The last wave didn't co with tactics or snarls.
It ca with desperation.
They were cornered now, the few that remained, and cornered things didn't think.
They lunged, clawed, bit, and died for it.
Senrix t them with a sword that felt heavier than the mountain itself.
His arms were numb, his ribs felt like they were grinding against each other with every breath, and his vision kept narrowing to a tunnel of blood and stone.
But he moved.
He had to move.
A creature with a shattered jaw leapt for his throat.
He didn't have the strength to lift the sword cleanly, so he dropped low and drove it upward through the creature's gut.
It died on the blade, twitching, and he used its falling weight to throw himself out of the way of the next one.
His shoulder hit the rock hard enough to make stars burst behind his eyes.
He didn't stop.
The sword beca a blur of motion he barely controlled. He stopped aiming.
He stopped thinking about angles and rhythm.
He just swung, and wherever the steel landed, sothing scread and fell.
One creature caught his left arm with its claws.
Pain flared, sharp and imdiate, but he didn't pull back.
He grabbed it by the throat with his right hand and smashed its head against the stone until it stopped moving.
Another ca from behind.
He felt it before he heard it, the shift of air, the scrape of claws on stone.
He dropped, rolled, and kicked out blindly.
His heel connected with its knee and it went down with a shriek.
The sword found its neck before it could rise.
His shirt was soaked through.
Not with sweat.
Blood.
His own and theirs.
It ran down his ribs in hot lines, pooling in his boots, making the stone slick under his feet.
He slipped.
For half a second he was falling, the edge rushing up to et him.
He threw himself forward, catching the edge of the path with his fingers.
Stone tore his skin open.
He didn't feel it. He pulled, heaved, and rolled back onto the path as a creature leapt over him and fell screaming into the drop.
When he stood, there were only three left.
They circled him, low and wary, like they'd finally realized he didn't die.
Senrix spat blood onto the stone and tightened his grip on the sword.
"Co on," he rasped.
His voice was shredded. "Finish it."
They didn't need another invitation.
The fastest one charged.
He let it co, let it commit, and stepped aside at the last mont.
The blade ca down across its back and split it open. It fell without a sound.
The second one tried to flank him.
He t it head-on, driving his shoulder into its chest and throwing it off balance.
The sword followed, punching through its throat.
The last one hesitated.
Senrix saw it in its eyes, the calculation, the fear. It turned to run.
He didn't let it.
He threw the sword.
It spun end over end and took the creature through the back of the neck.
It dropped face-first into the dirt and didn't move again.
Silence fell.
Senrix stood in the middle of it, chest heaving, hands shaking so badly he could barely keep his fingers curled.
The path was a slaughterhouse.
Bodies piled over bodies, so still twitching, most still.
Blood ran in dark rivers down the slope, disappearing into the cracks of the stone.
The sll was unbearable, iron and rot and sothing sour underneath.
He waited.
One second. Two. Three.
Nothing moved.
Nothing ca.
He exhaled, and it felt like the first real breath he'd taken since this started.
His legs gave out.
He hit his knees hard, the impact jarring through his bones, but he didn't fall forward.
He stayed upright, hands braced on the stone, head hanging low.
It was over.
He'd killed them all.
The realization hit him slowly, like cold water.
He was still alive.
Senrix laughed.
It ca out broken, wet, more like a sob than anything else.
He couldn't stop it.
"Fuck," he whispered to the empty path. "I actually did it."
He tried to stand.
Failed.
Tried again and managed to get to his feet, leaning heavily against the rock face.
Every movent sent fire through his ribs, but he forced himself to move.
The sword lay a few feet away, half-buried in a dead creature.
He retrieved it, wincing as the motion pulled at his wounds.
The peak was still above him.
Closer now, but still far.
He had to keep going.
He didn't know what waited up there, but staying here wasn't an option.
The blood would draw more things. The sll would.
So he walked.
It wasn't walking, not really.
It was dragging himself forward one painful step at a ti, using the sword as a crutch, using the rock wall to keep from falling.
The wind picked up as he climbed higher.
It cut across his wounds and made him shiver, but it also cleared the air.
For the first ti, he could breathe without tasting blood.
Hours passed.
Or maybe it was minutes.
Ti had stopped making sense sowhere around the fiftieth kill.
The path got steeper. The stone got colder.
And then, suddenly, it was flat.
The summit.
Senrix collapsed onto the stone, chest heaving, staring up at the sky.
It was clear here, no mist, no clouds.
Just endless blue and the sun, high and rciless.
He lay there for a long ti, listening to the wind and his own heartbeat.
Slowly, the pain started to fade. Not disappear, never that, but dull, recede into the background. His breathing evened out. His hands stopped shaking.
When he sat up, the wounds were still there, but they weren't bleeding anymore. The cuts on his arm had closed to thin lines. The gash in his ribs was no longer pouring blood.
He didn't know how. He didn't care.
He was alive.
Senrix stood up slowly, testing his weight.
His legs held. His left arm still ached, but he could move it.
He looked around.
The summit was small, bare, wind-scoured stone.
Nothing here but rock and sky and silence.
For a mont, the world went quiet.
Not silent, quiet.
Like the noise in his head had finally stopped.
When it passed, he felt different.
Lighter, sharper.
Like sothing in his mind had clicked into place.
He understood the sword better now.
The way it balanced, the way it wanted to move.
He understood the mountain, the wind, the way his own body wanted to react before he even told it to.
Senrix closed his hand around the destroyed sword and let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding.
He'd survived.
He looked out over the mountainside, at the path he'd climbed, at the blood and bodies far below.
Sowhere down there, sothing had noticed him.
He could feel it.
A pressure at the back of his skull, distant but watching.
Let it watch.
He was done running.
Senrix turned his back on the edge and started walking.
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