Steel screamed.

  Garth and Kyle had been locked together for long enough that the fight stopped feeling like a clash and started feeling like a test—a contest of endurance, control, and cruelty. Kyle fought like he was enjoying himself. Garth fought like he couldn’t afford to.

  Their weapons separated and met again in rapid bursts—impact, sparks, recoil—each exchange forcing the other to adjust, to give ground, to reveal something.

  Around them the hillside battle continued in waves, but in that narrow space between the two of them everything else felt muffled. Like the world was holding its breath just to watch.

  Then the ground gave a little under Mino’s next landing.

  Not enough to collapse the hill.

  Enough to throw her weight wrong.

  She skidded, arms flaring wide for balance, boots scraping rock. She didn’t get hit. She didn’t even fall.

  But Alisa—perched on her back—lost purchase.

  Her small body slipped, paws scrambling, and then she was tumbling off the ledge.

  Garth sensed it before he saw it.

  His head snapped.

  His whole focus shifted.

  And Kyle smiled.

  Garth didn’t think.

  He broke away from the lock and launched himself toward the edge.

  Mino lunged too, twisting, reaching—

  But bodies surged between her and the drop. Astrebounds rushed in, smelling opportunity, trying to cut her off from the weakest piece on the field.

  “No!” Mino snarled, but she couldn’t reach.

  Garth fell.

  Not uncontrolled—fast. Like he’d thrown himself off a roof to catch someone who couldn’t fly.

  As he dropped, he fired a beam of light behind him without even looking.

  It struck Kyle full in the face.

  Kyle’s grin shattered.

  The light wasn’t just bright—it was clean. It seared vision. It punished eyes. It forced pain where arrogance lived.

  Kyle screamed and staggered back, hands clutching his face. Blood streamed between his fingers. His weapon dipped. His footing failed.

  He hit the ground hard, rolling, still howling.

  Garth didn’t watch him.

  Garth kept falling.

  Alisa was a blur below—small, helpless, a heartbeat away from impact.

  Garth hit the ground like a meteor and caught her inches above the stone.

  His knees buckled with the force. His arm snapped taut around her small body. Dust kicked up around them, and for one horrible heartbeat it looked like both of them might break.

  But Garth held.

  Alisa whimpered once, then pressed into his chest.

  Garth set her down beside him, one hand still on her back as if letting go might make her vanish.

  The fight raged around them.

  Taco’s wind screamed overhead. Zacheas blurred through bodies. Mino slammed into the enemies blocking her like a battering ram, furious.

  A slash of light came toward Alisa—an attack aimed low, aimed cruel, aimed easy.

  Garth saw it.

  He didn’t raise a barrier.

  He didn’t block.

  He grabbed Alisa by the shoulder and threw her.

  Alisa yelped as she went airborne, tumbling through dust and sunlight like a tossed doll.

  The slash carved through the space where she’d been.

  Garth launched after her a breath later, rising into the air with a burst of power, catching her mid-flight with one arm while his other hand carved down two enemies that tried to intercept him.

  He landed with Alisa against him, and she immediately scrambled onto his back like she’d been born there.

  Garth didn’t soften. But his voice did—just barely.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  Alisa licked his cheek hard enough to sting.

  Garth exhaled once, then looked to Mino, who was breathing hard, face smeared with dirt and sweat.

  “The sword?” he demanded.

  Mino’s chest rose and fell like she’d been sprinting for her life—because she had.

  “In safe hands,” she forced out, exhausted. “Safe.”

  Garth nodded. Relief flickered once in his eyes, then disappeared under the next wave of calculation.

  He scanned the field.

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  Everyone was tired.

  Not “breathing hard” tired—dangerous tired. The kind where a single mistake turns fatal.

  “We retreat,” he said.

  Zacheas turned sharply. “Now?”

  “Now,” Garth repeated.

  They moved as one—cutting a path through the thinning edge of the enemy line. They didn’t run blindly. They ran like predators escaping a trap, killing anything that tried to latch on.

  Behind them, Kyle’s voice rose—ragged, furious, and loud enough to carry.

  “Follow them!” he screamed. “Kill them!”

  The army surged.

  They ran until the hills stopped being hills and started being long broken stretches of scrub and rock.

  Garth cast a barrier behind them—huge, arcing, thick enough that the air itself seemed to bend. It formed like a wall across the path they’d taken, glowing faintly as attacks hammered into it from the other side.

  The barrier held.

  For now.

  They kept going.

  They didn’t stop until their lungs burned and the world started to tilt at the edges.

  When they finally did, it was in the shadow of a shallow ravine with rocks high enough to break sightlines.

  Taco leaned on her shield, sweating. Zacheas sat hard on a stone, eyes still scanning. Mino paced, unable to sit still. Garth stood apart, breathing steady only because he forced it to be.

  Mino finally spoke, voice rough. “What do we do now?”

  Garth’s eyes stayed on the horizon. “First we get home.”

  Mino’s hands clenched. “And then?”

  Garth’s jaw tightened. “Soon we make sure the guardians of the other Sherodren weapons are hidden.”

  Zacheas’ head lifted. “You think they know about more than Shediro.”

