Free Web NovelChapter 24: Kill Brogan
The system screen barely registered in his peripheral vision before Ren dismissed it entirely.
He didn’t care what it said.
He didn’t care about unlocks or bloodlines or notifications of any kind. The only thing that existed in the entire world right now was the man standing across the clearing with blood on his hands and a smile that hadn’t fully faded yet.
He pushed.
The gravitational force pressing him into the crater floor was immense, the kind of weight that bent steel and cracked stone, but Ren pushed against it anyway, his claws digging into the earth, his legs shaking under the load, blood beginning to seep from beneath his scales where the pressure found the gaps.
His bones popped, one after another, loud enough to be heard across the clearing.
And then he was free.
He didn’t stand. He launched, covering the distance between himself and Brogan in a single explosive burst that left a divot in the earth where he’d been kneeling, moving so fast that by the time Brogan’s eyes registered the motion, Ren’s claws were already in him.
They hit the ground together, Ren driving Brogan backward across the clearing at a speed that tore the earth open in a long ragged scar beneath them, trees blurring past on either side, Brogan’s screams swallowed by the wind and the sheer velocity of it.
The headmaster dropped altitude sharply above them, watching with eyes that had gone very still.
Ren drove Brogan’s back into a tree hard enough to crack it down the center, pinned him there, and looked at his face from inches away.
"You touched what was mine," Ren said, his voice so low it barely carried above the sound of Brogan’s labored breathing. "You held it. You hurt it. And then you snapped its neck while it cried."
He opened his jaws at point blank range and fired.
The ember breath wasn’t full force. It didn’t need to be. It was enough to be heard from a hundred meters away, enough to strip the air of oxygen for a half second, enough that when it was over Brogan’s face was unrecognizable and his screams had become something raw and animal and desperate.
"You’re going to bleed for that," Ren said, pulling back. "Slowly."
He slashed with one claw, the blow launching Brogan upward, and then Ren was above him before he peaked, driving him back down with both feet. Brogan slammed into the earth and left an impact crater. Ren came down hard right after, landing directly on his chest, claws sinking in.
Brogan screamed again, full throated, the sound of someone with nothing left to hold back.
The other three instructors closed in fast, weapons raised, but none of them moved to attack, watching with the particular hesitation of people who had just recalibrated what they were dealing with.
The headmaster descended slowly beside them, eyes fixed on Ren.
Ren picked Brogan up by the throat.
He looked at the headmaster. At Cassian. At Selene. He looked at all of them, one by one, and let them see exactly what was behind his eyes right now.
Then he drew his claw across Brogan’s neck in a single clean motion.
The head hit the ground before the body did. Ren hurled it downward with enough force that it shattered against the earth, and straightened, his gaze locking onto the remaining three.
"Leave," the headmaster said immediately, not a request, not a discussion, just a single flat command aimed at the other three. "Now. All of you."
"Headmaster—" Cassian started.
"Move!"
Ren attacked before the word finished echoing.
The headmaster threw a gravity field between them and Ren hit it at full speed, the invisible force slowing him but not stopping him, his legs driving forward through the resistance while the three instructors scrambled backward.
"GO!" the headmaster bellowed at them, pouring more into the field, his arms shaking with the effort of holding something back that should not have been able to keep moving.
Ren broke through.
Cassian threw Ash’s burned body directly into Ren’s path, a desperate instinctive move, and Ren’s claws tore through it without thinking.
The explosion came from inside.
A magical charge, planted somewhere in the seconds before the throw, detonated the moment Ren made contact and the force of it was total, a white hot blast that picked Ren up and hurled him backward through the air, smoke pouring from his scales as he tumbled.
He hit the ground and rolled, vision strobing, every part of him screaming.
When he looked up, a magical formation was already spinning above the three instructors, geometric and glowing, a teleportation circle pulling itself into existence with frantic speed.
Ren moved.
He crossed the distance at a dead sprint, claws extended, and reached Cassian in the half second before the circle completed. His claws drove into the side of Cassian’s neck, deep, angled, dragging through more than half of it before the teleportation ripped them all away.
The clearing vanished.
They reappeared in the camp, stumbling, Cassian collapsing the instant his feet touched ground, blood gushing from his neck in thick, rapid pulses. Selene dropped beside him immediately, hands moving, magic already forming.
"Leave him," the headmaster said.
"He’s dying—"
"Leave him and find the students. We are leaving this forest right now."
She looked up at him, something breaking in her expression.
"Headmaster, I can save him if you just give me—"
"There is no time." His voice carried no anger, no cruelty, just the flat, immovable certainty of a man who had made an irreversible assessment. "I underestimated what was in this forest. That error has already cost us enough. We will not compound it by staying."
Selene looked back down at Cassian, at the blood soaking into the earth beneath him, at the light going out behind his glasses.
She stood.
From somewhere deep in the forest behind them, a roar rolled across the treeline, long and low and furious, reverberating through the ground itself.
The headmaster’s jaw tightened.
"Move," he said quietly. "All of us. Now."
Ren didn’t follow them to the camp.
He flew back to the cave first, fast and low, covering the distance in seconds, and swept through with Dragon Vision the moment he arrived, checking every wolf, every lizardman, every corner of the swamp and the cave entrance.
No casualties. Everyone accounted for.
He closed his eyes for a moment, something in his chest that had been wound impossibly tight loosening by the smallest fraction.
Then he turned back toward the forest, and the rage came rushing back in.
He moved through the treeline at speed, looking for students, looking for anyone still in his forest who hadn’t received the message clearly enough yet, and the first two he found were standing in a small clearing, frozen, staring up at him as he dropped from the canopy above.
Luka. Dawn.
They didn’t run. They didn’t speak. They stood completely still, the way prey stood when something larger than anything it had ever encountered appeared directly overhead, and he could see it in both of them, the way their skin had gone pale, the way Dawn’s hand had found Luka’s arm without her seeming to realize it.
They could feel the blood on him. The rage that hadn’t fully gone out yet. They knew, without him saying a single word, that this was not the dragon they had met before.
Ren held himself in place above them, teeth clenched so hard he felt them grind.
These two weren’t the cause. He knew that. They had never been the cause.
He stared at them long enough for his breathing to slow by one degree.
"Leave," he said finally, the word coming out rougher than intended. "There is a limit to my patience. And do not come back."
They looked at each other.
Then they ran.
Ren watched them go, and did not follow.
He turned his eyes slowly back toward the camp, where he knew the headmaster and Selene were moving fast, gathering students, trying to get clear before he changed his mind.
His battle with them was not finished.
Not even close.
