The air was too heavy to breathe.

  Dust hung suspended in the cold, glowing faintly blue from the light spilling off the Spartor’s body. It

  looked almost serene standing there, its single eye burning through the haze, steam curling up from its

  cracked armor.

  Bash crouched low behind a mound of shattered wall, his knees jammed against cold stone. He didn’t

  realize he was bleeding again until he saw dark smudges spreading down his sleeve. His hands shook

  uncontrollably, small spasms running through his fingers like electricity.

  He didn’t blink. He couldn’t.

  In front of the alien, half crumpled against a wall, was his father.

  He was alive, but barely.

  Blood ran down his chin in slow streams, freezing into dull streaks across his collar. His chest rose and

  fell in short, uneven jerks. The frost beneath him hissed where his blood hit it, thin tendrils of steam

  coiling upward like ghosts.

  For a few heartbeats, neither of them moved.

  The wind had died, the fires were down to embers, and even the crackle of ice seemed to hold itself

  back.

  It felt like the world itself was afraid to make a sound.

  The Spartor wasn’t untouched. Shards of twisted rebar jutted from its back and thigh. Fragments of

  shattered drone blades were lodged in its shoulder. Patches of frost sealed over open wounds where

  blue blood had frozen mid-flow.

  Steam escaped from those fractures in steady bursts, each one curling upward in faint spirals before

  vanishing into the night air. The creature stood motionless, its hands slack at its sides, but the power

  thrummed under its skin, a faint vibration that Bash could feel through the ground.

  The sight made his stomach twist. He realized with cold certainty that everything they had done, every

  bullet, every blast, every knife, hadn’t been enough. It was wounded, yes, but not weakened.

  He wanted to crawl backward, to hide deeper among the rubble, but his body wouldn’t move.

  His breathing turned shallow. His throat tightened until it hurt.

  He blinked, and the world shifted between now and before.

  , The sound of his mother’s voice, steady but kind.

  , The soft clink of tools in his grandfather’s workshop.

  , His father’s laugh echoing off the porch.

  Then a flash: the sound of the explosion that took the house. The taste of smoke. His mother’s hands

  shoving him toward the bunker, her voice rising over the roar of falling stone, “Go!”

  Now there was only this.

  A dying man and a god that refused to die.

  The Spartor tilted its head, and Bash saw it turn toward his father.

  Kyle moved. Barely a slow, shaking shift as he pushed himself upright. His body trembled with the

  effort. He braced a hand against the wall, dragging his legs underneath him. His breathing came out

  harsh and wet.

  “Dad…” Bash mouthed, but no sound followed. His voice had broken somewhere deep inside him.

  Kyle coughed, a spray of blood hitting the ground. He wiped it away with the back of his wrist and spat

  what he could. His eyes, half-lidded, bloodshot, unfocused, found the alien again.

  For a moment, he just looked at it.

  Then, slowly, he raised his chin.

  The faintest grin cut through the mess of blood on his face.

  “Come on,” he rasped.

  The words were almost nothing, but they seemed to echo.

  The Spartor’s light flared, its body humming with a deep vibration that seemed to shake the air itself.

  Lines of blue energy raced along the cracks in its armor, gathering at its shoulders and arms. A burst of

  steam vented from its side, carrying the sharp scent of scorched stone.

  “COME ON!” Kyle roared again, louder this time, the sound tearing something in his throat.

  The alien’s head tilted further, studying him. Its hands flexed once. The frost beneath its feet spread

  outward like veins of light through cracked glass.

  Kyle stepped forward, one shaky, broken step at a time.

  He dragged his right foot behind him, his ribs audibly grinding with each movement. The knife in his

  hand hung low at his side, its edge catching the faint light.

  “Come on!” he shouted again, his voice cracking halfway through. “Do it!”

  The Spartor moved.

  The ground groaned. Tiny fragments of ice leapt into the air with each slow, deliberate step. The alien’s

  breathing grew heavier, the glow in its chest pulsing harder.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Bash’s pulse pounded in his ears. He pressed his palm against the wall, his fingers leaving streaks of

  blood.

