The creature attacked.

Damon threw himself sideways, shoulder slamming against the cold concrete floor. Something whistled past his ear, not a claw, not a physical strike, but a wave of distortion that made the air itself scream.

The wall behind where he’d been standing sizzled, the metal surface corroding as if aged a hundred years in a second.

[BANSHEE (B-RANK)]

"S-Shit!"

The system’s identification flickered, the text unstable, as if even describing the creature was straining his useless interface. But it was more information than it had ever given him before.

Not that it helped.

’B-Rank...’

A monster that required a full team of C-Rank Resonators or a single experienced B-Rank to handle. The kind of threat that wouldn’t even notice someone like him before turning him into a smear on the floor.

The Banshee didn’t have a face. Just a vaguely humanoid shape made of static and screaming silence, its edges bleeding into reality like ink spreading through water. It cocked its head, the motion jerky and wrong, as if it were a puppet controlled by strings that didn’t quite reach.

It wasn’t looking at the door.

It was looking at him.

"Damon?! DAMON! What’s happening out there!?"

Lena’s voice cracked through the door, panic finally breaking through her sarcasm. The Banshee’s head snapped toward the sound. Its form flickered, interest shifting.

"No, no, no, hey!" Damon scrambled to his feet, grabbing a chunk of loose concrete from the floor. "Over here, you glitchy piece of—"

He hurled the concrete. It passed straight through the Banshee’s torso and clattered against the far wall.

It didn’t even flinch.

"Focus on me, you dipshit!"

Damon yelled, then immediately regretted it.

The Banshee’s head snapped toward him, its half-corporeal form flickering wildly as it prepared another attack. He quickly stepped sideways just as a sonic screech tore through the space he’d occupied a heartbeat before.

The grazing force ripped the front of his shirt clean open, and the wall behind him buckled inward like crumpled paper instead of reinforced steel.

’No way to fight back!’

Right now, the only thing he could do was buy time.

But if reinforcements were forty minutes out, Damon knew he’d be dead long before then.

’Unless—’

"This is where it went!"

’Unless something was tracking that banshee when it managed to escape!’

The voice rang out from the corridor behind him. Damon spun, and his breath caught.

Long golden hair spilled past the figure’s shoulders. Serpentine eyes gleamed in the emergency lights. Ears sharp as knives rose to elegant points.

An elf. An actual elf, one of the beings who’d crossed through the portals when the first breaches opened, the same ones who’d forged an uneasy alliance with humanity in the centuries since.

"Stand back, child!"

The elf already had an arrow nocked, drawing three more from the quiver in a single fluid motion.

Four arrows left the bow in rapid succession, each one glowing with a faint silver light. They didn’t pass through the Banshee like Damon’s concrete.

They struck true, piercing the creature’s flickering form and pinning it against the far wall like a butterfly to a board.

The Banshee screamed. Not the sonic attack from before, but a genuine shriek of pain 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

"Filthy thing," the elf muttered, already drawing another arrow. This one was different. Longer. The tip carved from something that looked like crystals. "You should have stayed in whatever hole you crawled out of."

"Wait!" Damon pushed himself off the floor, his legs shaking. "There’s a student trapped in there. The door’s sealed, and—"

"I’m aware." The elf’s serpentine eyes never left the writhing Banshee. "But I can’t open that door while this thing is still breathing. And I can’t kill it quickly without risking a death wail that’ll bring this entire corridor down on our heads."

"A what?"

"Death wail. Banshees release their remaining energy in a final scream when they die. The blast radius on a B-Rank would be... problematic."

Damon’s mind raced.

Death wails, final screams, energy releases.

Two years of studying. Two years of memorizing every monster manual, every bestiary, every after-action report from his father’s missions. He’d read about Banshees before.

Their death wails were directional, stupidly focused. They released it in a cone in front of the creature, not a sphere.

"I’ll handle it!" Damon yelled out.

"What!?" The elf stared at Damon as if he’d just suggested the impossible. "What do you mean?"

"You get the student out of the door, and I’ll drag the banshee to another corridor and take it down with that special arrow of yours."

"Do you have a death wish, child?"

Damon only chuckled. The math was simple. The elf and Lena had actually working systems. If either of them died, it would be a genuine loss for humanity.

But him? If he died, nothing of value would be lost. The math was simple.

Of course, the elf would never agree to those terms. So Damon decided to act without permission.

He wasn’t going to get his system working anyway. He’d known that for two years now. The least he could do was die saving someone who actually had one.

"I’ll be borrowing this."

Damon snatched the nocked arrow from the elf’s grip, then grabbed a second for good measure, exploiting the elf’s momentary shock. The instant the arrows were grabbed, the banshee sensed the shift. Its form flickered, phasing out of the arrows that pinned it.

Damon didn’t hesitate. He bolted around the corner, inches away from the Banshee, the stolen arrows clutched tight in his hand. The moment he turned, he hurled the non-enchanted one straight at the banshee’s face.

It wasn’t meant to kill. It was meant to insult.

The creature’s hollow eyes locked onto him. Target changed. The weaker prey had volunteered.

"That bastard!"

The elf shouted, then glanced at the door where Lena was still trapped. She had decided to honor the idiot’s final wish.

***

Damon kept running, his lungs burning, his legs screaming. Behind him, the Banshee followed, a blur of static and silent fury. It was smart. It knew it was outmatched against the elf.

And Damon was the perfect target to refocus on.

He heard it then, cutting through the chaos, the screech of tearing metal, the heavy slam of the blast door hitting the floor. Footsteps. Lena’s voice, raw with confusion and fear.

"Where’s Damon?! Where is he—"

The elf’s answer was lost in the echo. But it didn’t matter to Damon anyway. The door was open, and Lena was out, and the elf would get her to safety.

Everything was finished.

’Good,’ Damon thought. ’Now I can stop running.’

He dug his heels into the concrete, twisting his body in a motion that sent a jolt of pain through his knee.

From fleeing to charging.

He wasn’t sure where this sudden boost of confidence and recklessness came from. But he definitely knew it wasn’t because of morals.

His best guess? He wanted to go out with a bang rather than remain stranded in the Logistics Sector.

The Banshee recoiled, its flickering form drifting backward in sheer, alien confusion. It hadn’t expected its prey to suddenly charge at it, especially not prey that weak.

"Didn’t take that elf long to move, huh?"

Damon’s lips pulled into a grim smile. He saw the Banshee’s hollow face, the way its edges crackled with unspent energy.

Its form was still destabilized from being pinned earlier. This was its best chance to finish it off completely.

One shot. He had one shot.

He gripped the crystalline arrow tight. The tip pulsed with a faint, cold light. Whatever enchantment the elf had placed on it, it felt heavier than it looked, dense with something that made his fingers tingle.

"Die!"

Damon drove the arrow straight into the Banshee’s skull.

The creature’s form shattered. Not like flesh. Like glass breaking in slow motion, cracks of silver light spiderwebbed across its body. And then—

The scream.