"Just where is he?" Xain muttered as he and the others rushed through the ruined streets, eyes scanning every collapsed storefront and shattered alleyway for any sign of Callum.
"There!" Zee suddenly shouted, pointing ahead.
At the center of what had once been a clothing store, its windows blown out and racks of torn fabric scattered across the floor, lay the werewolf. The building was half-collapsed, its roof sagging inward and the display counters overturned, but Callum was unmistakable where he lay amid the wreckage.
They ran to him.
When they reached him, it became immediately clear why he hadn't moved. Callum was in the middle of regenerating. His body was slowly knitting itself back together, muscle shifting beneath torn skin and bones grinding faintly as they realigned. It was a slow, unpleasant process to watch.
Considering the damage, it wasn't surprising.
Literally every bone in his body had been shattered.
"O-okay… he's not dead. That's good," Vilak said with a long sigh of relief, some of the tension draining from his shoulders.
"I told you he'd be fine," Lia replied confidently, giving the necromancer a reassuring pat on the back.
Mae crouched slightly, leaning closer to inspect the werewolf before lightly nudging him with the toe of her shoe. "I wouldn't say he's fine. I mean… he's still broken in many different ways."
"Don't do that!" Zee snapped immediately, grabbing her twin by the arm and pulling her back from Callum.
Xain shifted uncomfortably as another faint crack echoed from Callum's body while something inside him realigned. He glanced at the others. "Can any of us help him? Speed things up somehow?" he asked, clearly uneasy about just standing there while the werewolf's regeneration dragged on.
The group exchanged looks.
"I… can't heal people," Vilak admitted.
Lia hummed thoughtfully. "I taught Even how to use his water magic better, but I don't have it myself," she said, which unfortunately meant there wasn't much she could do either.
That left them with one option.
Waiting.
"He is the only one that managed to damage the Demon King," Nori pointed out.
Xain, the only one who understood him, nodded in agreement. "He's right. Vilak's skeletons and magic did nothing to him, which probably means the rest of us can't do much either."
The others didn't understand the sign language, but the meaning came through well enough from Xain's explanation.
"Werewolf claws t-tend to cut through supernatural… everything, really," Vilak explained hesitantly.
Zee lowered her gaze toward the sword in her hand.
"Do you think the sword could do the same?" she asked aloud after a moment. "It can cut through magic at least," she added.
Both Vilak and Mae immediately turned toward the weapon.
"It can do what?" Mae asked, leaning closer to examine it.
"D-does it have anti-magic on it?" Vilak asked, taking a cautious step backward.
Zee shrugged slightly. "I don't really understand how it works. It just cuts through magic. That's what we know."
Xain spoke up then, glancing at the blade. "But doesn't it have a limit? Isn't that why one of its gem… crystal… whatever those things are in it, is they cracked?"
Zee gave another small shrug. "Maybe. I haven't gotten the chance to use it yet."
A low groan rose from the floor of the ruined store.
Everyone immediately looked down.
Callum had shifted back into his human form, lying awkwardly on the cracked tiles amid scattered clothing racks and torn fabric. His face twisted slightly as he moved, muscles still recovering from the brutal reconstruction his body had just finished forcing itself through.
"Ugh…" he muttered, pushing a hand against the ground. "Why were you all talking like I couldn't hear you at all? I was still conscious, you know. You do realize that, right?"
He slowly pushed himself upright, one hand bracing his lower back as he stood. The motion made him hiss sharply through his teeth as the last remnants of pain shot through his spine.
Xain stepped closer, eyeing him from head to toe. "Are you okay? Is everything… back in place?"
Callum rolled his shoulders carefully, then twisted his torso a little as if testing the movement. "Yeah. It is," he said after a moment. "Takes a lot to put a wolf down."
Then his attention shifted to Zee.
"And uh… Zee? You don't have to try using it on him yet," he added, nodding toward the sword in her hands. "I'll give it another go before that."
Zee blinked. "Are you sure?"
Callum nodded without hesitation. "Yeah. We know my claws work. Your sword might work, but we don't actually know that yet. So let's just not take chances, okay?"
He exhaled deeply after saying it, the breath leaving him slowly as the memory of the previous fight resurfaced.
"Not that I really want to go fight him again," he admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. "Goddess, my entire body broke. And I was terrified for a moment because suddenly I was here…" He paused, frowning slightly as the thought caught up with him. "Speaking of which, how am I here? Wasn't there a building falling on top of all of us?"
Vilak shook his head uncertainly. "None of us know either. I-it just… happened." He hesitated before adding, "But someone else is fighting the Demon King right now."
"They are?" Callum asked, brows lifting.
Beside them, Nori raised his hands to sign.
"Speaking of which, should we go back to—"
He didn't finish.
High above the ruins, the radiance hanging in the sky suddenly changed.
The burning sphere of light tightened.
For the briefest instant, the glow compressed inward instead of expanding outward. The brilliance sharpened, condensing toward a single invisible focal point somewhere far above the city.
Then the light moved.
A line of white carved down through the air.
It wasn't a falling beam or a gradual descent. It was an instantaneous alignment—a perfect vertical axis drawn between the radiant sphere in the heavens and the ground below.
The beam struck.
Far across the ruined district where the crater lay, the impact flattened the space around the point of contact for a split second before everything erupted outward.
Stone didn't simply break—it vanished.
The street imploded into a violently expanding crater as the shockwave blasted debris outward in a perfect circular ring. Entire slabs of pavement ripped free. Nearby buildings shuddered violently as windows collapsed inward and rooftops tore loose from their foundations.
The sound arrived half a breath later.
A thunderous concussion rolled across the city, drowning out everything else as the force of the strike rattled the surrounding ruins.
For an instant, the pillar of radiance burned so intensely that the center of it erased all detail. Within the blinding column, a single dark outline appeared—King Domine's silhouette suspended in stark black against the overwhelming light.
Then the beam intensified further.
It drove downward harder, deeper, as though attempting to force him straight through the earth itself.
The brilliance held for a moment longer.
Then it faded.
Silence slowly returned to the broken streets.
Inside the ruined clothing store, every one of them had turned toward the distant crater.
Callum swallowed.
"Okay…" he muttered quietly, eyes still fixed on the distant devastation. "…now I'm not so sure about going back to try again."