  “If they know about Shediro,” Garth said, “they know about the rest.”

  Taco swallowed, fear making her voice small. “That means—”

  “It means the hunt isn’t just for one sword,” Garth finished.

  And in the silence that followed, the truth settled like ash.

  Back at the café, Marten’s screen glowed in the dim.

  He looked even more severe than usual, which was saying something.

  “There’s a report,” Marten said, “of several asteroids coming in a state away.”

  Heroko lounged as if the words were weather.

  “How far is the group from HQ?” Heroko asked.

  Marten tapped keys. “Last call places them twenty minutes out. They should be getting in soon.”

  Heroko’s red eyes narrowed just slightly. “Then it’s probably safe to go get the asteroids.”

  He rose.

  Cassidy, who’d been trying to look useful without being in the way, straightened immediately.

  Heroko paused at the door and looked back at her like she’d been a tool left on the wrong shelf.

  “Come,” he said.

  Cassidy hesitated only a second, then followed.

  Outside, the night air was cold enough to sharpen the world.

  Heroko stopped and glanced at Cassidy.

  “Get on my back.”

  Cassidy blinked. “What?”

  Heroko’s expression suggested the question itself was inconvenient.

  Cassidy flushed and stepped closer, climbing up awkwardly.

  Heroko adjusted his stance once, then—

  They disappeared.

  Not teleported with light.

  Not warped with a sound.

  Just gone.

  And then present again far away, already moving at a full run, Cassidy clinging to him with wide eyes and a death grip.

  Garth’s group hit the edge of town exhausted but moving, keeping to side streets, avoiding open intersections, trying to look like shadows rather than targets.

  Home was close.

  Too close to feel real.

  Then Kyle appeared.

  He didn’t drop from a roof this time.

  He stepped out of nothing in the center of the street ahead of them like the world had simply decided to make room.

  Garth stopped hard.

  Taco inhaled sharply.

  Zacheas shifted, weight forward.

  Mino’s hands curled into fists.

  Kyle’s face—his eyes—looked normal again.

  No blood.

  No damage.

  No evidence Garth’s light had ever touched him.

  Kyle smiled at their expressions.

  “You thought that was going to last?” he asked sweetly.

  Garth’s voice went low. “Move.”

  Kyle laughed. “No.”

  He lifted his weapon.

  Across the state line, a crater smoked in a lonely field.

  Heroko approached it without caution.

  Cassidy slid off his back, unsteady, staring at the broken earth and the dark object half-buried within.

  It didn’t look like a rock anymore.

  It looked like a capsule. Something that had punched through the sky with purpose.

  Heroko stepped forward and placed his hand against it.

  The asteroid vanished.

  Cassidy blinked hard. “How did you—”

  Heroko didn’t answer.

  He turned, already expecting what he saw.

  They were surrounded.

  Bounded figures stood in a ring around the crater, weapons drawn, eyes glowing faintly with alien power. More than a patrol.

  A capture team.

  Cassidy’s breathing went fast. She reached for instinct she didn’t trust.

  Heroko’s voice was calm. “Stay still.”

  Cassidy froze.

  Heroko moved.

  The ring collapsed.

  Bodies fell in clean, efficient lines, cut down so fast Cassidy’s mind couldn’t track the sequence. Heroko didn’t fight like a person.

  He fought like a law being enforced.

  When the last enemy dropped, Heroko wiped his blade on the grass, sheathed it, and looked back at Cassidy like the whole thing had been a short interruption.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  Cassidy swallowed and followed him, stepping carefully around bodies, trying not to look at the faces.

  Back in town, the Super Freaks stood surrounded.

  Not by an army this time.

  By something worse.

  Kyle stood in front of them, smiling, weapon in hand. The street around them was empty as if the city itself had pulled back in fear.

  Kyle’s voice was pleasant.

  “Spike is getting tired of you interfering with his plans,” he said. “So he sent me to take you down.”

  Garth’s stance tightened. “Spike’s afraid to come himself?”

  Kyle’s grin widened. “Spike’s busy.”

  He took one slow step forward.

  “Now,” he said, eyes bright, “let’s see if you can fight what you can’t see.”

  And then Kyle disappeared.

  Not ran. Not jumped.

  Disappeared.

  The air shifted.

  A slash erupted from nowhere and carved across Garth’s side.

  Garth grunted, stumbling, boots scraping pavement. He swung at empty space.

  Kyle’s laughter echoed from somewhere close and nowhere at all.

  Another invisible strike snapped across Taco’s shield, jolting her arm.

  Zacheas spun, trying to catch movement with instinct rather than sight, but the attacks came like ghosts—angles impossible, timing wrong, the street itself betraying them.

  A third slash hit Garth low.

  His leg buckled.

  He hit the ground on one knee, blood darkening his shirt.

  Kyle’s laughter grew louder, circling.

  “You can’t block what you can’t predict,” Kyle taunted.

  Garth lifted his head, eyes hard, chest heaving.

  And in the space between invisible blades, the realization hit all of them at once:

  They weren’t just being attacked.

  They were being toyed with.

  They were trapped.