Raphael closed the distance in a single push off the floor, no warning, a red line leaving itself in the air behind him. Death Crow came in screaming.

Both were Lv3, but familiarity with Blood Frenzy was not equal between them. The thrall had no time to register the attack.

"Useless!"

Alp wrenched the thrall backward at the last instant. The axe-blade grazed the neck with a fingernail’s clearance, any less and the head would have come off.

But Raphael didn’t chase the failed strike. He pivoted and drove a kick into the abdomen that sent the thrall sideways into the wall with a sound like snapping wood.

Two ribs gave way. The thrall doubled over, cold sweat streaming down his forehead, the red in his vision blurring.

"Damn it all, stuck wearing you is my worst fortune!"

Alp took direct control of the limbs, operating the thrall’s body like a frame from the inside, forcing it sideways as Raphael came again.

The dodge was a moment too slow. Death Crow swept across the thrall’s flank, deep, down to bone, and where the blade had passed, the black vapor of the weapon clung to the wound.

The flesh at the edges went white. Went still. Stopped healing.

Even the blood stopped.

A cut that had missed the center mass. A strike that hadn’t bisected him. And yet a portion of the body had simply, stopped living.

"What is this? Why isn’t it healing? It won’t heal! No! I don’t want to die—!"

Two seconds ago he’d been snarling about killing Raphael.

Now he was scrabbling backward on the floor like a panicked animal, all of it gone, the Superbia, the aggression, the contempt, replaced by something formless and desperate.

The transition was too abrupt. Too absolute. Something had reached in and changed the emotional environment from the outside. 𝕗𝐫𝐞𝕖𝕨𝐞𝗯𝚗𝕠𝘃𝐞𝚕.𝐜𝗼𝚖

"Death Sentence. That’s what that mark does."

He’d killed harpies cleanly enough that the effect hadn’t been visible before. This was the first time he’d watched it land and hold.

Each strike from Death Crow applies the Death Sentence mark, moderate disruption to the target’s fate, and psychological weakening.

His eyes sharpened. He came forward again, raising Death Crow high.

Alp’s reflexes were just barely enough to track him, better than the thrall’s by a significant margin.

He couldn’t peel away from the contract no matter how much he wanted to, which meant he was locked into defense.

He pulled the thrall clear as the blade came down, and Death Crow carved through the neck surface, not a clean decapitation, more like a hatchet into a tree that stops a third of the way through, the blade embedding there.

Because in that moment Alp’s Shadow had transformed.

The black cloak became liquid. A spreading tar that began to coat the thrall’s entire body, wrapping him in a dark membrane, converting him into something that wore that shell as armor.

Physical Resistance Lv4. The killing blow had just barely been stopped.

Raphael planted a foot on the thrall’s chest, wrenched Death Crow free, raised it, and brought it down on the same point.

Crack.

The spine broke. Half the head hung loose from the remaining neck tissue, held by a fraying connection.

Whether the thrall was still technically alive had stopped being relevant. The body was operating on Alp’s will now, and it kept moving, half a skull lolling at the shoulder, still trying to crawl away, still refusing to stop.

The third blow came.

The flesh at the wound site went the same white and rigid as everywhere else Death Crow had touched.

The self-healing was gone entirely now, without it, the thrall was just a body taking damage it couldn’t undo, the way any tree eventually falls if you keep swinging.

Alp understood this perfectly well. He had no intention of watching his contractor die if he could avoid it.

But his mutation points had been invested in physical resistance, not physical functions, defense without the speed or strength to break free. He couldn’t outlast Raphael. He couldn’t break the grip.

What he could do was change the situation.

The moment the black membrane had fully enclosed the thrall’s body, a transformation began, analogous to the way Raphael shifted into wraith-form.

The entire mass began to sink, pressing downward through the floor’s shadow, the speed of it faster than expected.

Raphael swung again. The blade hit the floor and opened a gouge in the stone.

The thrall’s shadow looked back at him for a single moment, and then both of them slid into the shadow pooled in the corner of the wall and were gone.

"Run now. Fast."

Alp had no interest whatsoever in a continued fight. He’d been part of a coordinated group of five when they’d killed Raphael the first time, and that had still cost one of the assassins their life.

Now he was bound to an incompetent thrall, his capable partners not here, and the target had come back from death with abilities that hadn’t been in the briefing.

He saw no path to winning this.

The thrall did not agree.

Superbia’s influence was tidal, and the tide had shifted.

The Death Sentence’s grip on his fear had released the moment the immediate threat receded, and what flooded back in to replace it was the exact mood that had driven him into the fight in the first place.

"Run? Why would I run? You’ve been holding out on me! I thought you were just a defensive communication device with minor utility, and you can do that?"

He’d seized the body’s controls back before Alp could stop him.

He wasn’t hiding anymore. He was moving, jumping between the shadow under the desk and the shadow in the corner and the shadow behind the door, rapid repositioning, each jump putting more confusion between himself and Raphael’s tracking, until he’d opened enough angles to find one Raphael wasn’t watching.

He settled beneath a chair, directly behind Raphael.

Locked onto the back of the neck.

The black membrane parted just enough. The vampire’s fangs emerged from the dark, aimed at the carotid artery.

He threw himself forward.

"Die—!"