  Every instinct told him to scream, to throw something, to move, anything, but he couldn’t. He was

  trapped between fight and collapse, unable to choose.

  His father kept walking.

  At twelve feet, Kyle stopped.

  He spread his arms slightly, blood dripping from his fingers. His face was drawn, almost calm. Bash

  saw the faint tremor in his hands, the tiny, involuntary shake of a body running on empty.

  The Spartor towered above him now, its single eye blazing like a small sun.

  It raised one massive hand.

  Steam swirled around its arm, condensing into frost. The air rippled with cold.

  Bash’s chest locked. He gripped the rubble so hard his knuckles split.

  Kyle stood still. His shoulders lifted with one long breath.

  “Come on,” he whispered one last time.

  The alien reached for him.

  Kyle ducked.

  The hand whooshed over his head, close enough for the icy wind to sting his neck.

  He lunged forward, knife arm driving up from below with all the force left in his body. His boots

  slipped, but momentum carried the strike home.

  The blade hit hard, high on the alien’s torso, just below the collar ridge, sinking deep enough to pierce

  through the fractured armor and into the glowing tissue beneath. There was resistance at first, then a

  harsh tearing sound as the steel broke through.

  The glow under its skin flared violently, surging across its body in jagged waves of blue light.

  There was resistance, then a tearing sound as the steel broke through hardened flesh.

  The glow in the Spartor’s chest flickered wildly, pulsing like a dying star.

  A single crack of energy shot through the air, bright enough to burn Bash’s vision white.

  Then came the roar.

  It wasn’t just sound, it was pressure, heat, vibration. The noise hit Bash like a wall, forcing him to duck

  behind the rubble and cover his head. The frost around him shattered into dust.

  He lifted his head just in time to see the alien seize Kyle by the torso.

  It happened faster than thought.

  Two massive arms, moving like coiled cables snapping free, clamped around his father’s chest.

  For one heartbeat, Bash saw his father’s face, eyes open, mouth half-formed into another word that

  never came.

  Then the alien squeezed.

  The sound was immediate and final. Bones crushed. Air expelled. A sickening pop that didn’t echo

  because the world seemed to stop when it happened.

  Bash flinched back, his stomach twisting, his lungs locking up. He tried to scream but only air came

  out. His body recoiled without control, tears blurring everything.

  The alien’s roar faded into a long, ragged exhale. It held Kyle’s limp body a moment longer, as if

  studying the fragility of it. The knife still jutted from its chest, both blades now buried deep in a line of

  broken armor.

  Then it let go.

  Kyle’s body fell to the ground with a dull, final thud.

  His legs folded under him, his head turning slightly to the side as he hit. Blood seeped outward,

  threading through cracks in the ice. His fingers were still curled halfway around the knife handle.

  Steam rose off him, faint, curling upward into the freezing air.

  The alien stood over him, chest rising in deep, mechanical motions, steam venting from its side. The

  glow from its heart dimmed, then steadied again, the flicker of pain fading back into cold endurance.

  Bash couldn’t hear anything anymore. Not the wind, not his own breathing, nothing. Just the hollow

  ringing left in the wake of a scream that never came.

  His mind stopped recording sound. It only took in images.

  The frost at the alien’s feet spreading wider.

  The steady drip of blood from his father’s fingertips.

  The faint shimmer of the different objects still embedded in the alien.

  He pressed a hand over his mouth. His shoulders shook, but no sound followed. The noise had left him

  completely.

  The cold crept up his arms, across his neck. His vision narrowed. He tried to move, but his muscles

  refused. His body was a cage locking him in place.

  The alien exhaled one last plume of steam and went still again.

  Bash’s eyes stayed fixed on the knife handles. They gleamed faintly through the frost.

  The light in the Spartor’s chest pulsed once, slow, calm, steady.

  Kyle didn’t move.