panther and the fury of a storm. Her knees pinned against his chest, the shard raised high and trembling in her blood-slick fingers.
Victor's hands shot up, pleading now, voice cracking like ice under the weight of a titan, "Mia—Mia, please—I didn't mean—I'm sorry—I was wrong, I was scared, I—" but she wasn't having it, not one syllable, not one breath.
The shard came down, straight into his chest, again and again and again, each thrust punctuated by a scream—hers, his, the cavern's. Blood sprayed across her breasts, her face, her arms.
"You fucking liar!" she shrieked, "You used me! You poisoned them! You think your sorry means shit when they're foaming at the mouth because of you?!"
Tears poured from Victor's ruined face then, mixing with blood, snot, and the faint sizzle of methanol burns. Eventually, his apologies dissolved into wet, gurgling sobs that sounded almost human, almost pitiable, but Mia didn't stop, couldn't stop, the shard singing through flesh and bone until his chest was nothing but a cratered ruin.
I couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't do anything but watch from my prison of paralysis as the woman I'd teased, fucked, and fought beside became something ancient and terrible—a fury, a maenad, a goddess of vengeance.
Atticus rose slowly then, wiping blood from his mouth with the back of a hand that still shook from his adrenaline, and strolled around the carnage like a professor circling a fascinating specimen dissected on the slab.
His boots crunched over glass and stone, until he bent and picked up the vial that had fallen free in the chaos—the antidote—cradling it like a newborn babe swaddled in hope.
Mia's screams faded into sobs that wracked her whole body, the shard slipping from her fingers to clink against the stone.
Her hands began clawing at the floor now, nails scraping through blood and dust, leaving red crescents in the rock.
Her shoulders heaved with the weight of it all, tears falling in fat, hot drops that hissed where they met the fire-warmed floor and steamed like offerings to forgotten gods.
Atticus moved with purpose, returning to his pack before pulling out a set of glass instruments—beakers, droppers, a tiny burner that he lit with a flick of flint. Then, from his back pocket, he produced a canteen.
Mia froze where she knelt, turning slowly with eyes still streaming, voice trembling like a leaf in a hurricane, "Atticus… what are you doing?"
He didn't look up at first, focused on his work with quiet intensity. "Diluting the antidote," he said finally, calm as a surgeon mid-operation, "one vial won't save twenty men, but mix it with water, reduce the concentration, and administer the product in micro-doses and I believe it should work."
Atticus poured, measured, and heated, his hands steady despite the blood drying on his knuckles.
Mia's eyes went wide then, a flicker of hope cutting through the devastation like a knife through fog. I watched from the floor, paralyzed but alive, my heart doing cartwheels in my chest while my brain sighed in relief like a man finally allowed to piss after a three-day bender.
Atticus, you brilliant bastard, I thought, the words echoing in my skull like a prayer to a god I'd never believed in, you saved us, you absolute legend, you glorious nerd with a flask and a death wish.
It wasn't long before the solution was finished. Atticus corked it with a soft pop, then nodded to Mia with the gravity of a general issuing orders, "Start with the ones still breathing hard, mouth to mouth if you have to, I'll handle the rest."
They moved like a storm and its respective shadow—Mia cradling heads with hands still slick with Victor's blood, tipping liquid between foaming lips that gasped and sputtered back to life; Atticus measuring drops and giving quick administrations.
One by one our crew stirred with coughs, gasps, and curses that filled the cavern like a chorus of the damned clawing their way back from the abyss.
Renly sat up first, lute clutched to his chest like a child's teddy bear, blinking through the haze with eyes that slowly focused on the carnage. Brutus groaned and rolled to his side, spitting up blood and muttering something about "fucking poison" under his breath.
Dregan blinked through the crust of foam in his beard, voice gravelly as he rasped, "What in the nine hells just tried to kill us?"
And then—Freya. Sweet, stubborn, fragile Freya.
She came to with a gasp that sliced the silence clean in half. Her fingers twitched first, curling against the cold stone, then her whole body jolted like a puppet yanked upright by invisible strings.
They saved me for last.
Atticus knelt beside me with the vial in hand, the antidote sliding down my throat cool and bitter. I could feel my senses return in waves—fingers twitching like they'd been asleep for years, toes curling against the stone, tongue loosening like a knot finally cut free.
The second I could speak, I croaked out the words that had been burning in my chest, "Why me last, you sadistic prick, did you want me to suffer the longest or just enjoy the quiet?"
Atticus smirked then, wiping blood from his glasses with the hem of his torn shirt, "Wanted five minutes of silence from that mouth of yours, consider it a gift to humanity and a personal favor to my sanity."
I pouted—cute, dramatic, devastating. "You wound me, Atti, and after I was going to name my firstborn after you, maybe even teach it to read just to spite you."
He snorted, standing with a wince that spoke of bruises blooming under his skin, "Name it Regret, fits better, comes with a built-in warning label."
I pushed myself up on shaky arms then, legs still wobbly, the world tilting slightly before righting itself.
My gaze found Mia where she sat naked still, knees drawn to her chest like a shield against the world. She was staring at the ground like it held answers in the cracks or maybe just the reflection of her own shattered soul.
Her face was blank as a mask carved from grief. I crawled to her—slow, deliberate, ignoring the ache in my joints and the way my muscles screamed like they'd been flayed and stitched back together.
"Mia, hey, you with me, talk to me, love," I said softly, voice stripped of its usual bratty lilt and laced instead with something raw and real.
She didn't answer at first, just sat there like a statue bleeding from the inside out, but then—suddenly, fiercely—she lunged, pulling me into a hug so tight I felt my ribs creak and threaten to snap.
Her body shook against mine like a tree in a storm, tears soaking my shoulder hot and endless, spilling down my skin like rain on parched earth.
"I killed him," she whispered, voice raw and broken, "I killed him, and I'd do it again, I'd do it a thousand times, but gods, I can still feel his blood on my hands. I can still hear him begging, and I hated him but I didn't want to be this. I didn't want to be the one who—" the words dissolved into sobs that wracked her entire frame, fingers clawing at my back like she was drowning and I was the only thing keeping her afloat.
The moment hung there, fragile and heavy, the cavern silent save for the crackle of the fire and the wet sound of her grief.
Just then, that silence was shattered by the scuffle of boots at the entrance. It was Dunny, of all people, bursting back into the cavern like a ghost returned from the grave.
His face was flushed with panic, eyes wide and wild, voice shaky as he gasped, "Guys, we have a problem!"